Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 22/09/08
Label: Wall Of Sound

Mogwai song titles have served little purpose historically, other than to perhaps peel back a corner on the witling personalities that exist behind their irascible and chiefly instrumental beyond-rock opuses. "I'm Jim Morrison, I'm Dead" and "Batcat" at least ensure that senseless tradition continues here unabated.

But "Auto Rock", from their last album "Mr Beast", for once got it exactly right. Following a career high (2003's blissfully over-achieving "Happy Songs For Happy People") they retreated, as though just re-discovered their default setting scribbled down on a scrap of paper in an old pair of jeans. But the thing with math-rock is that it's not only about knowing the numbers inside out - it's about meticulous processes and unravelling the uncharted, at pains.

For all that album's routine successes it sounded more like a rock band laying foundations. Trim track lengths and tidy sonics also made them seem like wherever they were going, they were desperate to get there as efficiently as possible. Rest assured though, "The Hawk Is Howling" embodies no such anxiety. Climbing from "Mr Beast"'s enclave, a refreshed Mogwai, light of foot and heavy of mind, trek onward again with the curiosity and poise of their commercial breakthrough "Come On Die Young".

In fact the wholesale lack of anxiety is notable and this album's USP. Even as "Batcat" writhes unrelentingly, torpedo guitars operating in wide pincer-like tandem, doing Rage Against The Machine's job for them as they bank nostalgia pay cheques instead, even as the "Disintegration", Cure-esque "Scotland's Shame" leaves tyrannosaurus prints for future generations to discover, there is a sense of optimism and control, a horizon to aim for.

But there's more. Sigur Rós and Mogwai, whilst often mentioned in the same breath, have always remained distinctly territorial. But on the wayward angelic "Thank You Space Expert", complete with Trojan staccato string refrain, they waltz unexpectedly, enlighteningly across the same cloud. And were the hallelujah kryptonite hum of "The Sun Smells Too Loud" showered in anymore stardust it would have to be quarantined indefinitely. And then registered as a new religious movement.

These 10 songs evolve unhurriedly and, as with all Mogwai's best moments, like time-lapse photography from the heart of a dark storm. Even when consumed by the magnitude of their own conclusions there remains an identifiable central beauty. In a sense, maybe everything past those first arresting EPs counts as Auto Rock, but this time around you're given little opportunity to dwell on that.

    by James Berry