Mogwai, "Every Country's Sun"; The National, "Sleep Well Beast"

This post will be more about the stylistic choices made by these bands, rather than focusing on the qualities of the albums themselves.

Each new Mogwai album over the past ten years makes a solid first impression.  But they never seem to grow on me -- each listen brings diminishing returns, and seldom reveal any new, unexpected levels of detail.  A couple of tracks might stand out, but the rest fades into the background, not to be revisited once the next album cycle begins.

I searched my archives and had another look at what I wrote about "The Hawk Is Howling" nine (!!) years ago.   Nothing has changed!  Their albums still fill a "halfway gray area between loud and soft, between epic and succinct, between melodic and freeform".  The ideas and clever melodies are there, but the payoffs aren't.  Mogwai used to be all about building to the climax.

Creatively, I can't think of another formerly great band that's more in need of a complete reset.  I keep coming back to "Rock Action", where every track seemed to announce it's own new microgenre, particularly the guitar noise/industrial slam opening track "Sine Wave". "Zidane -- A 21st Century Portrait" wasn't a classic but it took their music in a more blissed out direction that they had not fully explored to that point, and applied it to soundtracking the high drama of sport.  That fresh approach is what drew me to the album. 

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In contrast, The National's latest album is a grower.  At first I was disappointed at the lack of a standout powerhouse rock track such as "Graceless" from "Trouble Will Find Me".  It's a quieter, more intimate album than its predecessor, with enough soft electronic embellishments to avoid repeating their earlier work, but not nearly enough to signify any kind of stylistic change.  Previously, they would serve up maudlin with a wink and a style, treading that fine line between sad and humorous in a drunken pub rock package in a way that few bands other than Tindersticks have ever been able to master.  Here, there's something more didactic about the lyrics, although I might soften that stance after additional listens.  But "The System Only Dreams in Total Darkness" (what a title!) and "Day I Die" are tremendous singles, and the tension and urgency that the music needs is maintained from start to finish.  There's a real buzz about an indie rock album made by forty somethings about relationship problems , which is weird and cool and confusing all at the same time.  

Diary of Musical Thoughts Podcast Episode 38

"A spontaneous techno mix to celebrate the fall leaves", 39 minutes

No quote-inspired title this time, the title simply means what it says.  I selected the tracks and mixed them surprisingly quickly, with virtually no testing to see how they'd flow together.  Sometimes you just get lucky and things pan out.  These bite-sized mixed are a hell of a lot easier than the longer ones to compile and mix, and easier to listen to as well.  On days like these, I feel like there should almost never be a need to make a mix longer than an hour.

Slowdive, Vaadat Charigim live at Barby, Tel Aviv

It's appropriate that this is likely my last non-(cool) Dad gig.  Shoegaze was the genre that should have been a passing fad like so many other 80's and 90's rock-based microgenres.  Yet it somehow stuck around thanks to a small number of passionately devoted fans (half of which formed their shoegazing bands, or so it might seem).  Much like the West Coast psychedelia scene of the late 60's, the bands were relative footnotes in the grand scheme of rock at the time and flamed out quickly, but became counterculture, forever cool touchstones -- especially once their fans grew up to be music critics and couldn't stop writing about them.  Now we're the crusty stoners in our 40's who can't get enough of the music we grew up with.  Are there any new shoegaze fans jumping on ship during the past few years.  Based on the look of the crowd in the Barby, it seems not.

But at the very least, Vaadat Charigim won themselves at least one new fan (me).  They may be the best rock band in Israel.  These guys just get it.  Formed only five years, they look like grizzled fans who finally said fuck it and decided to go for it and form the shoegaze band they'd always dreamed of forming after letting life get in the way for far too many years.  Their music is like the Spirit of '88 MBV with the tempos slowed down by 25%, full of searing transitions and loaded with pop hooks.

The first wave of shoegaze largely passed me by at the time.  I knew about the bands but wasn't a big fan and hardly owned any records until years later.  I didn't see any of them live either -- until now.  Yes, this was my (depending on how you'd classify bands like Catherine Wheel) *first* "first wave" shoegazing gig.  

Two things about Slowdive, who are still magnificent after all these years.  First, the new songs are great and fit it seamlessly with the old ones.  Someone new to their music who dropped in on this show would be hard pressed, I think, to tell the old and new songs apart based on style and even based on crowd reactions.  Second, the gig was mellow.  Really mellow.  So mellow that after 20 years, the overlap between Slowdive and Mojave 3 was finally revealed to me in perfect clarity.  Slowdive on this night were Mojave 3 with mountains of reverb (which to be fair, is exactly what I always wanted out of Mojave 3 ... I even saw them live once in the blind hope that they might become that live).  Everything from the smooth, laid back tempos to the twangy guitars (encased in feedback and reverb) to Neil Halstead's trucker hat was dedicated to providing listeners with the alt-country experience at a much higher volume.