Every Country's Sun

Every Country's Sun takes two decades of Mogwai's signature, contrasting sounds - towering intensity, pastoral introspection, synth-rock minimalism, DNA-detonating volume - and distills it, beautifully, into 56 concise minutes of gracious elegance, hymnal trance-rock, and transcendental euphoria. Produced by psych-rock luminary Dave Fridmann, it's a structural soundscape built from stark foundations up; from a gentle, twinkling, synth-rock spectre to a solid, blown-out, skyward-thrusting obelisk. There's percussive, dream-state electronics (Coolverine), church organs as chariots of existential fire (Brain Sweeties), tremulous, foreboding bleeping - possibly from a dying android (aka 47). Their most transportive album yet, it also hosts their most fully realized art-pop sing-along of their storied history, Party In The Dark, a head-spinning disco-dream double-helix echoing New Order and The Flaming Lips, featuring Braithwaite's seldom-heard melodic vocals declaring he's "directionless and innocent, searching for another piece of mind". This is music as a keep-out chrysalis, protective audio armor through exalting organs and portentous, dissonant guitar fuzz warping at the edges, bending the world inside-out into a reality in which you'd much rather live. The last three songs ascend into explosive exorcism, closing with the colossal Every Country's Sun it's searching intensity whooshing towards infinity in a dazzling cosmic crescendo.

Tracklist

Side 1

Coolverine
Party In The Dark
Brain Sweeties

Side 2

Crossing The Road Material
aka 47
20 Size

Side 3

1000 Foot Face
Don't Believe The Fife

Side 4

Battered At The Scramble
Old Poisons
Every Country's Sun