Mogwai’s ‘vaguely upbeat’ return after difficult years

One word keeps cropping up during our interview with Glasgow four-piece Mogwai – and that word is “weird”.

It was “psychedelically weird” when their last album, As The Love Continues, unexpectedly went to number one in 2021.

The achievement was made “even weirder” by the fact it happened during the pandemic, “so we couldn’t even go to the pub to talk about how weird it was”, says frontman Stuart Braithwaite.

The success took them all the way to the Mercury Prize gala (“such a weird ceremony”), but they didn’t let it influence their new album, The Bad Fire.

In fact, they completely forgot to mention the chart achievement to their new producer, John Congleton (St Vincent, The Killers, Blondie, Modest Mouse).

He only found out when a French journalist brought it up in an interview.

“He was like, ‘Wait, your last album went to number one?’ And we were like, ‘Yeah’.

“And he was like, ‘Wow, that’s weird‘.”

To be fair, he was right.

Mogwai are not a band who ever seemed destined for global domination.

Formed by longtime friends who wanted to create “serious guitar music”, the quartet specialise in long, mesmerising instrumentals, riddled with creeping anxiety and devastating pay-offs.

Their journey to number one took 25 years, aided by chart rules that place higher value on physical record sales over streams when calculating rankings.

Mogwai – a cult band with a fanbase that prizes vinyl – found the scales tipped in their favour. For one glorious week, they outsold Dua Lipa and Harry Styles.

“It was a huge surprise,” Braithwaite reiterates.

“We want our music to do as well as it can, but we’re not uber-ambitious. We’re not like Queen, plotting world domination.”

But even if the band had been inclined to capitalise on their success, fate was conspiring against them.