Pilgrimage of the Soul is
a wonderful exercise in heavy but melodic post-rock. Although I don’t know
their early work, I’d really enjoyed MONO’s last outing, 2019’s Nowhere
Now Here, and it made my long list that year, only to fail to make the
final 20. Pilgrimage of the Soul
is stronger for two reasons. It’s much more consistent, and its quiet/loud
dynamic is based on careful, steady progressions (which, having a taste that
sits at the Mogwai end of post-rock, is more up my street). Actually, the best moments of Pilgrimage
of the Soul are its quieter ones, like the opening licks of ‘Innocence’,
the dreamy first half ‘Hold Infinity in the Palm of Your Hand’, or the utterly
beautiful ‘And Eternity in an Hour’. Equally, I suspect I love these tracks so much because they are almost always
heading somewhere; MONO don’t drift off and so nor do you. The crescendo
kicks in eventually. It’s not perfect:
for example, I’m less keen on ‘Heaven is a Wild Flower’, which has never managed
fully to grab me. All in all, though, this is classy stuff.