The Bad Fire by Mogwai review: 'atmospheric and assured'

Mogwai’s new album attests to the band’s natural chemistry and their desire for dynamism, writes Fiona Shepherd

Mogwai | Steve Gullick

Mogwai: The Bad Fire (Rock Action) ★★★★

Rufus Wainwright: Dream Requiem (Warner Classics) ★★★★

Rhona Macfarlane: As The Chaos Unfolds (self-released) ★★★★

For the first time in a 30-year career, Mogwai are preparing to follow up a chart-topping album. Following the most genial chart battle of recent times, their 2021 lockdown release As The Love Continues beat Ghetts to Number One with a little help from a good-natured social media campaign.

Are they feeling any pressure? Not that you’d know it. Their 11th album, The Bad Fire, is as assured and atmospheric as you would expect, even as it was forged against a background of loss and serious family illness for some of the band members – hence the title, which is Scots slang for hell.

Taster track God Gets You Back is indeed tasty with Barry Burns’ synth arpeggios to the fore, evoking the work of John Carpenter or Ryuichi Sakamoto’s soundtrack to Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence with added doomy drones and wiggy modulation. When the vocoder vocals and melodic shafts of sound are applied, the results are practically electro pop.

Fanzine Made of Flesh is more pop, Mogwai-style - a cross between ABBA, Kraftwerk and Swervedriver, according to frontman Stuart Braithwaite. One out of three ain’t bad.

In keeping with their desire for dynamism, Hi Chaos ditches the synths for guitars. Its Nineties alt.rock drive is both tough and trance-like, upping the ante at every turn, while What Kind of Mix Is This? is a return to their trademark bruising shoegaze slowcore.

Pale Vegan Hip Pain is a vintage Mogwai title, even by their irreverent standards, but manifests as a lovely, plangent instrumental lament with sonorous solo guitar. Likewise, the waggishly-named If You Find This World Bad, You Should See Some Of The Others is actually a dolorous but dignified seven-minute centrepiece.

Diverse attractions remain, attesting to the natural chemistry of the band even at a time of personal duress. Braithwaite’s wan, breathy vocals strike a vulnerable note on 18 Volcanoes with fuzz guitar, pounding bassline and spiralling synths all held in check, the melodic analogue synth pop of Hammer Room is spurred on by rhythmic guitars and previous single Lion Rumpus is good propulsive fun ahead of soothing coda Fact Boy.

Rufus Wainwright | Miranda Penn Turin

Rufus Wainwright’s latest classical opus, Dream Requiem, is both beautiful and grimly apposite. Originally composed during lockdown in his Laurel Canyon home while wildfires raged around him, this recording of its 2024 Paris performance by the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, conducted by Mikko Franck, is released as wildfires once more lash the Californian coast.

This is a requiem mass for our times – and there is much to lament – inspired by Verdi’s Requiem but also spliced with suitably authoritative readings by Meryl Streep of Lord Byron’s poem “The Darkness”, which was itself inspired by a climate altering natural disaster - the far-reaching 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia which lowered temperatures around the world.

Soprano Anna Prohaska is the other beseeching solo voice, piercing the exquisite melancholy of the adult and children’s choruses, while different sections of the orchestra seize their moment to shine. It’s Wainwright’s world, so there is melodrama to spare, with baroque, romance and plainsong influences in the shape-shifting mix, moments of tremulous sorrow and contrasting exultant climaxes.

Rhona Macfarlane | Lucinda Lewis

Singer/songwriter Rhona Macfarlane draws on her folk music upbringing and classical training at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland for her accomplished debut album, As the Chaos Unfolds, which documents the uncertain times of her mid-twenties with poise.

Inspired by a visit to her native Montrose, the sighing strings and a pop touch of opening track Return to the East gives way to husky country pop (July Rain), fragrant piano balladry (Let The River Flow) and the classy torch pop of the closing title track, inspired by Sunset Song.

CLASSICAL

My Heart’s in the Highlands: Burns | Hahn | Lehmann | Schumann | MacRae (Delphian) ★★★★

My Heart’s in the Highlands is a timely showcase for Inverness-born tenor Glen Cunningham, given his recent title-role triumph in Britten’s Albert Herring for Scottish Opera. Together with pianist Anna Tilbrook, it’s also a thought-provoking reminder of how composers and arrangers across centuries, borders and cultures have responded to texts by the likes of Robert Burns and Robert Louis Stevenson. Schumann’s multi-hued Burns settings from the Myrthen Op25 Lieder are insightfully free-flowing. Reynaldo Hahn’s Stevenson settings of Five Little Songs make no apology for their characterful, carefree amusement. Among sundry arrangements are the exceptional sensitivity of Scots composer Claire Liddell’s “Ca’ the yowes”, and the virtuosic levity of her “Wee Willie Gray”. What really sets this alight, though, is Stuart MacRae’s newly-commissioned Five Stevenson Songs, where imaginative sophistication rubs shoulders with magical enticement, wistful supplication, manic ecstasy, and much more. Ken Walton

JAZZ

Misha Mullov-Abbado: Effra (Ubuntu Music) ★★★★

The Effra is one of London’s “lost” rivers, flowing now beneath the Brixton area, home to bassist Misha Mullov-Abbado, who leads a muscular and inventive, horn-rich sextet in his eight-track celebration of Brixton’s cultural melting pot and his life there. The punchy Traintracker kicks off, Liam Dunachie’s piano and a catchy brass hook preparing the ground for some deft sax soloing (Matthew Herd and Sam Rapley) and a concise break from drummer Scott Chapman before a final trumpet flourish from James Davison. In contrast, the gentle piano chimes and brass drift of Rose shed a spell of their own as bass and piano spell out the melody, Mullov-Abbado’s solo dwelling on it fondly. Elsewhere, Dunachie particularly sparkles in the fast-moving Canção de Sobriedade, while the ebullient roistering of The Effra Parade – particularly by trumpeter James Davison – suggests that the titular street must be a lively thoroughfare indeed. Jim Gilchrist