New Song: "Get To France" by Mogwai

Mogwai and I go way, way back. I've seen them a few times and am always riveted by the live presentation of their gorgeous songs. For my review of their 2008 album, The Hawk is Howling, I said that they "create a beautiful sense of gloom. Post-rock, space rock, instrumental metal, or whatever you want to label them, this Scottish five-piece delivers lengthy, guitar-ridden songs that effortlessly veer between delicate and downright combative." 

I also reviewed one of their shows at Terminal 5 (which, unfortunately, I could hardly see) and said that, "Mogwai, and other largely instrumental post-rock bands of a similar nature, absolutely have to be witnessed live. Drenched in foggy blue light, the music that emerges from fingers, strings, buttons, keys, drums, effects pedals, and speakers overwhelms the senses, rendering the onlooker delightfully deafened…at least temporarily. Though Mogwai is capable of translating their omnipresent sound to recordable tape, hearing the music on your headphones simply isn’t the same as witnessing them in full rock action. And they certainly are pros." Oh how I love quoting myself!

Needless to say, I am delighted that the band is putting out new material --- a four-track EP called Earth Division will be released on September 13, via Sub Pop. The first track on said EP, "Get to France," is delicate, almost childlike, reminding me slightly of "Auto Rock" from Mr. Beast, but with less (actually no) climactic build-up, which Mogwai does oh-so-well. The piano is somewhere between "Nannou"-style Aphex Twin and Amelie Yann Tiersen --- cutesy but somber, with a hint of ghostly echoes in the background.  It's that ghostliness which makes this a Mogwai track; a sinister something lurks within the simple melody...we just don't know where. I love when bands really strip it down and go almost neo-classical, and this song proves that Mogwai, while absolutely epic at rocking out and using guitar pedals a plenty, can also write and record bare-bone songs that, quite literally, strike a chord. 

I'll tell you about Punk Rock...

On the opening track of their 1999 album Come On Die Young, post-rock band Mogwai featured an infamous Iggy Pop interview from 1977. On March 11 of that seminal year, the king of Punk was interviewed by CBC host Peter Gzowski to help explain what punk music meant to him.

Watch the clip here!

And listen to the song!

"I'll tell you about punk rock: punk rock is a word used by dilettantes and ah... and ah... heartless manipulators about music that takes up the energies and the bodies and the hearts and the souls and the time and the minds of young men who give what they have to it and give everything they have to it and it's a... it's a term that's based on contempt, it's a term that's based on fashion, style, elitism, satanism and everything that's rotten about rock 'n' roll. I don't know Johnny Rotten but I'm sure... I'm sure he puts as much blood and sweat into what he does as Sigmund Freud did. You see, what sounds to you like a big load of trashy old noise is in fact the brilliant music of a genius, myself . And that music is so powerful that it's quite beyond my control and ah... when I'm in the grips of it I don't feel pleasure and I don't feel pain, either physically or emotionally. Do you understand what I'm talking about? Have you ever felt like that? When you just couldn't feel anything and you didn't want to either. You know? Like that? Do you understand what I'm saying sir?"

For the record, I know that thing by heart. Test me!