Mogwai's brooding post-rock provided the perfect antithesis to Britpop back in 1996. Getting 'serious' with guitars came as a welcome relief to the jocular self-indulgence that marked the close of the era.
It might seem ironic then that the Scottish five-piece have entitled their fourth album 'Happy Songs For Happy People'. Don't worry, the paranoid lashings of eerie and tumultuous guitars are still in place, it's just that the tunes want to warm and soothe rather than throw tantrums. Gone is the insistence to mark every song with quiet-to-loud bursts, to be replaced by organically grown anthems.
Coming in at a concise 40 minutes, the whole record is best described as a thing of aching beauty. Mogwai have clearly learnt that the wonderful collage of sounds they interweave can compute equally well into four-minute pop songs just as well as endless sprawling epics. What really makes this record engaging is that the simmering tension often chooses not to explode, yet somehow it works. 'I Know You Are But What Am I?' is a case in point, a lonesome piano meets a static drumbeat, looks for relief, but backs away at the last minute. It's clever, simplistic and wonderfully controlled all at the same time.
A similar trick is repeated on the haunting opener 'Hunted By A Freak', in which hushed vocals struggle against trilling guitars and chilling feedback to make the listener feel that they are, er, being hunted by a freak. Occasionally they really do let go, as on the eight-minute climactic 'Ratts Of The Capital', where Mogwai find a happy medium between the building noise avalanche of Godspeed! You Black Emperor and the lush soundscapes of Sigur Ros. However, standout track is perhaps the slow burn tingle of 'Kids Will Be Skeletons'. Emotionally heavy, it's the perfect post-club comedown music, gently willing you to sleep.
Despite the multifarious sounds and orchestral arrangements, the music on 'Happy Songs For Happy People' feels easy, due to Mogwai's acute grasp of melody. Unlike many of their post-rock contemporaries, their poised compositions are capable of attracting more than a handful of post-rock aficionados. Just don't expect them to be surging up the singles chart any time soon. They're much too good for that.
