Mogwai: are coasting

CD Reviews

MOGWAI: THE HAWK IS HOWLING ***

WALL OF SOUND RECORDS, 10.99

YOU'VE got to love Mogwai's song titles. Their new album includes a slow-burning – is Mogwai's music ever anything else? – eight-minute track called Scotland's Shame. It opens with a simple, four chord sequence played on an organ. We could be in a church, listening to a mournful hymn. Then that familiar guitar effects wash gradually comes in and the track builds and builds to a climax.

It's Mogwai by numbers, but it's still atmospheric; it makes one think of a funeral procession, in fact. Is it an elegy for a victim of sectarianism?

No it isn't, and really we should know better than to ask that question by now, given that the album also contains tracks called – apparently at random – I'm Jim Morrison, I'm Dead; Thank You Space Expert and Danphe And The Brain, the last of these suggesting that not only could Mogwai not be bothered to come up with a meaningful title, they couldn't even be bothered to type it correctly.

Scotland's Shame, according to Mogwai's Barry Burns, was originally going to be called Robocop VS The Orange Walk, until someone pointed out that this probably wouldn't be a very good idea. This could be a joke in itself, of course. The point is, never take Mogwai too seriously. Their music can be heartbreaking, transforming, and apocalyptic at times, but they are not like their Canadian kindred spirits Godspeed You! Black Emperor, who have used their evocative, instrumental guitar symphonies to express their anti-corporate, anarchist politics. While Godspeed sample political conspiracy theorists and loftily point out connections between record labels and the military industrial complex, Mogwai cheerily blether about football and call their songs things like Oh! How The Dogs Stack Up and I Am Not Batman.

It's an endearingly unpretentious approach to a genre of music that is sometimes deeply pretentious but, 13 years into their career, it's beginning to look like a cop-out. Mogwai are, these days, the great survivors of Chemikal Underground records' original roster. It's three years since The Delgados decided that not nearly enough people cared about either their two near masterpieces, The Great Eastern and Hate, or their last-ditch attempt to make a pop hit, Universal Audio, to justify carrying on. Arab Strap have bowed out too, and in the time that Mogwai have been happily soldiering on, Bis made three albums, split up, formed three other bands between them, Data Panik, The Kitchen and Dirty Hospital, briefly reformed, split up again, and still found time for Manda Rin to make a solo album.

Meanwhile, Mogwai continue to release albums that sound more or less like the one before, funded by a large and loyal fanbase who happily continue to buy them. Their UK tour this autumn will take them to big venues such as Edinburgh's Corn Exchange and London's Hammersmith Apollo, after a jaunt across America, a remarkable feat for a bunch of Glaswegians making instrumental post-rock for a laugh.

There's nothing very wrong with The Hawk is Howling. It includes some of the most beautiful music Mogwai have made – Local Authority in particular is achingly lovely – but most of it could have appeared on almost any Mogwai album. The thrashy Batcat sounds like something from Young Team, while opener I'm Jim Morrison, I'm Dead would sit equally happily on 2006's Mr Beast or 2003's Happy Songs For Happy People, or indeed elsewhere. A minor exception is The Sun Smells Too Loud, which ups the pace a little, dabbles with synthesiser effects and hints at what might have happened had Brian Eno spent last year working with them instead of Coldplay.

Recently, Mogwai's Stuart Braithwaite started making occasional EPs with Arab Strap's Aidan Moffat. The first sounded, quite frankly, like two drunk men arsing around, a huge disappointment given the combined talent that went into it. The Hawk is Howling is nowhere near as complacent, but listening to both I kept thinking of a T-shirt Mogwai made many years ago with the slogan "Blur: Are Shite". It got them a lot of publicity, this subversive Scots swipe at the self-satisfied, London-centric arrogance of Britpop, delivered at a time when Blur were slipping into complacent self-parody with The Great Escape. It helped a lot that Mogwai's ego-free, outward-looking music – influenced by American bands but not in thrall to them – felt like a breath of fresh air compared to what Blur were doing.

In the years since, though, Damon Albarn has pushed himself creatively again and again, boldly reinventing Blur twice, then recording with musicians from Mali, starting a band consisting of cartoon characters, making a dark, poignant concept album about London and writing an opera. Each of these was a huge risk; each one he pulled off with dignity and panache. Mogwai, meanwhile, are still making instrumental post-rock for a laugh. Those T-shirts, even they must admit, don't seem so clever any more.

&149 Fiona Shepherd is away.

POP

ABSENTEE: VICTORY SHORTS ****

MEMPHIS INDUSTRIES, 11.99

THE male bass singer is a rare thing in pop; Canadian band Crash Test Dummies once launched an international career on the basis of a song in which a man hummed "mmm mmm" in a very deep voice. The similarly rumbly Dan Michaelson and his band Absentee have something else in common with the Dummies – a breezy, polished pop exterior only just concealing a dark heart.

First album Schmotime had songs with titles including We Should Never Have Children and There's A Body In A Car Somewhere, and Victory Shorts continues in a similar vein. Fans of Pulp or Black Box Recorder will find much to like in its black humour and subversive wordplay, and if you think of Mark Eitzel and Nick Cave as romantics rather than gloomy sods, this is your kind of album.

Like all of the above, Michaelson understands and documents, poignantly and unsentimentally, how real-life mundanity can so often undermine romantic imagery. "You peel an orange to symbolise love," he sings mournfully on Pips, "but all I see as proof is the juice on your cuff."

TV ON THE RADIO: DEAR SCIENCE ****

4AD, 11.99

IN DAVE Sitek, TV on the Radio have one of the best producers in the business, and in Tunde Adebimpe they have a distinctive and versatile singer. They also have more ideas than almost any other band, channelling the spirit and invention of Prince and Bowie in the way they effortlessly fuse genres – funk, electronica, prog rock, hip-hop – indifferent to expectations of what kind of music either black or white people should make.

There will be those who proclaim this third album a classic, dazzling in its invention (it's one of the best-sounding pop albums since Gnarls Barkley's debut). To these ears, though, this band's music remains less than the sum of its parts. None of the tunes is as memorable as you'd hope, while lyrically this album is crying out for the insights of Thom Yorke or Win Butler to match the music's epic pretensions, but instead it mostly offers impenetrable, pseudo-poetic gibberish. It gets four stars for effort and ambition, but a little grudgingly.

CLASSICAL

SCHUBERT: SYMPHONY NO 9

SIGNUM, 10.99

THIS is a version of Schubert's "Great C Major Symphony" that gleans the cleanest of details from a work that is prone, in the wrong hands, to being overblown and cumbersome. But this is Sir Charles Mackerras and the Philharmonia Orchestra, so the crystalline crispness is hardly a surprise.

The signs are immediate – a horn theme stripped of fatuousness and delivered with pragmatic purpose and nothing in this naturally projected interpretation veers from that initial mood. The lyrical bounce of the andante is a delight; the scherzo bristles gracefully; and the finale simply says what it has to with unpressured resilience. The "live" in this live recording is palpable.

HARRISON BIRTWISTLE: SECRET THEATRE *****

NMC, 9.99

TWO works from the 1970s and one from the 80s constitute this fascinating package of vintage Harrison Birtwistle on NMC. All are works fired by Birtwistle's obsession with Stravinsky and the mechanised ritual of his music.

Secret Theatre is the most recently written of them and in this dazzling performance by the London Sinfonietta, under Elgar Howarth, emerges with shining vigour and translucent energy. Both Carmen Arcadiae Mechanicae Perpetuum and Silbury Air date from 1977, and complete an absorbing package from a continuously enterprising label.

WORLD

OUZBEKISTAN – MONAJAT YULTCHIEVA ****

OCORA, 13.99

THE downside of the world music boom is that musicians from far-flung cultures now feel obliged to Westernise their acts, so as to ingratiate themselves with Western listeners, but in the process they often destroy the "otherness" that makes their music special.

This CD – recorded in the mid-1990s and now re-released – is an antidote to all that: a sequence of maqams from Uzbekistan which make no concessions to Western notions of the "voice beautiful".

The music has a venerable history going back many centuries, but its focus is the Fergana Valley, where Monajat Yultchieva was born in 1960. She applied to enter the Uzbek conservatoire but was turned down for singing "out of tune": luckily she was spotted by maqam composer Shawqat Mirzaev.

He took her under his wing, and, playing the rabab lute, accompanies her here. Having invaded this traditionally male preserve, she's now regarded as a national treasure.

Against a bracingly spare accompaniment, her expressive voice demands close attention. The songs conflate earthly and divine love, and are imbued with Sufi mysticism: simplicity surrounded by a profound stillness.

KALMAN BALOGH – MASTER OF THE GYPSY CIMBALOM ***

EUCD, 8.99

THIS, on the other hand, is about as easy-listening as you could get, and though it's internationalised, it's still the real thing.

Kalman Balogh is descended from an old musical dynasty, and began to play the cimbalom at 11, going on to study at the Liszt Academy in Budapest. What he does with this hammered dulcimer really is magical, with country dances and classics by earlier virtuosi spiced up with collaborations with musicians from Egypt and all over Europe.

JAZZ

ASAF SIRKIS TRIO: THE MONK ***

SAM PRODUCTIONS, (EXCLUSIVE TO AMAZON AND ITUNES)

ASAF Sirkis is probably best known for his long stint as drummer in Gilad Atzmon's Orient House Ensemble, where he has carved out a deserved reputation as one off the most imaginative and creative drummers on the UK jazz scene.

Like many great drummers – including the late Tony Williams, an avowed model for this band – Sirkis's work as a leader does not always convince, and this new disc is rather uneven, brilliant at times and rather meandering and unfocused at others.

There is a strong fusion feel to the project, with a core trio of Sirkis, electric bassist Yaron Stavi and guitarist Tassos Spiliotopoulos joined by Gary Husband (another fine drummer) on keyboards or piano on four tracks, and Brazilian percussionist Adriano Adewale on another one. The high points reveal compelling group interactions and inventive manipulations of colour and texture.

FOLK

BLAIR DOUGLAS: STAY STRONG ****

RIDGE RECORDS, 11.99

THE full title of this latest album from the self-effacing Skye musician adds both the Gaelic ("Bithibh Laidir") and French ("Rester Fort") versions of the title, reflecting the mix of Scottish folk and rock, Cajun and New Orleans music that makes up this eclectic collection.

Recorded over a number of months in four countries, the album features Douglas's keyboards and Cajun accordion alongside a stellar collection of singers – Eddi Reader, Michael Marra, Cookie Rankin, Kathleen MacInnes, Arthur Cormack and Runrig's Bruce Guthro and Rory MacDonald among them – and musicians interpreting his typically captivating and moving tunes and songs.

The soundscape constantly shifts, taking in poignant ballads, anthemic rock, sparkling Cajun workouts, a slice of New Orleans R'n'B and the composer's very different tributes to Martyn Bennett in Martyn In Mind and James Brown in Keep The Cilidh Funky.