Grails

Over the past decade, the Portland, Oregon post-rock quartet Grails has worked at evoking vivid spaces: the grand, dusty West; open, exotic plains; chaotic and dystopian futurescapes. On Deep Politics, the band’s fifth album, Grails’ recent preoccupation with studio tinkering and overdubs has the band fixating on the spaces inside, with piano and orchestration creating a cinematic passage of dread and disquiet. It’s hard to say how the group will recreate this onstage (though extra members have joined past tours), but given the band’s discography, it’s probably fair to assume that the solution will be surprising.

Updated 04/12/2011