New Mogwai album lacks continuity

The new Mogwai album lacks the transitions necessary to make it cohesive.

By Andrew Terry

Published Sept. 25, 2008

Post-rock is a genre that confuses a lot of people because it's usually instrumental and based on untraditional harmonies. Mogwai is one of those bands that truly personifies the sound - but that is not necessarily a good thing.

Mogwai's history is one of critical success and genre-defining albums. Hailing from Glasgow, Scotland, Mogwai is one of the true pioneers of post-rock, a label the band is hoping to transcend. Its music is crescendo-based and deals almost entirely with instruments with few songs being sung. Mogwai often lands right in the middle of bands with a more metal-infused sound, like Slint and Isis, and softer post-rock bands like Explosions in the Sky.

It's been two years since the band's last album Mr. Beast, and two years might not have been enough.

The guys' latest album, The Hawk Is Howling, opens with soft piano chords juxtaposed with an electronic echo. This echo is a semi-persistent theme throughout the first half of the album, and it sounds remarkably 8-bit.

The sound stands out as a unique retro-vibe, but these moments are few and far between. Quickly thereafter the band falls into their usual ironic "soft-metal."

Hawk also faces a lingering problem of continuity. The opening song "I'm Jim Morrison, I'm Dead" is soft and dry, followed with make-you-deaf metal. There is no transitional song to grab the in-between and ready listeners for such a vast transition. In mostly every other case, it really isn't much of an issue, but an instrumentally based post-rock band has to be listened to like a book, almost like a symphony, and if it continually jumps around, then it feels unnatural.

That really is the only problem with the first half of the album. It manages to hold listeners' attention with unique, and sometimes even fun, approaches to the regularly stale genre. The fifth track "The Sun Smells Too Loud" is a fantastic departure with an almost poppy/'80s feel that flows with energy. It becomes a letdown when the band immediately jumps back to the traditional isometric, trembling guitars.

That's where the second half of the album really fails: It's the same throughout. Mogwai brings nothing new to the table, and it really disappoints your expectations given the cleverness of the first half of Hawk. The guys try and decrescendo all the way to the end, which leaves the album feeling tired. They manage to at least end the album with a final hurrah of metal bliss, but after five songs of plain, monotone drudgery, it's too little too late.

This review shouldn't come off as sounding too harsh - the album itself is still good, just not great. Mogwai made its album simple, and easy to digest, which is good for people new to the genre. The only problem is this isn't the album to convert you. It breaks very little ground, and though a handful of songs show a creative breakthrough, most lack originality.