Ahead of their performance at Green Man Festival this weekend, revered Dundalk quintet Just Mustard talk origins, their forthcoming third album, and their festival survival pack. 

So far, Just Mustard have shared two teaser singles from their upcoming third album – due 24th October. Both are sensational, scintillating, and deeply compelling. June-shared “POLLYANNA” has this fuzzy electricity to it, with grainy synths swirling around, driving percussion, and Katie Bell’s ethereal and drone-like vocals. The title-track followed, shared earlier this week, a slow building cascade into euphoria. These two brilliant singles hint at a new and improved Just Mustard – fearless, atmospheric, psychedelic, sonically unbridled. 

The Dundalk five-piece have, overly a number of years and two prior full-length albums, positioned themselves as one of Ireland’s most naturally intriguing and boundary-pushing bands. It feels only right then, to see them nestled amongst the line-up for this weekend’s Green Man Festival, alongside the likes of Wet Leg, Wunderhorse, TV on the Radio, Underworld and English Teacher. The festival, tucked away in the beautiful Welsh valleys, is widely regarded among the most progressive in musical cohort and festival ethos alike, a perfect later summer feast of artistic excellence, gorgeous scenery and a much needed breather away from the fog of city life. 

Ahead of the band’s set this Saturday 16th August, Wonderland caught up with Just Mustard to talk festival survival pack and album process. 

Listen to the latest single…

Read the interview…

What is Just Mustard’s origins? How did you form? Where did the name come from?

We are all from the same town, it’s a small enough town, and we all had similar taste in music and wanted to write some songs together and play as many gigs as possible. Rob and David lived together above a nightclub so you could play drums at all hours and it started there with the 3 of us, mete joined shortly after then we got mags a year later. The name came from a joke that wasn’t funny and didn’t make sense, I wish there was a good story. 

How would you define the essence of your sound and approach? 

It’s a constant balancing act of light and dark, soft and abrasive. Trying not to occupy the same frequencies. I try to match the feeling of the lyrics to the feeling of the instrumentals. Recently we were trying to write songs that would be fun to pay live. 

Congratulations on your forthcoming album, WE WERE JUST HERE. How are you feeling about the release?

Buzzing for people to hear it, and really excited to play the songs live. 

How does your new album show a musical and thematic progression from its predecessor Heart Under? 

Heart Under was a dark and murky heavy emotional thing that rarely gasped for air. The vocals being more like an instrument that were quite minimal and fearful. With this album we wanted to move away from that and towards light. I wanted to write melodic vocals that took up more space. 

What was the creative process of making the album? 

We wrote a lot of songs, maybe around 20 songs, the first songs we wrote were more like heart under and then we wrote two songs, “Pollyanna” and “Endless Deathless”, these two songs felt different and like the start of something new. We followed these songs and wrote the album around them. The process differs from song to song, but most of them myself and David worked on the basic song structure at home and then finished arrangement and instrumentals with the band in our practise space. We just played them over and over again, usually we would make a lot of demos but this time we did voice memos instead because we wanted to be good at playing them. 

What does the record mean to you? What do you hope to achieve? 

I feel really happy with this album, it is fun to listen to and play. As always just seeing what happens next and how far we can take it. 

You’re set to play Green Man Festival this coming weekend — what can attendees expect from your set?

We are playing quite a lot of songs from our new album as well as the usuals from our previous two, we haven’t played a gig in a long time so we’re all really excited and raring to go. 

Have you ever been to the festival yourself? What names on the line up you’re excited to see yourself?

We played it before in 2019 I think. It’s always got an unreal line up. I’m looking forward to seeing caroline, Been Stellar, Cruel Sister and Underworld.  

What is in your festival survival pack? 

Water, Guinness, bread and a positive attitude. 

What else is to come from you this year?

Album, videos, gigs, up for anything.