Grade: B+
It’s ironic that post-rock veterans Mogwai named the group’s eighth studio effort “Rave Tapes” because it features some of the bleakest sounds featured on any album this year. At fifty minutes long, the album’s songs meander into one another to form one of the most beautifully depressing soundscapes any band has crafted in recent memory. The songs are an assortment of solemnly-soaring keyboard-fueled crescendos coupled with bizarre, morose analog noises, interspersed with the occasional whispered word. On its own, the album is sonically pleasing enough, though it doesn’t quite live up to the standards of its predecessor, “Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will.” Like all of Mogwai’s projects, it will probably leave listeners drowning in a pile of their own tears. In fact, I can say with complete confidence that the album would be much better suited for a funeral than a rave.