'Really Old' But Still Keen To Party

23 February 2015 | 10:33 am | Tyler McLoughlan

Barry Burns plans to get wild in Aus, even if he's a fan of slippers.

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As Mogwai begin the last run of touring in support of their eighth studio album,
Rave Tapes
, guitarist Barry Burns contemplates how he feels to be celebrating 20 years in the business.   

“Really old,” he starts with a big laugh from the bar he owns in Berlin. “It’s difficult not to think about that because I remember being a teenager and lookin’ at The Rolling Stones and thinkin’ ‘God, it’s pretty sad that they’re still goin’,’ and now despite havin’ like a hundredth of their success, we’re doin’ the same thing… We’ll have a big party for it but you get the feelin’ that a good half an hour after the party starts, that we might go home and put our slippers on and go to bed. We’re still gonna go for it when we go to Australia; because of the jet lag, you just have to go crazy on the drink.”

"I don’t know about the rest of the band to be honest, but I’ve started to write songs for a new record already."

 

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Burns is a super-lovely bloke who’s happier chatting about gigs that have moved him to tears and his coveted copy of Tales From The Australian Underground – Singles 1976-1989 than the reasons for Mogwai’s longevity, though this distinct lack of rock-star ego on all levels has certainly contributed. “[For the Australian shows we’ll have] magicians, dancers, tigers, lions, all that!” he roars with laughter, before conceding, “I dunno, we just come over and play a concert like we always do. There’s never anything special, just people tryin’ very hard to play insanely difficult music!”

As conversation turns to the events of the past year and the reception from the use of a more electronic palette across Rave Tapes, Burns shares one of the biggest insights from 20 years with Mogwai. 

“It’s nice to be at that stage when it’s almost – apart from the Australian and New Zealand and Asian dates – it’s pretty much finished for [Rave Tapes], so it’s quite nice to get a bit of perspective on the whole thing and see that it’s done quite well and people that never used to listen to us have started to listen to us. A lot of that is to do with the television show [French series Les Revenants] that we did the music for as well – that’s brought a lot of different people, which has been a good thing for us. I’m kind of itchin’ to get new stuff; I don’t know about the rest of the band to be honest, but I’ve started to write songs for a new record already and we’ll just have some time off and get back into it again. I’m pleased with how it went on a whole; I think you always want to change stuff and music is never finished, so there’s a lot you wanna go back and change, but that would be fairly hard I think. I was just sayin’ to the lads that I feel like albums are sort of like a photograph or a snapshot of everythin’ that was goin’ on in your life at that point, and you don’t really wanna change it anyway.”