Mogwai: 'I’ve got a complicated relationship with nostalgia'

“I’ve got a complicated relationship with nostalgia,” says the 48-year-old. “Sometimes people can end up standing still.

“I’m much more excited about the fact that we’ve got a new record than the fact that we’ve somehow managed to make music for 30 years. Even though that is something, I’m more excited about new music than thinking about old stuff.”

Back in 1995, when Braithwaite formed Mogwai with bassist Dominic Aitchison and drummer Martin Bulloch, their main aim, he says, was “to be played by John Peel” on his taste-making late-night BBC Radio 1 show. They also aspired to play Barrowlands, “the big ballroom here in Glasgow”.

“John Peel played our first single (Tuner) and we managed to play the Barrowlands when our second album (Come On Die Young) came out – everything else has been a bonus.”

During the pandemic, a fan-driven campaign helped propel the band’s last album, As The Love Continues, to number one in the UK charts – a feat that Braithwaite described as “psychedelically weird”. Today, he says it’s “great” for the group – who have been a four-piece since 1998 – to be regarded as alternative national treasures.

“I really took a lot from that,” he says of their unexpected chart-topper. “From people who like our music and from other musicians, it was just a really nice thing to happen, and surprising, because I don’t think it was something that we’ve had down as anything that could ever potentially happen. It was weird but very nice.”

The making of Mogwai’s new album The Bad Fire – named after the Scottish term for hell – coincided with a traumatic period for keyboard player Barry Burns when his daughter fell seriously ill. Braithwaite says that the whole band felt a collective sense of shock over the sudden turn of events. “We have a group chat to organise rehearsals and just chit-chat generally, and Barry said that his little girl had a rash and Martin, who has his own health concerns, said he should take her to the hospital to check it out and she was immediately diagnosed,” he recalls. “It all happened within a matter of hours and we were all aware of it, so it was really shocking and terrible for Barry but we all knew everything that was going on, it was really scary.”

Fortunately, Burns’s daughter pulled through and is now “thriving” again. Braithwaite feels that the experience brought them even closer together as a band. “I was just grateful for us all to be together because it hadn’t happened for quite a long time because of the situation,” he says. “It was definitely a very different set of circumstances than anything we had experienced before.”

Grammy award-winning producer John Congleton, who has worked with everyone from Laurie Anderson to The War on Drugs, jetted over Los Angeles to Glasgow to helm the recording sessions. Braithwaite says: “To be honest, a lot of this came about because we couldn’t leave Scotland, and John had always said he’d love to make a record (with us) and he’s pretty willing to go anywhere.

“He was a lot of fun and did a great job, we were really happy with how it all turned out.”

Congleton was assisted by Mogwai’s regular collaborator Paul Savage “so we had both of them in the studio”, Braithwaite remembers. “John is very hands on. He’s a bit like us, he’s up for trying things out and if they don’t work move on to the next thing. But he’s definitely a good energy to have in the room while you’re recording.”

Album track 18 Volcanoes is reminiscent of My Bloody Valentine, the dream pop band who have long been an inspiration for Mogwai. Here, they took things their fandom a step further, Braithwaite reveals. “We are all big My Bloody Valentine fans, and Kevin (Shields) designed a pedal that I used on that song,” he says. “I went full Kevin on it.”

Having in the past provided soundtracks for films such as Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait and Kin, last year Mogwai themselves were the subject of a documentary film, directed by their friend Antony Crook. Braithwaite says of the experience: “It was quite enjoyable. We didn’t do that much ourselves, we just let Antony film a little bit of us and we handed over all the archive footage to him. It was really his project, but I felt quite proud watching it. It was quite surreal watching ourselves onstage, that was probably the strangest part about it.”

Mogwai play at O2 Academy Leeds on Saturday February 22. They will also be collaborating with KNDS Fairey Acid Brass at the BBC 6 Music Festival at the Victoria Warehouse, Manchester on Friday March 28. For details, visit https://www.bbc.co.uk/backstage/6musicfestival/