Mogwai’s break into the top ten of the Official UK Albums Chart is a victory not only for their new record, Rave Tapes, but artists everywhere that persist with a musical style regardless of changing trends. As Barry Burns says, “we’ve never written for an audience, we’ve only ever written music for ourselves.”
With haunting melodies that unravel slowly into tremendous movements of drums, guitar, piano and distorted effects, their music is painfully difficult to categorise – “post-rock” is sometimes used but it often does not suffice. The defining characteristic is that of contrast: gentle glockenspiel ostinati collide with intense guitar riffs and march-like drums. Burns appreciates this, but is not especially proud. “Isn’t all music (that’s any good) like that?” he asks me.
With a title like Rave Tapes you might expect a slightly different direction for the band – eight albums on, you might even think it was due. But the title is misleading, as a first listen will leave you with a sense of peace and solemnity. Burns acknowledges, “It is quite a stripped down album.”
But in much the same way as before, the music stirs you, taking you through the highs and lows of whatever you want a Mogwai track to be about. In fact, Burns reveals that their approach “hasn’t changed much” and, interestingly, “writing is a solitary thing, but then we get together and practise each other’s songs.”
While you would expect this consistency of sound and quality to have a set formula, this is not the case. Mogwai are still a very human band, Burns says, “writing these songs and getting them together is extremely difficult and slow.”
Lyrics continue to be something they avoid: perversely, it is the lack of words and vocals that gives the tracks their descriptive reach and emotional potential. Front man Stuart Braithwaite once said, “we speak with our effects pedals. We convey our inner thoughts through various tones of distortion.”
While this might sound like creative genius, Burns debunks this with a more matter-of-fact explanation. “Knowing Stuart very well,” he tells me, “he was either drunk or taking the piss when he said that! That’s hilarious. Adding more lyrics isn’t something we’re comfortable with and we’re not great singers.”
This is typical Mogwai – operating in their comfort zone and basically doing what they do best. While some bands toil away at reinventing themselves, Mogwai’s simple practicality has been the elixir of their long-lasting success.
Glasgow, too, has been important in their formation and development. “There’s a great desire in Glasgow to not sound like anyone else.” But while Burns talks fondly of the Scottish city, he has a more critical view of the United Kingdom and consequently the band’s “British” identity. “I’ve never, since I can remember, felt part of the rest of the ‘kingdom’”. His opinion on the monarchy is even more cutting: he terms it, “a wealthy figurehead, who instils an instant feeling of inferiority as soon as you are born, cannot be a good thing. It’s like a pointless celebrity.” On whether or not Scottish independence would have cultural repercussions, he is ambivalent. “Culturally, we’ll have to see. That feeling of independence might spur a lot of new things but it might not.”
Either way, if Mogwai’s political desires are realised, England will have lost a jewel in British instrumental music.
