Interview: Mogwai's Stuart Braithwaite on the band's 11th studio album The Bad Fire

The album will be released tomorrow, 24 January, and is available to pre-order and pre-save now in various formats, including vinyl box set, CD box set, black LP, clear vinyl LP, CD and cassette.

The album was introduced by new song Lion Rumpus, alongside a video directed by long-time collaborator Antony Crook, director of the documentary, Mogwai: If The Stars Had A Sound. The album features recent singles God Gets You Back and Fanzine Made of Flesh. The band will embark on a world tour in 2025. You can pre-order or pre-save The Bad Fire here.

The album was recorded in Blantyre, with Grammy Award-winning producer John Congleton joining the band in the studio. Mogwai explain: “A Scottish colloquialism for Hell,The Bad Fire draws inspiration from a series of tough personal moments that the band found themselves in following on from their chart-topping tenth album, 2021’s As The Love Continues.”

I spoke to Stuart Braithwaite about the new record.

Congratulations on the new album and still being at it after 30 years of Mogwai. When you arrived in the studio, how much of this album was already fully formed and ready to go, how much emerged in Blantyre. How much is this a Blantyre record?

I'd say it's a Glasgow record. We got most of it done before we went in. There were still some parts and some sounds and everything that we kind of worked on when they were there, but the demos were in pretty decent shape and we'd been rehearsing. So yeah, I'd say it's got a G postcode, not an ML postcode.

Do you start with a clear idea of what the running order is going to be in for tracks on the album, how does that side of it work?

We actually almost always record quite a lot more than we need. We've got another half an album and we've probably got to try and work out what we're going to do with it, I think, because it's not like some of this stuff turned out bad, it's just that it didn't maybe fit together or didn't go with the whole mood of how everything else was set in. I'd say the order of how things get done is running order, artwork, song titles, mastering, so that's the last sprint at the end of the race.

I had read that you said that new track from the album Fanzine Made of Flesh started out as a song you worked on when you were staying in Alex Kapranos from Franz Ferdinand's place in Brooklyn. Do you find that where you are geographically, whether on tour or on holday, leaks into the music? Are you influenced by your surroundings and what you're doing at the time, what you're watching on telly, what you're listening to?

I think everything does find its way in to an extent, though I would imagine probably with that song, it was more like, “oh sh*t, why am I on holiday when I should be writing songs?” Or there happened to be a guitar there and maybe I can assuage my guilt by come up with something.”

Is there a thread that runs through this record in terms of the themes you've been thinking about or where the band finds itself in 2025?

Well, it was a hard record to make for a few reasons. It was a hard record because Barry hadn't really been with the band. Barry had went through a really terrible time. His little girl was really sick. She was in hospital for most of a year. So just all of us getting together was a bit of a struggle though I think, I can't speak for everyone else, but from my point of view it felt like a bit of a release, just all being together and making music. So I think it's, to my mind, got quite a cathartic energy to it. And I think there's definitely themes in the music that tie it together.

With this one, we hadn't been together. We went to Australia without Barry, which were the first gigs we've done without him since he joined the band. So when we got together it did feel kind of like we were ready to record. I would say it probably doesn't normally, because we're always doing something, we were always doing a soundtrack or on tour. So I can't really think of a time apart from actually the pandemic when we didn't see each other on a fairly regular basis.

With the success of the last album and then the gigs that you played and the new audience that was then going through the Mogwai back catalogue, it seems like it has been quite an exciting four years for the band. To reach 30 years in music and feel like you're starting out on something rather than just going through the motions. You are not a legacy band. You're out there creating new music and new things and bringing new people to the band. Does that feel good?

It feels great. It feels really good. Quite a few people have asked if the last record doing so well brought pressure, but I actually think it released pressure because it made me think, well, we've got a lot of support. People got really excited about our last album then it kind of made me not worry so much about how this one would do. As times went on, I started worrying anyway. But I think that's just my general nature. But I think, yeah, I think definitely it gave us a bit of a boost.

What would you consider the maximum amount of words that should be in a song title?

I don't think there is a maximum. I suppose you could go medal, you could have every single line from James Joyce's novel Ulysses as the name of track four. I guess that would cause some problems printing. But no, I think you can have as many as you want. I mean, they all get abbreviated, even ones with two words get abbreviated to one. So I guess it doesn't matter that much.

Are there any of these tracks that you're particularly looking forward to unleashing live?

Yeah, I mean we've been rehearsing, we're doing all of them. But I think maybe the louder ones like High Chaos and If You Find This World Bad, You Should See Some of the Others. Those are the loud ones I think will be a lot of fun to play. But I think it's all sounding good.

30 years in, you're at a different stage of your life, does that make the music different? I've spoken to Aidan Moffat from Arab Strap and he's quite content that his music is invested with some different emotions now that he's older. Does that work the same way for Mogwai?

I don't think so. I'd probably be different for Aidan because his music's always very specifically about his life where ours is more abstract. So to be honest, I actually think that it's very similar to how it was when we used to practise in Martin's bedroom in Blantyre. We've just never left Blantyre behind [laughs].

Are soundtracks still going to be part of what we can expect fromMogwai?

Yeah, well, I mean we've actually done one since we finished the album, which I don't think I'm allowed to say what it is, but it's the kind of thing that everyone will probably get a chance to see. So yeah, I think it's just great to be able to keep making music and apply what we do to a different medium. I guess we will keep doing it, it depends if we keep getting asked. But yeah, we've done another one so at least one person asked us.

You said that this album and getting together was a bit of a release through the music and it was quite a cathartic experience after a lot of challenges. Lots of people would've been walking around at different stages in their life listening to Mogwai as a backdrop challenging times. Is that something that you think is a very positive aspect of creating music, that the songs can have that effect on people?

Absolutely. I don’t know if you've seen the documentary that Antony Crook made, but in his film, the last part of it is people specifically talking about that, about music, helping them get through hard, hard parts of their life - in one case, extremely hard. And I find that quite emotional to be honest. And it's maybe something that I hadn't thought about too much, but maybe we've had a hard time that's kind of resonated quite a lot during the period of making this record. Definitely.

Someone once asked Alasdair Gray why he lived in Glasgow when he could be creative anywhere. Why do you live in Glasgow?

It's mainly the weather [laughs]. I think we just feel at home here. We're part of the music community and feel quite supported, but also it's quite an inspiring place. There's an awful lot of talented people around here, and if you're around other talented people, you're in that mindset.

Most of my friends are either involved in the arts in some way, or they're creative people who make things. And that’s not to say that wouldn't be the case if we lived somewhere else, but if we all lived somewhere else, it would certainly make band practise a bit of a challenge.

There's a list that comes out every year from Time Out, of best cities in the world. Glasgow was one of them for 2025, and it specifically mentions the music scene and I always feel that its important that Glasgow is a place that bands want to come to, a place where you can make a start and could go from King Tut’s to The Hydro. In your experience, is it important for Glasgow to be a city where, if you have the glimmer of an idea, you can find a stage and get things going?

Yeah. And I actually think it's one of the things I thought was so sad about the 13th Note closing because that was such an important place for us. I’ve heard it might reopen, and I hope it does. But that was such an important place for us to play numerous times to get better at what we were doing.

And I think that Glasgow still has other places too. There's definitely a really good ecosystem for bands to be very successful in all kinds of music. Not just the stuff we do, but there are places for people to get opportunities to work on their music and get better and better and, in some cases, breakthrough, which is really great.