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| Track list: 1. Punk Rock: 2. Cody 3. Helps Both Ways 4. Year 2000 Non-Compliant Cardia 5. Kappa 6. Waltz for Aidan 7. May Nothing But Happiness Come Through Your Door 8. Oh! How the Dogs Stack Up 9. Ex-Cowboy 10. Chocky 11. Christmas Steps 12. Punk Rock/ Puff Daddy/ Antichrist Running time: 67 minutes Released: 1999 |
As much as I love Mogwai, I've never really got on with CODY as an album. It has always been down the pecking order for me. Probably because I came to the group late, and picked this up by going backwards not forwards. Still, now it's time to listen properly.
Punk Rock: isn't, but the synergy of the voice with the gentle wandering guitar is better than it has any right to be. The louder moments of the sampled voice track (TV show interview I guess) are less effective, crowd noise is not particularly engaging. It is snowing outside, I have not been sleeping well the past week or so and I have been overly social in that time, too - only one weekday evening and today, Sunday afternoon, to myself. I need that alone time to recharge, and hopefully the next hour or so can contribute to that.
I suspect I will enjoy the listen more than I anticipated when I wrote the intro (a long time back given the sparse postings and need to fill in As and Bs that I bought), and come away with a new appreciation for this record, but still - 67 minutes is a marathon, not a sprint. The listen is putting off consideration of how to handle a complex scenario in the RPG I am running, the washing up and various other things I don't really feel like doing right away, so the gentle meandering of the title track is a rather apt form of procrastination. I am actually pretty familiar with track Cody from the live album Special Moves, which I listened to a lot whilst driving in the couple of years after it came out.
Thus far the tone of the disc is subdued, placid, with a tempo to match. It's really rather relaxing, a long way from the quiet/loud dichotomy or the wall of guitar noise that crops up in many Mogwai offerings. The most interesting factor so far has been the use of American TV soundbites. One actually spans two tracks, linking Helps Both Ways to Year 2000 Non-Compliant Cardia. This latest tune has the most body of anything so far, but is still in keeping with the easy overall tone.Not having ready up on the album, I don't know if this continues throughout, whether it was a deliberate choice by the band to mellow out, or whether the longer tunes coming up in the second half are more immediately recognisible as Mogwai.
To be fair, I'd like to think that if I heard any of these tunes in isolation without knowing them I would still be able to guess the creators because its not a million miles from their signature either.
I am enjoying this little oasis of calm. I am half way through per the track list, but a lot less than that in truth. The back half contains 4 tracks over 8 minutes and 2 at around the two-minute mark, whereas the first half was made up, generally, of standard radio song length pieces. The first of those long tunes does not shake up the formula, the easy-paced, light melodies. It does introduce some more strident strumming, but still within a slow paced formula. At this point the form is starting to wear a little thin for me in some respects. Whilst I appreciate the overall tone I am increasingly finding my mind is wandering because it is all a little too samey. Then Oh! How the Dogs Stack Up comes in with a weird old voice sample and and being completely out of place - old-timey, slightly off-key piano, and a sort of screeching background. I think that tune has to go.
Three epics back to back now.
For some reason when I see the track title Ex-Cowboy, the cattlemen of the American west is not the first thing that comes to mind. I think instead of Football, and Bloodbowl, of Dallas and Darkside. Perhaps it is an affectation, sport on the brain, influenced perhaps by the silenced snooker on my TV right now? I really like the main riff here though I find myself semi-tuned out because the pattern is set, and the track does not seem to have enough of a crescendo. Of course, it arrives as I am typing that last sentence, a sort of helicopter-blade swirl of sound applied over the top of the same riff at the same pace and amplitude. A screech, a scream, an objection to something.
A nod to earlier, the static the tune ends with is used as a bridge between tracks, and Chocky kicks off with a lot of dissonant sound humming and buzzing around, obscuring a gentle piano intro. I find this to be unwelcome. One tune fades, another rises, and then the fuzz clears and we actually have a piece of music with a discernible structure. A pretty good one at that. There are hints of sounds here that remind me of other songs, snatches of other groups - positive associations. The one that I can't shake that pops up again and again through the track is Red Snapper... I don't recall the track title(s) for the songs I am thinking of though, so I can't explain the reference. Maybe They're Hanging Me Tonight? It's a very different piece, different style tone and everything, but there are echoes here and there, similar sounds used in similarly punctuating ways.
There is a sort of restrained but naked threat in the sound of the first crescendo in Christmas Steps, a sound that had me springing forward in interest and excitement. This is the first really aggressive passage of the album and I like the bolder, brasher sound. The contrast is too late in arriving for me to consider CODY a great album, but this at least provides a great moment. The energy disappears from the track thereafter and it feels like the wind-down lasts too long, but then from a certain perspective the whole record is one c.70 minute come-down with a brief lively moment near the back-end.
Punk Rock: isn't, but the synergy of the voice with the gentle wandering guitar is better than it has any right to be. The louder moments of the sampled voice track (TV show interview I guess) are less effective, crowd noise is not particularly engaging. It is snowing outside, I have not been sleeping well the past week or so and I have been overly social in that time, too - only one weekday evening and today, Sunday afternoon, to myself. I need that alone time to recharge, and hopefully the next hour or so can contribute to that.
I suspect I will enjoy the listen more than I anticipated when I wrote the intro (a long time back given the sparse postings and need to fill in As and Bs that I bought), and come away with a new appreciation for this record, but still - 67 minutes is a marathon, not a sprint. The listen is putting off consideration of how to handle a complex scenario in the RPG I am running, the washing up and various other things I don't really feel like doing right away, so the gentle meandering of the title track is a rather apt form of procrastination. I am actually pretty familiar with track Cody from the live album Special Moves, which I listened to a lot whilst driving in the couple of years after it came out.
Thus far the tone of the disc is subdued, placid, with a tempo to match. It's really rather relaxing, a long way from the quiet/loud dichotomy or the wall of guitar noise that crops up in many Mogwai offerings. The most interesting factor so far has been the use of American TV soundbites. One actually spans two tracks, linking Helps Both Ways to Year 2000 Non-Compliant Cardia. This latest tune has the most body of anything so far, but is still in keeping with the easy overall tone.Not having ready up on the album, I don't know if this continues throughout, whether it was a deliberate choice by the band to mellow out, or whether the longer tunes coming up in the second half are more immediately recognisible as Mogwai.
To be fair, I'd like to think that if I heard any of these tunes in isolation without knowing them I would still be able to guess the creators because its not a million miles from their signature either.
I am enjoying this little oasis of calm. I am half way through per the track list, but a lot less than that in truth. The back half contains 4 tracks over 8 minutes and 2 at around the two-minute mark, whereas the first half was made up, generally, of standard radio song length pieces. The first of those long tunes does not shake up the formula, the easy-paced, light melodies. It does introduce some more strident strumming, but still within a slow paced formula. At this point the form is starting to wear a little thin for me in some respects. Whilst I appreciate the overall tone I am increasingly finding my mind is wandering because it is all a little too samey. Then Oh! How the Dogs Stack Up comes in with a weird old voice sample and and being completely out of place - old-timey, slightly off-key piano, and a sort of screeching background. I think that tune has to go.
Three epics back to back now.
For some reason when I see the track title Ex-Cowboy, the cattlemen of the American west is not the first thing that comes to mind. I think instead of Football, and Bloodbowl, of Dallas and Darkside. Perhaps it is an affectation, sport on the brain, influenced perhaps by the silenced snooker on my TV right now? I really like the main riff here though I find myself semi-tuned out because the pattern is set, and the track does not seem to have enough of a crescendo. Of course, it arrives as I am typing that last sentence, a sort of helicopter-blade swirl of sound applied over the top of the same riff at the same pace and amplitude. A screech, a scream, an objection to something.
A nod to earlier, the static the tune ends with is used as a bridge between tracks, and Chocky kicks off with a lot of dissonant sound humming and buzzing around, obscuring a gentle piano intro. I find this to be unwelcome. One tune fades, another rises, and then the fuzz clears and we actually have a piece of music with a discernible structure. A pretty good one at that. There are hints of sounds here that remind me of other songs, snatches of other groups - positive associations. The one that I can't shake that pops up again and again through the track is Red Snapper... I don't recall the track title(s) for the songs I am thinking of though, so I can't explain the reference. Maybe They're Hanging Me Tonight? It's a very different piece, different style tone and everything, but there are echoes here and there, similar sounds used in similarly punctuating ways.
There is a sort of restrained but naked threat in the sound of the first crescendo in Christmas Steps, a sound that had me springing forward in interest and excitement. This is the first really aggressive passage of the album and I like the bolder, brasher sound. The contrast is too late in arriving for me to consider CODY a great album, but this at least provides a great moment. The energy disappears from the track thereafter and it feels like the wind-down lasts too long, but then from a certain perspective the whole record is one c.70 minute come-down with a brief lively moment near the back-end.
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