In English, the phrase “we were just here” expresses surprise, frustration, or awareness about being in the same place or situation again, after a short period of time. Literal meaning (physical location) e.g. “Wait, we're back at the gas station? We were just here an hour ago!”. Figurative (situation, experience): can mean: we are repeating the same mistake, for example “Another software crash? Ugh, we were just here last week with the same issue”. Emotional or nostalgic use: Expresses disbelief at how quickly time has passed, for example “It's Christmas again already? Feels like we were just here opening presents.”
At the opening, a strong shot that crackles enough to streak the microphones. Then the dull and prolonged screeching of a resonant type effect pinger. The alternation is repeated fixedly and a carpet of veiled and suspended arpeggios enters. A diaphanous voice dreams of childish things.
There is a way
We can be, playing
Swinging for days
On paper planes
From their 2018 debut, “Wednesday”, shoegaze hues and subdued tones, to the 2022 follow-up “Heart Under”, all noise and industrial guitars, the quintet from Dundalk, Ireland, has always trafficked in a haze of genres that thickens around the clearing of noise-rock. Their writing is an exploration of sonic recesses, sounds that are sometimes completely unnatural, sometimes imitating a dark nature. Their gloom makes them worthy of being chosen by the godfather of darkRobert Smith, to open for The Cure's 2023 South American tour and for some of their huge UK and European concerts next summer.
In this third work there is a leap. Sounds speak to us in a particular way, they stage some truth about today's life.
The title of theopener“Pollyanna”, from the dictionary indicates an optimistic person but in an excessive and forced way, who pretends everything is sweetness and light. There is a euphoria, in the wall of sound that erupts in many tracks, the same wall as My Bloody Valentine, but in which there is no time to wallow in melancholy and sleep. An anxiety to live and to be able to feel something, once it's good, prevails.
In “Dreamer”, a nervous and intricate piece, they sing: “I don't wanna go where/ I can't feel a thing yeah/ I wanna feel something”. In “We Were Just Here”, on a cavalcade of synths wing Mgmt, large and square but with rounded corners, soft and comfortable, underline: “Everything happens, all the time/ All around me now and/ I just wanna make it feel good”.
The euphoric anxiety is also rendered by the “drumgasms” that cross the album – “Endless Deathless”, the coda of “Dreamer”, “That I Might Not See”, ecstatic rhythms danceable to the point of absurdity, enhanced by the touch of producer David Wrench (Fka Twigs, Frank Ocean, Sampha).
At the same time there is an eternal nostalgia, the sense that something has already been lost before we even get there, that it has slipped through our fingers and the thing is irreversible. This is the breath of some pieces with love lyrics – “Silver”, “Somewhere”, “Dandelion” – a dream-pop between the epic and the haunted, the soundscape of a shadowed undergrowth where the synths oscillate like will-o'-the-wisps.
With the last two pieces the album culminates in a sacred anguish. “The Steps” is a scale of metallic clang that seems to be produced by steel violas and cellos played with copper bows. It sounds like the ceremonial accompaniment of a rite that marks the phases of human life – a funeral, a wedding, or a baptism – but which seems to take place among the few left in the desolation after a catastrophe.
I can't free
What's sinking me
For only fields
No roads from here
“Out Of Heaven” ends in a compressed, grainy digital noise that explodes deafeningly and then, by some mystery, harmonizes with the two voices in a trip-hop that pulsates softly like a neon light about to die.
Just Mustard's third album creates a new, unprecedented sound world. A world of sound capable of giving us the emotional friction of our restless age. The need but also the fear of getting lost again, losing control. The languid muffling of the senses, while they absorb overloads of violence.
03/11/2025
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM
