12 Mogwai: Mogwai Young Team (Remastered)

Listen, boys and girls and others, I’mma keep this relatively brief. I feel like my words are pretty irrelevant here, I’m not sure that it’s easy or even possible to explain the beauty, the power, the genius of one of the greatest albums released during my lifetime. My short lifetime. I am young. I’m basically a baby.

1997 was the best year for music, don’t @ me. There wasn’t even a Manics album that year, so I’ll let that sit in just how powerful a statement that must be coming from me. British music, at least. I was in Britain at the time, you see, and though we were still obviously pathetically in awe of the USA – all the cool kids hated Friends, while every movie at the cinema starred Will Smith or George Clooney or… erm… Robert Carlyle…? – the world wide webification hadn’t yet taken over. What’s big in the US is now just big in the UK, because we’re all hooked up to the same companies’ propaganda machines, but back in ’97 we still kinda did our own stuff. Fucking Full Monty was the biggest movie of 97 (and, for a short time before Titanic, of all time in the UK*), nine of the top 10 selling albums of 1997 were by British acts. Trust me, bro: Jewel? Third Eye Blind? Tim McGraw? Notorious motherfucking B.I.G?? We had no idea who these people were. And you know what? We were happy.

(*it’s now 43rd, because these charts don’t fucking adjust for inflation so that the studios can crow about their new movies MAKING MORE MONEY THAN JAWS!! as a marketing even though $1 million in 1975 is about $345 billion adjusted for inflation)

In the UK though? Things were cookin’! The biggest album of the year – Oasis’s ‘Be Here Now’, which I swear I mention on every post – symbolically brought an end* to the heady days of Britpop, and there suddenly seemed like an explosion of different music from all across the musical spectrum**, as people seemed to be grasping all over the place to find out exactly where British music was supposed to go now we couldn’t just have endless parka coats ripping off The Kinks. This feeling out period gave us so much great music that I honestly think it’s what killed Diana. I’m not joking, if you were a fan of fucking Duran Duran then the shit that was coming out in 97 would have killed you. And – actually – we’d all be glad you died. You fucking square. Yes, there was OK Computer, yes there was ‘Fat of the Land’ breaking new grounds for dance music, yes there was ‘Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space’ – the actual best album of the year, but there was so much more for a 13 year old boy to vibe with:

1997, however, gave me so many wonderful new albums that I couldn’t help but be hooked for life. Obviously, there was Björk releasing another amazing record, possibly her best, but we’ve already established how I didn’t really pay much attention to female artists until at least the turn of the century, so unfortunately she’s unavailable for consideration. However, from the XY gang, we had career highs from The Chemical Brothers and The Foo Fighters (honestly, they were pretty good at one point); surprisingly decent evolutions out of Britpop from Blur and Supergrass; brilliant and unexpected comebacks/reinventions from The Verve, Nick Cave and Primal Scream; and incredible debuts from Mogwai and Daft Punk.

My Life in Albums (part 2 97-06)

(*it actually bared its hairy arse cheeks, bent over and curled a big dribbling turd over the very coffin that it had just buried Britpop in. Symbolically

**’across the musical spectrum’ of ugly white guys, admittedly. Sorry. Look, I was a 13 year old boy! Read My Life In Albums if you want more explanation on why I hate women)

Wait, what was that last bit? Rewind just a bit:

we had career highs from… The Foo Fighters (honestly, they were pretty good at one point)

Erm… No. You’ve rewound way too much.

Listen… I don’t like the Foo Fighters now! I was just… I was just saying they were pretty good back then! That’s a good album! Anyway, you’ve edited that out to take out the Chemichal Brothers! That’s dodgy journalism! Stop trying to push your agenda! You’ve gone way too far back anyway, I want the part much later on:

I didn’t really pay much attention to female artists until at least the turn of the century

That… Why…? No, I didn’t mean that part! When you take that out of context it looks bad! Yes, I know, still 100% true, but it looks bad! I mean the part right at the end! Can you pull that up?

incredible debuts from… Daft Punk

Oh for fuck’s…

Jesus Christ, the fuck am I doing with my life? That shit took ages!!

Anyway, yes, 1997 also saw the release of Mogwai’s debut, which got a gorgeous remaster in 2023. This record is an absolute monolith. One of the greatest ever achievements in whatever genre you decide to plonk it in. It’s menacing, it’s beautiful, it’s hard, it’s soft, it’s epic, but so intimate, it’s quiet, it’s fuck me it’s loud where the fuck did that come from?! If you haven’t heard it, please correct that flaw in your very character. Wrap yourself around this album and let it wrap itself around you. It’s a multifaceted work of uncommon genius that is everything guitar music aspires to be. Their debut album. Motherfuckers were in their mid twenties!!

So, to sum everything up: Mogwai killed Diana and that’s a good thing.

2021 #21, 2017 #50, 2016 #110, 2014 #6

Legit Bosses: 1