Mogwai - Every Country's Sun [Vinyl 2LP]

Every Country's Sun takes two decades of Mogwai's signature, contrasting sounds – towering intensity, pastoral introspection, synth-rock minimalism, DNA-detonating volume – and distills it, beautifully, into 56 concise minutes of gracious elegance, hymnal trance-rock, and transcendental euphoria. Produced by psych-rock luminary Dave Fridmann, it's a structural soundscape built from stark foundations up; from a gentle, twinkling, synth-rock spectre to a solid, blown-out, skyward-thrusting obelisk.

There's percussive, dream-state electronics (Coolverine), church organs as chariots of existential fire (Brain Sweeties), tremulous, foreboding bleeping – possibly from a dying android (aka 47). Their most transportive album yet, it also hosts their most fully realized art-pop sing-along of their storied history, Party In The Dark, a head-spinning disco-dream double-helix echoing New Order and The Flaming Lips, featuring Stuart Braithwaite's seldom-heard melodic vocals declaring he's directionless and innocent, searching for another piece of mind.

This is music as a keep-out chrysalis, protective audio armor through exalting organs and portentous, dissonant guitar fuzz warping at the edges, bending the world inside-out into a reality in which you'd much rather live. The last three songs ascend into explosive exorcism, closing with the colossal title cut Every Country's Sun, its searching intensity whooshing towards infinity in a dazzling cosmic crescendo.

LP1

1. Coolverine
2. Party In The Dark
3. Brain Sweeties
4. Crossing The Road Material
5. aka 47
6. 20 Size

LP2

1. 1000 Foot Face
2. Don't Believe The Fife
3. Battered At The Scramble
4. Old Poisons
5. Every Country's Sun