Scottish post-rock legends Mogwai have returned with their 11th studio album The Bad Fire. The album’s title is a Glaswegian slang for Hell in reference to the difficult time that the band members were going through. After what was thought to be just a simple fall, the daughter of Barry Burns, Mogwai’s guitarist, pianist, and composer, was found to have a rare bone marrow condition. Two years of treatment later she was on the mend, but the impact of this severe health scare lingered and the reverberations were felt by the entire band. Roles shifted during the writing process to accommodate the various band members’ personal lives and struggles. The weight of this whole experience can be glimpsed throughout their latest release.
Mogwai’s last album 2021’s As the Love Continues was a high-water mark for the band. Both commercially by landing their first UK #1 album and critically being met with widespread acclaim after a few less stellar outings. Personally, I rank As the Love Continues as an easy third in their entire discography, eclipsed only by Happy Songs and Young Team. In some sense their follow up album would normally have a lot to live up to. But given the circumstances surrounding the writing and recording of The Bad Fire, album sales and critical appeal were likely never of primary focus for a band that in many ways is not typically concerned with either. Mogwai have always been content to find their own way and this attitude has served them well over the course of their now thirty-year career.
The Bad Fire opens rather melodically with “God Gets You Back”, one of a handful of tracks to feature vocals on the album though here they are effectively instrumentation. Repeating only a few lines mirroring the rise and fall of the keys and guitar. A pair of rather melancholic instrumental tunes follow, but it’s actually the fourth track “Fanzine Made of Flesh” I’d like to really dig down into. (Yes, Mogwai continue their tradition of having exceptional song titles.) “Fanzine”, the most recent single, nearly knocked me out upon its initial release. Within the context of the album the placement of this upbeat honey sweet vocal laden track is one hell of a curve ball. But it’s not without precedent within Mogwai’s repertoire. While “Fanzine” doesn’t quite dethrone “Richie Sacramento” off of As the Love Continues in this regard it comes pretty close.
“Fanzine” has a bubblegum indie pop sweetness to it that is musically in direct opposition to the lyrics. As the chorus swells an effects heavy voice whispers along. ‘I cross the ocean on a one-way boat / Holding memories to make us float / See the stars and know they’re dead by now / See the light inside them fade and glow.’ If you’re able to break away from all the saccharine ornamentation the actual thematic content of the album is rather somber. Of the tracks that feature vocal work this juxtaposition between driving upbeat music and sorrow drenched lines is pretty consistent.
“Pale Vegan Hip Pain” (Again with these titles…) follows “Fanzine” like a sad deflated balloon or the discarded mess after a wild party. Slow and detached, a simple guitar line wanders accompanied by sparse drums. From here things get bleaker and more spaced out until about halfway through “If You Find This World Bad, You Should See Some Of The Others”. An epic seven-minute building barrage that serves as an outlet for all that accumulated angst and ennui.
The vocals reappear on “18 Volcanoes” and with them the subtextual melancholia. This time largely concerned with the passage of time and remembrance. ‘Hardness not scared to say / You will see ghosts every day / Sometime I’ll look back on this / And understand what I will miss / Every time I turn away / I can hear them following.’ But again, especially on the chorus, the music rises even as the lyrics dip down into despair. Like the vocal work elsewhere on the album “Lion Rumpus” is also abstracted to the point of instrumentation. Conversing and laughing along with the playful guitar lead. All of these hazy murmurings are reminiscent of “Hunted by a Freak” off of Happy Songs.
Of the instrumental songs that make up the bulk of the album the grand rising “If you Find This World Bad…” and “Hammer Room” with its light playful opening and set phasers for stun noisy ending are the more memorable ones. While “Fanzine” is easily my favorite of the vocal tracks and the album overall. I can already tell it will be one of the highlight songs of the year for me having listened to it continually since its release preceding the album. But for as much as I love that song it has only left me wanting more.
The Bad Fire feels like a double album comprising two very different halves with each partly absent and their remnants smashed together. The vocal tracks stand out so much, often to the point of breaking the flow of the instrumental sections. I ended up wanting to hear the missing tracks from a whole album of their take on shoegaze saturated indie rock, rather than some just okay, but never quite outstanding interludes. In any case The Bad Fire, while somewhat disjointed, is a decent addition to an ever-expanding catalog and definitely worth giving a spin. After all an average Mogwai record is still pretty darn good.
Band photo by Steve Gullick.
