To recognize the true brilliance of any Mogwai album since Young Team, all you have to do is... forget Young Team for one fucking second. Move on with your life! Start a chain of cotton-candy refineries, trade in your Raisin Bran proofs of purchase for a giant, inflatable bran flake, go to Bangkok and bang cocks, pay your masseuse for an extra-happy ending; that kind of thing. This is really sick, you know? You can refer to an album released nine years ago until you're purple at the teet, but there's so much more for you to enjoy if you're willing to snap out of this stupor, this obsession with what they used to sound like...
Yeah, early success is a prickly pear, is it not? You can wriggle and writhe, but people are always going to remember that one, indelible imprint you left on their mind, like flashbacks to wartime atrocities or that one, perfect, forbidden kiss that never yielded true love. Mogwai, faced with the daunting task of living up to a bloated ideal, have handled themselves valiantly, pumping out a quality record every few years, keeping the train tracks thrumming with mammoth live shows, and generally ignoring the fact that they are imitated (poorly) more than Marlin Brando, Cartman, and G.W. combined.
Far from a drop off in coherence, Mr. Beast is just another stop on a long, strange, satisfying trip. Luckily, Mogwai add fresh wrinkles with every new destination. After the lengthy liaisons of Young Team, Come On Die Young saw the quartet paring things down to the somber, soft-picking essentials for what they consider their best work (go ahead; ask 'em!); like a transmission from an extraterrestrial satellite, Rock Action introduced us to Mogwai's experimental side, while Happy Songs For Happy People continued the ascent with more alien-speak vocal effects and, as always, a measured approach that rewards the faithful and peeves the impatient.
As is their wont, Mogwai do the ol' double-dip with Mr. Beast, mapping new coordinates but tucking their favorite charts into a back pocket for easy reference. The big new 'move' in Mog's repertoire presents itself on alpha-Beast "Glasgow Mega-Snake," a hard-charging behemoth that doesn't waggle its climax in front of the listener with a promise of eventual combustion. This might not seem like too erstwhile a strategy on the surface, but for Mogwai it's nothing short of revolutionary, akin to a shy shut-in singing "What's Love Got to Do with It" at a heavily attended karaoke night or a tortoise ditching its shell because it 'was hot in there.'
Other signs of growth bubble and burble in the belly of the Beast, though a few of them would be better left undigested. "Travel is Dangerous" and "Acid Food" contain anti-frontman Stuarte Braithwaite's first non-manipulated vocals since Rock Action, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but 'transcendental' spoken-word crap weighs down the airy float of "I Chose Horses." Nevertheless, devotees of post-rock's finest band will be overjoyed by Mr. Beast's selling points, which include a few rousing, ass-plowing, rawk-'em sock-'em robots in the vein of "Summer" or "Mogwai Fear Satan" ("We're No Here," "Folk Death 95," "Mega-Snake"), a few plaintive, seed-sewing relaxation numbers for the delicate dill in all of us ("Auto Rock," "Team Handed"), and a few in-betweeners that fill the classic Mogwai prescription of quiet-loud dynamics and face-withering crescendos ("Friend of the Night," "Traveling is Dangerous").
Deride if you will Mogwai's artsy explorations since Young Team, but year in, year out, they've got the post-rock block shocked and locked like a gun twice-cocked. If my gentle rhymes don't convince you, then plunder their huge catalog, from the spectacular EP + 2 collection to the thrilling My Father My King single to the Kicking a Dead Pig remixes. If you can't bring yourself to investigate, then please, for gits and shiggles, live for now and listen to Mr. Beast in the context of a rock album rather than a Young Team follow-up. Hindsight can only get you so far...
1. Auto Rock
2. Glasgow Mega-Snake
3. Acid Food
4. Travel Is Dangerous
5. Team Handed
6. Friend Of The Night
7. Emergency Trap
8. Folk Death 95
9. I Chose Horses
10. We're No Here
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