Another leak....Dear dear me, it seems that there has been a second unfortunate Mogwai related leak this week. This was forwarded to us by an anonymous source, it is the unedited Pitchfork.com review of The Hawk Is Howling. Mogwai: The Hawk Is Howling (Matador/Wall Of Sound) rating 4.9 I’m Jim Morrison, I’m Dead
It’s telling that the Glaswegians in Mogwai titled this, the first track
from the band’s new LP The Hawk Is Howling, after poet and filmmaker James
Douglas Morrison.
There is a yearning and loneliness in the track, which builds slowly and
deliberately (albeit with more than an obvious nod in its introduction
toward The Cure’s 1980 single “A Forest”; this is most notable at 00:34,
00:51, 1:17 and 1:34 into the piece). It seems a sure bet that this
generally happy-go-lucky Scottish combo had to engage some serious soul
searching in order to come up with a title for the track that reflected the
heaviness and overall mood they were attempting to put forth. And, yes, they
almost succeed.
The problem is, of course, that Mogwai, while attempting to parlay an
admiration of the most significant American artist of the 20th century into
a values-based cauldron of shared association, has succeeded in only playing
dress-up. Further, it’s exceedingly culturally harmful to left-handedly
besmirch the legacy of persons such as Morrison. When one speaks his name or
thoughtfully considers him, the effect is one of a total reaction. That is,
Jim Morrison is a complete and fully realized concept. Were someone to come
across this track who is, perhaps because lacking in years, education and
(admittedly) taste, not accustomed to or fully informed of Morrison’s
legacy, then the word-association experienced by said person is one wherein
Mogwai enters the consciousness before, or instead of, images of Morrison
himself.
It’s a clever attempt at piggybacking which, were it not for the
gatekeepers of the flow of information, has all the potential of a
subversive political campaign but, like all campaigns of such a nature, is
ultimately a case of the emperor wearing no clothes. This is a clever game
to play by this group of roustabouts who hail from a land that never had an
emperor in the first place. (Note: While Scotland had no emperor it enjoyed
several centuries of rule by kings and queens, the most recent of which was
James VI, who acceded to the throne in 1567 — a mere 400 years before James
Douglas Morrison (AKA “Jim Morrison”) released a pair of best selling LPs
(The Doors and Strange Days) with his own short-lived pop combo.)
All of which is to say: look Mogwai, we accept that you love America
and her cultural heroes (a passion of yours that we have diligently noted
over the years, beginning with the fact that your band name was chosen from
what is probably our most beloved children’s film, the Joe Dante/Steven
Spielberg epic from 1984, Gremlins). But it is intolerable what you have
done with this track. It’s admirable that you have dedicated your adult
lives to musically exploring the metaphysical proposition of the meaning of
life (as evidenced by the slow-paced and, honestly, creepy and navel-gazing
music showcased here), but it’s another thing entirely to attempt to behead
the memory of a people’s most galvanizing artist and to place your personal
apprehensions within his skin. This activity is more than the aforementioned
window dressing: it is barbaric.
Gordon Lamb
Batcat
“This music is so good, I want to piss in its mouth.”
Really, that’s what it’s all about. You can bop us over our heads with
your rolled-up MFA, or debate whether a “song” is really a “song” if there
isn’t any “singing” involved. But sometimes you find a five-second passage
of music that’s so damned good, you want to turn it into a person, pry that
person’s jaws open, and take a nice, long piss into its mouth out of love.
What makes Mogwai such a powerhouse is that it can take those five seconds
and stretch them out for however long it pleases. To keep pissing for that
long, you need to drink a lot of watery domestic. But it’s worth it.
“Batcat” clocks in at a modest 5:25, abbreviated by Mogwai standards.
Like a drunken, awkward sexual exploit in the back of Weekend Dad’s Corolla,
it packs a lot of rage and misery into those five minutes. The guitar stings
and squawks like some sort of poisonous bird. The drums pound as though
they’re beating someone. The bass is both monolithic and serpentine, like an
ancient Grecian pyramid slithering through an exurban daffodil garden. Even
by workout standards, these workouts are pretty intense. The beat stops. The
bass rumbles. We take a quick break for some kind of sports drink, and then
it’s back into the deeply erotic fray. This music squishes traitors like
millipedes. Then it pisses in their little mouths, so that the circle of
piss can continue.
Sometimes it sounds like Van Halen. Sometimes it sounds like jazz or
Rhys Chatham or Branca. Actually, it sounds like all of those things at
once, recorded onto a cassette tape that’s been dropped in a toilet, dragged
around by a motorcycle, set on fire, and taught a lesson in “rock dynamics”
by a college sophomore who never takes off his shirt because he has
embarrassing tattoos.
When I was a kid, my brother and I had a boom box with high-speed
tape-to-tape dubbing. The idea was that you could make a quick copy of a
tape at twice the speed if both of the tapes went really fast. We would get
one of those adapters that allowed you to play your CD player through the
tape deck in your car, stick it in the boom box, and record CD’s onto a tape
that was running at double speed. The resulting tape of the CD would be
really slow — that’s what someone must have done to make the tape mentioned
above.
Really, words don’t do this shit justice. You can talk about music all
you want, but I think it’s because you’re a fucking loser who doesn’t have
what it takes to find a really good piece of music and piss in its mouth.
“Batcat” will put you in your place.
Emerson Dameron
Danphe And The Brain
The likelihood of serious dental work increases when you blow off (or,
in the indie world, can’t afford) yearly cleanings. There is talk of
advances in modern dental practices — lasers, space age polymers, whatever —
but at the end of the day, the process and end result are the same: you get
a cavity and the dentist fills it.
Dental schools offer cheap work, but everyone with half a brain knows
that the risk of some hideous fuckup increases exponentially with such
visits. Medical tourism, too, is a shady alternate option — go to Thailand,
this one cabbie always tells me, and get cheap bridgework and hookers. Two
great tastes!
Most everyone I know chooses to stay close to home, endure the pain, and
get the shit over with. See, that’s the thing — pain. It’s never about the
craftsmanship behind the work, which, if you think about it, is pretty
mind-boggling. I mean, these tiny spots of enamel are rotted out, and your
dentist, bless him, gets in there with a spinning diamond-tipped drill and
doesn’t fuck you up. All that precision is lost in the Vicodin aftermath.
Yet, in the event of a body being identified by dental records, the
process is about particulars. Plastic filling compounds will signify a more
modern era than gold, you know?
So the bleeps and bloops that festoon “Danphe And The Brain” serve to
pull me away from Mogwai’s prescription craftsmanship. Those little skitters
sprinkled atop the majestic post-whatever instru-guitar drone would have
made me think my CD was skipping if this was five years ago. (Okay, okay, if
it was last Monday, and my friends and I were sitting on my smoky Allston
back porch listening to a copy of the song, followed by some of Neil
Hamburger’s prank phone calls and Roadsteamer’s newest — y’know,
theoretically.) They draw attention away from the song itself, which would
be just fine (say that as morosely as you can: just fine) without the
distraction in the first place. It’s like they make me wonder if this
filling is a temp that’s gonna fall out and be replaced with whatever future
hip signifiers the next time there’s a checkup.
Michael T. Fournier
Local Authority
Mogwai wisely plays to their strengths on the pensively evocative “Local
Authority.” Vibrato guitar sets sail upon a languid shoal of electric piano
and brushed drums, painting a picture in the listener’s mind as vivid and
stark as any ECM album cover from the mid-seventies. Eschewing the
cataclysmic blasts favored by Mono, who would have gone nuclear three
minutes in, Mogwai doggedly maintains the supple flow, gently piling upon
simple melodies, creating a heaving lattice of sadness and regret. A searing
Fripp-like strain lurking just beneath the water’s edge threatens to erupt,
but it remains held in check, like a monster from childhood teasing from the
ebbing darkness of memory. Mogwai proves yet again that minimalism need not
be chained to the rock of simplicity. (Maserati, take note.)
Despite its austere and understated trappings, “Local Authority” hints
at a profound complexity by constructing a seemingly placid environment that
nonetheless compels listeners to confront their demons. This is a dark cool
place unknown. We float upon the reeds, a hand skimming the water, our minds
ruing our absolute insignificance. With a sputtering torch and sheer will,
Mogwai deftly guides us through this murky place. At journey’s end, we are
renewed.
Chris Arrison
The Sun Smells Too Loud
Then we come to “The Sun Smells Too Loud.” Allow me to write that again,
more slowly, with plenty of space between the words.
“The Sun Smells Too Loud.”
Does Mogwai try to annoy me? Are they making a concerted effort to get
on my nerves? If it’s not the world’s longest running track record for
god-awful cover art (sorry, assuredly huge name in the field), it’s song
handles like this. Just when I thought the septic tank had run dry with the
likes of “Glasgow Mega-Snake” and “Folk Death 95” from 2006’s Mr. Beast (and
don’t get me started on that album title, oy vey!), the post-rock poets
pinch out this turd.
Onto the tune itself … it is fantastic! Beginning with the lifted intro
— the synth beat to the 1981 new wave hit “Kids In America” by Kim Wilde —
the song quickly sways into an almost gentle circular pattern with a
speaking guitar line that has generous amounts of Verlaine-ish sheen. There
is no quiet/loud/quiet dynamic to speak of, and I think it no accident that
this particular track lays at the middle of the album. What we have here is
the gyroscopic center, twirling with confidence, never reaching beyond its
grasp, and keeping all in its orbit precisely in place.
When deconstructing the piece and paying close attention to the spacing,
the layers, and the notes, one can’t help but agree with all the
long-running rumors, gossip, and innuendo that certain members of Mogwai, if
not all, are affiliated with the occult and/or worship Satan directly. And I
don’t mean that silly American Midwest teenage Goth kind of stuff. We’re
talking the ancient European creepiness that can only be found in the likes
of Scotland.
Like any brainwashing organization worth its salt, Mogwai has employed
“love bombing.” They coat the intended victim — I mean, listener — with
waves of glorious adoration to weaken him, leaving him defenseless and
accessible to any and all manner of sick intentions. Then, bamn!, before you
know it, you’re on the street earning money for the kings any way you can.
So there you have it: “The Sun Smells Too Loud” is a pleasant, yet not
revolutionary addition to the Mogwai cannon. And I didn’t even mention how
horribly racist the lyrics are.
Billy Carter
King’s Meadow
By the time The Hawk Is Howling finally meanders on to track six, the
listener is made to feel like a victimized alter boy suffering under the
eager, moistened hands of a serial pedophile priest: “Oh wonderful. This
again?” Once more, Mogwai doesn’t miss a trick, since, it would seem, they
only have one: squeezing every last drop out of long, laboriously tortured
under-chords and notes even Codeine was wise enough to avoid.
“King’s Meadow” (a Dev Hynes cover, by the way) is yet another reliably
slow, trudging and labored patience-tester; in other words, this Scottish
band’s stock and trade. It’s amazing, however, the lengths Mogwai will go to
bore the living shit out of you. For instance, nine minutes of this
14-minute song is the sound of a feather duster being brushed across a
Formica table ... slowly. Oh yes, that sound in the lower register is a
lifelike 12” dildo being hit against a snare. Genius, to be sure.
But did this charisma-killing track really warrant the royal clusterfuck of
interloping guest musicians and soundboard gimmicks? Is “King’s Meadow” any
better with Conor Oberst on the lute-o-phone, Ryan Adams molesting a
Theremin, or that one chick from Tilly and the Wall tapping-dancing Morse
code on the hood of an Aston Martin Vanquish? And seriously, comedian
Michael Ian Black (!) on dog whistle??? I know these Mogwai scamps enjoy
wasting precious studio time and stacks of Matador’s money, but c’mon! This
is the kind of decadence even Kevin Shields would find shameful.
Ultimately, “King’s Meadow”, like most Mogwai songs, is best listened to
while sleeping, with the volume turned all the way down, and the stereo as
far away from you as humanly possible — perhaps in the back of a flatbed
pick-up truck speeding west into the night (as long as you’re safely in the
east).
Tony King
I Love You, I’m Going To Blow Up Your School
The seventh track, “I Love You, I’m Going to Blow Up Your School” makes
two promises. The first is that Mogwai has fallen deeply in love with you.
The second is that it will prove this love by destroying your school.
The first promise is trite — we’ve all heard, “I love you,” any number
of times. But only my girlfriend has heard those words combined with a
pledge to bomb a high school full of guidance counselors hell-bent on
convincing their students that it’s somehow taboo to date a 38-year-old man.
Like all Mogwai tracks, the song has no lyrics to express the exquisite
sorrow of forbidden love, but the sentiment is clear. Through its
seven-and-a-half minute length, a slow dirge of persecution — a love
oppressed by society’s cruel overlords — gives way to an explosive triumph —
the victory of a man who was once a target of derision by ageist tormentors.
This is storytelling. And one could not find a story of this gravity outside
the bloodstained pages of my personal notebook (which I carry with me at all
times). Thus, I decided to overlook the song’s myriad flaws and mark this as
my favorite.
Brendon Lloyd
Scotland’s Shame
There are two reasons why I like this song.
The first reason grows straight out of a worsening problem in the music
with which we are assaulted with on a daily basis. (I should note here that
I will simply use the term “music” in this review … no time for useless
genre struggles.) Plagiarism is the largest, slowest moving fish in a tiny
critical barrel. Even so, the mileage will never top out for this venerable
punching bag. Ripping off other artists can be conflicting — I have no bones
about it if the artist does something catchy or well written with the source
material. But I get pissed off when the offending party appears to boast a
presumptuousness of delusional, wholly inaccurate ingenuity. As I type these
words, there are plenty of these assholes wasting our air.
Not only have Mogwai ripped off no one but themselves, but they’ve
managed to once again adjust the formula one-eighth of a centimeter in the
right direction so that The Hawk is Howling could elicit the tiniest bit of
melancholy from an asshole’s asshole. If you’ve had a very, very fucking bad
afternoon — nerves worn totally raw, confusion, regret, stress, and all of
that crap — it’s the perfect alternative to a REAL emotional holocaust,
like, say, Tim Hardin’s “It’ll Never Happen Again.”
So while I can veil the first reason I like this song in the pleasure
derived from NOT hearing another group of disrespectful fucknuts in their
early-20’s unknowingly raping the worth out of someone else’s previous
brilliance (or mediocrity) and calling it their own, the truth lies
elsewhere.
“Scotland’s Shame” will save lives.
How? Well, because the song is a Mogwai 101 concoction —devoid of
vocals, building on accomplished, minor-key retread repetition until the
volume and density reach one of the band’s trademark stopping points between
“not-too-much-going-on” and “balls-out-bulldozing-almost-metal.” Thus, the
pleasantly inoffensive, just-sad-enough simplicity of the song will never
encourage an unstable nut job to grab the nearest high-powered rifle and
scale a water tower … like an copy of Tim Hardin 2 might.
And so, we come to the second reason I like this song, for which I’ve
decided employ a touch of my soon-to-be-murmured-about Mogwai Fan Fiction!
So, what’s up with the title of the album, The Hawk is Howling? Is this the
next instance of a band strapping a saddle onto the dead horse (pun
intended!) of zoological/biological source material for the creative
process? Guess again, assholes! For that easy fix, you’ll have to wait two
minutes for Kristen Schaal to form a band (or walk into any local club
tonight).
Don’t get me wrong. I am a fervent animal lover, and I regard nature as
something useful for certain forms of creativity. But for fuck’s sake, can
we give the shit a goddamned rest when it comes to music? That’s exactly
what the members of Mogwai were thinking when they cooked up the concept
behind these four words! Momentarily forgetting that they themselves are
named after a fake animal, the Scots devised a subtly satirical attack upon
this insufferably irritating trend.
When compared to a grackle or a female cardinal, a hawk might be
considered dignified and beautiful. But when placed among its predatory
contemporaries, this raptor becomes the Wal-Mart of Order Falconiformes. One
doesn’t have to look far to witness the opportunistic and lazy practices of
a red-tailed hawk as it circles above a city park or a Food Not Bombs co-op.
Go back to the country!
Mogwai have devalued the faux-naturalist naming process by utilizing
what is essentially a glorified crow. On top of that, they have punished the
animal and further deconstructed the trend by suggesting an unnatural and
demeaning sound. Hawks don’t howl! You know what howls? Dirty feral dogs,
Diamanda Galas, cats on the way to the vet, Bigfoot and most whores.
We can only hope that Mogwai’s pointed spoof discourages a few
“creative” types from naming a band, song or album title after something
that shits outdoors.
Andrew Earles
Thank You Space Expert
The penultimate track, “Thank You Space Expert,” begs the question:
Thanks for what? Precise coordinates to the Listless Nebula?
In this seven-and-a-half minute collect call from Glasgow, you can
practically hear Mogwai absently strike their guitars, glockenspiels and
who-diddly-dang-bangles with one hand, while gathering coats and galoshes
for the hard slog home with the other. It is this lack of focus and exigency
that constrains what could have been another triumph for the lads. Instead,
“Thank You Space Expert” casts the listener adrift in an aimless orbit,
leaving him anticipating a thunderous clang that never comes.
That’s a shame. Because three minutes in, had Mogwai brought the noise,
I would have high-fived everyone in the room and phoned my father for the
first time in six years. Alas, the band squanders the opportunity for Sturm
und Drang grandeur, opting for a threadbare melody that my asthmatic niece
could have conceived on recorder (and she’s missing an index finger!) “Thank
You Space Expert” probably should have spent more time in the practice space
asserting itself — demanding a tempo shift, electric saw solo, or something
else to distinguish it in the musical cosmos. Because in space, everyone can
hear you yawn.
Christopher Arrison
The Precipice
Life is a highway, and Mogwai will ride you all night long.
The journey, though, is one that some of us may find all too familiar.
In their quest to show us the epic, the immortal and the undeniably
timeless, they show us only the death already pulling at their macerated,
scrawny frames, their vision failing, testicles sagging in underwear washed
a few too many times, a thin feculent dribble sliding down their quavering
assflesh — a lifetime spent in pursuit of mediocrity.
As the guitars curlicue around the pounding of mannish tom-toms like the
garland of graying pubic hair around your uncle’s boner, Mogwai offer you a
lollipop and the promise of videogames, the ghost of Slint dulling your
senses into a glassy-eyed hypnosis, until you realize that Mogwai are
fucking you, fucking you, fucking you. You look behind you, and there they
are, laughing and pushing, delighting in ravaging your hitherto exit-only
shitpipe with what you realize is essentially just the Cliff’s Notes to an
Ash Ra Tempel track, only without the transcendence, the magic, or even the
ability to distract you from the dull thud, thud, thud, that is steadily
building, until you yawn and mention to said uncle, “Who the fuck listens to
‘Foreplay’ without ‘Long Time’? Can I go home now? I want to go play some
video games.”
And in that moment, their lusty conquest loses its drive, and it’s just
another joyless hump on a Friday night with Mogwai desperately pushing its
fading erection, hoping you won’t notice it’s got all the consistency of
rotting tapioca, until they just decide to pull their pants up and go home,
wiping their spent privates sheepishly and grumbling, “Let’s not tell
anybody about this, okay?”
The track is called “The Precipice.” Don’t forget to take a running
start, Mogwai.
Eran Greenberg
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