Every Country's Sun
Every Country's Sun takes two decades of Mogwai's signature, contrasting sounds – towering intensity, pastoral introspection, synth-rock minimalism, DNA-detonating volume – and distills it, beautifully, into 56 concise minutes of gracious elegance, hymnal trance-rock, and transcendental euphoria. Produced by psych-rock luminary Dave Fridmann, it's a structural soundscape built from stark foundations up; from a gentle, twinkling, synth-rock spectre to a solid, blown-out, skyward-thrusting obelisk. There's percussive, dream-state electronics (“Coolverine”), church organs as chariots of existential fire (“Brain Sweeties”), tremulous, foreboding bleeping – possibly from a dying android (“aka 47”). Their most transportive album yet, it also hosts their most fully realized art-pop sing-along of their storied history, “Party In The Dark,” a head-spinning disco-dream double-helix echoing New Order and The Flaming Lips, featuring Braithwaite's seldom-heard melodic vocals declaring he's “directionless and innocent, searching for another piece of mind”. This is music as a keep-out chrysalis, protective audio armor through exalting organs and portentous, dissonant guitar fuzz warping at the edges, bending the world inside-out into a reality in which you'd much rather live. The last three songs ascend into explosive exorcism, closing with the colossal “Every Country's Sun,” its searching intensity whooshing towards infinity in a dazzling cosmic crescendo.
With David Fridmann producing, the latest Mogwai album contains the same bratty conviction that defined their greatest records, like there’s something truly at stake.
At this point, Mogwai could be forgiven for resting on its laurels. The group has grown into an acclaimed international act, 22 years and counting, with a reliable musical formula that’s steady as a slow-burning fuse. That remarkable consistency makes Every Country’s Sun resemble a greatest-hits album, even if it’s…
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Scottish post-rock legends Mogwai's ninth album 'Every Country's Sun' boasts some of the best music they've written this century.
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Mogwai - Every Country's Sun review: Probably their most accessible effort so far…
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