Learn to Keep Your Mouth Shut, Stuart Braithwaite

Mogwai are a curious musical proposition: talkative off the pitch, traps shut on it. Those kings of post-rock favor an intense instrumentalism that, when played on stage, rarely finds them saying a word. On albums, guest vocalists have popped up on occasion, but for the most part the Scottish quintet have displayed a considerable consistency: they play music, not sing songs.

Yet, away from their brooding, epic, wordless works, Mogwai have earnt a reputation for being needling pranksters, publicly ranting about such dubious cultural institutions as Blur, Test Icicles, and Pitchfork Media. Not to mention the comedy that comes from naming their subject-free songs things like "I'm Jim Morrison, I'm Dead," "I Am Not Batman," and "Punk Rock/Puff Daddy/Antichrist."

Before this weekend's All Tomorrow's Parties festival in New York —which will find Mogwai playing at the same jamboree as their heroes, recently-reunited shoegaze originators My Bloody Valentine— I spoke to Mogwai founding father Stuart Braithwaite. Across the course of our conversation, he shared such sage wisdoms as: "A lot of people who write instrumental music, if they were being honest, would have to say their music wasn’t actually about anything. But a lot of people lie!"

The chit-chat comes in anticipation of the next-Tuesday release of Mogwai's sixth studio album, The Hawk Is Howling, by the morally-upright upright mammals of the Matador Records clan. Thanks to said label, curious listeners can try before they buy, too, with a compressed audio file of the surprisingly bubbly "The Sun Smells Too Loud" being blithely bandied about. So, stick a sock in it and soak it up.

Photo © [Steve Gullick]