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Pro-Mogwai:

You slip on your headphones... Guitar chords twist down from lavender skies in slithering fibers and attach to your goose- bumped skin. With each upward strum from the plaintive second album from Mogwai, these delicate cables tug you heavenward-- they're soft tugs, paced and patient. As you ascend further into the clouds you can make out the ground below you. The Scottish Highlands, God's golf course, bubbles in pillowy hills. Green grass hills filled with warm fat, feathers, and the carefully dug tunnels of fairies and elves roll to the sea, where they suddenly drop off in marble cliffs, wet from the spray of slapping waves. A storm is brewing in the distance. Thunder rumbles. Mogwai's music is weather. Its landscape, stunning in its simplicity and reduncancy. Come On Die Young develops in one long movement, a sparse symphony of indie. You can follow its pattern like a weatherman charts flows from high pressure to low pressure.

Unlike Mogwai's last album, which constantly shifted from loud loud to quiet quiet, Come On Die Young builds tension over eight and a half songs before erupting in the white noise of "Ex-Cowboy," "Chocky" and "Christmas Steps," the latter being the only respite from restraint for the riffheads. But it's the album's title track, carrying the record's only vocal, sung in soft sighs, that pulls apart your heart like string cheese, muscle fiber by muscle fiber.

Like a bottle of fine wine, Mogwai is not intended to be ingested on every humdrum day you live. It's not to be played as you drive to the Target to pick up some plastic adhesive hooks. Keep Come On Die Young on a cedar rack in a damp basement. Reserve it for thunderstorms and candlelight. Its open spaces and moments of silence are meant to be filled with raindrops and whispers of awe.

Con-Mogwai:

Fo'ckin bollocks! Where's the rock? Listening to Mogwai's Come On Die Young excites as much as toasting white bread with a magnifying glass in the sun on a partially- cloudy day. Here's the thing, if Mogwai weren't from the UK, no one would give a rat's arse about them.

I call this phenomenon the "3 Colours Red Effect," which states that any British band that plays a style of music that is completely overdone in America, but not particularly in the UK, they will achieve success in their native land. Would 3 Colours Red's brand of polished grunge sell any more than a new Gruntruck or Paw record? Call up Sony and find out. Likewise, would Mogwai's brand of third generation post- Slint instrumentals raise anyone's attention outside of those few Chicago college kids who still listen to Spiderland religiously? In the UK, Mogwai open for the Manic Street Preachers (who are amazingly big in the UK) and headline festivals. If they were from Urbana, Illinois they'd be on Quarterstick Records at best, opening for June of 44 at the Blind Pig.

Come On Die Young's most exciting track, "Christmas Steps," sounds like an unfinished Sweep the Leg Johnny song (i.e., minus the vocals, sax, more complex tempo changes, etc.), which, while pretty decent, is not enough to get you a spot opening for Everclear in the States. This is not to say that fame is an essential element to good music. I'm just pointing out that Mogwai could perhaps be the most over- hyped indie rock band in the world. There are much better bands doing the same thing from the back of vans across the US.

Young Team, Mogwai's last record, painted in bolder strokes. Feedback and riffs burst unexpectedly from beautiful melodies. I found myself hunching over the boombox waiting for Come On Die Young to develop. Then my back got sore. For an instrumental album, the playing is not mathy or complex enough to evoke interest. I mean, have you ever been to Scotland? It's constantly cloudy. Decaying industrial towns pop up in rusty clusters over barren hills. The locals drink to make their livers pop. It's not surprising Mogwai comes from this environment of incessant gloom and fog, where there's not much to do but fondly recall history and sulk.

Poorly Written, Ambiguous Indie Zine Review:

Mogwai are an instrumental band from Glasgow, Scotland. They play quiet indie rock. If you like Slint and its spin- offs, check them out.

-Brent DiCrescenzo