When the world comes to whatever ignominious end we choose, Happy Songs for Happy People will be playing somewhere. It'll be the instrumental soundtrack to everyone's collective thoughts of anger, resentment, acceptance, and then, ultimately-- after everyone's had time to reflect and make peace with whatever the hell it is they're trying to reconcile at that particular moment-- it'll also be the soundtrack to great big letdown of, y'know, the world ending. Tidal static washes will engulf the land; thunderous guitar peals will split the sky. As the Four Horseman gallop by, blasting this album at ear-splitting levels from their totally sweet sound systems, everyone will brace themselves for the dénouement; folks will all be waiting for that final burst of insight to make sense out of everything, and then guess what? Nothing. It's all over, just like that. Get your coats and go. All that storm and stress, and for what? Bummer, dude. At least it was exciting here and then.
Still, what a gyp. For the amount of energy Mogwai spend painstakingly carving out wrenching emotional turmoil, lush interludes, and haunting Slint impressions, they've had no idea where to take it since the sensory overload of 1997's Young Team. More intrinsically left-brained types might have used all that overpowering intensity of purpose to cure cancer, or debt, or Staind; Mogwai, on the other hand, have a languishing surplus of potential. On their debut, they did the only thing they knew how: buried the listener deep under cascading avalanches of sound, using immersion to distract them from anything as trivial as a lack of direction. Following the praise heaped on Young Team, though, they seem to have found an unhealthy amount of restraint; subsequent albums (Come On Die Young, Rock Action) fell into a disconcerting pattern of majestic swells and faint departures. Hell, Rock Action barely even swells.
\t Some would say they "tightened up"; I'd say "stiffened." No matter how it's described, tighten something enough (any old thing, really) and common sense tells you it'll break. The good news is Mogwai may have learned that lesson just in time for Happy Songs for Happy People, but don't break out the earplugs just yet: if Rock Action put you to sleep, don't rely on Happy Songs... to get you up in time for a morning meeting. In many ways, this album is even more reserved than past efforts; at no point does anything surpass even the mild-mannered blast of "You Don't Know Jesus". The difference is that much of the extraneous instrumentation that sandbagged Rock Action is left behind, which means the measure of the meticulous craftsmanship that was beginning to hamper Mogwai is gone as well .
A lone organ or piano often carries the melody through the album's quiet stretches, and the percussion is usually barely audible; for the first time, Mogwai have the delicacy necessary to stir without resorting to violent upheaval, as well as the added power of a lighter touch. It's a subtle distinction, maybe, but with every album, Mogwai is more and more about the details: the organic rise and fall of "Moses, I Amn't" is a cathedral dirge simplified to an unprecedented degree (by Mogwai's standards). Sparsely layered organs, strings, and exceedingly sparse, hollowed-out drumstick hits rise in waves that never quite crest, for once in perfect harmony with Mogwai's mournful undertones. It bleeds quietly into "Kids Will Be Skeletons", which in turn transitions into the brief crescendo of "Killing All Flies"; the sweep is almost effortlessly natural.
The song titles should give away what the wryly ironic album title doesn't. Surprise!-- this is a pretty goddamned grim album. Every time I hear Mogwai, I'm struck by what a miserable portrait they paint of Scotland, full of skeletonized children, dead flies and such; as usual, Mogwai's Happy Music... evokes similar imagery. The problem is that, in spite of much of the album's comfortable ease, the quieter tone and brooding atmosphere are burdened with even less interest in taking these songs somewhere, anywhere. We're left lost, mired in Mogwai's omnipresent gloom.
Only the closing duo of "I Know You Are, But What Am I?" and "Stop Coming to My House" mercifully (and critically) avoid this. From "I Know You Are...", it's a steady progression through to the gradual dissolve of the final track's epic finish, offering closure (finally) with a sample of some very happy children (its emotional weight is adequately deflated by the carefree kids). I guess that's the joke, really: these so-called "happy people" must like uninterrupted spans of soul-crushing gloom in between rounds of concentration camp footage. Honestly, though, it's a rare, honest-to-god conclusion from these guys, and it at least punctuates the album in a clever manner if the rest of the songs don't fare as well. Mogwai still can't seem to figure out where they're going, but that problem is only extended over these tracks, as whole songs build on one another. The Stephen Kings of menacing post-rock, it seems that in absence of Young Team's glorious cacophany their tremendous build-up often comes to nothing. And it sounds as though they've come to terms with that.
