“It’s been really emotional. People have missed live music, we’ve certainly missed playing it”: Stuart Braithwaite on Mogwai’s biggest year ever
Mogwai’s main man on new album As The Love Continues, creating a signature distortion pedal, and the year that saw the post-rock band reach new heights.
Mogwai. Image: Antony Crook
There are fleeting moments in music when everything aligns, time appearing to halt momentarily as the sound engulfs those fortunate enough to be present. On a still August night with a milky white moon watching over the Brecon Beacons, Green Man festival headliners Mogwai conjure such a moment seven songs into a triumphant set. From an eddying whirl of delayed notes emerges the celestial storm of Ritchie Sacramento, one of 2021’s most electrifying songs, 20,000 starry-eyed onlookers glorying in the return of live music.
Despite the ceaseless pandemic trauma of the past 18 months, this has been the biggest year in Mogwai’s career, with 10th studio album As The Love Continues crashing into the UK charts at No 1 in February. Suddenly, as Stuart Braithwaite, backed by a pair of Fender Twins and Marshall JCM900, teases out one of the year’s most memorable riffs from his trusty 1990s Telecaster, all is briefly well with the world again.
On the eve of the Green Man show, guitarist and occasional vocalist Braithwaite has been reflecting on the madness of it all. “I’d have thought you were out of your mind,” he replies when asked how he’d have reacted to the news Mogwai would top the charts 26 years later upon forming the band in 1995. “It’s been a really rough couple of years in almost every way, but for the band it’s been really good. We enjoyed making the album and it was great to have a focal point for the last year. It was really fun making it, a really enjoyable experience and the reaction to it has been amazing.”
Mogwai’s trajectory over 10 albums and wide-ranging soundtrack work has taken the form of a steady incremental rise, their transcendent mostly-instrumental symphonies unfurling into passages of tender meditative beauty alongside ear-splitting tremolo-picked ferocity. While standouts such as 16-minute calling card Mogwai Fear Satan from 1997’s Young Team and Glasgow Mega Snake (Mr. Beast, 2006) have drilled themselves into our collective consciousness, Mogwai are emphatically not a singles band, nor have they followed any kind of overarching commercial strategy. Yet since 2008’s The Hawk Is Howling, each album has climbed higher in the charts than the last, with Every Country’s Sun elevating them to arena stages in 2017. Braithwaite is proud that they’ve arrived at their pinnacle without a plan.