Mogwai - Ritchie Sacramento

Rise crystal spear, fly true over me.

Album: As the Love Continues [10th album]
Recorded: Stratford Upon Avon, England
Genre: Dream Pop, Post Rock
Album Release: February 19th 2021
Single Release: January 12th 2021 [2nd single]
Length: 4.12
Producer: Dave Fridmann
Vocalist: Stuart Braithwaite [age 44]
Label: Rock Action Records

Music Video


Live in 2021

Charts, Streams & Sales

Germany (albums): #3
UK (albums): #1
Spotify: 6,000,000 +
YouTube Music: 1,400,000 +
Mercury prize nominee 2021 (losing to Arlo Parks)

Credits

Details

• Mogwai take their name from a creature in the film 'Gremlins' (1984) even though they aren't particularly big fans. The name was chosen as a placeholder and was never changed. 'Mogwai' is a Cantonese word that means monster or devil.
  
• The album was composed during the first COVID-19 lockdown. The band felt like they benefited from the enforced isolation as it helped them to concentrate on their music.
  
  
• The song was wrote to commemorate musicians who had taken their life by suicide, namely Scott Hutchison of Frightened Rabbit, who died in 2018 and David Berman of Silver Jews, who died in 2019.
  
  This is the only song on 'As the Love Continues' that isn't an instrumental. When I heard the vocals it made me pay close attention as it felt like the band had something important to say. Sometimes you need words. I don't know how you'd say "promises of a memory, your own ghost running away with the past" using music alone and by the sound of it neither did the band.
  
  I get the impression that Mogwai don't like using vocals in their music, not only by their near total lack, which would seem to make their preference clear, but also by the way the band arranges themselves on stage. In the live performance above, at the 2021 Mercury prize, Mogwai only performed one song and it was 'Ritchie Sacramento'. Most bands would put their vocalist front and centre but Stuart Braithwaite is tucked away to the side. It's as if to say that the voice is one element among many and not the central or most important.
  
  
• A friend of the band mispronounced the name of Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto as Ritchie Sacramento and the guys thought it was so funny that they decided to name a song after it. To make matters worse, the friend worked in a record shop and should have known better.

Artwork