Raving on About Mogwai Going to Shit

Rave is not a word I would ever have associated with the music of Mogwai. As people, it makes a bit more sense. They has always been a certain distance between them and the more pretentious attitudes most post-rock bands employ. On a Mogwai album, you won’t find made-up languages (I’m looking at you Sigur Rós), songs about bizarrely specific historical events (iLiKETRAiNS, and I could have picked on the stupid typesetting as well) or any of the myriad of pretentious bullshit Godspeed You! Black Emperor do. Mogwai have always insisted they just make rock music. During live performances, they talk about football and other bloke stuff in between songs. The idea of them going to raves doesn’t sound completely nonsensical. Either they don’t go to raves, they are so out of it at said raves that they don’t know what happened or they just didn’t put that much thought into their album title, because this isn’t suitable music for raves. This is the same post-rock they’ve been chugging out for years. Mogwai’s first three records, Young Team, Come on Die Young and Rock Action were all fantastic slices of innovative exciting post-rock. Their fourth, Happy Songs for Happy People, is an absolutely beautiful record, and stands as one of my all time favourite post-rock records. It was here that things took an inevitable down turn. 2006’s Mr. Beast features most of the bands best known tracks, and is certainly a really good listen. It’s not exactly groundbreaking though, and marked the point at which Mogwai seemed to stop caring about being ahead of the scene. Their albums up to this point stood in contrast to the vast majority of post-rock, but from Mr. Beast onwards that stopped being the case. In the years following that we’ve had The Hawk is Howling and Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will and now this one, Rave Tapes. They are all servicable albums, but they’re all quite post-rock by numbers. Once you’ve listened to Mr. Beast, or you know, God is an Astronaut, you’ve kind of covered the territory. I’m not a fan of bands who just keep releasing the same material but slightly worse each time. If you’re going to start releasing poor albums, at least take a risk, and that’s something Mogwai don’t seem willing to do any more. I suppose I should say something about the music on Rave Tapes. It’s adequate. In fact, the opener, Heard About You Last Night is a really nice track. With some ambient leanings, it reminds me slightly of the aforementioned Happy Songs which is a great thing (I appreciate how bitter I’m starting to sound, I’ve no intention of keeping it in check). The spoken word sample in Repelish makes for a fairly refreshing listen, whilst Hexon Bogon is legitimately a pretty tasty post-rock number. The rest of the songs here aren’t really anything to write home about.The main innovation that came with Mr. Beast was the addition of vocals on a few tracks. They kind of worked there. Sadly, that is no longer the case. The only track here that has singing, Blues Hour, is a dreary pile of shit. The rest of the tracks are just forgettable. It’s a shame, because I still have quite a bit of space to fill, but there’s really nothing I have to say about them. I mean it’s also a shame because this is a band who I have loved for many years, and this has just bored me. Mogwai are still a credit to British music. I would certainly still recommend going to see them live. They are always loud as fuck, which makes even their most mundane material sound a bit more exciting. They also still play loads of their old stuff. On record, it’s getting to the point where me recommending them is going to have to come with the standard hipster caveat: start with the early stuff.