Instead of a classic rock standard, the first song Mogwai’s Stuart Braithwaite learned to play on the guitar as a kid was the Velvet Underground’s squawking opiate epic Heroin.
“That sounds painfully hipster, doesn’t it? But it really was the first song. I had a really great teacher. He just wanted to play a couple of chords and mess around with scales. He also showed me Raw Power [The Stooges] but the songs on that were probably a bit too hard for me to play, really.”
Braithwaite is talking via zoom from his home in Glasgow, ahead of a New Zealand tour. The return visit follows the 2021 release of the band’s 10th studio album As the Love Continues, as well as their soundtracks to crime dramas ZeroZeroZero and Black Bird, and Braithwaite’s 2022 memoir Spaceships Over Glasgow: Mogwai, Mayhem and Misspent Youth.
In the evocative book, Braithwaite writes about growing up in the rural Clyde Valley. His father was the only telescope maker in Scotland. “So there were always really interesting people coming around to our house.” Braithwaite describes his childhood as being “unspeakably weird and psychedelic” and recalls his first psychedelic experience as a child seeing “fractal kaleidoscopic shapes” and hearing Delia Derbyshire’s eerie Doctor Who television theme in his head after being administered gas for a routine procedure in hospital to remove his adenoids.
“It was definitely not your normal childhood with kids just playing football in the back garden. We grew up in the middle of nowhere but there was always something interesting happening.”
The memoir also captures the thrill and romanticism of discovering music. Obsessed with groups like the Cure and My Bloody Valentine, Braithwaite snuck into his first gig to see fellow Glaswegians the Jesus and Mary Chain when he was 14, thanks to a crudely constructed fake ID and wearing his then-long black hair over his face to try to pass for an 18-year-old girl. He even shaved his legs in case a bouncer clocked him.
“I was so small for a boy. So any time I played football I’d just get the shit kicked out of me. Yeah, I was definitely not built for athleticism,” he laughs.
Mogwai formed in Glasgow in the mid-1990s, debuting with 1997 album Mogwai Young Team, a record that was the art-noise “post-rock” antithesis to the era’s Britpop.
“We were listening to Sonic Youth and the Velvet Underground. They all did so much with the tools at their disposal and I think we always had in the back of our minds that’s what we needed to try to do. So I think we just found our own place in that by constantly trying out different things until we got our own sound.”
On their most recent album, As the Love Continues, the group took a different approach because of the pandemic. Scrapping plans to record in the United States, each member worked in isolation at their homes. Braithwaite says it was a way of retaining connectivity.
“It was a great way of staying in touch with everyone and a way of checking in to see how everyone was doing. When we were finally able to leave Scotland, we went to England to record the album together and I think we were just so glad to be able to go out and do something. When it came out, it got a really lovely reception.”
Nobody was more surprised than the group when the record went to number one in the UK charts, he says. It was also nominated for the Mercury Prize and named the Scottish Album of the Year.
Staying true to their singular customary sound of majestic, wide-screen guitar soundscapes, Braithwaite also lends his sweet vocals to the single Ritchie Sacramento, a tribute to late Silver Jews frontman David Berman.
What Mogwai lack in song lyrics they make up for with their approach to track titles, which can be as sprawling as their skygazing instrumentals and, in turns, obtuse, absurd and hilarious.
Examples include Boring Machines Disturb Sleep, George Square Thatcher Death Party and To the Bin My Friend, Tonight We Vacate Earth.
After more than 30 years of friendship and playing together, Braithwaite says the Mogwai band dynamic is “pretty easygoing”. “We just know each other so well. And we know what all of us like doing, or who is better at doing what … I think it’s a lovely way of evolving.
“We’ve been friends now since even before the band started. We still like getting together and playing music so there’s no reason not to do it.”
Not even nearly three decades of performances in a band with a reputation for being among the loudest on the planet. Braithwaite remembers an early gig at Auckland’s Powerstation as one of their loudest ever. The volume was recorded at 132 decibels, akin to a jet engine on takeoff.
“As well as being punishingly loud, we also played for a very long time to mark the last night of that tour. That was a fun night.” l
Mogwai tour dates: The Opera House, Wellington, February 29; The Powerstation, Auckland, March 1.