Mogwai Are in Their Element on The Bad Fire

For thirty years, Glaswegian titans Mogwai have captivated audiences with cinematic, subsuming instrumental compositions at once devastating and uplifting. The band’s daring expansion of rock music’s formal conventions did them few critical favours in its early years; Mogwai’s slow-building, wordless, introspective music came as a striking deviation from the irreverent Britpop that dominated the U.K. in the mid ‘90s.
Fast forward to 2021. That year, Mogwai landed their first number one album with As the Love Continues. Last month, on the heels of that success, Mogwai released their eleventh album, The Bad Fire, via Temporary Residence and Rock Action. Though Mogwai have worked with producers including David Fridmann and the late Steve Albini in the past, for The Bad Fire, the band enlisted for the first time renowned producer John Congleton (Explosions in the Sky, Sigur Rós, John Grant).
The quartet – guitarist/vocalist Stuart Braithwaite, keyboardist Barry Burns, drummer Martin Bulloch, and bassist Dominic Aitchison – made The Bad Fire during a period of pronounced difficulty for its members, particularly Burns. As Mogwai prepared to start work on what became The Bad Fire, his daughter had to undergo a bone marrow transplant and chemotherapy. During this period, Burns found respite in the ritual of playing with his bandmates in the studio.
Mogwai typically choose meaningless song and album titles, to curb accusations of pretentiousness, specifically from their hard-to-impress compatriots. Meaningless titles also allow listeners to focus on the music in its purist form, free of any external connotations. But knowing the circumstances surrounding the creation of The Bad Fire, it makes sense why the band gave it a name derived from a Scottish working-class colloquialism for Hell.
Despite said circumstances, Mogwai’s indomitable spirit persists throughout The Bad Fire. Second single “Fanzine Made of Flesh” swells with joy as Braithwaite’s robotic vocoder-drenched voice melds into dense guitars and Burns’ shining arpeggiated synth, all guided by a steady rhythm section.
Accompanying the single is a music video directed by Agnes Haus. Featuring an elusive, disjointed plot and a visual and emotional palette that calls to mind I Saw the TV Glow, the clip for “Fanzine Made of Flesh” plays like a film trailer. By intention or not, the video emulates the magic of Mogwai’s music: it breaks from linear time; in fact, Braithwaite has described time as standing still with neither beginning nor end when he plays with the band. Hell is an eternity, but there’s a sense of comfort on The Bad Fire; Mogwai are in their element.
Northern Transmissions spoke with Braithwaite over Zoom about the importance of close friendships during times of personal difficulty, finding emotional sanctuary in music, working with Congleton, experiencing intuitive synchronicity with longtime album art collaborator Dave Thomas, and more.
Northern Transmissions: You often hear people talk about how your music has helped them get through hard times. What music has helped you get through hard times?
Stuart Braithwaite: Oh, man, tons. I still love them, but my favourite band when I was a teenager was the Cure. All those old Cure records hold a special place for me. Also, things like Nick Drake. And as for more modern times, Grouper, that kind of thing. I definitely listen to quite a lot of pretty emotional things.
NT: A lot of music that’s really textured and you can lose yourself in, but some comparatively pretty sparse. It can work both ways. Mogwai’s music’s so overwhelming sometimes, and it has a similar effect.
SB: Yeah, I think so. Music you can get lost in – that’s always quite important for me when I listen to music and definitely with our own music as well.
NT: Having formed 30 years ago, the music industry has changed in so many ways, and it’s getting so much harder to be a working musician. Mogwai have gone through a bit of a ringer to get to where you are now. Having come through the other end of those challenges but facing this new set of circumstances with grief and personal loss, what did pulling together an album under these circumstances teach you about yourselves as individuals or your resilience as a band?
SB: We’re pretty close friends. We’re quite lucky. I think a lot of people have less close friends as they get older. Having some pretty close friends that we can rely on helped. And just having the album to do, having something to look forward to and work towards, definitely helped us.
NT: Do all the members live in Glasgow or around Scotland?
SB: Mhmm.
NT: I’m sure also having a bit of physical proximity to each other also helped as well.
SB: A little bit, but when Barry’s little girl was unwell, he had to isolate, kind of like COVID times. It was probably the longest we’d not seen Barry since he was in the band because he wasn’t really allowed to see anyone, which probably made it doubly hard for him. But yeah, you’re right, the fact that we’re all in Glasgow or near Glasgow’s definitely helped.
NT: I’m hoping she’s doing much better now!
SB: Yeah, she’s doing great. She was at our sound check; we did first show the other night, and she was causing chaos.
NT: Awesome! Well, chaos, but awesome chaos. How was that first show for you?
SW: It was great. It was quite nerve wracking because we played the album from front to back. We were doing it in conjunction with our friends who own a record store here, and they just announced that we would do this. They didn’t actually ask us if we would do It, so we kinda got put on the spot to learn the whole album, but it actually turned out pretty well.
NT: The Bad Fire was your first time working with John Congleton. How did that come together?
SB: My wife is a musician, and she was looking up who made a bunch of records she liked. I looked him up, too, and he made loads of records I liked and also quite a lot of records by friends of ours like Explosions in the Sky. I think I just followed him on Instagram, and he just replied back to me, just like, “Hey, how’s it going?” I was in Los Angeles, staying with some friends. This would have been before any of this stuff happened with Barry’s family. [John and I] weren’t meeting up to make plans to work together. But when that all happened, we were
looking for someone who would travel to Scotland to record because Barry couldn’t leave, and I suggested John. We had a few Zoom calls. We were all on the same page. He works pretty similarly to other people we’ve worked with, although he’s definitely got his own style. But he’s not like one of these people that’s gonna make us play one at a time or something like that. He likes to record bands playing live, which is what David Fridmann does. It’s what Steve Albini did. [John] used to work with Steve. He was Steve’s pupil, so there was a lot of connections. It definitely made sense.
NT: As for the band’s usage of words, I know that Mogwai likes to keep things in that regard meaningless and just more fun. But I’m wondering, the lyrics themselves, are they more important to you for their actual meaning or as a textural element?
SB: I put a bit of effort into them these days. I try to make them have a real connection or at least tell some kind of story. It’s actually kind of funny, the lyrics I spent the most time on are the ones I ended up completely destroying with a vocoder, on “Fanzine Made of Flesh.” I like that obtuseness. [laughs]
NT: Speaking of “Fanzine Made of Flesh,” Agnes Haus said that when she was sent the track, she embraced being unable to understand any of the words and didn’t want to know where they came from. Is this how you generally approach your art? Do you enjoy letting the audience piece it all together?
SB: A hundred percent. Music and art and film and books should all be completely open to interpretation, especially if it’s something with an abstract element to it. I’m certain that certain pieces of music or films or books have a completely different meaning to me than to the person that wrote them or made them. And I love that. The human experience is not uniform at all. Art should be something that we use to navigate the world in our own way. It’s meant to be the opposite of real life. I like the fact that Agnes made this really cool video that is completely out there, and that’s her idea of what the song represented. I just love that. I would hate to tell people what to think. I like people doing and thinking their own things.
NT: Is that your same attitude towards the band’s album artwork? How much input do you give to the direction there? Or is that also something you hand over to someone else in full faith?
SB: We’ve got a little bit more input with that because Dave does it. We’ve been working with him for a long time. But this one was weird. We didn’t decide to call the album The Bad Fire until the last second. It’s insane that he came up with the volcano because we hadn’t seen the artwork, and he didn’t know the album title, so it’s some kind of weird psychic connection.
NT: That was my first thought when I saw it. It sums up the album so much.
SB: Yeah, yeah. But he didn’t know it was called that. It almost seems quite literal, which would be the most un-Mogwai thing of all time, but it just happened by accident.
NT: You’ve also been unable to explain how the band comes up with the music; it’s kind of like just whatever comes to you in the moment of playing, and time seems to cease to exist. I’m wondering, there’s that age-old idea we hear from artists all the time where they’re like, “I don’t know how I come up with the painting or songs or whatever. They just come to me. I feel like I’m a vessel for some higher creative force.” I’m curious what your take is on this perspective.
SB: I’m down with that. But to think that artists are an incredibly special thing… I think if anyone opened up to the possibility of being able to create something, they could create something. But it’s weird. I don’t know where the ideas for music come from or how they connect in some ways but not in other ways. I’m definitely down for feeling that it’s coming from another dimension. That’s totally up my street. But yeah, the song titles, we just call them any old rubbish, and I guess that is maybe to stop being pretentious because our music on its own is pretty pretentious. [laughs] So we give them stupid titles so that we can still go to the pub, and our friends still talk to us. [laughs]
NT: Speaking of the Scottish locals, The Bad Fire – that colloquialism – have there been other Scottish colloquialisms in Mogwai’s music that you’ve peppered in over the years?
SB: Oh, yeah, loads. Ten Rapid means to get punched in the face ten times. Mogwai Young Team is a gang thing. So is Come On Die Young. You would have different types of “young teams” depending on the part of the city. Come On Die Young was an actual gang that Barry’s dad was in when he was young. We’ve used a lot of vague Scottish things over the years. Hardcore Will Never Die, but You Will – that was something someone said in a shop to threaten a shopkeeper. Scotland’s a very ridiculous place, so it’s good to channel our own environment.
NT: If there’s one thing you want listeners to get out of listening to The Bad Fire, what would that be?
SB: I’d like the listeners to hear music and be motivated to dismantle the capitalist oligarchy that’s taken over the world. It’s a big ask, but why not aim high?
Mogwai 2025 Tour Dates
Feb 04 – Amsterdam, Netherlands – Paradiso
Feb 06 – Hamburg, Germany – Große Freiheit 36
Feb 07 – Copenhagen, Denmark – Vega
Feb 08 – Stockholm, Sweden – Fållan
Feb 09 – Oslo, Norway – Rockefeller
Feb 11 – Berlin, Germany – Admiralspalast
Feb 12 – Leipzig, Germany – Taubchenthal
Feb 14 – Maastricht, Netherlands – Muziekgieterij
Feb 15 – Groningen, Netherlands – De Oosterpoort
Feb 17 – Brussels, Belgium – Ancienne Belgique
Feb 18 – Antwerp, Belgium – De Roma
Feb 19 – Paris, France – Casino De Paris
Feb 20 – London, England – O2 Academy Brixton
Feb 22 – Leeds, England – O2 Academy
Feb 23 – Edinburgh, Scotland – Usher Hall
Mar 08 – Bangkok, Thailand – Voice Space
Mar 11 – Osaka, Japan – Gorilla Hall
Mar 12 – Tokyo, Japan – Zepp Shinjuku
Mar 14 – Tapai, Taiwan – Zepp New Taipei
Apr 07 – Washington, D.C., USA – 9:30 Club
Apr 08 – Philadelphia, PA, USA – Theatre Of Living Arts
Apr 10 – Brooklyn, New York City, USA – Brooklyn Steel
Apr 11 – Boston, MA, USA – Paradise Rock Club
Apr 13 – Montreal, Canada – Beanfield Theatre
Apr 14 – Toronto, Canada – Danforth Music Hall
Apr 16 – Detroit, MI, USA – Saint Andrew’s Hall
Apr 17 – Chicago, IL, USA – The Metro
Apr 18 – Minneapolis, MN, USA – Varsity Theatre
Apr 20 – Denver, CO, USA – Ogden Theatre
Apr 22 – Salt Lake City, UT, USA – Commonwealth Room
Apr 24 – Vancouver, Canada – The Commodore Ballroom
Apr 25 – Seattle, WA, USA – The Showbox
Apr 26 – Portland, OR, USA – Roseland Theatre
Apr 28 – San Francisco, CA, USA – The Regency Ballroom
Apr 29 – Los Angeles, CA, USA – The Bellwether
Apr 30 – Phoenix, AZ, USA – Van Buren
May 03 – Austin, TX, USA – Emo’s
May 04 – Dallas, TX, USA – The Echo Lounge
Pre-order The Bad Fire by Mogwai HERE
Latest Reviews
Tracks
Advertisement
Looking for something new to listen to?
Sign up to our all-new newsletter for top-notch reviews, news, videos and playlists.