It was a cold, autumnal evening in 2018 when I first stumbled upon Irish five-piece Just Mustard. I remember exactly how I felt while listening to the first few moments of their breakout single “Pigs.” That deep bass groove juxtaposed against subtle metallic terror, with the most delicate and ethereal of vocal melodies cutting through the din. I was transfixed immediately, caught willingly in the track’s intricate webbing. As soon as the drums hit and the song kicked into overdrive, my jaw nearly had to be surgically removed from the floor. I sent the track to everyone I knew and anyone that would listen, and have been preaching the gospel of Just Mustard ever since.
Ever since that singular moment, Just Mustard have been my favorite modern band, without a shred of competition. In 2022, their sophomore record Heart Under was my number one record of the year, with a silver bullet. Not only were their albums fantastic from top to bottom, the standalone singles they released between records were just as captivating as their album tracks. I was smitten with them, as head over heels as I’ve ever been with a modern outfit, as the band represented everything I truly adored about music.
On paper, Just Mustard’s sound taps into the industrial terror and ethereal beauty of bands like Swans, Cranes, Sonic Youth, This Heat, and all the very best bands who are able to channel both sheer beauty and powerful trepidation in their music, often in the very same moment . However, Just Mustard are simply not content wearing their influences on their sleeves, and have continued to push the envelope further and further with each release. Each track they release is a stunner, and every show I’ve seen in a dimly lit, jam-packed club is a revelation.
This Friday, October 24th, Just Mustard release their third (and arguably best) LP, WE WERE JUST HERE via Partisan Records. The LP is, for lack of a better word, tremendous, featuring ten nightmare lullabies for dreamers. Each track is a treasure unto itself – a heady balance of seduction and dread, a series of absolute bangers that lure you in gently yet go straight for the jugular.
Just Mustard, with good reason, have caught the attention of The Cure’s Robert Smith, who has booked them as support on numerous occasions. The band is also a force to be reckoned with live, perfectly channeling the beautiful chaos of their recordings into a visceral live experience, with all five members of the band firing on all cylinders. I’ve seen the band three times in small clubs in New York City, and each show I’ve seen has been deeply inspiring. In 2026, Just Mustard will embark upon a massive worldwide tour, which finds the band playing a mix of gigs across the US and Europe. Tickets for the US leg of the tour are on sale this Friday, coinciding with the album’s release.
With all of this in mind, we had the chance to catch up with vocalist Katie Ball and guitarist/vocalist David Noonan about the new LP, the Irish tradition, and how it feels to play nachtmusik while the sun is still shining.
It just so happens that every time you put out a new record, it’s my favorite record of the year! Can you tell us how WE WERE JUST HERE came together?
Katie Ball: Thanks very much! I suppose we properly started writing this January last year. We tried to do the writing-while-touring thing, but it wasn’t really working for us. So we just took last year completely off and started writing then. We probably got about 20 to 30 songs together and at the start of last year we scrapped all of them. But we had 10 songs and we scrapped all songs but two and then we wrote another maybe 15 or so after that.
So yeah, the album could have gone in so many different directions. It was whenever we wrote “POLLYANNA” and “ENDLESS DEATHLESS,” we decided to just go in whatever direction that was and try and write songs to go with that world.
What about the leftover tracks? Do you ever save them for a rainy day or do you start fresh every time?
KB: They’re on the hard drive, but we didn’t even get around to finishing some of them. In the end, some of them are only basic song structures while others were fully fledged songs that we scrapped, but I doubt any of them will see the light of day. It’s funny that “DANDELION” made it out of the scrap heap. That was one of the songs that we got rid of, but then we had the rest of the album together, we felt like it sort of fit in this world and we brought it back.
I’ve always loved your use of effect pedals. How do you generally write songs? Do the effect loops work as your backbone? For lack of a better term, do you “jam?”
David Noonan: It’s a little different every time. Sometimes Katie might have chords and lyrics and vocal melodies or someone in the band might bring an instrumental piece to work on, or someone may have a vocal melody that hasn’t been put down. Maybe not that last part as much anymore, but otherwise, anything really goes. It could be one single instrument that forms the backbone of a core song.
Our process has certainly evolved over time. We do try and jam but it wasn’t necessarily working for us that much at this time. It wasn’t the most fruitful way to come up with music for us. We do work better with people bringing in ideas, with Katie writing the lyrics, and we just kind of go from there.
I think this time the thing that was different was that we decided early on before we’d even really started writing that we wanted the vocal melody and the lyric to lead the song more, so we applied that more this time. Previously, we would find ourselves trying to shoehorn a song into a musical idea, so this time we just flipped it and let the vocals guide the rest of the arrangement.
Katie, how do you write lyrics? Do you tend to write stream-of-consciousness, have a certain feeling in mind, or do you compose your lyrics more texturally?
KB: For me it’s all about getting that first line and then I’ll write as many lines that come to my head that could fit with that first one, and then I’ll just do a lot of editing. I also tried a new thing with this album because I know I haven’t been writing songs very long, so I’m still learning what works for me. Before, I would stop myself from even writing a lyric down on the piece of paper because I’d be like, “no, no, no, no, that’s too cringey” or whatever.
This time I forced myself to write things down if I thought it was decent. I decided that no matter what I came up with, I don’t have to release it if it didn’t work after a while, so I tried to stop talking myself out of certain lyrics. With that in mind, I just wrote as much as I could. In the end, it was way better because in the past, I was masking my true feelings, and this time I just tried to write without stopping.
I get it. I write lyrics myself and I’ve unfortunately felt blocked for most of the year, not sure what I want to say or if I have anything prudent to say anymore. I’m not quite sure how to work that out–but I guess, the way out is through. Good tip!
KB: Yeah. Just write it down, and move on! More often than not, the next day you’ll look at what you wrote and it’ll sound a lot better than it felt in those first few moments.
Good call! So, I’d love to talk about your live show. Here in NYC, you played quite a bit of the new record. I was talking to Rob about it after, and perhaps I misheard, but I recall him saying this was the first time you played some of those songs out. Is that right?
KB: Not quite! I think we had played most of them before, not many times…
DN: I think it might have been the first time we played them all together in one set. We’ve slipped a few in here and there to see how they feel, but we played six that night, which was a first for us.
Well still, that must have felt scary, debuting some of these tracks for the American audiences ahead of the album release. How’s the reception to the new tracks been?
KB: Yeah, it’s been almost as good as the old tracks, which is kind of rare since people tend to prefer hearing songs they’ve heard before, or they’ll need to have heard the recording for them to fully take them in live. It felt great to see the crowd respond so much to the new material!
I think that might have something to do with your live show. I think the way you sound live does such a great job of bringing the records to life and vice versa. You’re a powerful live band with such a visceral quality. The way the effects and rhythms and vocals all gel together really gets under my skin. Is it hard to bring these songs to life, or has that come naturally to you over the years?
DN: There’s elements of it I think that are hard. We definitely do put time and effort into it. We are always actively working on elevating our live show and making sure that it’s as good as it can be out front. We do have a lot of technical work to do since we use so many effects and have to consider how everything comes together sonically. It can be hard–there’s so much low end that it’s difficult to find your feet on stage if the sound is a bit off.
Arrangement-wise, we do try and write with the live show and full band in mind. We try to be in the moment, trying to think about when we’re playing together in a practice room or if we’re doing a sound check or if we’re playing a gig, that exact moment is what the band tuly is, and that’s the only actual reality. I think when we’re writing, we’re not worried about how to figure it out and make it real later–it just is real in that moment, if that makes sense. We just carry the band forward, just trying to be self-contained so we don’t need any other members or a computer or anything else to exist for us to be able to perform. We just need the five of us on stage playing, and then that’ll be the song.
We always try to write with that in mind, to not add anything that we just can’t do live. Obviously we like to layer stuff and we will make things sound as big as possible. That’s a fun thing to explore, but in terms of the actual arrangements of the core parts, when we try to translate it to the live show, it’s mostly there already and is how it should sound. So when we do go to translate to live it’s kind of already there. It already is how it should sound. It’s just a case of making sure we can make it sound the best version of that.
So, no studio trickery or massive amounts of overdubs, then?
DN: Well, despite what I just said, we definitely tried to use the studio as an instrument more than we have in the past. I think we’ve been quite rigid with this in the past and seen it only as a documenting tool as opposed to a creative tool. On Wednesday, we just treated the studio as a tool to capture what we’re doing in the room and there was nothing else allowed to be added to it. On Heart Under, we let go of that a little and explored a bit more. With this record, we were a bit more free with it and tried to experiment more with recording techniques and formats, but we didn’t start adding any extra melodies or synths or anything like that.
Since you don’t use synths, how often do you experiment with different pedals? Some of the sounds you get are terrifyingly beautiful, while others are truly chaotic and wild. You really do have a great spectrum of sound across your body of work.
DN: Cool. Thank you! I don’t know how rigid this rule has been, but I feel like every time we write an album, we add more pedals as we’re writing it. Since the first record, I think we’ve only added a pedal or two each for every album. I suppose we still end up using ten pedals each in total. What I find most exciting is exploring the parameters of what you already have and trying to push our rig towards doing something that it couldn’t do before, through a combination of sounds and whatever input we’re giving it. So yeah, it’s less about trying to find really cool pedals and more about getting them to do really unexpected things I wouldn’t normally try.
I personally try to keep my pedal board as small as possible, because I feel like it’s so easy to just get lost in the pedal world forever. We don’t go on an endless hunt for new pedals, but if there is a sound we desperately want, we’ll try and find a pedal that will scratch that itch. It’s more about functionality for us.
Let’s talk about the latest single ENDLESS DEATHLESS. That track in particular has a lot of grooves, dance beats, and things like that. I know there’s always been a percussive energy to your tracks, but were you thinking of intentionally exploring dance music in that way, or did this happen organically?
KB: We definitely wanted to make music that people could dance to. You can’t really tell from our previous stuff, but we are all influenced by electronic music and dance music so I think that’s always on our mind. That’s actually the one track that came from a jam on this album!
Well, mission accomplished! My 10-year-old son just heard that track the other day and he really cut a rug to it.
DN: That’s cool! I think my brother’s partner said the same thing, she played it for the kids she looks after and they were all dancing to it. They were all dancing really funnily to it, but all the same…
At this time, my ten-year-old pops into the frame to say hello to the band before heading off to school.
DN: Do people do many all ages shows in New York?
Not really, not that I’ve seen as much these days… It’s kind of an underground thing here, and that’s become a rarity these days. I’m not saying the underground has gone away, but I feel like New York is mostly about selling drinks, while the music often can be a secondary consideration. There aren’t as many safe spaces for kids to enjoy live music these days, which is too bad.
DN: Yeah.
KB: We did an all ages show in our hometown of Dundalk last Halloween, with prizes for the best costumes. The all ages show was at 6 PM and then the adult show was at 10 PM. It was pay what you want for the all ages show!
We noticed ourselves when we were younger, there were loads of all ages shows that we had access to and now there are teenage bands who go to see each other and play for each other, but not a lot of older established bands do them anymore, sadly.
Yeah, sadly, if you’re going to take a kid to a show here in the States, you have to take them to a massive arena show or bust. That’s fine in a way, it’s not a bad experience in some ways, but it’s not about celebrating younger bands and tapping into that vibrant energy of an all ages punk show, or something. That’s more about community building.
DN: Yeah, that’s massive as well when you’re a young teenager and actually experiencing music up close is massively impactful and I know just when I went to gigs when I was 14 or 15 it was the biggest deal in the world, jumping around and stuff. I don’t feel like you can get that same thing from going to see an arena gig when you’re a kid.
KB: A lot of people can’t afford arena shows…
Yeah, they’re expensive. I mean, we took him to see Devo at an outdoor amphitheater and we went for lawn seats because we weren’t sure of how he’d react or how he’d feel in the moment. With these massive shows you’re spending $200+ to get up front and then someone who isn’t even much of a fan but can afford the cost of tickets will just haphazardly spill beer all over you. The whole thing is just kind of a drag.
KB: Yeah. In the end, music should be accessible for everyone, even if you don’t have the money for arena shows.
Honestly, things have gotten more and more expensive over the years. Actually, I can’t imagine what touring is like for you guys, and how much that costs, especially here.
KB: Yeah, America is very expensive actually.
And you’re just playing a few dates here, is that right?
DN: We just did Boston and New York this time, but we’ll be back next year. We’re definitely doing a lot more extensive traveling in the near future.
Yeah, it looks like you have quite the year ahead of you so far! Aside from doing some smaller gigs in the UK, I just saw you’re playing with The Cure again for some of those larger festival gigs. That’s awesome! Of course, I’m a lifelong fan of that band, and I know you’ve been playing with them for a while now. How did that come about?
KB: Well, we played with them in Dublin in 2019 and we got along well, and then they asked us again for the South American shows in 2023. Indeed, they just got in touch with us again about these new shows. We just feel so lucky, yeah!
They’re really great like that, taking bands they love and believe in on tour with them over the years like Mogwai or Cranes or Twilight Sad or even Kaelan Mikla. It’s always nice to see they have such a respect for younger bands and such loyalty to everyone they share stages with.
KB: It seems very intentional and he really thinks about the support slots and what a bill can be with the right bands.
Since I’ve only seen you play in small clubs in NYC where things can get really loud and intense, I’m curious about some of the bigger places you’ve played. How do you feel the band translates live in those massive outdoor spaces?
KB: It’s hard to know. It feels weird playing some of our songs in the daytime outside, especially with the Heart Under tracks, because they were made for clubs and dark rooms. I think maybe these new songs might translate better in that way. Our ideal situation every day would be to play in a dark room, inside, at night time, but I hope hopefully these tracks might work in different environments. Back in the day, if we were playing an outdoor show, we would pick our most “daytime” songs to play for people in hopes that people wouldn’t give us dirty looks and cover their ears.
Well, what ARE your daytime songs?
KB: “Deaf,” “Frank,” Tainted,” and probably “Early” from Heart Under is a bit of a daytime song, I guess… There aren’t many, you can count them on one hand! “Seven” can probably make it as a daytime song…
Maybe it’s time to do a daytime EP?
KB: Yeah!
DN: That’s not a bad name for an EP, actually! It’s funny though, I think the songs definitely turn into something very different in these situations because they feel like they’re in the air and not contained. That’s what it feels like from the stage anyway. I don’t know how you feel with the vocals, Katie, but I feel the same if I’m doing any of the backing vocals. It just feels like your voice is getting thrown out into the sky. Same with the guitars. It just hits different.
It’s certainly a mad life experience to be playing any kind of big festival stages like that but also to bounce off of that as well. You play differently in those situations and you lean into different things because the sound is reacting in ways you wouldn’t expect compared to playing a small, tuned acoustic room. When we play the smaller shows, I like hearing how the sounds are reacting and mingling with each other. We perform a little differently in both situations, I think.
Well the venue in New York was long and skinny. I was hearing things bouncing off the walls that I’d never heard before, and that was terrifying in the best way possible. It was beautiful. It must be nice to hear yourselves differently after all the shows you’ve done.
KB: Yeah, that show at National Sawdust was one of my favorite shows we’ve ever done for sure.
DN: Me, too!
So, I want to talk about your homeland for a second. There’s such a rich musical history in Ireland that spans many different genres – folk, classical, post-punk, and so on. Do you feel connected to the great Irish musical tradition in any way?
KB: I suppose maybe there isn’t as much Irish music influence in our music compared to other bands, but I definitely feel very connected to Ireland and the music scene especially in our hometown.
DN: Katie, I don’t want to speak for you in terms of vocal melodies, but for our melodies in general I feel definitely influenced, if not directly by traditional Irish music or Irish folk music. I think I often gravitate towards unique time signatures and rhythms that you hear in Irish music. Our music often has a triplet feel which definitely comes from, among other places, the Irish tradition.
KB: I do think there’s an eeriness to my vocal melodies that is inspired by Irish singing, come to think of it!
Do you draw inspiration from anything aside from music?
KB: Films, definitely films.
DN: Yeah, films and sometimes books, but I’m a terrible reader. However, when I do read, I get really inspired. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, though. I used to be a really good reader, but now I have to force myself to read, for some reason. Katie reads a lot!
KB: I’m really good!
I’ve always been a big reader, but it’s been hard to focus these last few years. The pandemic ruined me. I feel like a different person these days, not prioritizing books the way I used to, but perhaps that’s just part of growing up. Teach us your ways, Katie!
KB: You just got to sit down and do it. For me, I didn’t really practice reading. I would read one line and start daydreaming and then I’d read another line and start daydreaming and then I’d be like, “What is this book even about?” I didn’t take anything in, despite reading things over and over again. But the more I made the time for it, the better I got about being able to take it all in. I read a lot of rock biographies these days, which are very easy to digest.
DN: Did you see that film Aftersun?
I have not, but it’s on my list! I’d love to see it soon.
KB: Yeah. it’s a hard watch, but that was very inspiring for us.
DN: Obviously, a lot of David Lynch stuff. It’s just a favorite and…
Rest in peace…
DN: Of course. I think just his approach to telling stories or getting across a mood… How he worked was so inspiring to us, and even if you don’t necessarily digest what he’s done…
KB: …also how he just didn’t talk about his work, just let people have their own interpretations of it. You can really tap into a specific mood of a film and be like, “I want to recreate that in a song.”
DN: Right! Or even just a single moment or a piece of dialogue or something. You can kind of riff off that. Whatever resonates with you and kind of gives you a little start to create something else…
KB: With books, I’ll read a line and I’ll write about it in my notes, and then I’ll come back to it much later and be like, “Whoa, did I write that?” The lines got a little blurry for me. I had to start writing the book name and page numbers beside it in my notes, but then I would try to write my own lyrics based on how that line made me feel.
Right! I’ve done this – take a snapshot of what moves you and re-synthesize it… That’s the trick. As for loving Lynch, I can definitely see surrealism in your music, again, the way your music is both beautiful and frightening. You weave such a lush tapestry in that way…
DN: I like the idea of films being a non-linear form of storytelling. I think that applies to our music, because we’re not often trying to get across a specific narrative or an idea. We often try to capture a single emotion or feeling in one setting, or explore that feeling from different angles in the same song.
KB: We also like to tap into Lynch’s balance of the light and the dark. I think that’s what we do with our music as well.
Absolutely! So, to shift gears a bit, let’s talk about what you have planned for the next year or two.
KB: I think next year is just going to be a whole lot of touring and not sure what else, to be honest. I’m always trying to write as much as I can… The plan is to just play as many shows as we can and take the album as far as possible.
DN: I do want to try and figure out how to write on the road. That’s my goal.
Ah, yes! The great “road record” – Aladdin Sane, New Adventures in Hi-Fi, Nebraska, Year Zero, etc… Most of those records are my favorites in a band or artist’s catalogue.
DN: Absolutely, yeah! It’s just a personal goal that I’m trying to figure because I don’t know… It can be very demoralizing having these periods of forced drought where we’re on the road and can’t write, and when we get home, I feel like I have to start from scratch every time. I want to try and kick that cycle and make it feel less like a stop-start, push-pull rhythm… I don’t know, I’m laying my New Year’s aspirations on you here!
So, are you thinking about taking a rig with you on the road? Are you traveling on a bus or a van?
DN: We’re usually in a van, but yeah we’ll see what the crack is next year. I think if we had a bus, we could bring a lot of gear with us. At the very least, I might just bring an iPad along and just try and record with that.
Ah, technology! Yeah, it’s so much easier to write and record using simple tools these days… Since you’ll be traveling by day though, truly you have to record the Daytime EP…
DN: Seriously, I wouldn’t be surprised if that happens.
KB: We’ll totally give you credit if we do! §
WE WERE JUST HERE is out tomorrow, October 24th, on CD, vinyl, cassette, and digital streaming services. Check below for the full track listing and please pick up a copy or three via Bandcamp. Also, check below for a full list of UK, EU, US, and Canada tour dates for 2026. UK and EU dates are on sale now, while US and Canada dates are on sale this Friday to coincide with the album release.
Follow Just Mustard:
Just Mustard tour dates:
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Live photos by Frank Deserto
Many thanks to Kevin Larkin Angioli for copyediting this piece
The post Out of Heaven — An Interview with Just Mustard appeared first on Post-Punk.com.
