Post-punk? Post-Rock? Dundalk’s Just Mustard are Post-Everything. Released via Partisan Records, ‘Still’ fetters a ‘pop song’ inside bludgeoning amplified abstractions.
Wishing, in their own words, “the listener to feel like they’re on a train going through a tunnel”, these erstwhile perpetrators of beautifying shoegaze-core have evolved into something savage and formidable. Resembling an awesome, artful beast resurrected from the merciless Age Of Iron, ‘Still’ has it’s fangs whetted with ravaging distortion. The track’s churning cogs whirr with shrieking guitars and wrecking-ball drum – surgically precise, like a mortician carving up a disused corpse. These machinations are primordial and instinctive, while suggestive of a troubled present and a yet-more-troubled future.
‘Still’s’ disquieting video, offering too-close-for-comfort frames of vocalist Katie Ball miming inside eyeballs, recalls Kubrick’s Clockwork Orange and it’s controversial scenes of behavioural therapy. Imagine Malcolm Mcdowell, shackled to his seat, eyes wide and unblinking. Except he’s listening to Just Mustard, and having simply the best time.
The new issue of So Young is out now! Issue Thirty-Six features interviews with Wet Leg (Print Cover), Jockstrap (Online Cover, below), Black Country, New Road, Metronomy, NewDad, Teeth Machine, ENUMCLAW, Been Stellar, Blue Bendy, BODEGA, Catcher and more. Order your copy here or read the digital edition below.