THE WHOLE ELECTION FELT LIKE A SLOW MOTION CAR CRASH
Scottish post-rockers Mogwai spent much of last year recording their latest album in the States against the backdrop of Donald Trump’s rise to power. Guitarist Stuart Braithwaite discusses their two-decade career and the impact of austerity on music with
FEW bands reach their third decade intact. Even fewer manage to release nine albums across 22 years, losing just one member in the process.
But Scottish post-rockers Mogwai have. And all while managing to remain an outfit that can turn its hand to an array of projects, such as scoring both a football documentary and a nuclear history film.
They returned in a more traditional format this year with their ninth studio album Every Country’s Sun (minus guitarist and keyboardist John Cummings, who left for a solo career in 2015).
The band’s guitarist Stuart Braithwaite is supposed to be talking about the record and a few upcoming shows, but he seems far more interested in bemoaning the current state of the world.
The Tories are a “despicable bunch”, Brexit is like “approaching an iceberg” and US President Donald Trump is an “incomplete human being”, he says, in-between snippets of conversation about the Scottish four-piece’s recent effort.
The record landed in September but was completed in January – and Mogwai arrived in the US to start recording it just before Mr Trump was elected.
Thus their whole time in the studio was set against a backdrop of drama as the world watched power transfer from Barack Obama to Mr Trump.
“The whole election felt like a slow motion car crash,” Stuart says. “And then, to be there when Trump won, it was really weird. We finished mixing just after he got inaugurated so we were there for all of the horror.”
Their first album since Cummings’s exit, they decided to sign up psyche-rock veteran Dave Fridmann (Mercury Rev, The Flaming Lips, Tame Impala, MGMT) on production and headed to his isolated studios in New York state to put down their ideas.
The resulting effort charted at number six, their highest ever position and only their second ever top-10 studio record after 2014’s Rave Tapes.
Forgetting the music again, Stuart returns to his number one target.
“He [Trump] doesn’t seem to have any empathy, any intelligence, he just seems to be a genuinely awful person on every level.”
Stuart is equally scathing when discussing the politics of the music industry.
“What really worries me, is there being the resources to introduce new bands. I think that a lot when I look at festivals, most of the headliners are old bands.
“And that’s not because music is not as good as it used to be, but probably because there isn’t the money to market bands up to that level.” That lack of money has led to the rise of middle-class singersongwriters and bands, he says.
“There’s nothing wrong with those people making it, but there isn’t enough variety. You look at bands like Arctic Monkeys or The Jesus And Mary Chain and think would bands like that get to make albums as easily now?”
Grime music is an exception, he argues, because of the lack of expense needed to create it.
“That shows once you take away the financial burden, you get these really f ****** talented and inspired artists making music that represents their lives and communities,” he says.
Quizzed on what can be done to help tomorrow’s stars break through, Stuart gets down to the nub of the problem.
“If your parents can’t afford to feed you, then they can’t afford to buy you a guitar,” he says.
“It gets back to more fundamental things about society and the way poor people have been victimised and made an example of to try and detract from what the bankers did. It’s just another way the culture of austerity affects people’s everyday lives. It meant you are more likely to get a posh singer-songwriter and not the Sex Pistols.”
The band are currently back in America for a tour. They will return to the UK for a show at London’s Brixton Academy before an end-of-the-year homecoming at Glasgow’s SSE Hydro.
Stuart says: “I’m just enjoying going out and playing all the songs.
“We’re really lucky that people are keen to hear what we’re playing and writing, I just want to keep making music.”
Mogwai’s Every Country’s Sun is out now. They play the Brixton Academy on December 15, the SSE Hydro on December 16 and tour the rest of the UK in February 2018.