Come On Die Young [CD]

If Young Team gained an appeal through the shoegazer-style washes of ‘Tracy’, and its digital tide of effects pedals that layered the endless ’Mogwai Fear Satan’, ‘Come On Die Young’ shows the band wanting to simply plug in and play. Opener ‘Punk Rock’ features untreated clean guitars chiming in minor-key over a speech by Iggy Pop. The band’s trademark plaintive emotion, often covered below layers of feedback and delay on the previous album, is here bravely on show: ‘the brilliant music of a genius, myself’ Iggy Pop declares; you sense Mogwai would say the same themselves; if their music did not already do that for them.
‘Cody’ is a rare vocal track that sounds like a country lament from a ghost town, straight after the gold rush. Indeed, the sharply picked minor-key guitars could easily be Neil Young on Zuma: just darker. In the background a tasteful pedal-steel howls mournfully, as Stuart Braithwaite’s vocal sounds like all of Glasgow propping up the bar, and the soft, lugubrious music emphasises an overall half-drunken, half-romantic stupor.
If ‘cody’ is a bar-room howl, then ‘Helps Both Ways’ is the loner sloping home to his empty house and falling on the couch in front of the telly; almost literally, as an American football game plays in the background for the entire song. Again there is a clean guitar, but this time a nicely muted horn section plays over the top to the pace of a fugue. The song is strangely entrancing, a fine demonstration of how classical instruments are used in post-rock as not just to fill in the gaps, but to add something to the music.
‘Year 2000’ and ‘Kappa’ propound the sparse, ennui-rock further, the first with layers of metallic sounding guitars and samples, the second with a definite Slint-feel that is slightly atonal. The songs feel like a pair, but also as more an exercise in sound and unfettered production than anything else. The atmosphere of locale created by the previous tracks is in this way slightly compromised, but not totally.
‘Waltz for Aidan’ returns us to this drunken, woozy feel; and it’s sumptuous, aching melody, that finally melts into long country lanes of delay is one of the most beautiful moments on the album. The song is overdosed on wistful melancholy, and leads into the rather tenderly titled ‘may nothing but happiness come through your door’: the poignancy evident in the title is played out by a solitary guitar, that builds in volume as a clattering drum beat turns it to an impassioned shout: the rage finally collapses into a pool of soft keys, as a phone message plays pathetically in the background. At these junctures, we get this sense of a narrative running through this album, perhaps a person who has lost everything, and that this is a journey through his solipsism: the barren nature of the production enforces this brilliantly.
After the distorted piano interlude of ‘Oh! How the Dogs Stack Up’, the album enters into its tour de force: a triptych of lengthy songs - ‘Ex-Cowboy’, ‘Chocky’ and ‘Christmas Steps’ that each demonstrate Mogwai’s outreaching talent. In the first, a loose bass groove uncovers swathes of sound, from the beginning violins to towering guitars that finally rage to the surface, coating the soundscape in nightmarish entrancing squalls of feedback: the result is paralysingly beautiful, like staring over a precipice. The following number ‘chocky’ demonstrates the band’s sincerity of feeling as a plaintive piano melody unfolds alongside ascending guitars, the song drifts on like a journey through the hills, before foundering in a fog of static. ‘Christmas Steps’ is far better than it’s E.P. counterpart, sounding better with the lighter, less prominent guitars; it feels like someone picking their way through a snowbound landscape.
The closer is slightly disappointing, but this is a great album, an important album. I can’t understand why people see ‘Young Team’ as the flagship album: for me it is ‘Come On Die Young’ - the band took a brave risk with eschewing their early stomp box fascination, and this album demonstrates that they could make the most battered sounding guitar cry.

Mogwai has created a fine record in `Come On Die Young'.

The album seems to fall into two distinct parts. The first seven tracks are atmospheric pieces largely notable for their restrained instrumentation and gentle melodic threads. `Waltz for Aidan' is beguilingly beautiful and `Cody' has whispered, dream-like vocals.

After the scratchy piano of ` Oh! How the Dogs Stack Up' the band launch into three lengthy tracks which make up nearly half of the disc's total playing time. Here the feel of the music is looser and more expressive, guitars are louder and freer; classic post-rock territory perhaps.

In my opinion, the CD is most enjoyable where the band create music with strong melody and atmosphere at the same time. My favourite track is `May Nothing But Happiness...' which features a delicate percussion melody interspersed with an increasingly strident guitar motif. The effect is haunting and tremendously atmospheric. The end of the track carries a cleverly sampled repeating automated telephone message; you can almost picture an empty hotel room in the dead of night after some horrible incident

The album's weak side is its length, as at 67 minutes it struggles a bit to maintain the quality. I know from reading other reviews that I am in the minority, but `Christmas Steps' seems to be prime culprit of this. The middle part of the track is impressive with its staccato guitar and percussion, but why the tedious, barely-there intro/outro which adds nothing? The track could easily be trimmed by five minutes.

Don't be too put off, though, this is a very enjoyable CD from a band at the top of their game. Well worth buying if you appreciate cleverly crafted music.

It's difficult to know where to start when describing such music as this. It's difficult to do with an aural vocabulary. I'm tempted to start getting poetic and metaphorical. It's watching the sky on a clear night out in the country. It's the sea washing through you. It's being sucked in to a black hole. This stuff is damn well SPIRITUAL, man!
Drawn out, mesmerising contemplative moments contrast with intense bursts of power. Tension and release are integral elements of this album. Tension is built up in various ways such as ingenious harmonic progressions using increasingly dischordal harmony (such as in Year 2000 Non-Compliant Cardia), and general, gradual build up of sounds and volume which erupt in to a barrage of noise (such as on the utterly brilliant Ex-Cowboy).
This album is slower, quieter, more held back than Young Team. Whereas Young Team rocks out with the loud intense bits right from the start, Come on Die Young builds up gradually over it's 68 minutes. It starts peacefully with Punk Rock - a relatively short piece. This is also a pretty unremarkable introduction as far as I'm concerned. It doesn't take long for Mogwai to hit their stride; CODY is wonderful. This features the only example of singing on the album, with Stuart Braithwait harmonising beautifully with himself thanks to the wonders of multi-track recording. This is sad. It's mournful, ghostly singing over equally emotive guitar. Year 2000... is a small taste of what is to come at the climax of the album. Kappa and Waltz for Aidan are a short, peaceful lull before the build up begins with May Nothing But Happiness Come Through Your Door and Oh! How the Dogs Stack Up, the latter ending with the Mogwai brand of white noise which links in to Ex-Cowboy: the beginning of the afore mentioned climax, and definately the greatest piece of music that Mogwai have ever produced. I really, REALLY like this piece!! It's the basic quiet, simple start, built gradually up to something immense which Mogwai do oh so well. But it's better than the rest. It's ripe, it's perfectly proportioned, the mixing is spot on. It's like a drug, it's mind altering. It makes an otherwise reasonable, laid back person like me want to destroy everything. It's something else. It's the first time that the beast is properly let loose on the album, and it roars and snarls; bites and scratches for the next half an hour or so over Ex-Cowboy, Christmas Steps and Chocky. Along with CODY these are the stand out tracks on the album, and they are brilliant. Christmas Steps builds slowly in a similar way as Ex-Cowboy to a short, sharp burst of terrifying energy before slowly withering away with a quiet, reverb drenched violin for company. Chocky begins with an awful sounding honky-tonk piano over a layer of fuzz. Gradually the fuzz takes over and carries through to the main body of the piece which contains the piano along with the guitars, etc. The music builds in layers, becoming more and more intense until the music gets too taut and snaps, leaving just the piano and the fuzz again. The album ends with a short come-down piece which features a lovely trombone (I think part).
May Nothing... is the only real weakish spot for me. It just goes on too long.
Although I think that Come on Die Young is Mogwai's finest album to date, it probably isn't a good place for Mogwai newies to begin. For a first taste go to Young Team. Once you've done this and discovered how incredibly fantastic it is, move on to Come on Die Young and adore it for ever an'ever an'ever.