Mr. Beast

The best music reaches up, and the bands that make the best music aim ever higher. Sometimes they fall far short of their aim but they're all the better for trying. When they have a body of work, you can forgive an album that didn't make it (particularly when you can syphon off the best tunes for your iPod). To be honest, Mogwai's albums usually are a bit hit and miss. I don't think they've had a single one that didn't feature a duff song or two. Where Mr. Beast is a letdown is not that it has more than the usual quota of duffers but that it is overall of good quality but does not soar.

With the astonishing, brilliant exception of Friend of the night. Mogwai's trademark is to take a fragile, sweet melody and spin it into a huge wobbling monster of a track. A failing of Mr. Beast is that many tracks are nice but go at a trot, never quite breaking out into the full gallop that the Gwai thrilled with in Mogwai fear Satan or Ratts of the capital. Friend of the night is far too short: it leaves me every time begging for more. But it is breathtaking, a quintessential Gwai melody that briefly takes off, captures your heart and then sails off with it. For about half as long as it ought to!

Still, for all that it doesn't quite live up to the hype, it's another well-crafted, beautifully produced Mogwai album. That makes it better than nearly everything else around, because Mogwai at a walk beats most bands at a sprint.

***

Talking about beautiful production, I have been listening a fair bit to Seamonsters, the Wedding Present album that was produced by Steve Albini. I say produced, but Albini insists that he "records" bands, and does no production at all.

Dalliance, one of the best songs Dave Gedge, or anyone else, has ever written (who else could so accurately capture the hurt of the "other man" who is dumped for the husband), breaks out from a gentle strum that highlights Gedge's words into a massive sprawling guitarfest. What amazes me is that you can pick every note the guitar plays out. The sound is massive but beautifully structured.

As I write this, Shine, by the House of Love, is playing on my iPod. It perfectly illustrates the value of production. Shine screams out for the rhythm guitars to go to 11, but they stay resolutely at 3. If only Albini or Kevin Shields (imagine! The House of Love with seventeen layers of feedback) had produced them.

posted by Dr Zen @ 4:53 pm