Mogwai - Young Team

opening track or tracy

radar maker

"Cheery Wave" or "Satan".

Herod

Gotta go with "Like Herod"

FEAR SATAN

Tracy please

(this is where I vote for my remembered favourite from the time despite being unable to remember it and too lazy to dig the CD out)

MOGWAI FEAR SANTA

Mogwai Fear Fun lol amirite?

My favourite ever bit of Swells-lampooning was from some dude on the internet around the time this came out, saying that all his articles are the same, quiet bit quiet bit SHOUTY RUDE CAPITAL LETTERS BIT - who does he think he is, Mogwai?

"Satan" or "Tracy," though Young Team is easily my least favorite early Mogwai album.

Ten Rapid would make a better poll -- or would it? (It'd almost certainly come down between "Summer" or "Helicon 1.")

Of course it would. Because all the other songs are terrible!

Oh no they aren't!

R U Still in 2 It,radar maker?
Yes! I Am a Long Way from Home,like herod,with portfolio,trayce & katrien sending a summer Cheery Wave from Stranded Youngsters

my answer is the opening track btw

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

opening track it is

Fear Satan, for old times sake, if nothing else.

Voted 'R U Still Into It', but by god, I love the shit out of this whole album.

It's a tough choice. Must be a top 10 album of all time for me.

Opening track. I still think 'Young Team' is basically all you need to know about this band, apart from the odd EP track. I've never really liked any of their other albums. Ever-diminishing returns and all that. This one is definitely a classic of 90s post-rock, even if it does totally rip off 'Siamese Dream' in places.

Easy pick for me: "Mogwai Fear Satan" is one of the top two or three songs they ever did. Also "Summer (priority version)" >>>>>> "Summer" -- this can't be overstated enough!

"I still think 'Young Team' is basically all you need to know about this band"

otm

"This one is definitely a classic of 90s post-rock, even if it does totally rip off 'Siamese Dream'"

HA??!

yeah wtf? And "... Fear Satan".

I meant that in semi-jest. But there is a definite correlation between the opening riff from 'Rocket' and the 'Yes! I Am a Long Way from Home' and also 'Silverfuck' and '...Fear Satan'. Possibly. Admittedly it has been a while since I listened to either :-). So kind of an actual jest if you will.

Although I did stumble on this for what it's worth:

http://www.dustedmagazine.com/reviews/4329

"That wonderful crunch, the innate sense of momentum and weight, picks up the legacy of Siamese Dream as much as that of Spiderland."

There's a couple of bits of guitar on My Father My King that really remind me of Siamese Dream. I thought I'd voted for Tracy, but I tried voting for the first track earlier and it let me have that so who knows. Either of those two, anyway. I think I prefer the original Summer to the album one, but maybe not. Anyways, I loved this album to bits when I first got it, having bought it without hearing a note of their music but reading their interviews in the NME and thinking they sounded like they had to be brilliant. Wasn't disappointed.

Is the remaster worth hearing?

this was what got me into Mogwai (and, by extension, a lot of music I love), but it's their 4th-best album imo

"Yes! I Am..." is the only truly essential track here...it condenses Mogwai's early ethos into the finest 5 minutes of music they'd made at this stage, lays out the manifesto AND fulfils it. "Tracy" is a very very pretty aside, and most of the rest is very presentable, even magnificent, but I'd argue that the opening track has a concise power that eclipses everything else here.

I voted "Mogwai Fear Satan" without much hesitation because it's the one track on here I come back to individually; the rest are all of a piece to me.

I think this is why I feel this is their strongest album though because it does feel like they have a coherent aesthetic vision that they successfully execute. The record flows well and does feel "all of a piece." The rest of their records have standout tracks but don't gel together in quite the same way. It is the same reason why 'Evol' is my favourite Sonic Youth record I think, which is another record Young Team tangentially evokes when I listen to it.

Haha, I reckon this is by far the LEAST coherent of their first four albums! Or at least, the one with the most incoherent, uncrafted narrative.

Doh! Ok maybe I should stop being pretentious and just say that Young Team is the only one I ever actually listen to any more, at least until I have had a chance to hear the other early albums again (which are what? Come On Die Young? Rock Action? Happy Songs for Happy People? Or am I missing one? Presumably not the EP comps.)

And which album is your favourite?

Is the remaster worth hearing?

― chord simple (j.o.n.a), Friday, 20 March 2009 16:47 (19 minutes ago)

It does sound bigger; the bass is totally monster on the remaster. The extra tracks on the second disc aren't that special, but I'd say it's worth it overall.

Come On Die Young is maybe more coherent but only in that it's pretty much the same song over and over up until Christmas Steps. Not in a bad way, mind!

It does sound bigger; the bass is totally monster on the remaster. The extra tracks on the second disc aren't that special, but I'd say it's worth it overall.

That sounds good, the bass is too quiet, it's the drums that I think sound the worst though. I think I've got all the extra tracks anyway.

nah (x^n post), Rock Action veers between tuneful awesomeness ("Take Me Somewhere Nice", "Dial:Revenge") and meandering, dull-to-me stuff like "Sine Wave" and "Secret Pint". I generally program tracks 2, 4 and 7 and think wow, this is fantastic; but in the whole album context I get lost and stop paying attention. Whereas Young Team is consistently on target wrt keeping my attention (which for me is the main "problem" with songs like this, losing the song's plot due to my inattention)(not really a problem if it's good background music but unless that's by design a la Eno then I tend to think this is a weakness).

Come on Die Young = I can't remember much about this exceot for Christmas Steps and I prefer the rawer Xmas Steps EP version

Rock Action = loads of vocoder. Ahead of its time maybe.

Happy Songs for Happy people = when they started getting really forgettable.

But you know I was kind of really dismissive of Young Team up until a couple of months ago when I stuck it on on a whim and found I was actually still into it. So maybe a re-appraisal of the others is in order.

Rock Action and Happy Songs are pretty much tied for first in my book, with the first two some way behind, and the latest two further back. CODY has about as many excellent compositions as Young Team, but a more interesting musical narrative. When Mogwai did those two 40-minute albums, they excelled themselves, without becoming any less ambitious/epic/interesting (in fact, they became a far better, more varied band).

Sine Wave is the best NIN cover ever, and Secret Pint is pretty much ideal after the sturm und banjo sonicfest that is 2 Rights

It always seemed to me after going to one of their ATP-curated things that they secretly wanted to be much heavier and post-metal and sound like Isis or Jesu or maybe even Sunn0))) or something, but for whatever reason they couldn't quite bring themselves to go down that route. (or maybe they have now).

xpost

Yeah definitely Rock Action is the point at which they decided they couldn't keep on with the quiet/LOUD thing forever.

(admittedly, the Government Commissions Secret Pint is better, and THAT one comes after the *definitive* Mogwai blow-out)

Rock Action and HSFHP are their most overtly electronic albums, especially the latter. Not getting much of a post-metal vibe from either, more a very liberated approach to sound. No explicit formula, I mean songs do build and fall apart, but the dynamics are more attuned to the individual songs' needs. And, more importantly, their songwriting improved along with their understanding of melody.

It's true, "Sine Wave" should have kicked off the industrial/shoegaze phase of their career that sadly never came to be.

When questioned about his opinion on Mogwai Young Team, Mogwai guitarist Stuart Braithwaite has said:

“ The album was a total disaster. We were young and naïve and had too little time. We should have said; "No, the record isn't done until six months later." Instead, we sat and mixed whole nights and felt bad. We didn't talk to each other. When the album was released, we just wanted to forget everything. We were certain that all critics would pan it, honestly. After that, we understood that we had think stuff over that we recorded.[1] ”

Mogwai drummer Martin Bulloch has also given his thoughts on the album:

“ The recording of Young Team was fucked up. There were quite a lot of sketches going on. I think the whole of the first LP is angry. It was the mood of the whole thing - there was a lot of anger about.[2]

Exactly. The coherence is in the limited songwriting, and the variation is in the "well let's throw it all at the wall"-style editorialising ;-)

Asking artists to critique their own work is asking for disaster, always.

Also "Summer (priority version)" >>>>>> "Summer" -- this can't be overstated enough!

"Sine Wave" way underrated -- hell, I think the entirety of Rock Action is underrated. (And its use of vocoders is quite judicious, because I hate vocoders but they don't bug me on RA, but they do on Happy Songs.) It sort of follows the CODY template: ambientish track 1, wistful/melancholic track 2 w/ romance vox, mix of stuff in between, big crunchy loud thang midway through ("You Don't Know Jesus"/"Ex-Cowboy"), epic mofo right before the end ("2 Rights", "X-Mas"), with an epilogue at the end. Where CODY gets drawn out and samish in the middle, RA is a lot more concise, and I will defend it to the day I die.

Young Team, though, just has three big tent poles that I can be bothered with.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

The right song won it. I'm surprised Like Herod didn't get more action though.

Poor Brendan 'no votes' O'hare. Even Radar Maker got more. Would R U still in 2 it? sound as good if it wasn't riding in on the back of the noise of With Portfolio? the answer's yes, obviously, but just saying, like.

I'm pretty impatient with "Like Herod" these days, I just can't be bothered to sit through it most of the time.

Also there's no point in listening to the Young Team version when the Evening Session one is readily available and blows pretty much everything out of the water...

^^^^^^^^^^

Evening Session = Peel/Govt Commission version?

yes.

(admittedly, the Government Commissions Secret Pint is better, and THAT one comes after the *definitive* Mogwai blow-out)

― leigh exodus (country matters), Friday, 20 March 2009 17:22 (Yesterday) Bookmark

It was on the Evening Session rather than Peel, but yes it's the version on Government Commissions.

kind of silly that 'with portfolio' didn't get a vote. i love that track

Interesting to finally see the original album cover photo, thanks to Chemikal Underground on twitter today.

Norman Blake says in the comments that Brendan O'Hare took the photo on Teenage Fanclub's first Japanese visit and someone else replies with what I take to be a shot of the same spot as it is now.

Twenty three years ago today we released @mogwaiband debut album ‘Young Team’. The photo is the original that was used for the front cover. pic.twitter.com/AA059RPK67

— Chemikal Underground (@ChemUnderground) October 27, 2020

I thought the y2k aesthetic institute put this on twitter years ago

That's awesome! Right outside Ebisu station east exit. There's an incredible gyoza shop about a block away that we always hit when in town.

Xp it's from a different y2k tumblr blog lol

https://expo-99.tumblr.com/post/125632838834/brendan-ohare-brit-album-cover-photography

They took found photos of the surrounding area and inverted the colors to match the album art.

I'd never seen that, thanks!