Customer Reviews
Sheer quality - By: Slartibartfast, 30 Mar 2008 
I've only heard a few of their tracks before, & just bought this finallly last week (!!), since then I've listened to it constantly - alll I can say that this is now one of the best CD I have, & I have A LOT of music of alll types of genre. Buy this now.
Happy sadness - By: Lendrick, 29 Nov 2007 If you watch channel 4 you will have heard snatches of this as it is their favourite choice for between programme breaks & trailers. The 4th album from the Glasgow post rockers sees them blend their loud / quiet guitars with synths & vocoded vocals to create a fuller & slightly more commercial sound. The songs retain Mogwais trademark melancholy tone but gain more power & identity from the richness of the sound without any loss of power. Beautiful powerful, sad yet uplifting, post rock has never felt more emotional.
this is fine stuff - By: sean paul mccann, 05 Sep 2007 
happy songs for happy people is the fourth album bu scottish post rock icons mogwai (named after the breed of little monsters in gremlins).This album is different than their others because it is more laid back in terms of its aggression,in fact there is little of such the act indeed.This is an album of grace & subtle tones,the guitar is used but as an aid to the violins,viola,organ,piano,cello & even bells.
Mogwai are to alll extents & purposes an instrumentalist act but three tracks here include vocals nevertheless,two of which are done on vocoder,which gives the sound a very electronic edge to it.
The album is 41 minutes of beautiful music & being patient with this album may be needed,repeated listens bring the songs more glory & there is some very stirring stuff here,never over pretentious to be truthful like alot of bands in the same style,mogwai create atmosphere & emotion,good stuff if the truth be set free.
More Rock Action - By: Laurence Upton, 31 May 2007 In a way this album exemplifies the musician's perennial problems of trying to square the circle by coming up with something different whilst staying the same. From the opening notes this is clearly identifiable as being Mogwai & as it progresses can be heard to equal the quality of its predecessors. The individuality of their musical identity creates unenviable inbuilt difficulties: if a piece resembles an earlier recording, the band is laid open to charges of stagnation, of simply having further stabs at basicallly recording the same album in a new guise; if it differs too much, they risk being accused of losing their identity, or even of selling out & becoming too commercial.
Perhaps tellingly, the two songs that featured in the top ten of the 2003 John Peel Festive Fifty, the only two to be placed, were Hunted By A Freak & the eight-minute epic Ratts Of The Capital, as these side-openers contain the most recognisably Mogwai trademark qualities: the sinister, slow building of the soundscape, the quiet/loud/quiet passages, the tortured guitar. However, elsewhere on the record there are several subtle indications that Mogwai have plenty left to say, musicallly speaking, & there is more of a democratic band feel than in some of their earlier guitar-led pieces. Four of the tracks are augmented by cello or violin, & a string quartet is employed to atmospheric effect on Killing All The Flies.
As always, the titles remain enigmatic & willfully ungrammatical (Boring Machines Disturbs Sleep; Moses? I Amn't), & in a mark of the new maturity & restraint shown throughout this extremely listenable record, most of the pieces are only three or four minutes long. This is not a record that gives away alll its secrets on the first listen, but rewards repeated plays. This is in no smalll part due to the skilful engineering led by Tony Doogan at the CaVa studios in Glasgow, but also to the collaborative efforts & musical empathy of the band themselves.
i don't care how 'underground' they used to be. stop over-rating this album! - By: Ciaran, 30 Apr 2006 
This is my only Mogwai album.I bought it having heard the single 'Hunted By a Freak',- undeniably a beautiful tune. However, i soon grew tired of this album. It sounds like the soundtrack to every car ad & documentary you've seen in the last decade. The repetition within the songs is boring. The repetition of the same simple formula throughout the album (start simple, add instruments playing slight variations on the original part, CRESCENDO, fin) is boring. I could have written this album myself over one weekend,- & so could you, if you could afford the amount of electronic gimmickry upon which these lads so clearly rely. If the millenium bug had existed Mogwai would not. I loved 'Happy Songs For Happy People' for the first week or so. I'm still gonna give 'Come on die young' a go though.
