Mogwai: the rare prodigy repeats itself live

Mogwai return to Italy as headliner of the inaugural evening of La first summerthe festival that for four editions has started the summer in Versilia to the sound of international music. They come a few months after the publication of “The Bad Fire”disc born from very painful personal grafts – The title itself derives from a Scottish chestnut expression indicating hell – And broke up in a sacred fire of emotion, intelligence, evolution and taste.

Starting with the paladins of the Scottish post-rock is a nice blowbecause a few bands are able to work on the atmosphere with such effectiveness and intensity. On the contrary, Mogwai’s music leads to so many emotional and sensory scenarios that they almost make the effort to tell their concerts. On stage, in fact, it doesn’t happen much. Stuart Braithwaite is the most atypical of frontman: does nothing to catalyze attention, while putting its own talents at the total service of the group’s music. He does not even like to be defined as the band’s “leader”. There seems to be no room for human protagonists: this story belongs to music. And in fact those who go to hear the Mogwai do so to be overwhelmed by their wall of sound and open the doors of perception, certainly not to look at a show.

With “God Gets You Back” and “Hi Chaos”, the first two pieces in the lineup, the Mogwai present their new record chapter at the Bussoladomani Park of Lido di Camaiore.
“The Bad Fire”, like any other Mogwai album, seems to be born to be played live.
Here is the eternal epiphany of the listener and follows the Mogwai for decades:
The study version is an adaptation, while the live is the original version. Assisting this rare prodigy, the ability of the new album to support their usual majesty an unusual sound elegance, not only for the genre, is even more appreciated. Although it has been composed in an emotionally very complicated period for the band members, an even wider job came out, which explores the details of the post-rock with increasingly distant horizons, without ever losing orientation. They are always theirs, and
The formula is so winning and healthy that abandoning it would seem sacrilegious, yet there is always something more
. Something deeper, perhaps even more fascinating.

At this point of the career, the Mogwai have developed an awareness and control of their means

To make many people do the most classic of errors, that of the famous
Oasis warning: “Please don’t put your life in the hands of a rock ‘n’ roll band”
. But don’t trust – and rely on – this band is difficult. It is clear when you are in front of their stage and the monumental ride of instrumental scattered disassemble piece by piece all the typical superstructures of the live music wheelchair, while synths and guitars intertwine in a vortex of extraordinary beauty.

Even in the few moments sung, the instrumental spell does not break.
In “Ritchie Sacramento”
for example, Stuart’s voice insinuates elegance in experience, the one that a few years ago has been described with words that might seem sensationalistic, but adhere perfectly to the project:
“If the Stars Had a sound”
. This was the title of Antony Crook’s documentary that told, in addition to the origins of this surprising career, also the moving path that brought their album for the first time –

“As the Love Continues”
worked during the pandemic and unquestionably welcomed as one of the most beautiful –
to reach the first position in the United Kingdom.
A result welcomed and also celebrated by many prominent figures of international music, as a powerful sign of hope for alternative music, or more simply for good music.

The concert is also designed as a climax,
Macroscopically re -proposing the growing experience of many of their songs. And in fact
Do they close after an hour and a half with “My Father, My King”, the coup de grace is for the eardrums – finally a concert with suitable volumes? – Both for the heart.
The perfect closure for a precious journey into the sound world of Mogwai, one of the few to be able to remain faithful to himself, without abandoning himself to nostalgia, without being trapped in the past. Indeed, always looking forward. In thirty years of career and eleven studio albums,
The Mogwai managed to retain an ever wider and heterogeneous audience, without ever distorting their vision.

A work based on artistic dignity, on the trust in the goodness of one’s music and on a constant quality that perhaps, after all, can really be an alternative to the many escapades and shortcuts often passed off by fixed stages of an inevitable destiny.