REVIEW: Mogwai, Young Team (JetSet)
- Simon West
If you're one of those people who can't understand why a nice bit of atmospheric indie guitar rock is always spoilt by some bugger singing all over it, we've got yer band here.
Young Team, the full-length debut from Scotland's Mogwai, has a few voices, swirling in and out of the mix in conversation and mutterings. There's one actual vocal on "R U Still In 2 It", but that's it. What Mogwai concentrates on is atmospheric instrumentals, with some of the most affecting melodies I've heard recently.
The tempo is pretty slow throughout, but the volume is apt to change in a heartbeat, sending layers of angry guitar over the listener where previously there was calm. Driven by a clean, minimalist rhythm section and augmented on this release by the keyboards of ex-Teenage Fanclubber Brendan O'Hare, Mogwai make music for dark nights and violent storms. The ten tracks here are not traditional four minute rock songs. Stretching anywhere from two to 15 minutes, they move from driving riffs to ambient breaks, fractured pieces of melody weaving in and out of the piece.
Snatches of sound and style on Young Team occasionally remind you of someone else - Joy Division here and there, a touch of Disintegration -era Cure on "Yes I Am A Long Way From Home", but the whole is entirely original - dense, layered melodies and moods - particularly on the standout "Summer (Priority Version)" and the drifting, swirling 15 minute finale "Mogwai Fear Satan". An excellent debut - the soundtrack to a film no one's written yet. Highly recommended.
