Birthed from the same music scene that has brought the world Hookworms, Eagulls, and Drahla in recent times are Mush. The Leeds-based quartet all started off far away from each other, but gravitated towards one another via a mutual love of Pavement and alcohol. Their art rock sound thrives off angular grooves, and on no track is this more apparent than their latest, ‘Comment Section Creeps’. Frontman Dan’s deadpan delivery goes hand in hand with some slacker guitar licks that Parquet Courts could be envious of. Witty lyrics (“scrolling down the page is a masochistic waste”) and spirals of technicolor feedback are the order of the day, as the band truly assert themselves as one of the nation’s ones to watch.
We chat to the band to find out a bit more about their new release with Art Is Hard Records and what 2018 may have in store for the band.
What can you tell us about the new single?
Both the tracks were written in short succession. Luxury animals was going to be ‘Human Testimony’ but the lyrics were pretty ploddy so it got a last minute re-write. We recorded with Matt Peel who reached out and asked if we wanted to do a kind of cheap taster session. The opportunity was too good to turn down and we thought we might as well milk it and put out a double A side. Gun to head I probably slightly prefer ‘Comment Section Creeps’ but we were pretty happy with how they both turned out.
Art is Hard seemed like a good place to go: They had worked with ‘Happyness’ who are good pals and who we’ve played with a bunch. I sent them an email and they were keen to do it as they’d heard the ‘Alt Facts’ tune. They seemed a good bunch and they’ve got some obscure marketing techniques like giving out free floppy disks. Actually the Happyness dudes are doing some artwork for the floppy disks I’ve heard. I dunno if that’s a secret. I’ve not seen it but I look forward to it.
What are the songs about?
Comment Section is about the weird human behaviour that you see on the internet: Abuse, general trolling, puritanical keyboard warriors. All very unappealing stuff. It’s also about the kind of weird temptation to look at the comment section even though you know it’s going to be bad. Like watching a car crash. It’s a fairly light-hearted critique of something that is genuinely quite disgusting. Luxury Animals is fairly straightforward, it’s basically about work life balance and wondering where it all went wrong.
What can we expect from you in the next 12 months?
So the single is out November 17th. We are going back on Marc Riley for a session on November 20th. We are supporting British Sea Power at Norwich Waterfront this month on the 21st. That’s a big one for us as me and Nick have seen BSP as bunch of times, particularly around the ‘Do you Like rock Music’ time. We are doing an Instore at Rough Trade in November which will be cool, it’s a stripped down acoustic thing so God knows how it’ll sound. After all the 7” stuff is done we are going to sort the full length album out, which is when the real work begins.