Mogwai - Every Country's Sun (2LP)

In September 2017, Mogwai came back from a run of soundtrack work with a full-blooded studio statement, Every Country’s Sun. It is the band’s ninth album, released on their Rock Action label in the UK and on Temporary Residence Ltd. in the US, and it finds them reuniting with producer Dave Fridmann at his Tarbox Road Studios in Cassadaga, New York. That setting matters. Fridmann has a way of turning Mogwai’s quiet-loud grammar into widescreen color, and you can hear it from the first bars of the opener, Coolverine. The guitars hover like heat haze, Martin Bulloch’s drums step in with patience, then everything swells with a clarity that makes even the feedback feel sculpted.

This was their first non-soundtrack LP after longtime guitarist John Cummings left in 2015, which could have rattled another band. Instead, the core of Stuart Braithwaite, Barry Burns, Dominic Aitchison, and Bulloch sounds focused and nimble. You can sense a lighter touch at times, a confidence in space, and then a willingness to bite down hard when it counts. Old Poisons is the best example of the latter, a ferocious late-album jolt that recalls the steel and scowl of their early days while still carrying the melodic polish they honed on records like Rave Tapes.

The headline for a lot of fans, though, was Party in the Dark. A Mogwai song with a hook you can hum on the way to work is still a thrill, and this one goes full shoegaze-pop, vocals and all, without feeling like a compromise. It is not an outlier either. Brain Sweeties leans into synths and motorik pulse, the kind of glassy electronics they developed on soundtracks like Atomic, only more playful. Do not Believe the Fife takes the long road, layering keys and harmonics until the pay-off lands in a way that rewards patience. The title track closes the record like a sunrise seen through cloud, gentle at first, then brilliant.

Fridmann’s production ties all of this together. The guitars have body but also air, the low end blooms instead of bludgeons, and the drum sound is cavernous without going mushy. You hear the room at Tarbox Road, that big wooden echo that also shapes records by The Flaming Lips and Mercury Rev, but it suits Mogwai’s temperament. They remain masters of the long fuse, and here the explosions feel earned rather than obligatory. The sequencing helps as well, with the band slipping a vocal curveball or a synth daydream between bruisers so the arcs feel like journeys, not formula.

Every Country’s Sun landed to warm notices from the UK press and US outlets alike, with many calling out the balance of melody and heft. Longtime watchers might hear it as a summation of several Mogwai modes, from the bruised grandeur of Come On Die Young to the neon gleam of their 2010s work, but it never reads as a museum piece. The songs have purpose. They were road-tested on tours that stretched from Glasgow to North America, where Old Poisons in particular became a setpiece that sent pints into the air.

If you are hunting for Mogwai vinyl, this one is a keeper. The Every Country’s Sun vinyl pressing does justice to the production, especially on a decent system where the crescendos breathe and the bass finds its floor. It pairs nicely with earlier Mogwai albums on vinyl like Rock Action and Happy Songs for Happy People, and it makes a strong on-ramp for anyone looking to buy Mogwai records online without diving straight into the sprawling early catalog. I have spotted copies holding their ground in a Melbourne record store bin, and it is the sort of album that tends to disappear from “new arrivals” in a day. Even if you are scrolling through vinyl records Australia listings late at night, this is a safe click.

Part of the fun with Mogwai is how personal the peaks feel, so different listeners will latch onto different moments. For me it is that breath held right before Coolverine lifts, and the clipped, gnarled riff that detonates Old Poisons. For others it might be the silver shimmer of Party in the Dark or the patient bloom of the title track. That range is the point. Two decades on, Mogwai still find new shapes for the same stubborn idea, that instrumental rock can carry as much feeling as any verse and chorus. Every Country’s Sun proves it again, with craft, with volume, and with a surprising amount of light.