Live Review | Mogwai @ Sonar 2006.03.07

The duality of Baltimore seems an appropriate venue for Glasgow’s Mogwai: a city reputed for both serene, waterfront tourist attractions and volatile crime rates. The band is known through the press for sharing their fierce opinions willingly on any political or musical topic, as mouthpieces Stuart Braithwaite and Barry Burns are more apt to reveal what they hate (Blur, Queen, Bush) on paper, as opposed to what they love (Scottish folk music, My Bloody Valentine, John Waters, apparently). In contrast, their music is void of voice for the most part. It does however, share heart attack-inducing decibel spikes with gentle twitches of atmospheric pop wonder. Despite the readily served tongue lashings, the group is amazingly humble during their March performance at Sonar, avoiding the mood-setting blue spotlights, hiding their faces in shadows.
Every movement of their live show is created to elicit the proper shock and suspense in their audience. Their cacophonic constructions are meant to soften the listener’s spine and screech to a halt. Their precision is laser-guided in and out of focus, creating one of rock’s most exciting acts – live or on record.
Meandering into “Mogwai Fear Satan” guitarists Stuart Braithwaite, John Cummings and Barry Burns weave hushed distortion in and out of one with hypnotic effects that could relieve Alan McGee of his wallet. “You Don’t Know Jesus” from 2001’s Rock Action is so righteously epic, but still based around a simple child-like melody, buried under a debris of cymbals and simultaneous layers of the same melody from each guitar. The band is both unrestrained and frightening at once and nimbly slopes into a delicate coda and silence again, as though this was a natural occurrence. The three-note repeating guitar buzz that shreds the ears apart with distortion is not however.
As Burns takes to the massive keyboard/ laptop setup at stage right, Stuart drops to his knees and twiddles effects knobs generating a hypnotic mood through “I Know You Are But What Am I”, bleeding into the spiraling “Stanley Kubrick”. The group collectively stuff every second with as much as they possibly can, stabbing and shaking noise from every inch of their instruments, though not dragging the song past the five-minute mark.
Closing the first set with the cavernous echoing of “Hunted by a Freak” and the choking riff of “Glasgow Mega-Snake”, Braithwaite maniacally bangs his Telecaster, leaning his stout figure briefly out of the fog and shadows to expose eyes sunken into a bald skull, framed by a mad grin.
The transcendental effects of Mogwai floats over their audience like a post-rock nerve gas, eventually crashing onto them in frenzy. Braithwaite and company, in the expertise, turn their peers into an endless sting of amateur acts who can’t show their teeth of conviction through the haze of their sound. Few acts in rock can even fabricate the punk theory and poetic practice that Mogwai naturally radiates – live or on record. - Rob Macy