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The Hawk Is Howling | 
| Artist: Mogwai
Label: Wall of Sound
Category: Music
List Price: £11.99
Buy New: £7.98
You Save: £4.01 (33%)
New (14) Used (2) from £6.08
Rating:  12 reviews
Sales Rank: 1614
Media: Audio CD
Discs: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 5.6 x 5 x 0.5
EAN: 5413356574029
ASIN: B001C4Z6FW
Release Date: September 22, 2008
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours
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| Tracks:
| • | I'm Jim Morrison I'm Dead | | • | Batcat | | • | Daphne And The Brain | | • | Local Authority | | • | Sun Smells Too Loud | | • | Kings Meadow | | • | I Love You I'm Going To Blow Up Your School | | • | Scotland's Shame | | • | Thank You Space Expert | | • | Precipice |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.co.uk Review
If at first, Mogwai's sixth album The Hawk Is Howling feels mostly remarkable for its song titles--what other quote-unquote 'experimental' band would christen their majestic soundscapes with names like "Daphne and the Brain", "The Sun Smells Too Loud", or "I Love You, I'm Going to Blow up Your School"?--repeated listens see this record find a neat place in the band's canon, somewhere between the sonic bliss of Happy Songs for Happy People and the intricate melancholia of Mr Beast. Solely instrumental, it's an album that follows the latter-day Mogwai template of gently undulating peaks and troughs, rather than mountains and precipices. Which might sound less than scintillating, but these days Mogwai are less about dynamite dynamics and more about intricate melodies and songs that slowly, but grandly, wind their way to conclusions. The opening "I'm Jim Morrison, I'm Dead" starts with a gentle minor-key keyboard piece by Barry Burns, but gradually builds in mass to a white-out of sparkling guitars. "The Sun Smells Too Loud" is a more synthetic-sounding piece doused in thick, fuzzy effects and yearning melodies. Meanwhile, "Batcat" proves the band can still flex a muscle, a squalling barnstormer with a Hassidic-tinged melody that recalls "My Father, My King". --Louis Pattison
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| Customer Reviews: Read 7 more reviews...
 Good Album November 24, 2008
Theres things I like in this album, but I dont think its as good as Mr. Beast. My sister bought me Mr. Beast while honeymooning with her new hubby in Scotland and I fell in love with that album...So of course I became a big fan of this band and was anticipating for this album to come out. Im not dissapointed at all and theres many great songs on it, but theres a few songs I find that drag on too long, especially the songs that really dont go anywhere in 6 minutes...This album is still one of my faves with Rock Action, Happy Songs, and Mr Beast.
This reviewer is liking November 12, 2008
I hadn't heard any Mogwai before. Listened to this album on their myspace page and really liked. Sometimes happy but mostly moody soundtracks to films never made but probably should have been. I can imagine Shane Meadows making a film with a Mogwai soundtrack.
A bit of Sonic Youth, a bit of shoegazing, a bit of Pink Floyd, it even reminds me a bit of some Pat Metheny stuff. Whatever it is it's worth listening too. Buy without hesitation if you like proper grown up sounds.
Quality Album October 31, 2008
Listened to this on the bands myspace page and then bought the album the very next day its superb.Stand out tracks for me(and they're all good)are Scotlands shame,the precipice and the sun smells too loud.This is the first Mogwai record I've bought it wont be the last.
 mogwai's best album to date October 12, 2008
as a fan of mogwai for years now i always anticipate their albums release. although the cover scares me alot i still had no hesitation in buying it. this album, simply, is the best mogwai release, it is perfect in every single way. every single track on this album is fantastic, as another reviewer said there is no track that you would want to skip. im jim morrison, im dead goes on par with killing all the flies as my favorite mogwai song of all time, and there are other songs on this album that near the top of that list.
each song is a masterpiece in composition, phrasing and execution and each song delivers beautiful moments. sometimes in the past i have been put off by some of the heavier moments in mogwai songs, but they have honed the balance between the heavy parts and the softer.
this album has rejuvenated my love for mogwai that went a tiny bit stale after mr beast. any new mogwai fans might as well start here and any old mogwai fans unsure should not even hestitate at this purchase.
Mogwai And The Crusade For The Temple Of The Lost Crystal Skull October 5, 2008
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
Now on their 6th album, the world has changed around Mogwai, yet Mogwai have remained resolute, evolving but unchanging : the mainstream has come to them - of a sort - through the appropriation of a similar style of music from other acts : bands that concentrate on moving away from the convention of melody and chorus/verse/solo to producing a music that operates in a different sphere of evocative, occasionally minimalist riffing. Mogwai, as an ethos, align themselves to a punk rock ethic of following your own muse, going where you want. Musically, "The Hawk is Howling" could best be described as a jazz metal drone LP. (Not a CD or a download, an LP, an old fashioned 33rpm vinyl disc that took up too much space when you had thousands of them.)
Face it, crazy it as it sounds, I actually have a music room. A whole room in my house made of CD's and LP's and cassette tapes. That's how ace music is. It's better than anything.
Anyway, "The Hawk is Howling" is a giant from these fiercely individual innovators. Production values have gone up - the songs sound slicker and wider than ever, but the songs themselves are still uncompromised. As long as you don't mention the words S**** R** or P*** R***, you should be OK. Mogwai really have very little to do with any of those words, except that their music is largely instrumental. They're out there, maybe on their own, maybe not, navigating some unusual path of their own, and they don't give a monkeys what you or anyone else think.
Follow the herd if you want, or be your own herd.
After a couple of years working on well-paying and relatively quick movie soundtracks, Mogwai return - though they never went away - with an album of effortless style. For starters, if nothing else, any band that produces songs called "Batcat" and "I Love You, I'm Going To Blow Up Your School" demonstrates a certain imagination miles beyond any band that has a song called say ""Baby Don't Go". Unless it's called "Baby Don't Go Unless You Want To Wake Up To Find I've Destroyed Your Town And The Horse You Rode In On". Maybe. Because revenge is the best revenge.
You will never hear a Mogwai song coming from a mobile phone or a tinny car stereo. Mogwai fans have too much taste for that kind of rubbish.
Songs here are dense instrumentals - where the stuff not played is as important as what is - designed to transport the listener to somewhere else : in effect, this material allows the listener to project anything they want into it, both being meaningful and meaningless. If you want to imagine, say, the last 30 seconds of any Black Sabbath song played at 11rpm, shorn of vocals, and well, that's most of the album : heavy, but light. Whoa. "The Sun Smells Too Loud" is something new for Mogwai : it's almost cheerful ; an upbeat 7 minute meditation on a handful of musical motifs that sound like a perverse holiday jingle.
The album hits a mid pace dip - think, if you will, of the inevitable point in any movie where someone has to draw a graph and explain exactly whats going on, if you've seen Back To The Future II - but aside from that, it's a mere moment of calm before a storm. The final three songs on the album work abck to a gentle fury that blows itself out. So, "The Hawk Is Howling" comes to a close and Mogwai disappear off into the distance, a golden sunset with Indiana Jones and James Bond and Dan Ackroyd's butler. But is the album any good?
Hmm. Yes. Glorious, instrumental landscapes that allow you to project whatever your imagination desires upon it in a maelstrom of uncompromising, evocative music. Set your flux capacitators to stun.
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