In May 2024, Steve Albini died, an irreplaceable engineer who had worked on thousands of records across four decades. An enormous loss to the music world, it was more personal still for MONO who had worked with Albini for twenty years, part of the DNA of their most beloved work. Snowdrop is a profound tribute to Albini, recorded at his own studio in Chicago, with his fingerprints all over it.

Snowdrop is not a crushingly sad record. It is serious, grave, meticulous, and deeply considered, but there are so many moments of uplifting beauty running through it that grief is far from the dominant feeling. The intention as stated by the band is to offer light and hope to those who have lost someone dear, and Snowdrop delivers on that promise completely. Every track is named after a flower with each one carrying a specific meaning in the Japanese tradition of hanakotoba, the language of flowers relating to how and when each one appears in the year, which is a beautiful conceptual framework for an album about loss and continuation.

Like Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Mogwai, and Explosions in the Sky, MONO are using the instrumentation of a rock band to create music of orchestral and emotional grandeur like classical composers. The melodies on Snowdrop are so simple that you could transcribe them for a beginner’s piano book, but the performance, sculpting, effects chain and passion transform simplicity into an overwhelming sound. The album begins with a lone guitar that sounds intentionally out of tune, grounding everything in the more abrasive DIY culture that Albini was so much a part of. Then the layers arrive and the core of the band is joined by an orchestra and a choir tracing melodic lines and lifting them up.

At moments Snowdrop feels less like a rock record and more the soundtrack to a beautifully drawn animation of a magical world, bringing modern film music to mind. Gerbera is an eight-minute standout built on the same simplicity that defined post-rock’s greatest moments, building to a triumphant and satisfying peak. Statice is more eerie with strange, wordless vocal textures, whilst Hedera is led by a piano and deeply focused. Shion is particularly wistful, the choir tracing the guitar line with breathtaking delicacy, and Farewell to Spring closes the album with one final piano-driven buildup in a tremendous peak that takes its time and earns every second.

There’s not a huge range on Snowdrop, and the music doesn’t try to surprise you or confound your expectations, with a focus that remains on simplicity, ease of understanding and intensity of feeling. The album sits comfortably within the post-rock tradition while also reaching beyond it, and the choir, strings and piano give an accessibility and warmth that a child could understand.

The greatest art communicates directly and for emotions such as these, music is a better language than English. MONO are fluent in the language of inspiring music that makes you glad to be alive.