I couldn't have scheduled a better day to interview Mogwai. Earlier that morning, the Glasgow greats watched their beloved Celtic win a footie match, with a proud Stuart Braithwaite donning a jersey from his hometown's team. And believe you me, football is a big deal for Mogwai. So much so that when the band play London and stay at the Columbia Hotel, they like to heckle a certain football association's HQ. "It's near the English, not Scottish, the English Football Association. So we walk by it and shout at it. 'You'll never win the World Cup ever again. You Anglo-Saxon bastards." Ah, the proud Celts...
Scotland is quite a fantastic nation, but some regions can be high on the backwards tip. Still it has nothing on upstate New York, where the band headed last November to record their latest and phenomenally brilliant full-length. They trekked to Cassadagas, in the middle of hunting season no less, to work on Come On Die Young, with ex-Mercury Rev man Dave Fridmann.
"There were all these people shooting deer, which appalls me really," drummer Martin Bulloch emphatically declares. "I don't see what's sporting about getting out and hunting a lot of little deer, I think it's crap. We'd go into convenience stores and stuff and [there were] life-size models of deer with targets on themÉrounds of ammunition and bows and arrows.
"I was quite appalled by the whole thing, I was quite vocal about it in a shop. 'Fuckin' hell, barbaric bastards," stuff like that, shooting my mouth off. We got in the car afterwards, we were just about to drive off from the carpark and Dave said there was someone sighting us with a gun. I turned around and there was this big red light on my face."
Poor Martin. Although his problems didn't end there either&emdash;he ended up getting bitten by a dog before recording's end. Anything New York City hands Martin these days has got to be a piece of cake after the Cassadagada mishaps...
I met up with Martin and new member
Barry Burns (flutes, keyboards, guitars) at their hotel deep in the
heart of Chinatown. It was a chilly, snowy Sunday afternoon, but I
knew I'd have an easy time with this interview. Margaritas were in
hand and the interviewer before me flat-out insulted the band. I was
sure to wow them with my sarcasm indeed. And although flailing
insults and sarcasm are two Scottish traits, Martin and newcomer
Barry Burns couldn't be nicer.
"When we first started the band," Martin recalls, "none of us apart from Stuart could play. Stuart asked me to be in the band because he knew that I had a drum kit and that I was a nice guy. That's a fact." It's a similar story for Barry too. "Stuart told me yesterday I was employed because I was funny."
Come On Die Young, the band's painfully perfect sophomore full-length (proper), marks the first recorded appearance of Barry, a former music teacher. He left teaching because he hated the kids, but the school's loss is Mogwai's gain. His debut recorded appearance, CODY, is an opus that strays slightly away from the band's once trademark lull-storm-lull construct, all the while retaining the glorious sound dynamics that have made this band so great. It's one of the most contemplative records I've heard in some time, recalling Slint, Codeine, My Bloody Valentine, to name just a few. And it's a record that possesses the rare ability to conjure up a gamut of emotions in just one sweeping track. Journos like to go overboard and use flowery descriptions and metaphors to describe the band. But it's not necessary to be wanky. Mogwai is brilliant and Come On Die Young is a permanent fixture in my cd player these days.
But I must say, I wasn't too sure what to expect after their interesting remix album, Kicking A Dead Pig. But one contribution alone makes Kicking a worthwhile investment&emdash;the remix work by Kevin Shields. How on earth did they find him??? "We had a big meeting with Eye-Q. Well, it wasn't a big meeting, it was at a pub in Glasgow and we [both] came up with some names of people who should do remixes. It was actually them that got in touch with him, but we've become friends with him since."
Pavement's Stephen Malkmus adores them, Scott McCloud partied with them after their recent Bowery Ballroom show, and Kevin Shields befriended them. Although it seems like they've got the world in the palm of their hand, things haven't always been so easy for Mogwai. I mean, there is a very good reason why they are on Matador in the US these days as Martin explains. "I don't really want to start on a bitching session about Jetset....They were good about putting out the records and stuff. But there were a few wee problems we had here and there, so we had to leave. Jetset wouldn't give us any tour support for the last tour we did, but Gerard gave us money. And we weren't even signed to Matador [at the time]."
That says it all really. The fact that someone was willing to front the band a bucket of cash to help finance their tour, when the band had no ties to the individual at the time. People are willing to bend over backwards for them. And after just one listen to CODY, you'll want to hand over your hard-earned cash too.
~ Diana Willis
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