Live review: Mogwai

While watching Scottish post-rock band Mogwai Saturday at The Varsity, a few thoughts ran through my head:

1) These guitars are loud like a laser beam straight to the head.
2) I put “Golden Porsche,” a song from the Scottish band’s 2004 album Happy Songs for Happy People, on a mix CD for this girl. She probably didn’t get it.
3) Around my 16th birthday, my sister bought me Happy Songs. I had really never heard the band, just read the glowing reviews and how they had beef with Blur and Oasis. The album, largely instrumental, was my introduction to post-rock and still occupies my ears from time to time to this day.
4) I don’t recognize this song, but it’s still cool. It’s basically five minutes of Krautrock, which to me is the perfect amount. (Backstory here: I’ve clumsily followed the band throughout the past decade. They consistently release pretty good material. I never give it the proper time. The band’s latest, Rave Tapes, is another winning entry in a catalog that I should probably listen to more. Fittingly, the song I enjoyed and bobbed my head to is called “Mexican Grand Prix.”)

5) I hope the bartender can read lips. There is no way he’ll be able to hear my order, even if we are three feet away because there are currently three guitars firing off like cannons into the p.a. I imagine this is what it’s like if you used an agitated lion as an alarm clock. (This song is called “Rano Pano,” another song I hadn’t heard before because I’m a bad fan.)
6) Seeing this band is a cathartic experience. Mogwai is music tailor-made for the loner. The Scottish band has never needed words, just time and space for its minor chords and symphonies of distortion.
7) Two of the members are wearing baseball caps. The bassist really doesn’t move, and I’m pretty sure he’s wearing shorts, too. The guitarist ends every song by prematurely telling the audience “Thank you,” which of course the crowd eats up because he does so in a Scottish accent.
8) The inclusion of “Auto-Rock” was the best part of Michael Mann’s Miami Vice with Jamie Foxx and Colin Farrell.

9) This is the only band that could write a beautiful song and call it “Hunted By a Freak.”
10) I don’t know if I’ve grown out of listening to Mogwai, but I don’t care because this distortion they’ve wrapped me in is exactly what I want to hear right now.

Hear Mogwai’s latest release, Rave Tapes, below: