For all the serrated- edge musical commentary we whip up here at Pitchfork World Domination Enterprises, we sure are a lazy bunch of motherfuckers. We sleep in late, spend all day downloading porn and drinking oven cleaner, watch too much late- nite Cinemax, and generally find new and exciting ways to miss deadlines. It's a bleedin' miracle we get anything done at all. Usually, we can get away with being about a month or two behind on the latest releases, the main reason being because we don't get paid.

But this particular approach to work has its drawbacks. Such as the shameful situation of an especially good album buried at the bottom of the ankle- deep pile of as- yet- unreviewed CDs on the floor, and by the time we get around to listening to it, everyone else already knows about it. Young Team has been out for well over a year now, long enough for Mogwai to release a double CD of remixes (of course, it'll probably be another year before we get around to reviewing that, too). So why review it now? Call it penance. Call it making up for lost time. This album is so damn good it's worth a review regardless of extenuating circumstances.

It's been said that the hallmark of an excellent band is the ability to assimilate the influences of a host of bands that came before them and reconfigure their sounds into something unique and transcendent. If you're looking for musical signposts, Mogwai's got 'em in spades-- Tortoise, Sonic Youth, Slint, and My Bloody Valentine, to name a few. Imagine a group of emo kids listening to nothing but those bands and watching 2001: A Space Odyssey repeatedly. And then they go and make Young Team, a collection of religiously epic instrumentals full of lush, careening guitars that remake shoegazer as stargazer, plaintive piano interludes, and snippets of phone calls and overheard conversations drifting through the mix like intercepted radio signals.

Like 2001, Young Team speaks of passion and wonder in its own intuitive logic. Especially notable tracks include the Slint- spawned monster "Like Herod," "R U Still In 2 It"'s Aidan Moffat- fortified primer on human despair, and the sixteen- minute- long, mind- exploding closer "Mogwai Fear Satan," which is by far the most accurate sonic representation of the Big Bang theory in the history of music.

The short of it: one of the best frickin' albums of 1997. A judgment over a year late in arrival. But really now, who's keeping score?

-Nick Mirov