Mogwai never seemed like a particularly good bet to age well. They came out of the gate as a band that Meant Something to many people, namely fans of heavy guitar music and rock critics. They established a clear, identifiable, and exciting new sound, but their latest LP-- Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will-- doesn't change the pattern Mogwai have set for themselves on recent, often middling, releases: There are some anthemic guitar blasts, some prettily drifting comedowns, and one or two vocal tracks.
The band has regained none of its prior fierceness, but Hardcore is, importantly, the band's least self-conscious album in ages. There are no attempts to be really heavy, man. There are no stale electronics. The songs that wander out of the band's comfort zone-- most notably the Neu!-indebted "Mexican Grand Prix"-- are the types of genre exercises a veteran rock band of Mogwai's stature should probably undertake. Hardcore feels comfy and lived-in, backhanded compliments only to those who didn't slog through The Hawk Is Howling and Happy Songs For Happy People.
The price for all this hominess is basically any lingering sense of mystery. Mogwai can chime away pleasantly during "Death Rays"-- featuring the band's best guitar lick in years-- but it can't turn "Rano Pano" into "Stanley Kubrick". This is fine, as long as we're willing to admit that we get different things out of Mogwai albums these days. This is a record of savvy rock vets kicking at distortion pedals until something frothy emerges. I'm on board if the results are going to be as page-turning-ly melodic as "How to Be a Werewolf" or as playful as the pitch-shifted "George Square Thatcher Death Party". The mistakes are easy to forgive: "White Noise" is the band's most vanilla opening track ever. The slide-guitar panorama of "Letters to the Metro" will still your blood just as surely as "Like Herod" once boiled it, but it's merely the type of innocuous doodling the band has long padded its albums with.
Mogwai's prior output and general demeanor has made it difficult for them to be a group that fans simply enjoy. The band built its reputation on sonic extremes, and that purview has infected their reputation: deliver a masterpiece-- I don't think they have it in them-- or suffer indifference. On Hardcore Mogwai sound like they're enjoying being Mogwai again. I'm ready to enjoy them being Mogwai again too.
