The American release of Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s second full-length album, Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven, came one day after the 2000 presidential election. Listening to it 20 years later feels prophetic, the work’s title encapsulating the pervasive feeling of anxiety felt by so many in the ensuing 21st century—a hope that our bodies could somehow transform into rudimentary radio conduits to form a collective, desperate grasp at divine rescue from the inexorable, crushing drive of late capitalism’s corruption, pollution, and cravenness.
Two decades after its stateside debut, the otherworldly transmissions received and recorded for Lift Your Skinny Fists are somehow even more terrifying, beautiful, and awesome. But like many biblical visions, the feelings and messages evoked are so subjective and personal that it’s often a struggle to put them into words.
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