Godspeed You! Black Emperor @ Electric Ballroom (2022)
21/09/2022
Humming Amps
I spent 15+ minutes thinking Godspeed started a full hour earlier than I expected with their Hope Drone, despite not questioning it just being one dude with his guitar on stage. I spent the rest of the time on and off trying to look into who was listed as support to Godspeed for this show in the first place, and after more research than should be necessary, I found out it was a guy called Kevin Doria from a band called Growing! Interested! This set was really good as well, just being guitar based ambient drone, strong Stars of the Lid vibes and all.
Very good!/10
Godspeed You! Black Emperor
Setlist
Hope DroneJob's Lament
First of the Last Glaciers
Rockets Fall on Rocket Falls
Cliffs End
Anthem for No State
The Sad Mafioso
The only Post-Rock band
2 hours really isn't enough with this band. Given how long their songs are on average, over half of it is newer stuff, which isn't that much reason to complain given how good the last album was.
I fucking love Rockets Fall and Sad Mafioso though! Predictably setlist highlights. Even the extended looping drone stuff at the end owned. Of course I'd say that though. They're probably gonna play 'Mladic' and 'Monheim' on their next and last night in London and I'm gonna kick myself so fucking hard for not going to that one instead1, because both of those songs, especially 'Monheim', would've made a great show a fucking amazing show! I mean, this was still a great show though!
To make it more of a thing to come up with a dream setlist for this band though, it'd basically be all from the trilogy of peak Godspeed plus 'Mladic'2. Such a setlist would look a lot like this:
Dream Setlist
(Hope Drone)The Gathering Storm !important
Rockets Fall on Rocket Falls
World Police and Friendly Fire
Mladic
Monheim !important
She Dreamt She Was A Bulldozer
The Sad Mafioso !important
Honestly, if I went to the 05.14.03: Nantes, France show, that would've done the trick for me! That's a dream setlist in itself. Best Godspeed live bootleg/release for absolute sure, but then, I do still really wanna check out other good live bootlegs of theirs.
8.5/10 (Awesome!/10)
The third night's setlist seemed basically the same as the night before this one, so this is as lucky as I could get. Good!↩
Writing around July 2025, Asunder, Sweet and Other Distress only recently really grew on me, to the point where I'd potentially put 'Piss Crowns Are Trebled' into my dream setlist these days. Shoutout to those last two tracks on their 2024 album as well. Maybe they'll be playing all of those tracks when I see them at ArcTanGent this year? I have my fingers crossed, as Gord would say.↩