| Mogwai has a reputation of having just about as much to say in interviews as their songs have lyrics. With a distinctly "it is what it is" Glaswegian attitude, extracting answers on anything from musical influences to the meanings behind their often hilarious song names (consider, for one, Come On Die Young’s "Oh! How the Dogs Stack Up!" and Rock Action’s working title of Wear a Belt You Fat Bitch) was nearly impossible.
Thank goodness, then, for the presence of multi-instrumentalist Barry Burns, a surprisingly talkative addition to the Mogwai lineup. While he’s been along for the ride for a few years already, Burns’s presence on recordings and in performance has increased over the course of ’Gwai’s last three albums – the elegiac Rock Action, the vocoder-driven Happy Songs for Happy People and this year’s pummelling Mr. Beast. No longer one of the faceless few alongside de facto leader Stuart Braithwaite, Burns’s artistic input and placement is easily viewed as equal contributor.
For Mr. Beast, Mogwai’s fifth studio album, the lads took things firmly by the reins.
"We bought and tailormade a studio with (producer) Tony Doogan and kept working away at it without any deadlines or expectations besides our own," Burns says.
On the likes of "Glasgow Mega-Snake" and "We’re No Here," Mr. Beast returns to the heavy waters Mogwai have rarely treaded since 1997’s Young Team. While still capable of stretching out a slow-growing epic (opener "Auto Rock" and piano-led "Friend of the Night" are particularly swoon-worthy), the focus of Mr. Beast remains on furious release. As Burns sees it, "We missed being explosive and things kind of took a turn in that direction. It’s been much more fun this time around. We’re making music not sounding like anyone else."
Perhaps the most surprising move this year for Mogwai came in their selection of a new manager in the form of British indie music tycoon Alan McGee, the man behind Creation Records, My Bloody Valentine (who virtually bankrupted Creation) and Oasis.
"We’ve been self-managed for about three years, but we’re not businessmen. When Stuart (Braithwaite, the band’s founder) asked him for advice, McGee turned around and offered his services. We still take care of our merch and don’t give him any money on that," Burns is sure to add. "The way things are set up now it’s been the best year for Mogwai so far."
While Mogwai’s live shows in North America have been few and far between, Burns has noticed a shift in crowd reaction over the past few years – Canadian ones in particular.
"We used to hate playing anywhere between New York and Los Angeles. Everyone’s much more reverent in Canada. There’s a lot of scenesters in Vancouver that just talk, but otherwise we’ve been spoiled by North American audiences. Still, Japanese audiences are the best. There’s not a peep."
Where Mogwai’s earliest history was rife with tension and stress (Young Team’s "Tracy" even includes a recorded phone conversation describing a vicious in-band fistfight), by now the only battles deemed worth fighting are against the eardrums of the world – and as such, the group’s collective mission statement has become a simple one.
"We always approach playing live and recording as though the next show or record we do is our last one," Burns says. "In doing that we’ve always had this kind of weird mystique. We’re just five ugly Scottish guys making music and trying to come up with something decent." |
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