After finding swathes of 2014’s Rave Tapes to be problematic in the live arena, Scotland’s favourite sonic terraformers Mogwai have spun back to the organic on this sweeping new set of soundscapes. Whilst never quite scaling the same heights as Happy Songs for Happy People or Mogwai Young Team, as always with Mogwai, this album can become your favourite blanket, a shelter and a cathedral.
‘Party in the Dark’ is an early surprise and, after nine records, sports perhaps their most conventional song structure to date, with vocals prominent throughout. It it isn’t long, though, before moors and mountains hove back into view.
You ever wake up still drunk on a Sunday morning, with weary bones but feeling pretty splendid and poetic? This is your album.
’20 Size’ comes on like Crazy Horse-era Neil Young atop shimmering electronic pulses and swirling Hammond organ. Comparative lullabies then follow before ‘Battered at a Scramble’ lopes in kicking and ‘Old Poisons’ raises the pulse and engages the hips, but it’s the title track that is the pinnacle here. Disintegration-era Cure on Rohypnol. It’s sky-scraping.
You ever wake up still drunk on a Sunday morning, with weary bones but feeling pretty splendid and poetic? This is your album. Like a crack of sunlight filled with the psychedelic spiraling of dancing dust motes, Every Country’s Sun is a beautiful place to spend an hour.
Mogwai’s new album Every Country’s Sun is available now through Spunk Records/Caroline Australia.
