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Kick Out the Jams

Mogwai at the Huntridge, June 19

You've got to wonder if a generation of hipster kids has been tricked--tricked into becoming fans of easy-listening music, tricked into rejiggering their mental wiring so that rock concerts encourage politeness, mandate introspection and--yikes--repay careful attention. So go the aims of the borecore movement, in which bands such as Mogwai, Godspeed You Black Emperor! and Sigur Ros Zen-whack kids with a plush dreampop mallet in hopes of undoing the damage of 50-plus years of rock 'n' roll stupidity. Rock music livens in the short run, deadens in the long; borecore does the opposite. The crowd's yawns and watch-glances at Mogwai's show gave way, soon enough, to a kind of studied immersion as the band plunged on last Thursday night.

It was boring at first. Par for the course: Mogwai has not only addressed this as a sort of operational hazard, but embraced it as part of the operation itself. Snore-rock purveyors know that boredom, that enemy goblin of our oh-so-beloved work ethic, can breed a powerful brand of attentiveness. Thus it's not long before you eventually get sucked into the lush spaces between the music, register it like a physicality, and really start to enjoy this churchy jam band music in a post-millennial age when musicians offer solace while all the priests are busy fucking boys.

After a funny splash of technopunk karaoke by some dude called CEX, Mogwai began its hour-and-a-half set by diving right into its latest album, Happy Songs for Happy People, with the shimmer and gurgle of "Hunted By a Freak," which stretched and morphed like a neon amoeba (but never in messy fashion). Following up with the cheerful ding-dong of "Kids Will Be Skeletons," the band was perhaps grooming the crowd's collective brain for more strenuous stuff; by Mogwai standards, these were two-minute punk anthems. Indeed, those into Mogwai's earlier work--the linty epics on Young Team and Come on Die Young--might've been disappointed by a set list that leaned toward recent works. Then again, if mesmerized bemusement is the new sign of a successful rock show, Mogwai scored high on this night, particularly when it hit the crowd with its 20-minute encore, "My Father My King," which serves as a smorgasbord of Mogwai's favorite techniques: the elliptical openings, shifts in dynamics and sustained noise attacks in which feedback becomes an instrument in itself and bears something approaching a cleansing affect. I sure felt scrubbed and tingly after the show. Yeah, standing stiff-legged in a wind of scouring noise does that.--Andrew Kiraly