in this issue

m u s i c POPULAR
Rock, Etc.
RECORDING OF THE ISSUE
Mogwai: Mr. Beast. Tony Doogan and
Mogwai, producers. Matador 681 (CD and
two-LP). Music: ★★★★ Sonics: ★★★★
Since releasing
the eye-opening
Young Team
nine years ago,
Mogwai has been
hounded by lofty
expectations even
as its subsequent creations have helped
lay the foundation for the flowering
instrumental and cosmic-rock outgrowths,
ambitious developments that
are commonly tucked under the descriptively
vacant “post-rock” moniker.
After consciously turning away from
the soft-loud dynamic it veritably patented
on its previous efforts, the Scottish
quintet returns to but doesn’t simply
recycle the strategy on Mr. Beast. Rather,
the group makes it a subplot to noisier,
heavier currents flowing throughout the
seismographic work. The gorgeous
fragility that lightened 2003’s Songs for
Happy People hasn’t disappeared, but is
enveloped in piano-based soundscapes
that convey lyrical episodes, the darklight
tonal contrasts serving as speech
even when words are present.
Part of this secretive communication
resides in Mogwai’s song titles, which
here range from the mysterious “Folk
Death 95” to the more overt “Travel is
Dangerous.” With its treated piano intro
and harmonium glow, the latter fades
into view as a black-and-white photo, its
mood of subdued glory suggesting that of
a dignitary’s funeral. “Emergency Trap” is
similarly meditative, crawling piano
strides doubling as locked gates barely
able to hold off intruders—in this case,
welling waves of guitar-feedback that
resemble string orchestras madly striking
Mogwai
their instruments. Mogwai also ventures
into other musical disciplines. “I Chose
Horses” is jump-started with fingerpicked
spiritual tremolo patterns before
giving way to underwater synthesizer
washes over which Envy member Tetsuya
Fukagawa drapes words. “Acid Food”
glides on sunny western motifs, pedalsteel
lines, and faintly whip-cracked electrobeats
that elicit Daniel Lanois’ salted
atmospherics. Again, while present, spoken
language struggles to be deciphered
over a submerging rhythmic drone.
Words don’t even dare enter most
realms, and while this approach is nothing
new for Mogwai, the album’s weighty
din and clamorous crescendos are an integral
part of Mr. Beast’s unspoken premise—that
there’s a monster raging inside
all of us, and while it can’t be tamed, it
can occasionally be harnessed. But more
often, it roams freely. In response,
Mogwai increase the volume and physical
mass on the record’s most thrilling tracks,
those in which the quintet seems to crash
through glass-brick houses, ransack the
premises, and move on for more. That the
production allows for a multi-dimensional
palette in which hues, volume, scales,
and pitches are properly varied and monumentally
presented does wonders for the
music’s impact on the senses, particularly
on attacking passages that grow to enormous
heights without ever simply
devolving into empty threats.
Hence, “Glasgow Mega-snake”
writhes against wall upon wall upon wall
of guitar distortion, the bass notes swaying
like a four-ton I-beam being precariously
dangled from a crane. Warrior
drums and low-end thunder mushroom
on “Auto Rock,” the tune’s deadly outro
mimicking the claustrophobic sensation
of ice pelting against a car windshield.
Brake-screeching feedback is offset by
lean, melancholic chords on “We’re No
Here,” a battering-ram of a bender that
feeds off the denial in the title. Rubbing
Star Ratings Key: ★ Poor ★★ Fair ★★★ Good ★★★★ Excellent ★★★★★ Extraordinary
136 THE ABSOLUTE SOUND ■ APRIL/MAY 2006