The colors of Mogwai‘s volcanic explosions on the cover of The Bad Fire, the gloomy Glaswegians’ 11th record (by their count), are bright red, yellow, white, and periwinkle. Anyone who’s followed the post-rock group’s three-decade history knows, though, that Mogwai’s music burns neon blue — creating pure, clean heat but with the look of a bruise, a sense of confidence but with awareness of the damage that generates it. The title is a Scottish euphemism for Hell, but Mogwai have always favored purgatory.
Since the late Nineties, melancholia has been the quartet’s milieu — chord changes that favor lumbering, slow-building anxiety and drama over any impulse to rock. Instead they’ve mastered a dynamic tension that Charles Atlas would’ve envied. The band’s general taciturnity on its first albums, 1997’s Mogwai Young Team and ’99’s Come On Die Young, got them lumped in with the post-rock movement (Iggy Pop gets the most words said on Come On via a 1977 interview sample) but in hindsight their music feels more kinship with orchestral minimalism, ambient music, and even slowcore rock.
They found the core of their sound in the past two decades since becoming a go-to band for eerie, uncomfortable soundtracks, notably for the French TV series Les Revenants and climate-change doc Before the Flood. Now they have to define what Mogwai, the band, is compared to Mogwai the composers. Since exploring the more lucrative world of film composition, their albums have felt more expressive of the depressive feelings that drove them early on (except for the 2008 instrumental album The Hawk Is Howling, which still rocks hardest.)
By that measure, the mostly instrumental The Bad Fire contains what feels like etudes on unhappiness, a perpetual sense of never really fitting in anywhere. Opener “God Gets You Back” boasts a few major chords and some serene vocals from the group’s Barry Burns, whose daughter suffered a medical crisis during the making of the record, but the lyrics are “don’t breathe rare air.” “What Kind of Mix Is This?” begins with harp-like clean guitar before embracing a warm, quivering electric guitar line that promises resolution but never fully delivers. And even though some of the songs take their time building to an emotional peak, such as on “If you Find This World Bad, You Should See Some of the Others,” you still always feel like you’re getting cheated out of catharsis by the time it ends. You’re just meant to feel this.
The best moments come later in the record, which John Congleton (Explosions in the Sky, Sigur Rós) produced, when the group applies its worldview in new ways. On “18 Volcanoes,” Stuart Braithwaite sings, “All is over, the future unfolding,” in a way that never reveals whether that’s a good thing or not for him, as flickering sounds whirr around him and the bass throbs. “Sometime I’ll look back on this,” he sings, “And understand what I will miss.” They’re lyrics you don’t want to question too much because the full depth might be too much.
Meanwhile, the instrumental “Hammer Room” evokes the Eno-fied second side of David Bowie’s Low, with its propulsive rhythms and ambient-funk guitar, and the guitar line of “Lion Rumpus” snarls in a way that sticks with you long after the record is done. It’s just a sound, but it’s wholly emotional and moving. Creating music that reflects visuals has taught Mogwai that a little restraint goes a long way when tugging at heartstrings.
There aren’t a whole lot of new sounds erupting on The Bad Fire for Mogwai, but when the songs hit, they’re virtuosically powerful. You just have to want to feel a certain way to appreciate them. For Mogwai, purgatory is endless.
From Rolling Stone US.