Artist Spotlight: Mogwai’s Top 10 Essential Tracks 🎸
Discover Mogwai's 10 most essential tracks from Young Team to Rave Tapes - "Mogwai Fear Satan," "Like Herod," and why Glasgow's post-rock pioneers remain unmatched.
The Glasgow pioneers who proved instrumental rock could be both devastatingly loud and heartbreakingly beautiful.
Most post-rock bands built cathedrals of sound. Mogwai learned how to destroy them and rebuild them when you least expected it. Since 1995, Stuart Braithwaite, Dominic Aitchison, Martin Bulloch, and Barry Burns have created music that defies the limitations of instrumental rock—too emotional to be merely experimental, too ferocious to be ambient, too varied to be predictable. From the epochal 16-minute epics of their debut to their chart-topping recent work, they’ve influenced everyone from Explosions in the Sky to modern shoegaze bands while maintaining an uncompromising vision. Here are the 10 tracks that capture their evolution from Glasgow upstarts to post-rock legends.
10. “Remurdered” (2014)
Album: Rave Tapes
Stuart Braithwaite called this “maybe the best song on that record,” and it’s easy to hear why. “Remurdered” represents Mogwai at their most accessible yet still distinctly themselves—it could have been played on the radio without compromising their vision. The track benefits from the success of their Les Revenants soundtrack, which brought them to a wider audience. It’s hypnotic, building with purpose rather than just volume, proving that by their eighth album they’d mastered the art of restraint as much as explosion.
9. “Batcat” (2008)
Album: The Hawk Is Howling
Leaping out of the squalling feedback that closes “I’m Jim Morrison, I’m Dead,” this track hits with heavy metal-inspired distorted riffing and squealing guitars. Where most Mogwai songs feature quiet-loud dynamics, “Batcat” is essentially full-throttle from start to finish—loud/loud dynamics building to a louder still finale. The lyrics, distorted beyond comprehension, apparently scream nothing but “Bat cat! Meow meow meow meow” over and over. It’s their most uncompromising statement of pure aggression, proof they could still destroy when they wanted to.
8. “Kids Will Be Skeletons” (2003)
Album: Happy Songs for Happy People
Mogwai’s songs had been pretty before, but not in the dense, glowing way “Kids Will Be Skeletons” achieves. Barry Burns’ keyboards and vocoder feel not just integrated but essential here, creating something ingratiating even when it feels like an iceberg collapsing on your head. This track from Happy Songs for Happy People expanded their palette significantly, picking up a much wider audience while maintaining their core identity. It’s beautiful and overwhelming simultaneously.
