Few bands make great music in their third decade together, but Mogwai continues the particularly strong form they’ve been in since 2013’s Les Revenants on their ninth studio album, Every Country’s Sun. It’s built, as ever, on the Scots’ familiar instrumental tropes. Sometimes the album is pensive or disturbing. Elsewhere, it’s hymnal and graceful (Coolverine), or brutal (1,000 Foot Face). It’s not so much as quiet-then-loud as the sound of transcendental near-silence gradually erupting into a sonic nuclear meltdown . However, their signature sound is constantly and slightly evolving, as they curate their canon-like sculptors, for ever chipping away to perfect the smallest detail. Synthesiser rhythms mingle with the trademark guitars. Party in the Dark, the most outright pop song of Mogwai’s career, features rarely heard Stuart Braithwaite vocals: the song blasts a New Order-like bassline through a psychedelic haze to reach a euphoric chorus (“Hungry for a peace of mind …”). As ever, it’s music that seeks to somehow navigate a pathway through life’s eternal chaos.
