Great album openers get the listeners to keep on listening. They can do this in any number of ways. Some openers set the tone by easing us in. Others jump right in and blow our minds from the very beginning. A great album opener isn’t an easy thing to create. More than a great song, it’s all about the sequence. Track 1 has to be the perfect starter. This month, I’m highlighting my favorites. #AlbumOpeningSongs
And now we come up on a renowned band that I discovered only recently. I wish I took the advice of music fans earlier and gave these talented guys a shot earlier. The music of Mogwai has certainly taken up residency in my regular rotation and it has filled a void that other bands couldn’t with its post-rock inspired, mostly instrumental approach. This is music I can rock out to and zone out to simultaneously. As The Love Continues is one of my favorite albums of theirs. Mesmerizing, almost cathartic. The opener “To The Bin My Friend, Tonight We Vacate The Earth” feels like a baptism.
The track washes over me every time I listen to it. It kicks off with the song title’s words spoken, continuing the band’s penchant for eccentric track titles. “To The Bin” then proceeds to wash away the monotony with a flood of hypnotizing synthesizer parts, taking the banality out of the most dull moment or day. This opening track brings the promise of something momentous happening. And like many of Mogwai’s compositions, it proves that all of this is possible and even facilitated by the fact that there isn’t a single lyric uttered.