Song Recommendation: Mogwai - “Fanzine Made of Flesh” (2025)

Mogwai’s new album, The Bad Fire, is, true to its name, an absolute scorcher of a record. Top to bottom it’s packed with a fantastic mix of all the slightly disparate modes that Mogwai have deployed in their nearly 30 year career: there’s that incredible quiet-loud-quiet-LOUD thing that they perfected back with Mr. Beast, good crunchy guitars like on the majestically dour Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will, there’s plenty of great synth work, like from their underrated Atomic, and, hell, they even take some cues from the likes of Black Moth Super Rainbow and commit to the woozy aesthetics of the vocoder. And best of all, with The Bad Fire it really seems like they make the mix just work. I’ll point out “Fanzine Made of Flesh” as a starting point if you don’t want to just give the full album a go. Playing almost like if BMSR’s side project, TOBACCO, collaborated with early 2000’s Grandaddy to try to score a low budget version of The Lego Movie.