Mogwai’s Stuart Braithwaite Announces Memoir Spaceships Over Glasgow

Scottish greats Mogwai have had a fascinating career. They pioneered the post-rock genre in the ’90s, stretching the quiet-loud-quiet dynamic way beyond its logical extreme, and then they stayed together and made the transition into providing tingly scores for movies and TV shows. These days, Mogwai can make their own records, like last year’s Mercury Prize-nominated As The Love Continues, and they can also score things like the 2020 Amazon series ZeroZeroZero. This year, longtime frontman Stuart Braithwaite will tell that whole story in Spaceships Over Glasgow: Mogwai And Misspent Youth, his first memoir.

According to a press release, Braithwaite is “the son of Scotland’s last telescope-maker,” which I didn’t know. That press release says that Spaceships Over Glasgow will feature Braithwaite figuring out his favorite sounds and then putting those sounds to work in Mogwai. It’ll tell the story of the band and serve as “a love letter to live music.”

Braithwaite definitely has a reputation as a funny motherfucker, and he once wrote me a very irate email because I’d referred to Primal Scream as “British” rather than “Scottish” in a blog post. I bet his book will be a good read.

Spaceships Over Glasgow is coming 9/1 via White Rabbit.