Twenty Years of Mogwai Song Titles

This weekend Mogwai celebrate twenty years of dynamic noisemongering with two sold out hometown shows at Barrowland. They have asked fans to bring along donations for local food banks – more information on that here.

We will be taking our dried/tinned goods and ear plugs along just like everyone else but, in the meantime, let’s take a moment to celebrate one aspect of the band which often goes uncommented: their wit.

Frontman Stuart Braithwaite once admitted that their music was “about as funny as a death in the family”. Their song titles, however, are another matter.

Mogwai give good song title. Being a mostly lyrics-free zone, they have free rein to go as weird and wonderful as they like and over the years they’ve been a creative bunch, indulging band in-jokes from the silly to the sinister to the personal – Nick Drake, Stanley Kubrick and football referee Hugh Dallas have all been namechecked – to the downright clairvoyant (we’ll leave you to determine which title we’re referring to).

Here, in no particular order, are twenty Mogwai song titles we have loved, one for every year of their life so far:

1. Oh! How The Dogs Stack Up
2. I Am Not Batman
3. Teenage Exorcists
4. Eagle Tax
5. Letters to the Metro
6. Stop Coming to My House
7. Mogwai Fear Satan
8. You’re Lionel Richie
9. I’m Jim Morrison, I’m Dead
10. Fridge Magic
11. Glasgow Mega Snake
12. Thank You Space Expert
13. Satchel Panzer
14. George Square Thatcher Death Party
15. Secret Pint
16. Superheroes of BMX
17. Team Handed
18. A Cheery Wave from Stranded Youngsters
19. Christmas Steps
20. Young Face Gone Wrong