Mogwai "Mr. Beast" (Matador)
By Lucas Salg
Monday. Feb 27, 1:13 PM
Best work since their debut... but beware of the hype.

So Mogwai’s manager Alan McGee recently called this the best art rock album since Loveless, “and possibly better.” That’s a whale of a statement to live up to, and let me spoil it for you right now: Mr. Beast is not as good as Loveless. Not even close. Sorry Alan. However, I will concede to Mogwai that this is easily the best work they’ve turned out since their amazing debut, Young Team.

This isn’t the “rock with a capital ‘R’” record that the press release promises. A good portion of the record is still devoted to the minimalist ambient musings they’ve been falling for since Come on Die Young. But they have begun to reclaim some of the fire that made their early records so invigorating, and furthermore, they’ve decided to focus, wisely trimming all the fat from their sound. Their patented, oft-imitated murmur-to-roar dynamic still serves as the backbone for the majority of tracks here, but condensed into effective, highly concentrated four-minute chunks. Each song makes its concise statement and then retreats to make way for the next, and the whole thing runs a comparatively zippy 42 minutes.

The result of this is the most immediately rewarding and engaging record of their career. On a song-by-song basis, Mr. Beast boasts some impressive work. It is definitely nice to hear them bring the sorely missed noise on awesome tracks like “Glasgow Mega-Snake,” an oppressive wall of crushing minor chords, or when they propel shoegaze into the space-rock stratosphere with the soaring “Travel is Dangerous,” possibly the closest Mogwai will ever get to a killer single. Even their more subdued moments have more depth and impact than anything from their recent efforts, like the achingly beautiful pedal steel lines on “Acid Food,” or the intense spoken word vocals on “I Chose Horses,” delivered by Tetsuya Fukugawa of the genius Japanese hardcore band Envy. The arrangements are helped in no small part by the understated brilliance of Barry Burns’ haunting piano and especially Martin Bulloch’s deceptively simple, expressive percussion. Everyone turns in a good performance.

The problem with Mr. Beast is that there is almost no cohesion to the record. What it ends up as is a collection of great songs that have zero relation to one another. The transitions between songs are non-existent to the point of being a bit jarring, like the monster “Glasgow Mega-Snake” dead-ending into the placid “Acid Food.” Part of what made epic classics out of albums like Loveless or Young Team was their thematic cohesion: a feeling of unification, a sense that they transcended being merely a group of songs, exceeding the sum of their parts. I can respect the guys not wanting to make a career out of rehashing “Like Herod” over and over, but the short-and-sweet, hit-and-run nature of Mr. Beast makes for a much less satisfying record. Ultimately, despite some strong tracks, I walked away from the Beast a tad underwhelmed. Recommended, but keep those expectations in check.
www.mogwai.co.uk
www.matadorrecords.com

Listen to a song from this album in our Radio section!

Lucas Salg

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