Mogwai ---Ink Blot Magazine

Mogwai
by Jesse Fahnestock

A not-so-cheery wave from stranded youngsters

Mogwai

There are moments on Mogwai's debut LP Mogwai Young Team that recall the dental torture scene in "Marathon Man." In the most positive sense, of course.

Not that you expect Sonic Youth-inspired art-rock from Glasgow to be chipper. It's just that the grinding, screeching riff that tears "Like Herod" asunder is stupidly intense, possessed of an unholy paranoia you wouldn't expect from the carefree teens that recorded it. Of course, all was not so carefree at the time.

"The recording of Young Team was fucked up. There were quite a lot of sketches (slang for fights) going on," Mogwai drummer Martin Bulloch recalls. "I think the whole of the first LP is angry. It was the mood of the whole thing - there was a lot of anger about."

Teenage punks are usually all too willing to shake an angry fist at the world around them, but Mogwai's bad vibes were apparently directed at one another, a self-destructive streak that ran through the Young Team record and the group's occasionally antagonistic live shows.

"It can be quite angry playing some of those songs, and it can end up with the stage in pieces," Martin affirms. Sometimes it feels ambient, playing three minutes of white noise, but other times it's extremely intense."

Mogwai lost a sometime-member during this more intense period, with guitarist Stuart allegedly kicking former Teenage Fanclub drummer Brendan O'Hare out of the band for failing to hush up during an Arab Strap gig. Mogwai have been slightly evasive about the split, and I decided not to ask Martin about it. But if you want a metaphor for the mercurial O'Hare's effect on a band, listen to his "With Portfolio" from Young Team. Beginning with tinkling piano that threatens to be the album's prettiest moment, it degenerates into phase-shifting, skull-shagging noise that finds nowhere and heads there rapidly. Diverting, but ultimately frustrating.

Yes! They are a long way from home

"Every time we come here, we just think, 'Oh, fuck, we don't want to go back.' We just love New York so much. Not in the summer, though, because it's just too hot. Being fair-skinned is a bit difficult in the summer here."

Martin is relaxed and happy to be back in the Big Apple. Mogwai have just returned to America after recording new album Come On Die Young in late 1998. They're sitting on a new deal with uberindie label Matador and looking forward to a mini-tour supporting Pavement. Things are looking up.

Come On Die Young is a great title for an album. It's just not a particularly appropriate one. Where Young Team was enjoyably nihilistic, the new album is confident, at-ease and melodic. If it weren't for some pleasantly kinky structures and clever samples, you might actually call it mature.

The LP was recorded in rural, upstate New York with Mercury Rev producer Dave Fridmann - apparently in an attempt to force the band's hand after the struggles of the Young Team sessions.

"[For Young Team], it was quite an effort to get everyone in the studio at the same time," Martin explains. "So this time we wanted to get as far away from the distractions, and from Glasgow, as possible."

But could five young men in love with America not find new distractions?

"MTV distracted Dominic," Martin laughs. "He'd record his bass part and then we couldn't find him. He'd be off watching MTV or playing Nintendo.

"But we were more focused than before. We'd go 12-12, then Dave would go home, and we'd stay up all night and get pissed, e-mailing (Chemikal Underground labelmates) the Delgados, calling them cunts." The band's late-night Web, Nintendo and booze sessions eventually got under the skin of their venerable producer.

"At the beginning, he'd come in in the morning and say, 'Alright guys?' But by the end he'd come in and say, 'Aaal-right, you BASTARDS...' because we wouldn't be up yet," Martin recalls.

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