Album review: Mogwai – The Bad Fire

Milestones are redundant to Mogwai. A band whose music has often felt like an exploration of the elasticity of time itself, they’ve always seemed more captivated by the swirling colour and tantalising uncertainty of the spaces in-between. Even still, 2021’s terrific tenth album As The Love Continues felt like a natural culmination. Cementing their transformation from bratty, tracksuit-clad upstarts to revered elder-statesmen, it duly became the Glaswegians’ first-ever UK Number One, a monument to unbending commitment and untrammeled eccentricity.

But life goes on. Sometimes painfully so. From Fanzine Made Of Flesh to Pale Vegan Hip Pain, the joyously nonsensical song-titles of their even-better eleventh LP are as proudly dissociated as ever from the sounds within, daring the audience to find their own meaning. Its title, though, is more telling. Old Scottish slang for ‘Hell’, The Bad Fire chronicles a tide of personal trauma.

From keyboardist Barry Burns watching his daughter fight through cancer treatment, to guitarist Stuart Braithwaite’s experiences with his beloved dog Prince battling the same horrible illness, lived-in experience pulses through the ominous creep of Hi Chaos and pours into the mounting melancholy of If You Find This World Bad, You Should See Some Of The Others. Many fans beg for the eardrum-smashing heaviness of that still defines Mogwai’s live performances, but the weighty emotional authenticity of a feedback-drenched What Kind Of Mix Is This? or gorgeous highlight 18 Volcanoes is perhaps more powerful and profound. Growing older may have led to an inescapable amount of mellowing, but no-one’s kidding themselves that life’s getting any easier.

Processing pain does not mean wallowing in it, of course. The only way out is through. Ultimately, The Bad Fire feels like an acknowledgement of that, burning out neither in scalding catharsis nor cold resignation, but the radiant glow of a future still unwritten.

Hammer Room wraps playful six-strings around the kind of menacing synths that would do John Carpenter proud. Lion Rumpus is a euphoric 213-second explosion of rampant vocoders and swelling guitars. By the time we get there, woozy seven-minute closer Fact Boy feels richly earned: a poignant fade-out packing the bittersweetness and promise of a thousand sunsets.

For years now, Mogwai have watched them from the post-rock mountaintop. On this evidence, it’s a hell of a view.

Verdict: 4/5

For fans of: My Bloody Valentine, Nine Inch Nails, John Carpenter

The Bad Fire is released on 24 January via Rock Action