So, there is rock and there is post rock. I’ve never been sure where you draw the line with post rock but I will say that there are a lot of post rock bands about in Europe with Mugga, the subject of this review, flying the flag for Spain.
This self titled EP admittedly sounds more like an American band indulging in a bit of influence larceny than anything else. Now that turns out to be not such a bad thing as drawing from the mainstream helps their aural accessibility with, for example, that nod to Rage Against the Machine found in “Doubledeal” intelligently diluted with counterpointed melody and rock star on the loose vocal extemporisations. That ability to do stylistic U-turns is also evident in the strangely named “Sideroxylon” that reprises rock history and still finds time for a sneaky tempo shift into Bill Withers style melodic funk before those guitars take the song off into the sunset.
That mix of the expected and the unexpected marks out Mugga as being a band of interest. They take familiarity and play with it until it becomes something altogether different and if that isn’t post rock then I don’t know what is.
The EP is available from Bandcamp