Mogwai
The Bad Fire
★★★★
ROCK ACTION
AGAINST THE ODDS, Mogwai had a remarkably good pandemic. As the world fell quiet, like many musicians they found extra time and space to think and write, resulting in their tenth album, As The Love Continues, recorded in Warwickshire in 2020 with Dave Fridmann remotely producing via Zoom from upstate New York. Released in the winter of the following year, it even scored the Glaswegian band their first Number 1, a quarter of a century after the release of their debut 1996 single, Tuner/Lower. In characteristically self-effacing style, bandleader Stuart Braithwaite marvelled at this latest plot twist as being “totally surreal, completely unexpected”.
In sharp contrast, the period that immediately followed plunged the group into darkness, via personal losses and multi-instrumentalist Barry Burns’s daughter becoming seriously ill just as the sessions for this album began. (Following a bone marrow transplant and chemotherapy, Burns reports “she’s going to be fine.”) All of this understandably cast a long shadow over the proceedings at Chem 19 studio in Blantyre when the band first got to work, having flown over Texan producer John Congleton (St. Vincent, Explosions In The Sky) to join them.
The title of The Bad Fire, a Scottish term for Hell, reflects this difficult time in which, for the band, the studio became a “refuge”. But while the testing circumstances might easily have resulted in Mogwai unleashing their vexations through grinding noise, there’s instead a certain thoughtfulness and artful restraint here. Only in the My Bloody Valentine-fashioned woozy pulsing of 18 Volcanoes, with Braithwaite quietly intoning, “Hope has come another day/Hold me close in every way”, is there any real indication of the troubles at the heart of Mogwai during the period.
The Bad Fire may have been made in Scotland, but parts of it – the overlapping synth arpeggios of God Gets You Back, the elegant glide and harmonic guitars of Hammer Room – sound like they could have been recorded with Conny Plank in Cologne in the slipstream of punk when the German producer was overseeing landmark art rock records by Michael Rother and Ultravox. The reliably brilliantly-titled Fanzine Made Of Flesh, meanwhile, utilises vocoder, a vital weapon in the band’s sonic armoury since their third album, 2001’s Rock Action. The effect is akin to Air’s Sexy Boy going on a heavy rock bender.
Elsewhere, the vividly named Pale Vegan Hip Pain is a beautifully atmospheric instrumental slowie in the style of the group’s soundtrack music, particularly their quietly stirring score for 2013 French TV series, Les Revenants, with an almost Hank Marvin-styled twang guitar motif trading places with an eerie mono synth.
To call it a mature album would be to take away some of the perennially youthful spirit of Mogwai, but it certainly achieves a crafted, discerning grace. However hellish it may have been, a baptism in The Bad Fire has clearly proved to be a renewing experience.
The Bad Fire is out 24 January on Rock Action.
ORDER: Amazon | Rough Trade |HMV
Tracklist:
God Gets You Back
Hi Chaos
What Kind Of Mix Is This?
Fanzine Made Of Flesh
Pale Vegan Hip Pain
If You Find This World Bad, You Should See Some Of The Others
18 Volcanoes
Hammer Room
Lion Rumpus
Fact Boy
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