In fact, so beset by peals of screeching white noise is Beat’s conversation with Braithwaite, that you could almost drop the chat into the middle of a Mogwai record and no-one would be any the wiser.
Where then in the world is Braithwaite? Given the aching ten-second delay on the phone line, one might expect the answer to be the Bermuda Triangle, or the surface of Mars. But no. Braithwaite was holed up in a hotel in Sydney, gearing up to play the band’s single date antipodean tour; an in-and-out trip that saw them wow the punters at Tasmania’s Dark Mofo festival. “I’m just getting used to being over here, so still feeling a little bit spaced out,” he says, cheerfully. “It’s okay though. We’re just happy to come and play.”
The band were in our part of the world to drum up advance publicity for Every Country’s Sun, their unforgiving, ninth record. And although Braithwaite would have you believe that he doesn’t get too stressed about playing shows anymore – “I’m kind of beyond that,” he says, “cause it’s just something that we’re lucky to be able to do” – he does admit that playing new material is a different experience altogether.
“To be honest, we’ve done a few shows recently playing the new stuff and that was quite nerve-wracking. That was a different experience. It just makes you feel slightly out of your comfort zone when you start playing music that people haven’t necessarily heard before.”
Not that the band needed to have worried. Every Country’s Sun is the kind of bold work that critics fall over themselves to call things like assured, masterful and unfaltering. There’s not a dud song in the thing; not a track that doesn’t make your hands blossom up into fists and your jaw harden. It’s anthemic, it’s titanium strong, and it’s exactly as powerful and career-defining as the band’s best work.
Not that you can really tell Braithwaite that. He’s in no mood to take that many steps back – mostly because he can’t; because he can never see the piece as part of a big picture until long, long after it is done and released into the world. “When you’re writing it, you’re so immersed in the project and immersed in the task at hand, a lot of these things don’t come into your consciousness.
“A lot of songs on the new record are things that we haven’t really tried before. But while we were making it, we were trying to make it as good as it could possibly be. We weren’t even taking a step back and looking at it in terms of how it fit in with our other stuff.”
For Braithwaite, writing music is a balancing act. He has the concerns of his band to think about – he has to think about the kind of unified front Mogwai project as a group of musicians who have been playing with one another for some time now – but he can never lose sight of the fans, either. “Music is a shared experience. We’re definitely not cynical people, so we would never make music that we didn’t like. But at the same time, it’s music for everyone. It’s not a selfish process. It’s totally at the back of your mind, but it’s certainly not the ultimate thing. The ultimate thing is just to do something that you’re proud of.”
Ultimately, for Braithwaite, music is a form of communication. It is a thing to be shared; something to be passed around; something that unites. He has something to say to that effect, but the screeching hiss of phone feedback mostly cuts him off. “You make music that has an effect on other people,” he says, his voice just audible through the barrage of noise. “It’s fun to play music and it’s fun to write music. But it doesn’t really exist until it’s out in other people’s lives as well.”
