Mogwai Revival: The Self-Indulgent Prelude

I moved to Bombay the first time back in ’09, just a day before I started to really hate the city. I remember the flight clearly; there were noisy people all around, the weather was terrible; the usual. It was raining, and there was lots of horrible turbulence. Honestly, I was scared shitless. But now that I think back, I have very fond memories of that flight. Reason being that a couple of weeks or so before I took that flight, I had bought (downloaded; whatever) this album called The Hawk is Howling by Mogwai, while in the midst of this massive three month long instrumental atmosphere music spree. The entire two hours that I was on the flight, I heard just the first song off that album on repeat, called ‘I’m Jim Morrison I’m Dead’. Rumination and nostalgic remembrances rendered a miserable experience into a meaningful one, thanks in no small part to the song.

The flipside to Jim Morrison’s impact is that I could never get past that first track on the album; I invariably ended up playing the same piece on repeat and I never really allowed myself the chance to explore the album further.

A month or so down the line, after I had well and truly sucked all life out of that song, I decided to give the rest of the album an honest listen. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get past the third song, ‘Danphe and the Brain’, which again grabbed me instantly, so I just decided to give up. I heard ‘I’m Jim Morrison I’m Dead’ and ‘Danphe and the Brain’ on loop for the next few weeks, and never really got the chance to hear the entire album, and then I just sort of forgot about it. Oh, such a fool I was back then.

Then, just the other day (three years later), while working on something, I decided to play ‘Danphe and the Brain’ since it had been playing in my head for a few days so I had to get it out. I sort of got lost in what I was doing after a few times of re-playing the song, and the rest of the album continued to play very slyly while I wasn’t noticing. And somewhere during my passive state, it hit me.

Words can’t describe the kind of impression this album’s made on me since (which is shameful since I write for a living), and in such little time too – just two days to be precise. So I’ve decided to do a review of one song off the album (soon to follow), and it’s as hard a decision as any to make, since I really can’t decide between ‘I Love You, I’m Going to Blow’, ‘Scotland’s Shame’, ‘Thank You Space Expert’, ‘The Precipice’, and a couple others. Shall try nonetheless.

Album Name: The Hawk is Howling

Rating: 10/11

Because this is one of those rare albums that truly deserves 10 rating points. Then again, it’s not the ‘greatest album ever’ either, and I can think of many others which would probably get a 10.5 or so on the same ratings scale. So this rating has been picked for the sake of both fairness and convenience.