Glasgow’s finest experimental rockers return with their 11th studio album, another classic of dark-humoured, irreverent titles for their dynamic, quiet-to-stormy arpeggio-laden, always stirring songs and instrumentals. The album was made under the shadow of a very difficult period for band member Barry Burns whose daughter suffering a life-threatening illness for over a year, but happily she’s since recovered. That shadow may come into play, but surely also the troubles of th world as large, as the album’s title is a Scottish phrase for hell. But with that also comes gallows humour, a fun, creative devil-may-care. After the icily menacing opener, which sounds like the opening of a dystopian sci-fi movie – God Gets You Back – there are characteristically memorable song titles including the delicately slow and beautiful melody of Pale Vegan Hip Pain, the thrumming banger with robotic voices Fanzine Made of Flesh, and such as the dream-rock of 18 Volcanoes, the climactic electric guitar-rich chaos of Lion Rumpus, or the lovely violin-laden closer Fact Boy. But most notably If You Find This World Bad, You Should See Some of the Others, is one lifted from a mind-bending 1977 essay and speech by Philip K Dick themed around parallel universes and the probable irrelevance of our own. This instrumental track begins with simplicity and builds to a crescendo, and like much of Mogwai’s work, it’s stirs up a wide variety of emotions and thoughts, perhaps best summoned with headphones while walking through a windy forest. Stuart Braithwaite and co keep doing what they do, and even the chart-topping commercial success of their last album, As the Love Continues. This time with another big deal at the wheel, producer John Congleton, they still are unstoppably and unapologetically Mogwai, with ghostly echoes of Sigur Rós and My Bloody Valentine, and long may they continue. Out on Rock Action Records.
Mogwai are also headlining the 6 Music Festival in Manchester on Friday 28 March.
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