Mogwai

With Kathryn Joseph and Cloth

The Usher Hall, Edinburgh, 23 February 2025

It’s thirty years since Mogwai formed. 30 years recording some of the best instrumental rock music to emerge by any current measurement.

They are a band renowned for playing extended instrumental pieces of varying tempo, sometimes so soft you have to concentrate to hear what is being played on stage, knowing that sooner, rather than later, the speakers will explode like a wall of sound, a sonic boom, that will envelop the entire room.

This was a polished and accomplished set to a sold-out home audience that covered much of their previous back catalogue in addition to tracks from the Bad Fire.

The stage lighting used to emphasise the music is modest by the standards of other bands of such repute. However, the simplicity lends a sense of its own purpose. While the lighting or lack of it gives a vision of darkness on stage, the predominant colours of red and yellow which fill the stage during several tracks offer the backdrop of fire that corresponds with the album.

Stuart Braithwaite remains right of centre, as the audience looks at him, throughout the performance. His guitar eking out the rhythms, the thrashes and tender string picking that has become his familiar hallmark. The setlist is not overly troubled with vocal duties but when called upon, Stuart’s delivery remains precise. The rhythm section of Dominic Aitchinson on bass and Martin Bulloch powers the entire set again with a mix of tenderness and power as appropriate. There is a calm resolve about both, and you sense they are the linchpins of the band, without whom their fellow band members would happily wander aimlessly until the power is turned off.

From an audience standpoint, I’m sure that Barry Burns and Alex McKay would be more than welcome to continue wandering late into the night with the dynamism displayed on guitar and keyboards during the set. Along with Stuart, they remained to the fore throughout the set with a smattering of wailing, screeching guitars that bounced off the Usher Hall walls.

The band were also joined on stage at times by violinist Luke Sutherland, testimony as to how the band’s songwriting is able to include instrumentation that adds genuine value to their songs.

In a set that aims to showcase their latest recordings, that harks back to where they started and how they have developed over the decades, there remains one song that continues to be a standout of this or any other gig we have attended.

Mogwai Fear Satan encapsulates everything that Mogwai are all about. If there was one song to recommend to someone not familiar with their work this would be it. Whether listening to it coming through the speakers at home or, as Sunday night, watching the band play it live, it remains an engrossing piece of work.

We all know what’s going to happen, just after eight minutes of the video below, as the band lower the tempo and volume until you can just about hear the steady drumbeat and lead guitar. We prepare for it. We long for it. And it always delivers, just like Mogwai on Sunday night

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Support Acts

Cloth

I’ve seen Cloth a few times over the past couple of years and watched them grow in stature and confidence with every showing.

The new songs appear better developed, Rachel is more at home with her vocal duties and there is a sense that the trio have found the confidence to channel the music they want to play onto record and the live setting.

With a new album due out soon, I’d recommend a visit to see them play live before they themselves become the headline act.

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Kathryn Joseph

Like Cloth, Kathryn has been popping up before our eyes at several gigs in the recent past. There seems a marked difference in her confidence too. Her songs remain emotionally charged and she’s not afraid to tell anyone listening that the world would be a much better place without some of the people we know whether, that be through power, fame or just individuals that circumnavigate around our own little world.

Sitting alone at her keyboard, on a vast stage, with sombre lighting, her delivery is akin to that of Bjork. It is as mesmerising, as it is heartfelt.

She has a comedienne’s rapport with the audience between songs too, but maybe some of that would best be described after the watershed!!