Mogwai played the Paradise – 4/11
Scottish post-rock icons Mogwai headlined a sold-out Paradise with guests Brainiac and Ye Gods.
__________
The great engine that is Glasgow (mostly) instrumentalists Mogwai simply keeps rolling. Thirty years into their career, the collective that rose to prominence in the post-rock sphere by way of enigmatic atmosphere and towering crescendos continue to refine and reshape. January’s The Bad Fire – their eleventh official LP amid a sea of EPs, soundtrack work and other odds and ends – persists down the path of its recent predecessors with shades of electronic texture and dream-pop catchiness. It’s a less aggressive Mogwai than the band bent on blowing your speakers out with the violent sonics of “Like Herod” in ’97, but one still capable of dialing in the magic.
None of this is to suggest that Mogwai are no longer a band capable of force. This month’s show at an absolutely jam-packed Paradise contended quite the opposite, fusing the band’s modern sensibilities with the Mogwai of yore for a thunderous 90-minute set that played to all their strengths. And while I’m typically not much of a fan of Comm Ave’s storied rock club, the room’s relative intimacy actually served to amplify what was already working for them.
Any band can play loud, of course, but Mogwai make a true art of it in both whisper-to-a-scream dynamic shifts and the dense walls of sound that characterize their more chilled-out material. The latter is where we began the night, with a pair from The Bad Fire, but there was time for the explosive moments too – as in the case of set centerpiece “Mogwai Fear Satan” bringing the house down with a rollercoaster ride of shimmering sonic swells. The cumulative effect had the room transfixed from start to finish, in a reassertion of Stuart Braithwaite and company’s reputation as an all-time great live band.
Joining them for this spring trek was the wholly unexpected resurrection of Brainiac, the oddball Dayton synth-punk noise-rockers whose initial run came to an abrupt halt nearly 30 years ago following the death of vocalist Tim Taylor. Brainiac reactivated in a reconfigured form for some one-off shows in 2019, but only became a proper touring entity again upon opening a U.K. run for Mogwai in 2023 – eventually leading them here to the ‘Dise for their first Boston gig since the late ’90s. I was not hanging out at the Middle East as a young child and thus never experienced the band in their heyday, but the current lineup, which sees guitarist John Schmersal assuming frontman duties alongside auxiliary assistance from friend of the band Tim Krug, delivered a spirited set worthy of the their off-kilter, genre-bending, influential legacy. Some portion of the Mogwai audience appeared not entirely ready for it, but for another faction of the room, they seemed the main draw – something the band clearly appreciated after all those years away.
Check out photos from both sets below – in addition to a body-moving electro-industrial opening courtesy of Ye Gods – below.
