Mogwai
Every Country's Sun

THE REVIEW

At night, when limbs sway lightly on the white foam of sleep, all the paintings hanging in the attics start to scream, their mouths open wide and vomit the repressed fervor that populates the day, when bodies and landscapes remain pressed onto canvases without being able to move. The entire series of childhood photographs screams, and Rosabella as she burns in the fire, the tiled floor polished by the neglect of time screams, and the wallpaper with the stems of asphodels intertwined like Greek patterns and all the arabesques that adorn the ceiling scream, before it collapses and celebrates the awaited catharsis where the last necessary cure is the white noise.

The new direction of Mogwai is one that celebrates the liturgy of the scream, almost forgetting the scratching beginnings that in the second half of the ‘90s exalted post-rock with distorted guitars and long shoegaze-tinged rides: the basslines now rely much more on synths and electronic arrangements, so to the furious magma of dissonance has been replaced with the vibrant flame of emotion. In "Every Country's Sun" the four Scottish horsemen scream like pelicans tearing at their chests to make libation for their offspring, whether through the roaring crescendo of the maelstrom of "Coolverine", or by expressing it through the pathos ignited by the electronic poem of "Brain Sweeties". There are indeed moments of lightheartedness (the unusual shoegaze melody of "Party in the Dark") and the usual nods to the past (the noise distortions of "Battered at a Scramble"), but one cannot overlook how the mini-suite of "Don't Believe the Fife" represents a paradigm of the new Mogwai feeling, in two distinct movements whose sequence hints first at a wavering environmental watercolor á la Eno, and then bursts into the usual emotional shock orchestrated by strings and percussion, in a crescendo that, in truth, unabashedly aims to tear the sky asunder.

The thunderous screech is at its acme as "Old Poisons" rages with its dark and venomous force, releasing electromagnetic waves at a frequency above the critical value with which they cleave the ionosphere. The scream at the first light of dawn is losing its quicksilver since, freed from the imprisonment of the sound of instruments, it has dispersed into existence and now wanders like a golden and glassy echo.

It is the hour of slumber, and the limbs kissed by the white foam of sleep are now oblivious to the din that darkened the most painful night of existence. Only the diaphanous peace of "aka 47" remains to recolor with precious amber the series of paintings in the attics, the tables adorned with youth photographs, the floor with ancient ornaments, and the lovely flowers woven onto the walls.

Even the arabesques finally shine with new light.

The sun of each country.