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Skirt around the web on the lookout for reports of
Mogwai's current UK tour, concluding tonight at the
mammoth and appropriately ornate Brixton Academy,
and you'll end up wondering what exactly it is that
people want. Blood!? Well as it happens, far from it.
In between the repeated, lame, accusatory message-board
digs of being My Bloody Valentine and Slint rip-offs
(now we're not denying influence here kids, but come
on, compare and contrast will you) are the kind of dribbling
'it's just a horrible bloody noise' missives you've
not heard since you stopped sitting in front of Top
Of The Pops with your parents. And then there's of course
the expected 'they're just a bunch of pricks' line of
reasoning, as if this somehow deconstructs any counter-argument
rendering it worthless. Little do their detractors realise
that they've only highlighted everything that makes
them so very vital.
There's something to be said for a gig where the sound
guy is bounding side to side around his booth in-between
his knob twiddling, especially during the tremendous
snappy 'Christmas Steps', with all the intensity of
a post-rock gibbon, possessed and reaching meltdown.
Beyond merely a meeting of minds, a Mogwai gig when
perfectly executed, crisply presented, is awesomely
and hypnotically absorbing, a leap of faith almost at
which you'll throw your beliefs unquestionably, trusting
them to take you away. And tonight it is all that.
And in these current times of uncertainty and commotion,
through thoughts of war, hopes of peace, tensions, doubts
and unclear futures - all of which manifest themselves
in some way in Mogwai's relentless wall of sound - with
all that talk of religion as a cause, you realise that
with all it promotes and encourages, and the support
and sense of community it brings, this tour through
extremities, emotions and bloody-willed beliefs is the
only binding religion of sorts you need. In short, you
feel instantly like you belong, you're spoken to directly
without the need for words and everything is brought
to a succinct personal emotional conclusion.
If Stuart Braithwaite remerging through the swathes
of feedback enveloping the extended gig climax, to stand
silhouetted against a wall of strobes like a victorious
warrior, bellowing inaudibles with an untainted conviction,
marks him out as a 'cocky prick' then damn people for
being so ordinarily mild mannered, half-hearted and
unconvincing. If stalking the lip of the stage with
an unfaltering persuasion, their eyes speaking the thousands
of words they don't sing, lurching unrepentant over
their instruments - Stuart himself a human graphic equalizer,
his body mimicking every sonic fluctuation he wrings
from his guitar with wild exaggeration - as if they
refuse to accept any alternative makes them pricks then
God bless them for it. As their adaption of the Jewish
hymn, 'My Father, My King', spirals and fits its way
through the 20 minutes of the single version, and them
some, stretching it out to a paranoid overwhelming noisy
apocalypse, you can only give them their comeuppance
and bless them for shirking convention yet still delivering
it all and more.
James Berry for Crud Magazine© 2001
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