Howl out loud with Mogwai
By Innes Weir - Mogwai return on September 22 with their sixth album, The Hawk Is Howling. Happy music for happy people? You're having a laugh.
"Our music's always been pretty morbid, but we're actually quite content as people," says Stuart Braithwaite. "It's an inner darkness that comes out of us when we record.
"But we're happy with this one. It's an open album - heavy, minimal, spacious."
Recorded at The Delgados' Chem 19 studio in Glasgow, the band were well aware of their fans' expectations.
"It's not as if we're U2," says Stuart. "But we've reached a level with our music where we didn't want to f*** it all up with a disappointing record.
"It gets harder to write new music - you don't want to repeat yourself or basically make a s*** version of what you've done before. It's daunting."
With the pressure on, the band had to stop themselves over-elaborating.
"Fixating on detail is pointless," says Stuart. "You can become obsessed with tiny details that no-one else cares about and you just need to crack on.
"We tour for a year, then record for a year and try to stick to that. You get 52 weeks to record 10 songs - that's not too bad, is it? Jimi Hendrix put out three albums a year in his day."
Typically, the album is littered with bizarre song titles like I Love You, I'm Going To Blow Up Your School.
"The song titles are dumb, they're meaningless," explains Stuart, 32.
"We get people coming up to us with crazy interpretations of our songs all the time. I've done it with my favourite bands too; thinking a lyric's really flippant when it actually turns out to be about Dostoyevsky."
But with no lyrics to hang on to, don't Mogwai invite this confusion?
"I suppose so, but that's all part of the fun," says Stuart. "We've had vocals on a few songs in the past, but none of the tracks on this record sounded like they needed it.
"On top of that, we're just not that great at singing. And our own studio was out of action too; The Fratellis had just bought the building!"
New single Batcat is a taste of Mogwai at their most brutal - but not typical of the album as a whole.
"We're not a singles band, so we wanted to put out a track that was a departure from our normal sound," says Stuart.
"We released Friend Of The Night from the Mr Beast album and, even though I think it's a great song, no-one noticed it; it sounded so typical of what we do. Batcat might be a bit different..."