Another Mogwai record, another tour. Trust me, I’m not complaining! Any chance to see Mogwai play is a chance not to be trifled with, and while they have made a change from how they used to construct their songs, the last couple of records have been really strong and easily stand within a few steps of the towering heights they achieved with the run of Mogwai Young Team through The Hawk Is Howling. (Of course, your defined range might vary, which is the beauty of being a fan of bands).
If you haven’t been paying attention the last decade or so, hearing “Fanzine Made of Flesh” might be a shock. Auto-tuned vocals? Poppy synth lines? What in the name of bloody haggis is going on here? I guess that “How To Be A Werewolf” presaged that mode that Mogwai now uses somewhat more regularly, and Stuart Braithwaite’s unabashed love for The Cure shows up a bit with a slight nick of the melody from “In Between Days.”
In the world of setlist.fm and printed set lists with 48 point font taped the stage, I try to stay away from spoilers as much as possible. Especially for bands like Mogwai, a band I’ve collected since finding a copy of Ten Rapid in the bins and tonight marks the 14th time seeing them. The typical routine is that the band will generally play about 5-7 songs from the new one, and then sprinkle in some gems of past records; you know you’ll get at least one epic tossed your way as well. The night started out with the two lead tracks from The Bad Fire (sidenote – for a band with mostly songs that have no lyrics, they come up with some really clever song titles but this record title falls kinda flat for me), with Barry Burns and touring member Alex Mackay manning synths across from each other, the song building like a Tangerine Dream effort that had an extra bowl or two of Wheaties.
“Hi Chaos” hinted at the Slinty side of Mogwai, Burns’ guitar roaring to life and clearing cobwebs and sinuses in a most effective manner. For whatever reason, “What Kind Of Mix Is This?” was on the printed set list but skipped over, and old time fave “New Paths To Helicon pt 1” made a welcome return to the set, Braithwaite giving his guitar to Dom Aitcheson and taking the bass line which provided the melody as Burns and Dom created clouds of sound that eventually erupted into a full-on electrical storm. This is the sort of sonic bliss that makes Mogwai such a unique band despite the post-rock field being crowded with contenders; they don’t write complicated music, they just write extremely effective music.
Back to the earlier point about Mogwai’s dilemma of playing and promoting the most recent material but still keeping the hardcore fans engaged with songs they think might be coming, it’s a real issue for the diehards. Mogwai’s not gonna play two and half hour sets so hearing “Kids Will Be Skeletons” and the thundering “We’re No Here” were nice treats, but Boston got “Mogwai Fear Satan” once again for four of the last five shows in town, not counting the Atomic live score. Maybe they just like New York City more, where they played “Xmas Steps” and “My Father, My King”! Anyways, don’t take these sour grapes too seriously, any Mogwai show is a great night out.
Final observation of the night. During one of Mogwai’s pinnacle tracks, the emotional epic of “2 Wrongs Make 1 Right,” Burns was having some severe feedback problems when singing, to the point where he swung the mic boom away and just played the keyboard parts. He gestured to the guitar tech that something was off but some on the fly troubleshooting didn’t seem to fix the issue, and later he was careful not to get too close and sang at a distance, but the mix in the room definitely sounded off. When the song concluded, he pantomimed flipping his keyboard table over, in a joking fashion. This issue might have also lead to “Lion Rumpus” not being played, who knows?
If you happened to miss a band who was active in the ’90s, most of the time it’s just a matter of being a bit patient and wait for the inevitable reunion. In Brainiac’s case, the reason they called it quits was the tragic death of Tim Taylor from a car crash in 1997. Mogwai coaxed them back to the stage after inviting them to support the 2022 UK tour, providing a new generation the opportunity to see the band’s frantic attack.
Imagine a handful of robots, programmed to play noise rock but there a few blown capacitors and transistors involved. Oh, and also a computer virus has taken over the OS. And they bought their guitars from stores that don’t exist. Despite being a pretty big noise rock fan in the ’90s, Brainiac managed to escape my purview; they make use of some of the queasy, not-quite-the-right-note guitar work of Polvo but with a much more livewire delivery.
Ye Gods was hand-picked once again to support Mogwai’s US dates, providing some deep electronic rhythms and blippety-bloop squiggles that sometimes could have passed as the house music for a BDSM club.
