Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will - Mogwai (2011)
I’ve loved the concept of post rock since I first heard it. Always a fan of the loud-soft-loud, as well as unconventional approaches to conventional music, I saw the value of it pretty quickly. Whether it was the jazz-meets intstro-rock of Tortoise or the cinematic menace of Godspeed You! Black Emperor or the hard-rock-without-a-singer atmospherics of Explosions In The Sky, I’ve heard a lot of it and it never ceases to tickle my brain.
Post rock in general is always about dyanmics. Whether you start from acoustic guitar, piano, or some more esoteric sound, you build and build until the payoff comes in the form of rush rhythms and noisy guitars.
Mogwai have done it as well as anyone for a long time.
They’ve also, over the years, developed a fine-grained nuance that few of their peers can match. The beautiful interludes are truly beautiful, even if it’s a setup. There’s a melodic sense that goes far beyond just a quick ditty one of the bandmembers jotted down on a voice note.
As they’ve matured, they’ve also gotten less afraid to throw some straight-ahead rock and synth-pop in the mix. Post rock doesn’t always have to sound like prototypical post rock, and Mogwai dodges the temptation of making everything angst-to-anger better and better as the years go on. It always comes back to the explosive squall, but that’s what you want.
If you need an executive summary of what Mogwai is about, a way to get the whole thing boiled down for you, skip to the last track, “You’re Lionel Richie.” You get the beauty mixed with the atmospheric gloom, you hear the parts drop out to leave just the slow guitar. The gloom creeps back in gradually, and then you get pasted with the whole band roaring back.
