“Music is bigger than words and wider than pictures” intoned a starry-eyed voice on Mogwai’s otherwise almost wordless 1997 debut, Mogwai Young Team. The Glasgow band’s mixture of sonic grandeur and spiky irreverence quickly established them as cult favourites, in opposition to the complacent tail-end of Britpop: goth in aesthetics and metal in spirit, but labelled “post-rock” because of their long, mostly instrumental tracks.
Ninety minutes in their deafening company under the low ceiling of the Highbury Garage, as part of the venue’s series of 30th-anniversary shows, is enough of a reminder that they are not really “post” anything, not deconstructing anything: they are a rock band, with riffs and choruses and a deserved reputation for making small rooms quake with noise.
It’s hard to avoid this conclusion as Mogwai launch into the ferocious 10-minutes-plus of Mogwai Fear Satan, a phalanx of three backlit guitars and bass, the humble stage barely containing them. This is followed by the far more conventional verse-chorus-verse – and singing! – of recent single Ritchie Sacramento. These songs constitute two of their biggest “hits”, separated by 24 years and more than a dozen albums, each urgent in their own way. Their journey since the 90s has taken them to a highly unlikely No 1 album in 2021, and a sold-out show at the Alexandra Palace in 2022, via a soundtrack album for a Zinedine Zidane film and a range of more melodic, vocal and electronic permutations – like the superb synth-enhanced Remurdered, a stand-out tonight.
But it is a sublime two-song encore that shows Mogwai’s range at its best. The punchy, soaring headbanger Summer, an early live favourite, is followed by My Father My King – and nothing says Mogwai like the glowering menace and pummelling riffs of a 20-minute instrumental version of a Jewish hymn. In these moments it’s tempting to say the band create something close to the power and dynamics of a classical symphony, or a particularly slow-burning techno anthem – the guitar lines and motifs interleaving, digressing and regrouping like a shoal of fish, gathering strength and then exploding in fresh directions again. But they are a rock band – just one that is bigger than words and wider than pictures.
• At Albert Hall, Manchester, 9 and 10 February; then touring the UK until 19 February.
