EVERY COUNTRY'S SUN

I like Mogwai and therefore I like this album, although it is just another Mogwai album, nothing spectacular. Mostly instrumental thick sounding postrock with quite a bit of distortion and noise at times; straight rhythms and simple but characteristic melodic and harmonic lines, as we know of them. The album starts very promising. "Coolverine" is very confident, calm and tasteful and boasts one of Mogwai's simple but unique addictive melody lines. "Party in the Dark" has vocals. I don't know who is singing but as you'd expect from a postrock band, it's not a top notch singer. However, the voices fit the sound of the song very well and again the melody is a winner. A nice little not too sophisticated song. "Brain Sweeties" is rather slow and atmospheric, an OK track but not quite as addictive as the first two. I don't find "Crossing the Road Material" that attractive; it has a Mogwai-typical dynamic, starting off very laid-back and then becomes louder and noisier, although the end is again totally calm. "aka 47" is the most meditative relaxing track, beautiful. "20 Size" is another "Mogwai by numbers" track, it has the typical sound and dynamic, but nothing remarkable. "1000 Foot Face" again has voices; this time the track is of the meditative variety. Once more the voices fit the sound well but once more this is nothing outstanding. After a run of not particularly remarkable tracks Mogwai are back at their best with "Don't Believe the Fife". This time the contrast between the very pastoral and calm beginning and the powerful end is strongest, and the melody is one of those I want to hear again and again without knowing why. "Battered at a Scramble" has another very strong contrast between calm beginning and more powerful end. I think the guitar distortion is overdone in this one, already in the beginning. Later there's a thick wall of sound, but of the less attractive variety. "Old Poisons" is a more powerful track and the distorted guitars make much more sense to me here. It's a rather noisy affair but follows a clear logic. Some headbanging maybe? The title track is the last one, another Mogwai-trademark slow build up and then the noise kicks in step by step. I can see why they picked this as the final, it works in this place but isn't overall very special in Mogwai's universe.

So this is a mixed bag quality-wise, a few tracks are very good, the majority is OK but stuff that we have heard lots of times from this band before. There's enough diversity on this album at least to make it a pleasant enough listen.