Den Namen dieses Typen kennt man eher nicht so, seine beiden Hauptbands Godspeed You! Black Emperor und A Silver Mount Zion Orchestra aber umso besser. Außerdem spielte er jahrelang in der Band von Vic Chesnutt und betreibt dazu das florierende Montrealer Studio Hotel2Tango. Kein Wunder also, dass Efrim auch noch eine Solokarriere am Laufen hat. Sein erstes Soloalbum ist ein emotional-expressives Werk. Es handelt von Geburt und Tod, vertont auf eher experimentelle Weise abseits gängiger Songstrukturen. Seine Distortion-Gitarre mäandert fast wie einst bei Neil Youngs „Dead Man“-Score, ansonsten verliert sich Efrim aber auch gerne in hermetischen Analog-Tapeloop-Collagen von leicht esoterischem Charakter. Ist also ein ziemlich intensiver Trip in die Innenwelt eines fast schon uferlos Kreativen, mit zumeist nur angerissenen Songfragmenten, die sich in einem schwebenden Fluss aus verhallten Ambient-Drones verlieren. Destination: inner space.
(Joe Whirlypop^, Glitterhouse)
Efrim Menuck has had a widely respected career with Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Silver Mt. Zion but he continues to evolve album to album, almost song to song. With his solo debut, Menuck doesn’t shy away from anything. With Plays 'High Gospel', Menuck’s own emotions radiate throughout, allowing a more personal connection to the audience. I’d like to think that he took the opportunity to create the most unfiltered and soul-fulfilling creative piece that he could conceive. With only half of the album featuring vocals, the other half serving as rich interludes, the Gospel of Efrim Manuel Menuck is a series of hymns worth preaching.
(The Big Takeover)
Genuinely new and exciting, burning with purpose and most definitely worth forty minutes of anyone's time... Menuck's approach to his instrument is more experimental here, re-amping and multi-tracking, combining delays, distortion and compression to create subtly billowing clouds of pink noise; in fact, the guitar accounts for a relatively small part of a sonic palette that also includes field recordings, tape manipulations, electronics, organ and piano. When Menuck ties all these strands together, the results are mesmerising.
(The Quietus)
Efrim has been one of the most important figures in Canadian music for over ten years. He shows incredible ability to create moods/tones/textures [and] continues to make some of the most satisfying, unique and original music today. Not one to ignore, nor one to put on in the background. Pay attention to this one, or you will surely miss the beauty that it is.
(Beatroute)
‘Our Lady of Parc Extension and Her Munificent Sorrows’, from Menuck’s forthcoming solo album Plays 'High Gospel', is utterly, grippingly, compulsive-repeat-listen beautiful. It is at heart a simple folk song. At once celebratory and melancholic (‘All we’ve got is the dust and each other’), it is as effortlessly majestic as one imagines the Canadian landscape in which Menuck now lives to be. But alongside (or, rather, above) the simple, practically one-chord structure sits layer upon layer of analogue noise, signal bending, and distorted guitar swoops. It is these, combined with Menuck’s strange, strained vocals that make ‘Our Lady’ so exciting.
(Line Of Best Fit, Song Of The Day)
Plays 'High Gospel' is a record of strife and surmounting, of findings...This music, I think, was imagined in a city. Our backs to concrete, we could use its help.
(Said The Gramophone)