Maybe it's Friday Night Lights. Maybe I'm conditioned. But there's a certain kind of ringing, sustained guitar chord that kicks me in the soul every time I hear it. It's pretty much Pavlovian. That guitar, all longing and crushed hope and delay, builds up into a note of turbulent triumph while the music around it rises along with it. It all swells up, a contemplative murmur that turns into a screaming (but still contemplative) climax. Explosions In The Sky didn't invent that guitar chord, and they probably didn't perfect it, either. But it's probably their fault that whenever I hear a chord like that, I immediately conjure images of dusty fields and sweaty exertion and hardbitten leadership and love so strong that it makes you push yourself beyond where you probably should push yourself. A chord like that is a soul-filling, life-affirming sound, even if the context surrounding that music isn't exactly supposed to be triumphant.