Sigh.
So this is the third time now that I’ve sat down with the intention of churning out a satisfactory review of the new Mogwai album, Rave Tapes. And don’t get me wrong—it’s not an inherently bad album. Quite the contrary—it’s a good album. But that’s just it. It’s a “good” album. It’s not a game changer, or career defining, or life affirming when you listen to it. It’s just “good.”
And I suppose I should take “good” over bad; and that I should be feeling rather #blessed that this isn’t, like, a late-term abortion to my ears, an embarrassment, or a chore to listen to. Because it’s far from all of those things.
It’s just “good,” and “solid.” It’s another good and solid effort from everybody’s favorite Scottish post-rockers.
Maybe that’s the problem. Like, how much can you say about a predominantly instrumental post-rock album?
I think my issue before, the other day, when I tried to write this, was that I went into it thinking it needed to be some kind of epic, long-winded, hyperbole ridden tome, and not every review I write needs to be over 1,000 words, because not every album I listen to requires 1,000 to describe it to the reader.
Here’s the deal with Rave Tapes—it continues the sound that Mogwai have matured into over the course of the last sixteen years. Long gone are the days of the 15+ minute epics, and the raw, unhinged post-rock theatrics. Similarly as with this album’s predecessor, Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will, the band has found a way to reel all of that in and control it. Everything is very well calculated and thought out on Rave Tapes—with the focus being more on songs that use repetition of ideas that gradually build towards something with a greater emphasis on melody rather than just straight up noise.
In contrast to the triumphant and exuberant opening track from Hardcore Will Never Die, “White Noise,” Rave Tapes chooses to open mysteriously, with the slow burning, somber “Heard About You Last Night.” Structurally, this record has a lot going for it—over the course of the album’s 10 songs, the songs are arranged in such a way that it reaches a peak by the halfway point, and then spends the latter half of the album deconstructing that somewhat, and brings things to an epic close with “No Medicine For Regret,” and “The Lord is Out of Control.”
The album hits a stride with that peak, in the middle section, however. The incredibly concise “Hexagon Bogon,” and the heavy hitting “Master Card” are both standouts, but it’s “Replenish,” that is one of the most memorable tracks on Rave Tapes. The band crafts a rather restrained, hypnotic post-rock atmosphere around excerpts of dialogue featuring a man condescendingly describing “hidden Satanic messages” embedded in reverse in the Led Zeppelin tune “Stairway to Heaven.”
“Satan,” this man tells us, “Gotta live for Satan. Master Satan.” It’s a tad gimmicky, but in an otherwise humorless genre (post-rock) it’s an addition that continues to show Mogwai’s brand of absurdist humor that they try to inject into their music. I mean, this is a band that has a canon of songs with titles like, “You’re Lionel Richie,” “How to Be A Werewolf,” and “I’m Jim Morrison, I’m Dead.”
The fatal flaw with Rave Tapes is not that it’s boring, or that it is post-dad rock, but it’s not exactly gripping. It’s an album. It begins, and then it ends, and in the middle of those two events, songs happen. I stop short of saying this album is underwhelming, but once I am done listening to it multiple times for the purpose of this review, I question how often it’s going to be something that I come back to for leisure.
But, as I was chatting with one of the Bearded Gentlemen, he dropped some knowledge by saying to me, “Isn’t that case with all Mogwai albums?” Incidentally, this is fact that had actually dawned on me during my listening of Rave Tapes, and during my subsequent period of reflection on the band’s canon, and it had me feeling a little like this.
Mogwai do what they do, and they do it well, and they continue to be faithful stewards of post-rock. This record, similarly to Hardcore Will Never Die, suffers slightly from some very crisp, clean, expensive (and bordering on sterile) sounding production values, and as with much of their latter day output, they can, at times, overdo it on the incorporation of synthesizers into the songs.
In the end, Rave Tapes isn’t out to win Mogwai any new fans, but it’s not going to cost them any old ones.
Rating: 3/5