Should I be listening to Mogwai?

If you like instrumental post-rock-y kind of stuff and thought the problem with Slint was that they didn't sound more like My Bloody Valentine and that the problem with My Bloody Valentine was those occassional dance-y elements and the fact that their songs were too short and not Daydream Nation era Sonic Youth-y enough and that the problem with this era of Sonic Youth was the vocals then Mogwai is what you should be listening to. If not then they are decent enough band that released one pretty good album and insult Blur a lot (a plus in my book) and I would look for Young Team cheap.

I lurve them and have said so more than once. Rock Action is flat out amazing and I really think they are getting better with every album, and they were already great to begin with. Roll on the next album; offical bandsite here, might have T-shirt info.

I quite like the Kevin Shields remix whose title I forget, but I don't really find myself listening to anything else by them.

Simona, they are one of my favorite bands, but still I think you should only listen to them if they're your kind of thing. The newest album, Rock Action, does some different things from their other records, but I'd say a good place to start and get an idea of what more of the other ones sound like is the EP+2 (which is what it was called in the US).

Their songs generally always get louder and softer in predictable ways but if you're listening for, I don't know, unpredictable changes, you're listening for the wrong thing. (But I would imagine that you don't mean that, then, because lots and lots of other less repetitive music changes in just as predictable ways.)

People talk all the time about Mogwai's "promise" or how they indicated "a new way for guitar music", usually when they then want to say that they fucked it up after their first album or early singles. No one who does that ever says to my satisfaction what this 'promise' was. It seems all they can do is point to the songs they like and say, this is where they got it right (ie. these are the ones I like) and that's that.

From the Mogwai site :"As empresarios of our own Beastie Boys style empire (we run a small record company), we have also made numerous efforts to introduce our friends to new beverages . Attempts to introduce Sting to cyanide have thus far proved unsuccessful however. I think that you should go and look at our rock action records website too, as i know that very few of you have looked at it and it's quite interesting. On you go. Also can all the religious psychopaths stop writing to us. Try Sigur Ros - I hear they're into that kind of thing."

hilarious!

This feeling/whining can be summed up as We Miss Bark Psychosis.

Er, was this to me, A? I have, twice. :-)

why aren't they included in the above list? oh, yeah, no one except me and finney and andy kellman seem to remember them. ;)

(cue ned...)

i own everything mogwai's ever released commercially. i like it all, like cody less than the others, havent listened to rock action enough to really comment. am i wrong to thing mfmk is the best thing they've ever done?

I would remember Bark Psychosis if someone would send me their CDs!

(ned, i really couldn't remember whether you rated bp or not. christ, ilm really does love their yookay post-rock.)

Fret not -- they don't always roll off the tip of my tongue (but the really should!).

I like reading this as 'their yukky post-rock.' Ew! Gross!

i will admit that what brought me to nylpm/ft/ilm is finding tom and your write ups about disco inferno on yr respective 90s lists. i also realize on -my- 90s list i forgot both "hex" and "di go pop." (as well as "frequencies," a dj hype live mix, etc. etc...)

I disagree. The Arab Strap remix is Mogwai's finest moment.

Bark Psychosis? Barf Psychosis more like.

etc.

On Rock Action the band seem resigned to the fact that they're never going to get into the record books for stylistic innovation, and instead concentrate on filling the gaps between stylistic innovation and emotional content. These gaps have already been filled and in a markedly similar manner (the frequent use of vocals - and the haunted aspects the soft, resigned Britishness of those vocals convey - pushes them closer to Bark Psychosis than ever before) but the constant transmutation and shading of this landscape strikes me as far more interesting than doggedly trying to redraw the margins in thicker and blunter permanent marker.