Mogwai's debut is an interesting one. Mixing large soundscapes with pretty epics and explosions of noise, "Young Team" displayed what Mogwai's early releases promised. Considered by many to be Mogwai's best release, "Young Team" is actually considered by Mogwai to be their worst album. Whatever the case, "Young Team" is an excellent album with plenty of fun, noise, beauty and diversity to keep most listeners happy.
Mogwai are:
Stuart Braithwaite — guitars / keyboards / percussion
John Cummings — guitars / piano
Dominic Aitchison — bass / guitar
Martin Bulloch — drums
Mogwai have an interesting mix of sounds on their album. They are definitely a post-rock band, but while their peers like Sigur Ros and Explosions In The Sky have one specific sound that works extremely well for them, Mogwai have quite a few different sounds, yet still a distinct "Mogwai" sound. "Like Herod" is a song that most hard rock fans would find extremely headbangable and will scare most listeners with the explosions of loudness from the fairly quiet sound that the song begins with. "Radar Maker" is a pretty ambient interlude that sounds like Brian Eno's ambient era.
Though all of these sounds work extremely well for Mogwai, the places they excell in are when they make long drawn out epics. The album closer, "Mogwai Fear Satan" (also the album's best track) manages to stay interesting for a whole 16:18, despite the fact that it hardly moves out of the one single riff for a whole sixteen minutes. Genius. The album uses length to it's advantage. Breaks between tracks become hard to hear and the album all flows into one. It's odly the faster paced songs that end up as epics and the slower songs that feel more like interludes. Because Mogwai excel at making long epic songs, the album also feels like one big long epic song.
Whether "Young Team" is Mogwai's best or worst album is irrelevant. It's an excellent album and deserves just about all of the praise it receives. Instrumentation is excellent, guitars and drums especially and the piano is nice. Mogwai make everything they do on "Young Team" excellent. Some of the songs rock. Some are just slow beautiful songs. Some of them are breathtaking epics. The whole album, however is excellent.
Pros
- A good range of material
- Mastery of everything they attempt
- Some really incredible and beautiful songs
Cons
- Some tracks may be seen as filler, though they all fit in
- Long songs may bore people
- Some may wish that there were more of one certain style of song
Reccomended Tracks
Yes! I Am A Long Way From Home
Tracy
Mogwai Fear Satan
Reccomended For Fans of:
Explosions In The Sky
Slint
Radiohead
Smashing Pumpkins
FINAL RATING: 4.5/5
