Just Mustard

About

" The dark mood-music of an 80s shoegaze disco made modern "

Just Mustard started out, as many do, making waves in their hometown of Dundalk, an Irish border town with a roughshod music scene where they’ve long felt deeply embedded. They signed with local label Pizza Pizza Records and slowly gathered a reputation as a startlingly confident and dingy live act, the kind of performers who set a mood, batter their way through a set that merges into a beautiful whole, and leave your ears ringing.

Debut album ‘Wednesday’, nominated for Ireland’s national music prize ‘Choice’ came out under the Dundalk label in 2018, a surprisingly subtle and delicately textured release that saw the rocking four-piece finally nailing down the promise hinted at in 2015 debut single ‘Lemon Smiles’. Sure, there are borderline shockingly conflicting moments, such as in the brutally stark and direct opening chords of first track ‘Boo’, but other tracks, like ‘Pigs’ are more mood-led and accessible.

2022 saw a second full-length, after Just Mustard were signed to indie monster Partisan Records and began to establish themselves as an international touring act. In ‘Heart Under’, Just Mustard go full-focus on the shoegaze side of their sound, with frontwoman Katie Ball’s hauntingly dramatized vocal producing a beautifully nuanced sound with an almost throwback edge to it, a little like a bass-layered My Vitriol, with blazingly dense choruses.

Theirs are the dark lullabies of the squat party, the faded yet dramatic intensity of the club flashback cutscene in an indie movie. The mantals of Portishead and Joy Division are not quite Just Mustard’s to claim, yet, but they’re serious contenders.