Explosions in the Sky certainly start off its latest effort with, appropriately enough, an explosion of sound. All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone begins with an ascending surge of grinding guitars, before dissolving into the familiar soundscape of albums past. “The Birth and Death of the Day” and the 13-minute “What Do You Go Home To?” appear to have personalities, despite being mere arrangements of chords. Each song feels like part of a greater continuous whole, and the band stays true to form with their epic storytelling formula, bleeding each track into the next.
It’s the kind of music that makes it feel okay to daydream about ethereal scenes like unicorns prancing in fields or deep-sea adventures. That is, if you’re into that kind of thing.All of a sudden, the memory of what it feels like to hear a solid, optimistic and unpretentious album returns since The Earth is Not a Cold Dead Place came out more than three years ago. Instrumental albums have a tendency to fall by the wayside, victims of monotony, but these crashing cymbals and layered walls of sound won’t let Explosions in the Sky’s name rest.