Scottish band Mogwai have been releasing music since 1996, when they pioneered the genre that would become known as 'post-rock'. This week they celebrated their first UK number one for their tenth album As The Love Continues. Tony Stamp talked to guitarist Stuart Braithwaite in Glasgow.
Mogwai Photo: supplied
Tony Stamp: Congratulations, you have got your first number one on the official UK charts. Not only that you got your first US top ten. This is for your new album As The Love Continues, the tenth album in your twenty five year career, self-released on your label Rock Action Records. Why do you think this particular album at this particular time has resonated so strongly?
Stuart Braithwaite: I’m not totally sure. I think we did a good job of telling everyone who knows who we are that we had a record coming out. And people were really receptive towards it. People are always pretty nice about records but this one, people really seemed to be into it.
Our music’s pretty emotional too, and these are emotional times. I think it’s a combination of all that stuff.
TS: I saw Robert Smith from The Cure encouraging everybody to buy the album, I also saw the actor Elijah Wood doing it. Were there any other names that got on board with the cause that were surprising to you?
SB: Yeah I mean I’ve never met Elijah Wood, so that was a surprise - a really nice surprise. He’s a good actor, and I knew he was a big music fan, so that was really cool. There were a lot of other bands, bands we don’t know, bands who grew up listening to our music, but I had no idea about…
It was a quite a warm… really warm experience, feeling people’s positivity towards our music. It was amazing. It still is, it’s still going on, it’s nuts!
TS: Elijah Wood just seems like a good dude.
SB: He does. He was always my favourite hobbit.
TS: I often notice that young bands will put out a great record, or a great couple of records, but will quickly run out of steam. What is it that you do to stay inspired?
SB: I think the fact that we enjoy it is a big factor, you know? We’re having fun. It’s fun meeting up with the others, and seeing what everyone’s up to, and kind of play around. We never take anything too seriously, so we’re always having a pretty good time.
This whole week’s just been surreal, because our music’s not very commercial; it’s not like we ever planned on having a number one record… I’m gonna take it, but it was never why we started the band or anything.
I think that’s maybe one of the reasons so many other musicians were so supportive, because I’m sure they can see that. They’ll be like ‘Those dudes? They’re just doing their own thing. This is nuts.’
TS: When it comes time to make a new record, do you worry about repeating yourselves? Do you challenge yourselves to try new things?
SB: We’re always pretty conscious of trying not to do the exact same thing. Sometimes when you're writing a song you'll be like ‘Oh that’s really great’, and then you’ll be like ‘Yeah that was that song’. So that does happen. I guess that happens with loads of bands.
When we’re making a record our main thing is to just make the music good. All the other stuff that comes around it kind of comes in later. The main focus is to just get notes that sit next to each other, that don’t make you want to gouge your eyes out [laughs].
Stuart Braithwaite Photo: supplied
TS: Going right back to the start of the band, you were making these songs that had these very slow tempos, and these very epic chord progressions and melodies. The tempos in particular seemed to be flying in the face of what was popular in 1996. Were you kicking against the trends, or was that just what came naturally?
SB: No we were definitely doing that on purpose - we really hated all the popular music back then. We really, really hated it. The British music press is very zeitgeisty, and all the music that we really loved - like Sonic Youth and My Bloody Valentine, these kind of bands - people were kind of pretending they didn’t exist, and everyone was just listening to Brit Pop, and the bands that influenced Brit Pop.
And that’s fine, and this has changed somewhat, but at that point there seemed to be a kind of mentality that you couldn't think that was good and think that was good too, you [had to] think that was good and that was terrible.
And the stuff that people said was terrible was stuff we really liked. So yeah we were really anti-Brit Pop. Ironically we just kind of started playing the same game by saying that was all terrible, when it obviously wasn’t. Some of that stuff was really good.
TS: I remember the ‘Blur: are shite’ t-shirts.
SB: Yeah exactly. So we’re as guilty as anyone of bratty childishness. But it was definitely a kind of motivating force for us when we started the band - to be different from what was the pervasive culture at the time.
TS: I mean you talk about bratty childishness, but when I did the math, I thought ‘Well they were barely out of their teens’. Of course there was a bit of brattiness going on!
SB: Yeah I think the only mature thing about us was our record collections.
TS: And your records!
SB: Yeah and the music we were making too, I suppose. It was a blast, it was a really exciting time, but I do kind of look back on it and think ‘Oh my god, why did no one tell us to shut up, or not do certain things [laughs]. But you know what? If you can’t do dumb things when you’re a kid when can you do them.
TS: Contrast that with this album As The Love Continues, which was announced when the world was in lockdown, and has a suspiciously optimistic title. Was the idea behind the name to spread a bit of positivity?
SB: I mean, I like that, but our titles are totally random. That was something our drummer Martin’s kid said. We just liked it. Loads of our titles are things people say by accident, or mishear.
But I like it, I like the positivity. I like that the last record Every Country’s Sun had a kind of positive thing too. That just came from something totally random too, but I like it. Maybe we’re becoming hippies in our old age.
