and the way it is, I can leave it all

I suppose the fuckest thing about Mogwai and their gig last night came when four songs into their set, they turned in a rendition of "Cody" that I must say I was completely unprepared for. Who would have thought that a bit of twinkly post-rock gone dark, companioned with nondescript singing, would be so accommodating to twinges of nostalgia? Indulge me if you will, but Come On Die Young happened some ten years ago, alright. Cut to the present and the slow wonder of this song performed on stage, everything about its monochromatic melodic glory, the way Stuart Braithwaite warble through the words ("old songs stay 'til the end, sad songs remind me of friends") -- while my outlook today is a world away from how I felt about numerous things ten years ago, from broken dream to dream this song has ranged, "Cody" still left me shaken. Besides this surprise inclusion of "Cody" on Mogwai's setlist, the only other acceptable expanation that I can come out with for why I enjoyed this performance so much more than the last time the band showed up in town (in 2006) was that the newer song materials the band was now playing were much stronger too. The better parts of their most recent album The Hawk Is Howling come closest to echoing the restrained sonic fury of Come On Die Young, as in tracks like "I Love You, I'm Going To Blow Up Your School", "Local Authority" and "Scotland's Shame" unfold in well-oiled motion and evolve into something much more deeply involving at their own pace. Appropriate or not, after an evening of music that called attention to the band's less well-advertised subtleties, Mogwai ended their two-hour set by shuffling off full gorge into viking berserker mode with a "Like Herod"/"Batcat" encore, the wavves of louder-than-you'd-imagine feedback abuse still sounding toxic, still brutally uplifting.