gatefold cd with lyric booklet. thee silver mt zion memorial orchestra (smz) returns with its sixth full-length recording and first since the band's line-up change of summer 2008. having shed three members and recruited one (drummer david payant), the group officially dropped the 'tra-la-la band' from its name and embarked on an extensive european tour in 2008. as 'kollaps tradixionales'ably demonstrates, the band has lost none of its raw and frazzled anthemic power and continues to forge bold new ground in its search for a unique hybrid of punk, blues, psych, folk and modern orchestral idioms. anchored by the fried electric guitar and voice of band leader efrim menuck (godspeed you! black emperor) smz continues to slide comfortably towards an expansive, loose and blues-inflected balladry. needless to say, the slow burn with smz, bears little reference to typical notions of musical seduction, relaxation, or hip-swinging satisfaction. what smoulders here is much more precarious and anxious, driven by some of this decade's more devastating lyrical conjurings of the universal outsider and the thematics of 21st century western psychic oppression. as the lyrics to 'there is a light' attest, these are no simple paeans to the human spirit, but songs of complex, desperate and thorny hope.
