So… Mogwai, I feel I have grown up with yeee. I first unwrapped the cellophane off Come on Die Young when I was 15, and most of my class colleagues’ CD of choice was the latest Five or Another Level missive. Which is fine, they were kids I suppose, but CODY was my first real exposure to what Everett True used to bang on as “other music”. There were, infront of me, 12 tracks of in perfect guitar drawl which sounded alien and, for a pretentious little shit like me, exciting and different. Mogwai led me to Godspeed, and on to Slint and Explosions in the Sky. There have been other post rock bands, but for me and I suspect most Peelie-influence Britties these have been the most important. Loud-gwai.

Mogwai have not been the same band over the years. Rock Action marked a major change in style – Mogwai started to adopt an almost trademark sound, a kind of almost pop form of the 10 minute guitar concertos they were producing on Young Team. This was developed on Happy Music, and done almost by numbers on Mr Beast. Errors, who lie on Mogwai’s Rock Action label, took the sound and ran with it on It’s Not Something But It’s Like Whatever, making Mogwai’s signature noise an unlikely bedfellow with acid-house. Dance-gwai.

But Hawk is Howling sounds very little like recent Mogwai – and is almost calling back out to the roots of the band in their early singles and in Young Team. The orchestral elements from Rock Action are still here in part, but the song lengths are up again and there is little here that sounds like the kind of tight-knit 4 minute sub-radio friendly tunes that made up most of Mr Beast. More loud quiet on I’m Jim Morrison, more metal thrashing on Bat Cat, more cody-style wandering on Local Authority. More Stereodee noise on Scotland’s Shame. It’s almost nostalgia-gwai.

It’s all order in court, its all very appealing to long time Mogwai fans. But to be honest there’s been little to keep me coming back to this album. Post-rocks appeal to me initially was that it literally sounded like nothing I had heard before. But there’s nothing new or remarkable about this album, which is pretty much business as usual. Which is great if you want some new Mogwai wallpaper to tart your walls, but its undistinct from Young Team and earlier EPs and lacks much of the band’s original warmth and power. Pants-gwai.

You can buy it now, like.