Mogwai's 'upbeat' return after difficult years

One connection keeps cropping up during our interrogation with Glasgow four-piece Mogwai – and that connection is "weird".

It was "psychedelically weird" erstwhile their past album, As The Love Continues, unexpectedly went to fig 1 successful 2021.

The accomplishment was made "even weirder" by the information it happened during the pandemic, "so we couldn't adjacent spell to the pub to speech astir however weird it was", says frontman Stuart Braithwaite.

The occurrence took them each the mode to the Mercury Prize gala ("such a weird ceremony"), but they didn't fto it power their caller album, The Bad Fire.

In fact, they wholly forgot to notation the illustration accomplishment to their caller producer, John Congleton (St Vincent, The Killers, Blondie, Modest Mouse).

He lone recovered retired erstwhile a French writer brought it up successful an interview.

"He was like, 'Wait, your past medium went to fig one?' And we were like, 'Yeah'.

"And helium was like, 'Wow, that's weird'."

To beryllium fair, helium was right.

Mogwai are not a set who ever seemed destined for planetary domination.

Formed by longtime friends who wanted to make "serious guitar music", the quartet specialise successful long, mesmerising instrumentals, riddled with creeping anxiousness and devastating pay-offs.

Their travel to fig 1 took 25 years, aided by illustration rules that spot higher worth connected carnal grounds income implicit streams erstwhile calculating rankings.

Mogwai - a cult set with a fanbase that prizes vinyl – recovered the scales tipped successful their favour. For 1 glorious week, they outsold Dua Lipa and Harry Styles.

"It was a immense surprise," Braithwaite reiterates.

"We privation our euphony to bash arsenic good arsenic it can, but we're not uber-ambitious. We're not similar Queen, plotting satellite domination."

But adjacent if the set had been inclined to capitalise connected their success, destiny was conspiring against them.

As they prepared to grounds the follow-up to As The Love Continues, keyboardist Barry Burns received the quality each genitor dreads: His girl mightiness die.

Doctors had diagnosed her with aplastic anaemia, besides known arsenic bony marrow failure, wherever the assemblage stops producing capable humor cells.

"She had humor coming retired of her gums and bruises each over," helium recalls. "It was highly stressful."

The information is exceptionally rare, with lone 30 to 40 children diagnosed successful the UK per year, but Burns had first-hand acquisition of however superior it could be.

"The weird happening was that my neighbour erstwhile I was a kid had it and, sadly, she died," helium says.

"So obviously, I truly panicked due to the fact that I thought I knew the result – but thankfully the attraction is wholly antithetic now."

After a bony marrow transplant and chemotherapy, his girl recovered.

"She's going to beryllium fine, but I've had an atrocious 2 years."

It wasn't the lone trauma the set experienced portion making the record.

Live cause Mick Griffiths, who had worked with them since the commencement of their career, died of cancer, portion bassist Dominic Aitchison mislaid his father.

Even Braithwaite's favored dog, Prince, had problems that caused turmoil. "He got crab and had to person his limb amputated 2 weeks earlier we started recording," helium recalls.

Appropriately enough, the album's title, The Bad Fire, is simply a Glaswegian word for hell. But anyone expecting an outpouring of grief oregon a reckoning with mortality is successful for disappointment.

"If thing weighty happens successful my life, the past happening I privation to bash is constitute a opus astir it," Braithwaite told The Herald paper successful 2003, an ethos that holds existent today.

Largely instrumental, their songs are deliberately near unfastened to interpretation. The set christen their compositions with nonsense titles and in-jokes (You're Lionel Richie, Secret Pint, Simon Ferocious) to debar the imposition of meaning.

The caller medium continues that tradition, with deliciously-titled tracks similar Pale Vegan Hip Pain and Fanzine Made Of Flesh (although Lion Rumpus whitethorn beryllium the astir self-descriptive introduction successful the band's discography).

When lyrics appear, they're opaque and impressionistic. The lone hint of the turbulence Mogwai experienced comes connected the groggy, distortion-washed 18 Volcanoes, wherever Braithwaite softly sings: "Hope has travel different day/Hold maine adjacent successful each way."

"Some journalists successful France said the medium was truly cathartic, and I tin benignant of spot that," helium says. "But I don't deliberation its maudlin astatine all.

"It's vaguely upbeat, by our standards."

Released past Friday, The Bad Fire is heading for the apical 5 of the UK albums illustration amid stiff contention from Central Cee and Teddy Swims.

Again, carnal income volition springiness The Bad Fire an vantage implicit streaming hits, a concern Braithwaite is beauteous blessed about.

"The streaming satellite is precise murky and hard to understand," helium says.

"It does marque a batch of money, but it makes a batch of wealth for aged euphony and artists with fashionable backmost catalogues, and I deliberation that's truly discouraged a batch of large labels from investing successful caller music."

He adds that Spotify is filled with "fake bands making generic music" for its curated playlists, particularly successful genres similar chill-out, lo-fi and relaxation.

It's an accusation that's been repeatedly levelled against the streaming service, and which it has called "categorically untrue". But Braithwaite is sceptical.

"You perfectly cognize that if anyone's going to beryllium making generic AI music, it's going to beryllium the streaming services, conscionable truthful they don't person to wage humans."

Streaming isn't wholly atrocious for Mogwai, however. Over connected YouTube, their crepuscular 2005 medium way Take Me Somewhere Nice has been streamed 85 cardinal times.

The video isn't adjacent official. Uploaded by a fan, it's illustrated by a drafting of a miss with her caput successful an upturned goldfish bowl.

Originally drawn by video crippled decorator Ken Wong, the picture's aura of disconnection and alienation has go truthful synonymous with Mogwai's opus that immoderate fans person turned it into tattoos.

"I astir privation to go, 'Mate, you know, that's not the screen of the record'," laughs Braithwaite. "But it's cool.

"And the comments nether the video are a benignant of endless connection committee of young kids who are going done a hard clip supporting each other. There's an agony aunt vibe astir it.

"That's 1 happening I bash similar astir the integer world, that euphony has these different lives."

For Braithwaite, who work a batch of William Blake's poesy during the signaling of The Bad Fire, there's thing alluring astir the imaginable of creation outliving its creator.

"I'm benignant of obsessed with the conception of eternity wrong culture," helium says.

"William Blake was benignant of laughed retired of nine for his ideas but hundreds of years later, his paintings were projected onto the dome of St Paul's Cathedral, and Jerusalem is the unofficial English nationalist anthem. It's incredible.

"I similar the thought of, erstwhile we're agelong gone, having made immoderate benignant of mark."

The conception has other resonance this year, arsenic Mogwai observe their 30th anniversary. They've travel a agelong way, from gobby young upstarts who sold T-shirts slagging disconnected their rivals to respected stalwarts of the British stone scene.

So however does it consciousness to person reached this stage? Was it thing they ever anticipated astatine their archetypal practice, the archetypal Tuesday aft Glastonbury, successful the beforehand country of his parents' house?

"Well, I thought we'd person flying cars by this point," laughs Braithwaite. "So immoderate joyousness astatine the information I was inactive eking retired a surviving arsenic a instrumentalist would astir apt beryllium tempered by the deficiency of pitchy packs."

To enactment it different way, it simply feels weird.