not one of the most likely pairings, and from what i've heard about one certain band's treatment of the other band - a position that i don't think will be accepted again. but the manics with their militant hordes of fans, number one single, beer anthems, five albums and their own television documentary, and mogwai with one of the most brilliant and underrated debut albums of the year...
hm. i'll start this one again and try to take an unbiased view. a sensible thing, and almost a death trap for the 'gwai, since port talbot was the manics' only welsh gig of this small tour before they move on to the stadium-esque venues later on. so with a few thousand people back to witness the manics' first major action this year, mogwai would just be an obstruction. defiantly scottish to the last with flag and celtic shirts, they come on stage looking more scared than i'm sure they'd ever been in their life. but the show must go on (cue ironic hindsight), so true to form, they delivered a blazing version of ithica, a typical slow-pace fast-burn mogwai classic. although the quiet, insistent buildup was totally lost on the crowd who drowning out the band's best efforts with a discussion on nicky wire's new haircut or something. but no-one could ignore the walls of distortion bleeding out of the pa. and it even got a large round of applause from the crowd as it died away. strange lot of fans. it was unfortunate that most people didn't really care about the song but loved the 'loud bits'. all through 'helicon 2', a quiet little number, all you could hear was people discussing james dean bradfield's new underpants or something. it may be a credit to them, that by the end of an unfortunately nervously truncated version of 'xmas steps', stuart had to tell the football-chant section of the crowd who were shouting 'mog-wai, mog-wai' to keep quiet. because the true strength of mogwai's tunes is contrast. after a fantastically slow-burning 'helicon 1', they left the crowd with a blinding 'like herod' collapsing into a pure static/feedback-fest doctored with as many effects and guitars rubbing against amps as any heavy rawk band you could mention. so even though they are the most innovative and simply brilliant band on the planet (damn. i said it.), tonight most people just wanted a big noise before the manics. and if it'll recruit the band a few new fans - what the hell. just watching stuart stand there, eyes shut, guitar aloft, oscillating his body almost comically, like one of those little streamers that you put on the front of fans to show that they're working, blasted by the pure winds of hell and letting the sound flow right on out. and we all know what tunes the devil has. mogwai are the future of sound, kids. get used to it.
the manics are years on in to their career, gone from the goth-4-real-extreme to the white-suited art-posing of the cover of their new album 'this is my truth, tell me yours'. it is unfortunate that all bands have to mature this way bloated with fans who just want to hear that 'i only want to get drunk' song or that one about australia. the manics are now unfortunately long enough in the tooth to be thinking about giving it up for the stadiums. there's an awful feeling of resignation here tonight - not helped by the fact that it reads simply a greatest hits package. we get hardly any songs from the new album - all discarded for the surefire hits. which is, of course, not always a bad thing. it is easy to be cynical about their opener 'if you tolerate this...', number one single sell-out etc... but tonight it sounds far fresher than the record - the guitars are as sharp as ever, drums are precisely on target and the bass grooves through the whole song giving it a far more raw feeling than the overproduced and blander lp cut. and things seem to be going alright. james has apologised to us, he's apparently got a 'bit of a cold coming on', but songs like 'australia' and 'faster' are of top quality and come across with few scars. the wire-lead bass groovealong of 'la tristesse durera' shows the manics on their very top form tonight. unfortunately things start going a bit to pieces after that. when we do see some of the new material, 'tsunami', 'the everlasting' and 'you stole the sun from my heart' the pace slows and the band have found themselves right in the middle of stadium territory. dead string lines (the one keyboard player on stage managed to supplement many of the songs with a dead cool hammond sound, but as soon as he has his faux-strings solo...) and choruses that go nowhere. apart from an amazing performance of 'motorcycle emptiness' - a song which just stamps all over their new material and leaves it dead - things just go from bad to james' 'acoustic' bit. and to close tonight, the band perform a tragically limp and unemotive 'you love us', without any of the old fire, instead leaving the stage to the lighter-swaying 'design for life'.
although many i'm sure shared a completely different view from me - discussing sean's new socks or something, i found the whole thing pretty depressing. the manics have had their day, but mogwai have only just begun.
