Phases and Stages

A Five and Dime Ship

The Way It All Would End Who said it hasn't already? By the time this ambitious, 2-CD expedition crashes ashore with its 11-minute title (tidal) track – coming to rest in the hall of electric spirits (the sole voices on The Way It All Would End) – finality has been breached. The guitar ballet of Chad Rauschenberger and Seven Percent Solution's James Adkisson, A Five and Dime Ship sits low in the water, weighted down with dense inner, outer, and H2O space. Explosions in the Sky, only more explosions, and sea where there should be sky. Disc two, leading off with the EITS-like "Constance," is the stronger of the two discs, roaring into a Rush/Spiritualized overdrive with "Burnin Chrome." As on last year's auspicious debut, plenty of broken orbits (broken anchors?) here, yet there's no question The Way It All Would End is the same sort of all-out voyage Seven Percent Solution's All About Satellites and Spaceships was lo those many moons ago. The guitarists leave a layered trail of guitar loops as they sail down the causeway of their sonic waterworld. Disc one shoves off slowly, peaking on the church bell shuffle of "Shooting Gallery," where the scuffling mix of guitars and percussive electronics recall Radiohead. Segued out of the admiring "Your Extraordinary Beauty," Tangerine Dream tension powers "Godsflesh and Silicon," reprised on the second disc, where "Fun With Shapes and Math" wanders through Xanadu. Gutsy, adventurous, The Way It All Would End isn't the end of the world, but it's sailing there now.