Godspeed You! Black Emperor: Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven

Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven (often shortened to Lift Your Skinny Fists or LYSF), or Levez Vos Skinny Fists Comme Antennas to Heaven on the rear of physical releases, is the second studio album by Canadian post-rock band Godspeed You! Black Emperor, released as a double album on October 9, 2000 on vinyl by Constellation and November 8, 2000 on CD by Kranky. It has been listed on multiple decade-end lists as one of the greatest albums of the 2000s.

The four tracks on Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven are composed of individually named internal movements. The album is primarily instrumental, except for sampled voice inserts and the one minute “Moya Sings ‘Baby-O’…”. The samples on the album are often used to send some satirical, political, or poetic message. The inner panels of the vinyl edition released by Constellation contain a diagram used to illustrate the relative lengths of movements within the four tracks; each movement is drawn by Efrim Menuck, as a rectangular block with its length determined by the proportion of the track it comprises. Some of the blocks are shifted slightly upwards to show an increase in intensity. The movement title and the numerical length are denoted either above or below the square.

The inside cover drawings were taken from William Schaff‘s “Notes to a Friend; Silently Listening No. 2”, illustrations taken “from a series of small little books [Schaff] self released in the late 90s, and early into the 21st century”.

The cover is a redrawn version, by John Arthur Tinholt, of one of Schaff’s pieces from that series. The flip side of the vinyl contains various photographs taken by the band.