Mogwai / My Disco!

Andy J Ryan Mar 20, 2023

Mogwai - Metro Theatre, 20 July 2006
With their latest album Mr Beast bringing Mogwai back to Australia, they played the Metro in Sydney en-route to perform at Splendour in the Grass.†
My Disco! do some really bad, nasty things to music. The guitar is held high and close, enhancing each berating strum, the drumming is robotic in its precision and some deep dark rumbling emanates from the bass. The overall effect is tight and jaggedly intense. The band is challenging, unquestioningly talented with members each drawing their sounds from a broad musical base. My Disco! seem destined for devotees as intense as their sound.
The Metro is well and truly crowded for the start of Mogwai. The band casually walks onstage, all with matching Rangers jackets, and utter the first of few words for the evening "Hi we're Mogwai, from Glasgow". It doesn't take long to become entwined within the grip of Mogwai's music. The rather apt Yes! I Am A Long Way From Home gets things rolling before the slow burning pairing of newer tracks Friend of the Night and Travel is Dangerous. Discarding their jackets seemed to be the unspoken cue for the band to really get cracking, forging ahead with almost comparatively compact versions of Ithica and Tracy either side of a tottering Ratts of the Capital. The set flows from the utterly beautiful to intense and piercing and at times powerfully brutal - Mogwai Fear Satan should have a health warning issued before it is played, such is the jolt it delivers at its crescendo.
Ending with a bounding Glasgow Mega Snake there was almost a palpable drawing of breath from the crowd, gracious for the moment's reprieve as the band exited the stage. After some boisterous cheering, no doubt to be heard over the ringing in most folks ears, Mogwai returned for the ear melting coupling of You Don't know Jesus and left us for the last time with an extended squall loosely derived from We're No Here. It is indeed a testament to the music that it can physically overcome a person, the soaring volumes attained combined with the (perhaps over zealously used) strobe lighting did prove to be too much for some, but those who braved the (Mr) beast that is a Mogwai set could not help but be caught up in the amazing assortment of moods and noise.