Gig Review: Mogwai Returned, Took Me On A Journey, But Gave Me Back My Ears This Time!
Gig reviews, where did they go, eh? I know where they are…they’re here!
Mogwai
The Opera House, Wellington
Thursday, February 29
Scotland’s Mogwai is the greatest, and best of all the post-rock bands. That might be just my opinion, but, like Bill Hicks was fond of saying, it also happens to be a fact. So. There’s that. Just to back it up a little…
In preparation for this gig, I went right through the band’s catalogue, in order, and fell in love with almost everything they’ve done all over again. That’s perfect gig prep, and it doesn’t always happen — both, you don’t always find the time, and also you sometimes fall quite out of love with albums along the way. Look, some of my favourite Mogwai albums from 10 years ago are now lower down the list, but only because the ones from 15 and 20 years ago that I had forgotten to play for a while suddenly raced back up the list.
Why am I starting a review about Mogwai like this?
Well, you see, in 2015 they played. And it was brilliant. I was loving it. But I had to leave1.
That wasn’t the fault of the band, there was a bad mix that night, and the highs were excruciating, and some pinched frequency was there, incessant as a flea in a dog’s ear.
Anyway, I wanted to be as up with the music as I could be, and much as I was pumped for the return of the Glasgow legends, I was scared. I had been scarred. I was hopeful that this time it would be okay. I mean, transcendent, of course. Yes. (And it was!) But I was just hoping that it would sound okay.
First off, the mix on the night was exquisite. None of that screeching, soaring frequency issue. Just these perfect layers of sound, unfolding slowly, perfectly, and every instrument could be heard, and we could feel and hear and enjoy the spaces in between.
So, now that’s cleared up what did they play?
It was basically a model setlist, almost everything I could have hoped to hear, plenty from most recent album, 2021’s As The Love Continues. Fair. Bands tour behind their most recent material. And Love Continues continues the lovely sound of this band, with vocal tracks (first encore tonight, Ritchie Sacramento) and stark, piano-driven instrumentals that slowly build into majestic cathedrals of sound (album opener, and then tonight’s set opener: To The Bin My Friend, Tonight We Vacate Earth).
Dry Fantasy showed the band in full cinematic sway, this music less a case of being composed by the band as being conjured; it simply bubbles up through them, each member working together to share the load as conduits for (and of) the sound. Drummer, Martin Bulloch shows what a subtle-powerhouse he is on tracks like this, laying down deep into the snare drum and ride cymbal to create a deep pocket. And the sound of that drum, the way it hits you on impact, but with no over-ring. It was worthy of and deserving its own chef’s kiss. Just for that tuning and mic-ing and mixing on the snare! (Seriously, everything was so beautifully defined, so goddamned correct).
And each song was lit so thoughtfully, no gimmicks, no video screens, no huge amount of movement from the players — so much movement in every song — but the lighting design gave character to each performance.
Maria Sappho, an American composer and improviser, was sitting in on keys for Barry Burns who was unable to join this leg of the tour. Sappho was an 11th hour replacement. She was felt in the sound almost instantly, but certainly her intro to the first of a series of deep cuts (I Know You Are But What Am I? from 2003’s Happy Songs For Happy People) was the proof the sound would not suffer in Burns’ absence. Sappho subtly disappeared from the stage when she was not required (on the earliest material, such as tracks from 1997’s debut long-player, Mogwai Young Team for instance). But she stood just behind the curtain, taking in the sound of the band, a fan through and through.
Stuart Braithwaite and Dominic Aitchison stood near the front of the stage, stoic during the material, but Braithwaite regularly cut through the dark curtain of post-rock’s seriousness to thank the audience. A nice touch, always, and utterly sincere, it also speaks to the musicians’ respect for the audience, rather than the more contrived aspects of the genre that might feature bands operating in close to silence — between songs — or leaving instruments to loop and feedback and walk from the stage a little too serious-like. I love that Mogwai connects with its fans, appreciates them, and acknowledges the contract; the fact that we’re all there to celebrate the sound, they need us for the performance, and boy do we need them.
A Mogwai audience is filled with reverence, and always poised at the tip of elation. There are moments when a gentle intro slowly falls way to a groove (Helicon 1) or melodies find themselves wringing out through the shimmer of sounds (Drive The Nail) or the noise is so exquisitely channeled into something majestic (I’m Jim Morrison, I’m Dead), or the gurgle of bass makes way for guitar squall (Like Herod) and you see heads swaying in the crowd, eyes closed, and the worries of the world disappearing, if only for a bit. It’s transcendent, cathartic, spiritual. It’s the power of music’s great glory.
Tonight, Mogwai made moments to saviour in every single song. But for me, two nice, surprising standouts, were the gentle-prog that builds to scribble-pattern magic on Happy Songs’ deep cut, Killing All The Flies. And then the Tangerine Dream-jamming-with-a-rock-band brittle funk-becomes-big-beat of Remurdered from 2014’s Rave Tapes. Oh, of course it was magical to hear Mogwai Fear Satan as the closing encore for what felt like a half-hour of spiritual journey. But Remurdered was a key reminder of the gig I started to like in 2015, but had to leave.
It’s hard to put into words what Mogwai does that is so special, and why it still works. But just when you think the post-rock genre has been exhausted we get a return-visit from one of the most consistent and innovative of the bands that has been at that instrumental coalface for over a quarter-century now. And they played for just long enough that the world seemed to melt away beneath their chiseled sound. Every time a song built and got to a place where you couldn’t be more pleased with it, and then — roller coaster like — we are hurtled down the other side, and the real thrill ride happens.
Glorious. Life-affirming. Life-changing, even? It was everything. Everything.
In 2015, Mogwai played a show in Wellington that was probably brilliant. But I wouldn’t know because the band’s sound was so loud, so histrionic, so brutal that I left. And I’m pretty sure if I had stayed, they might have removed my ears entirely.
Totally agree. I was moved to tears a couple of time by the shear beauty of the whole experience. And the audience was enraptured. I was upstairs with my 16 year old Son, it was his first proper gig, and we were both completely in awe. the silence of the audience when listening to the quieter parts of the tracks just reinforced the respect the crowd had for the band and the music. after one such moment, when the band stopped, someone just yelled out simply "thank you".
Perfect summation of a perfect gig. So many of the words you used, Simon, are the very ones I've use since last night, transcendent being the prime one. They really are the best at what they do, so effortless but with staggering perfection.