Gig review: Mogwai at Brudenell Social Club

Here amid their ongoing thirtieth anniversary, the Scottish post-rock wizards offer a ninety-five minute set that fully maximises their catch-and-release euphoria.

“So you know, we’re not doing requests,” Mogwai frontman Stuart Braithwaite offers halfway through the band’s opening night of a two-date underplay run at the Brudenell Social Club.

Twiddling his headstock in the semi-darkness, the Lanark-born singer-songwriter barks a dry laugh. “We’ve got to practice these songs! If we didn’t, you’d all lose the will to live. But thanks for the interest.”

For a band more accustomed to the mid-level halls of the nation’s four-figure capacity circuit, the chance to be up close and personal with the Scottish post-rock wizards is not necessarily the rarity some might assume. But several-hundred miles down the road, they hold a prized place within the Leeds music scene; they opened the Brudenell Community Room just a few steps away on the other side of the bar nine years ago, and their frequent returns to the city often feel like cause for garlanded celebration, with stardust sprinkled amongst the sonics.

Here amid their ongoing thirtieth anniversary celebrations, they offer a ninety-five-minute set that stretches the breadth of their existence, spanning from 1997 debut Mogwai Young Team to 2021’s unexpected chart-topper As the Love Continues and last year’s well-fêted The Bad Fire with characteristic finesse. The question over whether Mogwai will deliver a terrific show is particularly redundant these days; the real mystery lingers on how they can render a rich catalogue of obsidian-slab compositions to fully maximise their catch-and-release euphoria.

They manifest those emotions with plenty of fan favourites and a surprisingly dense array of vocal deliveries; God Gives You Back’s vague choral storm and I'm Jim Morrison, I'm Dead’s glacial eruption give way to Killing All the Flies and Fanzine Made of Flesh’s heavily vocoded rumbles. Ritchie Sacramento meanwhile still remains a latter-day highlight - but it is with the space-age ache of Every Country’s Sun bleeding into Mogwai Fear Satan’s cinematic climax that stops an already rapt crowd dead in its tracks. “We’ll see you soon enough,” Braithwaite promises before Like Herod’s concussive crescendos play them out. It is a promise they will be held to.