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Apr 06, 2016 Web Exclusive By Zach Hollwedel

It has been five years since the release of Take Care, Take Care, Take Care, Explosions in the Sky‘s last non-soundtrack album. (Working on the films Prince Avalanche, Lone Survivor, and Manglehorn kept the group plenty busy in the interim.) Now, a full 16 years since the Texas-bred quartet made its debut with How Strange, Innocence, The Wilderness marks a true-to-form refinement of the band’s signature sound. It remains inherently easy to become lost in Explosions in the Sky’s absorbing and ambient world, one defined by a visceral electronic pulse that piques the senses and has a way of making everything else fall away. Listening to The Wilderness is an exercise in transcendence, an experience simultaneously both introspective and universal that has by now become standard-and perhaps all the more impressive for it-with any Explosions in the Sky output. From opener “Wilderness” to closer “Landing Cliffs,” the album’s nine-tracks offer an auditory embrace so richly layered and fully realized that it nearly reaches the point of tangibility. It perfectly marries tranquility and aggression, light and dark, and the ethereal with the earthly.

After a decade and a half, and now seven studio albums and counting, Explosions in the Sky proves it still has what it takes to deliver a stunningly deep and textured album. (Not that there was much doubt about the group’s ability to do so.) The Wilderness is the logical next step in musicians’ Chris Hrasky, Michael James, Munaf Rayani, and Mark Smith’s collective evolution, and one can only hope they follow it up before another five years elapse. (www.explosionsinthesky.com)

Author rating: 6.5/10