It’s the thirtieth anniversary of Mogwai – which is not a celebration you would have ever predicted, back when they formed in Glasgow in 1995. The band played music entirely at odds with the gurning Britpop zeitgeist, with songs that were slow, wordless and exquisitely moving, whilst giving interviews which were the exact opposite.
Nor would you have predicted that they would be following up their first #1 record. Mogwai’s previous album, As The Love Continues, became an unexpected lockdown #1 album on the Official UK Album Chart in 2021, following a spontaneous grass roots social media campaign. Fans and admirers within the music industry all agreed that what the country needed at that difficult time was Mogwai at the top of the charts.
“The last album going to #1 was psychedelically weird,” remembers guitarist Stuart Braithwaite, “The positivity towards us was really lovely, and unexpected, because especially in our early years we were kind of brats.” After thirty years the band had become treasured because they had always been committed and true, and that is what matters in the end. They may have been spikey, but they always punched up.
The arrival of a new Mogwai album – their eleventh – is therefore a cause for great celebration. The album’s title, The Bad Fire, is a working-class Glaswegian term for Hell. It reflects the difficult time that members of the band were going through, particularly keyboardist Barry Burns. “Trauma’s a weird thing. I’m still not through it,” he admits. “We were getting ready to start making the album and the doctors were saying my daughter was lucky to be alive. She’s had a bone marrow transplant, she’s come through the chemo and she’s going to be fine. But I’ve had an awful two years. I can only say that the whole time was a complete fucking nightmare.”
Burns told the band he didn’t know if he was in a fit state to contribute anything to the new record. They told him not to worry, and to just keep turning up at the studio. “It’s the weirdest record that I’ve ever done because it’s like I wasn’t there. I feel like I was outside of the sphere of whatever it was that we did. But this was not something we talked about. We never talk about the music we’re making. We’re basically a very Calvinist band who repress their feelings and don’t talk about stuff.” Yet turning up regularly for work helped him get through that period. “If you’re a musician you have to keep working, because otherwise you’re not a musician, you’re a househusband.”
New to the studio was American producer John Congleton, known for his work with Explosions In The Sky, Sigur Rós, John Grant and pretty much everyone in between. “I got in touch with John after hearing a bunch of records he recorded,” says Stuart. “When we needed someone to come to Scotland to record with us, he was at the top of our list. He is an extremely funny irreverent person as well as being a great producer and engineer. Definitely a unique individual!”
“I can still vividly remember when I first heard Mogwai back in the ‘90s,” says Congleton. “I was on tour with my band in Fayetteville Arkansas, and I bought Young Team in a record store called Clunks. I can’t remember what I’ve done recently but I have a clear memory of that.” For the producer, the chance to move to Scotland and work with the band was not something he could turn down. “It was very easy, because they were very professional. There was not a lot of pontification or handwringing over things. They're one of the bands that invented that genre, they've been around longer than most bands, and they know what is good. A lot of times a huge part of my job is trying to convince people that things are okay, but Mogwai have spent an inordinate amount of time in the studio already, so they are incapable of the bullshit.”
Congleton’s work can be heard on the album’s three singles. The album opener “God Gets You Back” sounds like Daft Punk being hunted by My Bloody Valentine, while “Fanzine Made Of Flesh” sounds like a victory parade for baby yeti and “Lion Rumpus” does actually sound like a lion rumpus. Once again, the song titles on the album are as pointedly meaningless as ever. They keep the songs from being burdened with external associations, freeing the audience to encounter the music in its purest form. It’s another example of the band’s ability to make counterintuitive decisions which all somehow enhance the experience of listening.
When a band has been around for thirty years, it can be hard not to see the new record as part of a story. It becomes another step in a career, part of a larger legend, or a bookend to a body of work. The album, in other words, cannot escape the nostalgia that smothers it. This is a dangerous time for a band – a point where they are in danger of becoming a story set in stone, more defined by their past than by the present moment.
The problem is that, after their lockdown #1, Mogwai’s story is almost too perfect. It is the tale of underdogs being true to their selves until they ultimately triumph in the final act. A story like this is deeply seductive. It’s how we think the world should behave. It is a story so pleasing and satisfying that it makes it difficult to frame the band in any other way, or see them from any other perspective. The 2024 documentary, Mogwai: If the Stars Had a Sound, for example, tells this story brilliantly. The problem of becoming a story is particularly acute for Braithwaite, who has just recently turned his own life into the shining memoir, Spaceships Over Glasgow (2022). But when a story has a perfect ending, you instinctively feel that it should end, rather than go on and on.
Yet to think of Mogwai in these terms is to make a category error. Their music is not about building a career, it is about escaping the trap of linear time. As their army of fans understand, when you listen to them with sufficient attention and volume, the past and the future cease to exist. “I’m a deeply impatient person,” Braithwaite says, “But I can play a song that lasts a long time because when you play our music, time kind of stops.”
Mogwai is a band based on the extraordinary alchemy of its four members – Martin Bulloch remains on drums and Dominic Aitchison on bass – but it is hard to associate these four very human band members with the otherworldly music that they make. The band themselves seem to be the most bemused by this conundrum. They are completely unable to explain how they can create such powerful music. “I have no idea what I’m doing, after thirty years,” says Burns. “That’s a nice feeling, being completely naive. It’s a very trial-and-error sort of band.”
Braithwaite was reading William Blake while he was working on this record – someone who was also no stranger to Hell, or timelessness. Blake confronted worldly struggles and injustice, but he knew there was far more to this world than just pain. As he saw it, the only response to the world’s suffering was to keep creating, lifting the world out of the depths one idea at a time. Blake was compelled to create, the only logical response to the world’s darkness. It’s easy to see why he resonates with this band.
The music of Mogwai is a difficult thing to describe, but an easy thing to experience. At punishing volume, it can annihilate your body, leaving you as little more than a head which should by rights fall helplessly to the ground. Yet the music contains an updraft, a sense of beauty encased in the onslaught. This holds you up, suspended and empowered, reminding you that paradise is your birthright. This is especially true of The Bad Fire. It may have been created in dark conditions, but all that is transcended by the act of four musicians working together here, now, in the moment – the only place where Mogwai exist.
This may be Mogwai’s thirtieth anniversary, but you will not hear that in this record. Dwelling in the past, after all, is only an option for those bands who have not found Eternity.
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TRACK LISTING
1. God Gets You Back
2. Hi Chaos
3. What Kind Of Mix Is This?
4. Fanzine Made Of Flesh
5. Pale Vegan Hip Pain
6. If You Find This World Bad, You Should See Some Of The Others
7. 18 Volcanoes
8. Hammer Room
9. Lion Rumpus
10. Fact Boy
DELUXE EDITION BONUS TRACK LISTING
1. God Gets You Back (Demo)
2. Hi Chaos (Demo)
3. What Kind Of Mix Is This? (Demo)
4. Pale Vegan Hip Pain (Demo)
5. If You Find This World Bad, You Should See Some Of The Others (Demo)
6. 18 Volcanoes (Demo)
7. Hammer Room (Demo)
8. Lion Rumpus (Demo)
