Mogwai - Central Belters (2015)

Tracklist

01. Summer
02. Helicon 1
03. CODY
04. Christmas Steps
05. I Know You Are But What Am I?
06. Hunted by a Freak
07. Stanley Kubrick
08. Take Me Somewhere Nice
09. Two Rights Make One Wrong
10. Mogwai Fear Satan
11. Auto Rock
12. Travel Is Dangerous
13. Friend of the Night
14. We're No Here
15. I'm Jim Morrison, I'm Dead
16. The Sun Smells Too Loud
17. Batcat
18. Mexican Grand Prix
19. Rano Pano
20. How To Be A Werewolf
21. Wizard Motor
22. Remurdered
23. The Lord Is Out of Control
24. Teenage Exorcists
25. Hugh Dallas
26. Half Time
27. Burn Girl Prom Queen
28. Devil Rides
29. Hasenheide
30. Tell Everyone That I love Them
31. Earth Division
32. Hungry Face
33. D to E
34. My Father My King


In the vinyl-revival era, the box set exists for primarily completists and Record Store Day hoarders by repackaging entire discographies in 180-gram reissues, they forsake curation for comprehensiveness. But in their initial '80s iteration as CD-stacked behemoths, box sets were actually designed for the casual fan. The earliest paragons of the format Bob Dylan's Biograph, David Bowie's Sound+Vision presented expertly compiled overviews of a veteran artist, weaving in hit singles, choice album tracks, rarities and live cuts to form a chronological portrait of their evolution.

So in that sense, there's something quaintly anachronistic about Central Belters, a compendium celebrating 20 years of Mogwai. The Scottish art-rockers are ideal subjects for a box-set distillation—they've released eight proper albums, not to mention a handful of soundtracks and stand-alone EPs. They're the sort of reliable band—both in terms of line-up stability and rate of output—that's no doubt lost some old-school fans along the way, and picked up some new ones (2014's Rave Tapes was their first album to crack the UK top 10), so both camps could benefit from a refresher on what they've missed.

DOWNLOAD ALBUM [flac]