Super Furry Animals

The Central Hotel on Dublin's Exchequer Street could be renamed Hangover Central. It's the lunchtime after Paddy's night and the Library Bar in the city centre hotel is peopled by the muzzy, the meek and the melted heads as the after effects of drowning the memory of our national saint kick in with a vengeance.

A decidedly ropy-looking Stuart Braithwaite, guitarist, and Martin Bulloch, drummer, from Mogwai look about half as bad as I feel. Thank God. The last thing I could face now is a pair of bright and breezy Glaswegians extolling the virtues of their new album. Although, Mogwai would be well within their rights to do just that. Their latest magnum opus, Come On Die Young, is an instrumental meisterwork, at times as gentle and tender as the Andrex puppy and then coming on all guns blazing with the ferocity and intensity of a rabid Rottweiler. It is, quite simply, the canine's wedding tackle.

Stuart is wearing the same dodgy hat that he has on in the promo shots, giving him the air of a kamikaze pilot with a really bad hangover, as both he and Martin settle themselves into comfortable armchairs in an attempt to somehow ease the alcohol-induced agony. It transpires that they spent the previous evening in the Mean Fiddler where their friends Snow Patrol were putting the audience through their paces. Having extolled the virtues of Irish Guinness and cursed our hangovers for a few minutes of mutual sympathy, we get down to business.

Mogwai formed in the summer of 1995, when Stuart got together with Dominic Aitchison, bassist. Martin joined a couple of weeks later: "I'd just got back from Glastonbury and got a phone-call from Stuart. I was really excited because we'd played together a few times before and I was in a really shit band anyway and was looking for an excuse to no be wi' them," he smiles.

The then three-piece started playing live and recorded a seven-inch single, and then they recruited another guitarist John, and the three became four. Former Teenage Fanclub member Brendan O'Hare was involved in the early days as well, but has since left for pastures new.

From the very start, Mogwai enjoyed tremendous critical adulation, notching up singles of the week like they were going out of fashion and picking up rave reviews for their increasingly powerful live show, the aural equivalent of a tsunami, as wave after wave of eardrum-beating chords wash over a usually stunned audience. But did this critical adoration mean anything to them or was it just a pleasant distraction?

"We didn't think we were cool because of it," smiles Stuart, "but I can't pretend it wasn't handy. It was easier to get gigs and labels were more interested because they know you get press."

However, critical acclaim certainly hasn't gone to their heads. Martin, for example, still holds down a day job.

"We used to go down to London to do a gig and then it was straight off stage and drive back to Glasgow," recalls Stuart. "To do that and have no-one give a shit, we probably would have just stopped. It's nice that people got behind us. But I don't think it made that much difference at the start. Even after we'd had two single-of-the-weeks, we were still playing to 40 people."

"I think it was when we played the first NME show at the Astoria with Pavement that really swung it for us," opines Martin. "That's when we started to get busy gigs in London. I think we took a lot of people by surprise that night—they weren't expecting anything from us."

As their star continued its ascent, both the press and public started to get precious about Mogwai and their music ("Apart from us," laughs Stuart) to the point where it almost became an underground, elitist, "we don't want you to sell a million albums" view.

"I find a lot of the people who used to come and see us early doors don't come to see us any more," muses Martin.

"I think they've moved on to some other obscure band," adds Stuart with a sly smile. "We got too mainstream for them after a while, I reckon."

"But the people who were really into it for the right reasons are still there," says Martin.

"There were a lot of fanzine people who were really mortified that we were playing big gigs and talking to the NME and stuff like that," laughs Stuart.

"I prefer big gigs," continues Martin. "You can hear what you're doing. There's no crime in wanting to let loads and loads of people hear your music."

So they've no desire to be cult heroes then?

"I don't think we'll ever be mainstream," notes Stuart. "I'd class bands like The Pixies and The Cramps as cult bands and we never sold as many records as them. I still think we have cultish prospects. We're never going to make daytime radio, unless we just sell out," he laughs before getting all serious again. "That's such a bad thought I couldn't even entertain it."

Listening to tracks like the beautiful "Chocky" or the manic "May Nothing But Happiness Come Through Your Door", you get the impression that they will never write a standard verse/chorus middle-eight song.

"It's good to break away from that sort of stuff," ventures Martin. "There's no point in sounding like everyone else. We try to make the songs flow as best they can."

"We could easily do an album of songs that was the same chord the whole way through and it would sound pretty good but it would be lazy. We always want to move on a wee bit," adds Stuart.

"It is actually like the way another band would do it, we just don't call them the choruses. We call it 'the change', 'the other change' and other very mathematical terminology like 'play the thingamejig'."

Could they ever see themselves writing a three-minute pop song?

"I don't know," smiles Stuart. "We could probably do a good 'Lucky Man' sort of thing, called 'I'm A Jammy Cunt'."

At this point they collapse into fits of laughter. True to form, Mogwai have never been afraid of slagging off other bands whose music they dislike. "We were talking about it today," chuckles Stuart, "and one of these days we're going to get the shit kicked out of us. I have to do a thing for the NME called Heroes and Villains where I have to tell them who we hate, and I reckon somebody's going to hook us. If someone said that about us, we'd kick their head in."

"We're going to run into someone at a festival who we've slagged off and forgotten about it and they're just going to hammer us cos we're not exactly big guys, are we?" predicts Martin.

It hasn't happened them yet, getting hassle from someone they've taken the piss out of?

"Nah, we give out hassle," grins Martin, "when we're pished and stuff."

"We've calmed down a lot, though, cos what's the fucking point? Especially since a lot of the bands we really, really hate are so insignificant," adds Stuart.

"Then again, you meet people from bands that you're not particularly fond of and they're really nice folk and you end up hanging about with them," smiles Martin.

I'm in the middle of asking them about their new album when Stuart points over at someone reading a copy of this very organ at the next table and whispers excitedly, "That's us. That's a picture of us!" The new album could make such recognition much more frequent. As they freely admit, Mogwai's music is not radio-friendly, at least not with our Jurassic Hits FM stations, but it is capable of reaching a wider audience and making the affable Glaswegians household names in all the right houses.

Come On Die Young has received rave reviews so far, but Stuart is not convinced whether the press will remain on their side for long.

"I reckon we're due a few kickings," he smiles. "I'd say three out of 10 reviews could be pretty harsh, just because we're still an acquired taste. You can't give them to the same people who reviewed the last one, so it's going to land on someone's desk who thinks it's shit."

However much or little he values the opinion of the press, Stuart and Mogwai do respect the views of their peers, with bands like Pavement, Primal Scream and My Bloody Valentine in particular praising the Glasgow boys for what they do. David Holmes even went so far as to name his Belfast café/bar after the band.

However, the Belfast superkid also displays a healthy disrespect for his Glaswegian muckers. There was an incident referred to in a previous interview where David Holmes allegedly walloped one of the members of Mogwai.

"He whacked me over the fucking head," Martin claims with a grin. "I don't think he meant it—he was just pished. He asked me if I was a Celtic fan and when I said I was he said 'Fuck, yeah', hit me and then went 'Good man'. It was dead sore."

Mogwai's appreciation society works both ways, though. While they are quick to belittle the bands they dislike, they are just as quick to promote the sort of music that moves them.

However, it isn't just other bands that feel their ire. Last year, the Glasgow suburb of South Lanarkshire was involved in a draconian curfew scheme, where everyone under the age of 16 had to be indoors before 9pm. Mogwai were one of the bands who spoke out against this, even releasing an EP entitled No Education = No Future (Fuck The Curfew). This was obviously something they felt strongly about, but is it the place of a rock band to involve themselves in what is a political affair?

"I would agree with that to a certain extent," notes Stuart. "When you see Bono from U2 going on about the third world debt, you're like, 'what the fuck do you know?'. But it was the fact that no-one was saying anything about it and they were just accepting it. These people are being shat on, and especially the fact that it was only in the run-down estates, it wasn't in the middle-class areas. The bourgeoisie can walk free while the proles are locked indoors."

"They just try to sweep all the problems from these sort of areas under the carpet and not deal with them," interjects Martin. "It's so stupid."

Back to Stuart: "It was a big PR thing, they brought the cameras in. They're in the New York Times. People must think Hamilton is like the Bronx. It's not. I mean it's where Martin lives."

"If it had happened 10 years ago it would have affected me," Martin says. "You can't take kids' childhoods away from them."

"There are so many really stupid policies at the moment in Scotland and it's not our place to highlight them, but no-one else said anything about it," notes Stuart. "I don't regret it, but we're not going to try to do Live Aid 2 or anything."

However, political issues aside, Mogwai are a rock band, and as such they have garnered quite a reputation for going a bit mad when they're on the road. Is it deserved?

"It can be true, to a certain extent," admits Martin. "Not to the point where it's going to affect gigs. We used to get unbelievably fucked before going on stage, but we heard tapes of the gigs and they were awful, so we had to stop. But aye, we do have a few drinks."

None of the rock 'n' roll clichés of trashing hotel rooms for these boys though.

"Cos someone's got to clean it up," says Martin. "There's no need for that. It's just spoilt little wanker fuckin' bands that do that. Someone's mum's got to go in and clean that mess up. That's shite.

I used to work in the fucking service industry. I used to have to clean up vomit in the morning after people being sick in bogs. It's not nice. Don't do it kids."

So now that the album is finally seeing the light of day, Mogwai can concentrate on doing what they do best, getting back on the road and playing live.

"Thank God the interviews are over," smiles Stuart. "No offence, this interview is perfectly pleasant, but it's about the 200th one we've done in the last three weeks. It's coming to a close, and I'll be quite glad when the record's actually out and we can see what real people think of it," he laughs.

Do you get sick of interviews?

"I'd say one in three is good and you just have a chat, but some people come in with an agenda and try to fool you into saying stupid things," notes Stuart. "Sometimes they get you in a mellow mood and try to get you to slag off other bands. One guy said to John that there were no good bands with girls in them. He wanted John to agree with him, to say that girls are shit and they can't play."

Have they ever confronted a journalist after an interview was printed?

"No, cos our press officer would probably kill us," says Martin. "There's one particular guy that we'd quite like to give a slap but we wouldn't really."