Out of Texas, a Wordless Wonder

AUSTIN Explosions in the Sky is a band of few words. Twenty-six-year-old guitarist Munaf Rayani opened the rock quartet's set at the Austin City Limits Music Festival last week with "Thank you a million and a half times for coming here and listening to us. We're Explosions in the Sky," after which he and his band mates played for 55 minutes straight. Their performance over, Rayani exclaimed, "Thanks again for your time. Jesus! [Exuberant expletive!]" They then exited the stage.

Explosions is one of the best bands you've never heard, an instrumental group out of Austin that has inspired a nationwide cult following. After touring in 2003 and 2004, the band took a break from performing, which makes this current short road trip -- with concerts in New York, Austin and San Francisco -- especially sweet for its devotees.

Andrew Clyde, a student at the University of North Texas in Denton, had been waiting two years, since he last saw Explosions live. He and his friend Clinton McConnell persuaded two of their friends at the University of Texas at Austin to put them up for the weekend just so they could catch last week's show.

"We listened to it yesterday for four hours," confided his friend Casey Daniel.

"Whatever," Clyde retorted.

"He's sleeping on the floor. He's excited about it," said another friend, Jaclyn Roix. "The only reason he's spending time with us was to see this concert."

Clyde is not alone. Texas Tech student Roger McCluskey drove from Lubbock, Tex., for the festival ("We don't get a lot of these indie bands in Lubbock"), and Candice Adams volunteered outside the fairgrounds for six hours just to hear them. "I listen to them almost every day on my iPod," said Adams. "I haven't met anyone who's like, 'Oh yeah, I've heard of them.' It's like, 'Oh my God!' "

That sort of enthusiasm inspired Gretchen Palek, who handles talent deals for the Discovery Channel in New York, to skip a wedding in Denver so she could attend the group's sold-out concert at Manhattan's Bowery Ballroom. "I carried [my tickets] with me everywhere I went, because I was just so afraid something would happen," said Palek. "When I saw them live, it was like a life-changing experience."

Explosions' music, which is orchestral in scope and veers between the triumphant and ethereal, is not easily defined. Many critics have compared the band's members to indie rock groups Sigur Ros and Mogwai, and they have won plaudits from such arbiters of coolness as the music Web site Pitchfork. But their rapid-fire drums and impassioned guitar riffs prompts Rayani to question why some critics have labeled them "post-rock." At moments, when they use sweeping arm movements to clang their guitars in unison while their drummer pounds away, they appear to be channeling the Who.

"We don't consider ourselves post-rock at all; we consider ourselves a rock band," Rayani said.

Perhaps it helps that the other three members of the band -- guitarist Mark Smith, 31, drummer Chris Hrasky, 32, and bassist Michael James, 29 -- were all metal-heads in high school. Rayani listened exclusively to hip-hop.

Explosions has three full albums: "How Strange, Innocence" (sold on its 2001 tour and recently remastered and rereleased); "Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Die, Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Live Forever" (which suffered some negative publicity because it depicted a plane crash and was released just before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks); and its 2003 release, "The Earth Is Not a Cold Dark Place." Band members also wrote most of the soundtrack for Peter Berg's 2004 film "Friday Night Lights," which partly accounts for their following among frat boys.