I saw Mogwai last year on their tour for The Bad Fire, and while I enjoyed the show, I bought the ticket last-minute and got a pretty bad seat in the back of an upper balcony. I feared I hadn’t gotten the full experience. This time around, I bought early and sprung for a good seat. It was worth it!
Forest Swords turned out to be one guy at a desk with a compact electronic rig. He had a Mac laptop with the lid almost closed but didn’t touch it and instead just manipulated some smaller controllers. Initially he made pretty, relaxed, meditative soundscapes. I felt soothed and enjoyed the relatively comfortable seat and the light show flourishes. There were occasional hints of noise and edge, but it never took on a dark tone. He gradually got more rhythmic and eventually even introduced a drum machine, but that drifted too close to generic techno and I got impatient. I liked the first half quite a bit, though.
Forest Swords turned out to be one guy at a desk with a compact electronic rig. He had a Mac laptop with the lid almost closed but didn’t touch it and instead just manipulated some smaller controllers. Initially he made pretty, relaxed, meditative soundscapes. I felt soothed and enjoyed the relatively comfortable seat and the light show flourishes. There were occasional hints of noise and edge, but it never took on a dark tone. He gradually got more rhythmic and eventually even introduced a drum machine, but that drifted too close to generic techno and I got impatient. I liked the first half quite a bit, though.
Forest Swords.]
Mogwai again appeared as a five-piece with touring guitarist/keyboardist Alex Mackay and a strong lighting rig, albeit a different one from last time. There was also a large Palestinian flag and a trans pride flag. Despite mics set up for guitarist Stuart Braithwaite and keyboardist/guitarist Barry Burns, only one song had vocals (“Ritchie Sacramento”, one of their best) and Stuart’s only other words were to express thanks. The music speaks for itself.
The set covered a lot of ground, and there were only two overlapping songs with the 2025 concert. The first half of the show favored relatively newer songs, but the band gradually moved backwards in time, favoring their earliest material. The final three numbers all came from the first two albums, and they also played both sides of the even earlier “New Paths to Helicon” single from 1997. The A-side wasn’t a surprise given that their upcoming Happy Tears compilation features a remake of it, but they curiously played little else from the collection. I’m not complaining; I like just about every song they did. The weakest link was “Titles” from their Black Bird soundtrack (2022). It sounded like soundtrack work: it had no real peak and sounded too much like background music.
[Mogwai performing “Helicon 2”.]
Thankfully, the sound quality and mix were superb. I had none of the complaints from last time. They performed well and the music was full and intense. The heaviest bits, like the jolts in “You’re Lionel Richie” and “Like Herod”, went hard, just like they should. It was a treat to see Stuart and bassist Dominic Aitchison swap instruments for “Helicon 1”, and to watch Burns and Mackay both have turns starting a song on keyboards before moving to guitar mid-song (as on “Don’t Believe the Fife” and “Lionel Richie”). I was amused to be able to identify the era of songs by the amount of keyboards and who played them. Burns prefers keyboards, but he only joined in 1998, and past member John Cummings, who departed in 2015, seems to have preferred guitar. Hence, I imagine that Mackay generally plays Cummings’s parts, and Burns plays guitar parts on the early songs written before he joined, which typically had few keyboards. I also realized that the band never play what I would characterize as a solo. They play deeply interlocking parts, and that’s a major key to their magic.
I was enthralled. This was the experience I had hoped for. I clearly wasn’t the only one; this was one of the most reverent audiences I’ve ever seen. I saw few phones and heard no chatter. It’s understandable. Every moment had to be savored.
Setlist:
01. Heard About You Last Night
02. Hi Chaos
03. Small Children in the Background
04. Ritchie Sacramento
05. New Paths to Helicon, Pt. 2
06. Titles
07. Don’t Believe the Fife
08. Scotland’s Shame
09. New Paths to Helicon, Pt. 1
10. Auto Rock
11. You’re Lionel Richie
12. Like Herod
Encore:
13. May Nothing but Happiness Come Through Your Door
14. Christmas Steps
Scores:
Forest Swords: B
Mogwai: A
P.S. Thanks to Mirah!
[Mogwai performing “Helicon 1”. I apparently only took pictures of the two songs for which Stuart sits.]
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