Les Reverantes, released Tuesday, February 26, 2013, by Scottish post-rock heroes Mogwai, is a soundtrack! I happen to be a big fan of film and TV scores and the composers who make them, like John Williams, John Barry, Danny Elfman, and, of course, Leonard Bernstein. Mogwai’s score accompanies the French television show of the same title, which follows a school bus full of children who are killed in an accident and come back to life, all the while unaware they ever died.
That’s really all you need to know about the show (in order
to imagine what kind of sounds might unravel over its course), because it’s a bizarre
premise, but also because the creators chose Mogwai to do the score. Certain tracks on Les Reverantes
are extremely quiet and wistful like their previous work; for example, “The
Huts” is so similar to “Waltz for Aiden” off their 2006 album, Come On Die Young, it makes me wonder if “Aiden” was a child gone before his time.
To be honest, I'm only familiar with Mogwai’s 2006 albums (yes there are two): Come On Die Young (the opening track of
which introduced many of us to the now infamous interview with legendary punk-rocker Iggy Pop); and Mr. Beast (the opening track of which was my favorite
song for driving around, windows closed, depressed about the commute, the job, the life). The music we listen to in our early twenties is strange: it has to fit the sad, exciting time of an often newly independent, post-punk lifetime, and still inspire us to get the fuck out of whatever sorry scene we've probably gotten ourselves into.
So while Les
Reverantes doesn’t carry, or produce, the same weight as Mogwai’s earlier music (they've been together since 1995), it has a heaping combination of sugar and spice. The synthesizer plays a more audible
role in Les Reverantes. The electric piano and drums could be used less on this record than others for all I know, but it has a very graceful Reagan-era
television-ready sound (“The Messiah Needs Watching”, “Modern”), similar to Ray
Lynch’s Deep Breakfast, or even more
original and older, Mike Oldfield’s Tubular
Bells.
And then there’s “What Are They Doing In Heaven Today?,” the
only track (of 14) on the album with lyrics. The slow, country ballad,
extremely reminiscent of Wilco, is like a slice of hearty bread, cut out for
the task of sopping up Mogwai’s particular pot of stew: piano reverie; steady, beating drums;
warm, tone-pure strings, and clouds and clouds of crashing symbols.
Grade: B +
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