Mogwai – Vicar St – 26/07/25 – Live Review
by Killian Laher

Mogwai are a band who have been ploughing their largely instrumental, guitar-laden furrow for about 30 years now.  No longer the purely visceral noisemakers of old, if anything, they’re a much subtler beast these days, still loud but with the growing presence of keyboards in their music.

First up were Scottish band Cloth, who released their third album a few months ago, but it’s their first visit to Ireland on tour.  Opening with Pink Silence, twins Rachael and Paul Swinton on guitars showed some skilled interplay on the likes of Golden and Polaroid.  Accompanied by a drummer, the tight trio played a couple of older tracks, such as Ladder, before finishing off with a rocked-up rendition of their debut single Demo Love.  A support act well worth catching.

At this stage in their career, Mogwai are fairly accomplished musicians, and their set leaned heavily on their more upbeat material.  They began with the opening two on this year’s The Bad Fire album, the slowly building God Gets You Back and Hi Chaos, the latter of which built towards one of several noise blasts.  New Paths to Helicon (pt 1) was an early highlight, again building towards an extremely heavy climax, while Rano Pano’s crunchy guitars were also good and loud.

While nominal frontman Stuart Braithwaite took charge of between song chat, it was Barry Burns who delivered the distorted vocals on Ritchie Sacramento and Fanzine Made of Flesh.  Pale Vegan Hip Pain was almost a ‘wave-yr-hands-in-the-air’ moment, leading into a stretched-out 2 Rights Make 1 Wrong, which again culminated in some glorious noise.  They powered through a sinister Remurdered and the colossal, lumbering We’re No Here before finishing their set with Lion Rumpus.

After returning for a blissed-out Every Country’s Sun, they finished with Mogwai Fear Satan, the band playing the old trick of building very quietly before hammering you with a blast of noise.  You know it’s coming, but it still scares the hell out of you when it arrives.

A surprisingly euphoric and uplifting night.  While at this stage in their career, their music could be described as comfortable, they are still among the finest practitioners of this kind of music, and they have some wonderful pieces of music in their back catalogue.