|
A blue
mist hangs over the stage like anticipation. We can see figures
in the mist - but it's not clear. There's a rumble of bass and guitar
and then a blush of red tinges the fog.
Mogwai
are here.
Or,
not quite here. They're hidden - behind dry ice, behind low lighting,
behind their instruments, their backs, their music. Hermits even
here, on stage, as the music creeps up on all of us.
Then
- an epileptic flash of strobe lights - on-off-on-off-on-off - and
we can see them. The band flicker into life, the music builds, drums
crash in, notes fuzz out, distorted and ugly.
Then
it's over.
Put
a jumper on
 |
| Mogwai
- in sensible warm clothes |
"It's
kinda cold," says Stuart Braithwaite - not exactly the singer
of Mogwai, but the one whose name everyone knows. The one who faces
the crowd, centre stage in a band of sociopaths.
"Put
a jumper on!" someone shouts.
"Ah
shud have a jumper orn, yer right," he smiles. "See: free
advice."
And
that's the conversation for the night done with.
Tonight
Mogwai play to a Stonehenge of watching heads - appreciative, enthusiastic,
cheering, whooping and clapping the end of every song as it's their
last - but motionless: no moshpit here - perhaps the odd person
waving an arm to a favourite track, but nothing communal. We are
a crowd of solitary types, used to listening to our Mogwai albums
late at night, scaring ourselves.
So
tonight it's just like a bedroom listening session on a large scale.
And very loud. For the most part Mogwai play from their new album
- but there's a welcome inclusion of first album classic 'Yes! I
am a Long Way from Home'.
Burning
intensity
Each
song is like a life story. At their best Mogwai build slowly to
a burning intensity, a fury, ferocious and self-harming. But at
their worst they are office jobs - going through the motions. Routine,
predictable, being angry about a photocopier jam and doing nothing
about it.
Tonight
it's a mix. You never know what you'll get next - the intensity
or the mundanity. But then, that's kind of like life as well, and
when it comes, the intensity is worth the wait.
Read
more Mogwai reviews
|
