Before We Get Old
Rave Tapes finds Mogwai at play in the fields the band helped cultivate
written by Eric Waggoner
They’re not the “Young Team” they once were—they’re 17 years away from their debut single, and marriages and fatherhood have complicated their lives—but the Scottish noise-rockers in Mogwai have, by way of compensating for the loss of gnarly youth, matured like a good spirit. Their eighth full-length, Rave Tapes (Sub Pop), is the work of a band so adept and so familiar with its own strengths, it’s become a sort of gold standard for what contemporary instrumental rock can aspire to.
Mogwai’s longevity might seem an unlikely story, since the group’s ambient, atmospheric songs wouldn’t at first seem like the easiest material to take to market. “And when we started up,” says multi-instrumentalist Barry Burns, who joined the group on 1999 sophomore release Come On Die Young, “it was pretty rare, to be an instrumental band. You didn’t hear it much. Now it’s totally fine, much more common. Rather like the Scottish accent,” he finishes cheekily.
Truth is, the members of Mogwai have always maintained a sense of humor and perspective regarding their largely wordless aesthetic. It’s the sort of approach that might—and often does—seem precious in execution; somehow, though, even Mogwai’s earliest releases captured a band that sounded muscular and energetic, without requiring them to “perform” youthfulness in the way so many fledging bands need to. Even in their flaming youth, in other words, the band sounded much older, more rehearsed and more mature than their years. Without accompanying voices, and at first without much in the way of public faces—the band members credited themselves under pseudonyms for debut album Young Team—the music was left to speak, as it were, for itself.
“I think that lack of marketability, being a mostly instrumental band, weirdly helped us a bit,” says founding guitarist (and sometime vocalist) Stuart Braithwaite. “Our former manager, he used to say he expected that people would still be wanting to hear us when we were in our 40s—which we’re now not that far away from, I guess. He said it didn’t matter what we looked like. By which he probably meant we looked like shit.”
For about half their life, Mogwai have scored music for film and art installations, a side of the group’s work that remains unfairly under the critical radar. In 2006, the band contributed soundtrack work for both Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain and Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait, director Douglas Gordon’s biopic on French footballer Zinedine Zidane. “People sometimes ask, ‘Why don’t you do a side project?’” says Burns, “but there’s really nothing that you couldn’t give to the band. Nothing ever really feels outside the boundaries. I suppose it’s gotten more complicated with time, but it’s really nice to work with people like that.”
“It’s amazing,” says Braithwaite. “We’ve been able to do some really interesting things.”
But Burns can’t resist: “Most bands probably last about three to five years, it seems,” he says. “It’s always a surprise that people come out to see us. Actually, it’s a little terrifying to think what’d happen if it ended. None of us have any other skills.”
Mogwai’s longevity might seem an unlikely story, since the group’s ambient, atmospheric songs wouldn’t at first seem like the easiest material to take to market. “And when we started up,” says multi-instrumentalist Barry Burns, who joined the group on 1999 sophomore release Come On Die Young, “it was pretty rare, to be an instrumental band. You didn’t hear it much. Now it’s totally fine, much more common. Rather like the Scottish accent,” he finishes cheekily.
Truth is, the members of Mogwai have always maintained a sense of humor and perspective regarding their largely wordless aesthetic. It’s the sort of approach that might—and often does—seem precious in execution; somehow, though, even Mogwai’s earliest releases captured a band that sounded muscular and energetic, without requiring them to “perform” youthfulness in the way so many fledging bands need to. Even in their flaming youth, in other words, the band sounded much older, more rehearsed and more mature than their years. Without accompanying voices, and at first without much in the way of public faces—the band members credited themselves under pseudonyms for debut album Young Team—the music was left to speak, as it were, for itself.
“I think that lack of marketability, being a mostly instrumental band, weirdly helped us a bit,” says founding guitarist (and sometime vocalist) Stuart Braithwaite. “Our former manager, he used to say he expected that people would still be wanting to hear us when we were in our 40s—which we’re now not that far away from, I guess. He said it didn’t matter what we looked like. By which he probably meant we looked like shit.”
For about half their life, Mogwai have scored music for film and art installations, a side of the group’s work that remains unfairly under the critical radar. In 2006, the band contributed soundtrack work for both Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain and Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait, director Douglas Gordon’s biopic on French footballer Zinedine Zidane. “People sometimes ask, ‘Why don’t you do a side project?’” says Burns, “but there’s really nothing that you couldn’t give to the band. Nothing ever really feels outside the boundaries. I suppose it’s gotten more complicated with time, but it’s really nice to work with people like that.”
“It’s amazing,” says Braithwaite. “We’ve been able to do some really interesting things.”
But Burns can’t resist: “Most bands probably last about three to five years, it seems,” he says. “It’s always a surprise that people come out to see us. Actually, it’s a little terrifying to think what’d happen if it ended. None of us have any other skills.”