The Hawk Is Howling
Mogwai\'s sixth studio album gushes with the same kind of epically atmospheric instrumental juggernauts that characterized their late 1990\'s works and finds them reunited (for the first time in ten years) with Andy Miller, the producer who initially helped bring their colossal post rock soundscapes to the U.K. festival-attending masses. The humorously titled \"I\'m Jim Morrison, I\'m Dead\" sets the tone with scant piano notes and moody synthesizer drones that build by blanketing other instruments and textures in perpetual crescendos, spiraling continuously upward until the composition climaxes with walls of sound that end abruptly with a single guitar feeding back. \"Batcat\" subtly contrasts this by flirting with heavy metal guitar solos and pummeling hard rock rhythms. Mogwai shift gears again on \"The Sun Smells Too Loud\", which is so tuneful and catchy, it almost begs for some vocals until a fuzzy guitar line comes in and \"sings\" the melody before getting upstaged by some beautifully harmonizing keyboards. Ending the album with \"The Precipice\" is like stepping in an electric guitar hive and getting inundated with layers of buzzing solos.
Mogwai's new album, The Hawk Is Howling, is the next iteration of the sound that began with 2003's Happy Songs for Happy People and continued with 2006's Mr. Beast: You get a handful of abbreviated heavy tracks, an equitable batch of somnolent drifts, and the occasional suggestive-of-the-future curveball.
How odd it must be, playing in Mogwai: You record a scrappy-yet-seminal debut (1997's post-rock standard-bearer Young Team), decide in hindsight that it's actually the worst thing you've done, and yet 11 years on, there your fans are, demanding the raw explosiveness of those salad days, when you've long since…
The album is a reassertion of Mogwai’s strengths and testimony that they are still credible and productive.
Mogwai - The Hawk Is Howling review: Contributing to the monotony of the genre they hate.