Tracks
Mogwai: "Friend Of The Night"
(2006)
By Conrad Amenta | 14 January 2008
I imagine hype is largely alien to the world of post-rock. Virgin Megastores don’t stay open until midnight to assuage gatecrashers the day before a Tortoise record hits the streets. But, the hype surrounding Mogwai's forthcoming Mr.Beast is building, regardless. That might be due to statements by Mogwai's manager, one Alan McGee of Creation Records pseudo-fame, that the album is "probably the greatest art rock record that I've been involved in since My Bloody Valentine's Loveless." Perhaps the five consecutive London shows in mid-January that long ago sold out. Even the wildfire of speculation that this very track review will inevitably set roaring across the internet, if by “internet” I mean CMG’s staff board. But is there anything going on here at all, or is this only the bringing of so much noise?
Despite all the prettiness that they’ve produced since their debut, reviewers of Mogwai will always, for disputable reasons, come back to the first time the dynamics-challenged “Like Herod” made them run across the room to lower the volume on their stereos, which they’d jacked in an attempt to hear anything. For those people, and to immediately dismiss one of the more redundant evaluations of the band, I’ll say that “Friend of the Night” (streaming from the band’s Myspace site) is not what Young Team worshippers might brand a return to form, but, stylistically at least, would be more at home on 2003’s underappreciated, and far more accomplished, Happy Songs for Happy People. Still, pianos anchor the song in dangerously ponderous emo territory, the crescendos never aspire to Mogwai’s trademarked, stacked-to-absurdity heights of brain-melting distortion and delay, and you could easily envision a slow-motion Peter Jackson schmaltz-fest to this much emotional kitsch and forced epic. It remains to be seen if Mr. Beast can put this song into context, but for a band that’s been around for almost a decade, I fear this kind of songwriting might fast become a rusted tool in need of replacing.
Despite all the prettiness that they’ve produced since their debut, reviewers of Mogwai will always, for disputable reasons, come back to the first time the dynamics-challenged “Like Herod” made them run across the room to lower the volume on their stereos, which they’d jacked in an attempt to hear anything. For those people, and to immediately dismiss one of the more redundant evaluations of the band, I’ll say that “Friend of the Night” (streaming from the band’s Myspace site) is not what Young Team worshippers might brand a return to form, but, stylistically at least, would be more at home on 2003’s underappreciated, and far more accomplished, Happy Songs for Happy People. Still, pianos anchor the song in dangerously ponderous emo territory, the crescendos never aspire to Mogwai’s trademarked, stacked-to-absurdity heights of brain-melting distortion and delay, and you could easily envision a slow-motion Peter Jackson schmaltz-fest to this much emotional kitsch and forced epic. It remains to be seen if Mr. Beast can put this song into context, but for a band that’s been around for almost a decade, I fear this kind of songwriting might fast become a rusted tool in need of replacing.