We find ourselves with another post-rock album, this one by Mogwai. This may not be an album in the traditional sense, as Atomic is, as you can see by the album cover image, a soundtrack. This album is the soundtrack to a documentary called Atomic: Living in Dread and Promise. Something very important to note about this album is that it’s an instrumental album, like the Explosions in the Sky album I wrote about last week (Read about the EITS album here) but unlike The Wilderness, there’s a clear and concrete theme to this album. As you would guess from the title, Atomic, this album is about the danger of nuclear weapons.

I will try to keep this review brief, as the last few reviews have gone on a bit longer than I expected and I imagine I lost a few of you along the way. I’m also learning how to advertise these reviews better now, so that more people can read what I have to say about these albums if they want. I don’t want to get into an argument about genre about each individual album I review because some people are firm believers that bands can only be one genre, while I believe that bands can cross over into multiple ones. For example, this album (as with other Mogwai albums) is clearly considered post-rock above all other genres of music. However, the band has explicitly stated in interviews that they disdain the term post-rock, so how is it fair for me as a fan to classify a band in a certain way when the band itself objects to that classification?

Either way, as it is your opinion to disagree with me, it is my own opinion that bands can transcend the invisible boundaries of genre. I have used this specific example in the past to discuss genres of music: the band Led Zeppelin. They are unquestionably a rock band, and played a large hand in developing the field of rock music as a whole, but would you not also consider them or at least multiple tracks of theirs to be blues, folk, psychedelic, or even hard rock bordering on early heavy metal? I watched a terrific documentary, the name escapes me, where the documentarians made the case that Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath were the two forefathers of metal music as we know it today. In that sense, two people discussing Led Zeppelin can both be correct when defining that band. The terms do not have to be mutually exclusive of one another. I can be right saying that they are heavy metal and you could also be right saying that they started with the blues.

To get back to my original point, no one disputes bands like Explosions in the Sky or Mogwai are post-rock bands at their core. However, other genres share many of the same qualities of music, for example shoegaze and dream pop. Both of those two rely heavily on distorted instrumental effects, especially with the guitar and synthesizer, to create an atmosphere of sound that envelops the listener. If I remember correctly, for example, shoegaze was called that because musicians performing that kind of music were literally looking down at their feet (perhaps using pedals or for other logical reasons) for much of their performances. These different types of genres blur the lines of music and vocals, and some of these bands of the various genres I speak of use their vocals as simple another instrument instead of a defining feature. I spoke of the band Sigur Ros in my previous review to highlight that quality, where the vocals don’t matter and add to the effect.

Coming back to Mogwai (poor guys, I went on a little digression into the differentiation of genre), there are no vocals on this album. As I mentioned above, this is a soundtrack, so it does have a beginning, middle and end. It’s not a traditional album in many senses of the word, and yet it could easily be considered a concept album. This album chronicles the development and use of nuclear weapons. I am not entirely sure if my interpretation of the album relies on my knowledge of the subject matter and having read about the documentary itself, to determine what I get out of this album. I hear a silent but very loud protest against the dangers of nuclear weapons. Trust me, I don’t want to get into the politics of that area, so I am simply stating that I feel the band, with its music, is powerfully expressing its disaffection with nuclear armaments and those in power that can use them. The track Ether, posted above, opens the album to us. It opens to quiet keyboard effects and adds another small layer every 30 seconds or so. The third layer that the band introduces is the horn, which grows in significance and volume as the track progresses. The fourth layer is the drone of a guitar that picks up around 2:30 in, and you can hear it coming from nothing but gradually getting louder and louder until it loudly picks up along with the percussion at around the 3:30 mark. Each layer adds on top of the one before it, until the layers get stripped away as the song leads to a close. It starts quiet, grows to something massive, and then lets go and fades back into quiet with the horn ending the track.

Ether leads into SCRAM, which opens with a distorted keyboard effect gliding back and forth, until a beat shifts in. Every one of the tracks has a term that is relevant to something in the nuclear world, and the tracks tend to distinguish themselves from one another. As Ether started slow and grew to a crescendo and then let off, SCRAM drifts back and forth but does the musical effect of “two steps forward, one step back” by introducing layer after layer of music and then taking it back, only to charge forward again. That’s the soundscape effect of post-rock, stacking music upon music to create a sound that is almost overwhelming but knows when to quit before it gets too much.

SCRAM falls away into Bitterness Centrifuge, which keeps a droning synthesizer as the foundation of the track. It adds and takes away when it needs, and gives a sense of wonder and discovery. I close my eyes and picture the scientists having a breakthrough that will lead them to a world they could not have possibly imagined – a nuclear powered world. It provides hope and promise, because at that moment it was an innocent creation that could be used to help all of mankind. Historically, things did not end at that point, and it’s very intriguing to follow the music along with what actually happened in the course of the nuclear developments.

U-235 is one of two turning points on this album, which started with such curiosity and innocence, but developed into something more pointed and dire. It served as a transition between the world of science and the world of war. I don’t want to give you a history lesson on what some of these song titles stand for, because I a) don’t want to get it wrong and 2) don’t think you came here for a nuclear weapon history lecture. I’m sure Dan Carlin of Hardcore History has something much more informative on that subject, anyway. As U-235 fell away into Pripyat, the album really took a different tone. Pripyat presented a much more fearful and dangerous environment than any track before. Pripyat, for a very brief summary, was one town right near Chernobyl that was affected by the nuclear disaster. This track was both a warning of what could happen and a mourning of what did happen, and it was filled with sadness. While yes, the timeline doesn’t exactly fit because Chernobyl happened in the 80s and the nuclear development and subsequent bombs being dropped were much earlier, it is poignant nonetheless. I close my eyes listening to this track and I see the wasteland, both of what could happen in the event of a nuclear war, and of what did happen when nuclear experiments go awry.

It doesn’t get much happier from here on out, folks. Weak Force continues on the path of “what have we done” with a sad retrospective of the perils of the atomic age. It could be interpreted as the outcry against nuclear weapons before they were used in World War II as well, because the damage could be catastrophic. It appropriately leads into the next track, Little Boy, which…well, we know what that was. Little Boy, the track, very effectively captures the moments leading up to the bomb being dropped on Hiroshima, with dread and fear of the unknown. The track following Little Boy, called Are You a Dancer?, is about as somber as you’re going to get from Mogwai. It’s a slow and heartfelt track coupled with a violin and hits hard while painting a picture of the devastation following the dropping of the Little Boy on Hiroshima.

Are You a Dancer? leads into Tzar, which feels like a musicalization of the thoughts and decisions made by the American leaders on whether to use another nuclear weapon to end the war. It’s deep and introspective, and I can feel thoughts like “was it worth it?” going through my mind. As we know from history, the decision was made to use another nuclear weapon to end World War II, but I cannot even imagine how difficult of a decision it must have been knowing and seeing the devastation that the first bomb caused. The end of Tzar is very quiet, but the music leading up to the climax of the track highlights the tough thoughts battling back and forth in the mind of the leaders in command at the time. The quiet after the big finish could absolutely symbolize the silent dread and immediate regret those people felt after making that decision. This all leads up to the final track, Fat Man. This track, unlike the others, starts with what sounds like a heart beat for about the first 30 seconds until the piano starts playing. It’s the longest track on the album, and arguably the most powerful because even though the war ended following the Fat Man being dropped on Nagasaki, the devastation at that exact moment in time was something the world could not imagine happening again. There aren’t decent words that can describe the feelings that manifest themselves from the final track, and how it ends with the heartbeat into silence. It’s powerful stuff. Without a doubt, it’s some of the most evocative and visceral music Mogwai has made before.

In what was going to be a shorter review, this turned out to be one of my longest. Unlike my other albums, I wanted to take you one by one through each of the tracks. This made for a longer read, but a greater in-depth analysis of the thoughts and feelings that this album can provoke. Even as a soundtrack, this album hit me like a train. I plan on seeing the documentary very soon, to see if my thoughts on the album match up to their placement on the documentary itself. As an album released on April Fools’ Day, like several other albums actually (including the new Weezer and Moderat albums), this one is no joke. I’ve been sitting on this review for a week now, trying to make my thoughts more coherent and easier to read. It almost seems unfair to rate this album in my normal scheme of album reviews, but in the interest of keeping things on the level, this album is very well made. I give this album 13 Ratings Units out of 15. The only thing that really held this back from a significantly higher rating was one that was beyond the band’s control – pacing. It’s not their fault that they made music to presumably follow along with a documentary, but I imagine their hands were tied to an extent to connect the music with the subject matter. Also, this is the first Mogwai album without John Cummings, their guitarist, who after 20 years decided he wanted to do his own thing. It is slightly telling, because for most tracks the guitar isn’t nearly as highlighted as it was in previous Mogwai albums.

I will leave you with this image. Never forget what happened.