i am spartacus!

This picture has been cropped for your protection.

Even if it’s not true, it’s a great story. Stuart Braithwaite receives a tape, listens to it a ton, finally realizes what he wants his nascent band to sound like. His band releases a genre-defining full-length called Young Team. Too bad the timing doesn’t quite line up. But, as I said, it’s a great story – about a great band with a terrible name, I Am Spartacus.

Forward! is the album and while that 2002 release date may confuse you, the aforementioned story is much more believable when you realize that the album was unreleased for more than four years. (Even so, Mogwai released Young Team in late 1997, making the story unlikely.) What also makes it believable, of course, is the music.

Much like Scotland’s finest, the songs are basically miniatures, built around one or two powerful themes, giving the group time to build grooves and crescendos around the material. The band rarely goes for the sort of climax that Mogwai, Explosions in the Sky or Godspeed is known for aside from a minor disturbance at the end of “Song of the Allied Armies” and nice jam on “The Black Sea Sun Is Shining,” but it’s usually powerful stuff nonetheless. Fans of Rachels, Do Make Say Think or Boxhead Ensemble, take note!