Mourn

A track such as ‘Boys Are C**ts’ left little to the imagination; even ‘Your Brain Is Made Of Candy’ wasn’t especially flattering in its observations. “We used to use anger and those kinds of feelings to write our songs,” says singer Jazz Rodríguez Bueno. “I think our songs are kind of a diary of things that happen in our life. And anger sometimes helps,” she laughs.

Mourn were formed a few years ago by Bueno and her school friend Carla Pérez Vas. Bueno’s father had introduced his daughter to a range of classic and contemporary punk and rock’n’roll bands, broadening her music tastes well beyond the Europop that clutters Spanish radio. “My dad is a musician, so he was always showing me bands – I discovered a lot of bands through him,” Bueno says. “When I was little I liked this sort of music, so I started to look on the internet. You can’t hear this sort of music on the radio, but you can find whatever on the internet if you’re interested in it. But you have to go looking for it, because you will never hear it here.”

In her early high school years, Bueno and her sister Leia formed a band with their father, “just to have fun”. A couple of years later, while still at school, Bueno and Vas decided to start their own group, recruiting Leia on bass and Antonio Postius on drums. While the band’s name is evocative, it came simply through a random selection process.

“We had a very long list of band [names], but we couldn’t decide on any of them,” says Bueno. “We didn’t like any of them, so we decided that it would be random and opened a dictionary and pointed at a word, and the word was ‘mourn’.”

From their conception, Mourn took their cues from PJ Harvey and Patti Smith, augmented with The Strokes, The White Stripes, The Replacements and The Clash. Mourn’s self-titled debut album was recorded straight to tape over two days in 2014, a deliberate attempt to capture the band’s live sound.

“It was like a rehearsal but being recorded,” says Bueno. “It’s like we were playing at home together, but in the studio. It’s cool, but it captures how we sound. It’s not overproduced. We did the same with the second album, but it took a couple of weekends rather than a couple of days. We recorded something like two songs a day.”

The release of Mourn’s first record saw the band generate interest outside of Spain, including from hip Brooklyn indie label Captured Tracks. “They saw our video that we recorded at our studio,” Bueno explains. “We have some friends that are called Look Behind You. They make music videos with musicians playing live. They wanted to record and film us. Mike Sniper [Captured Tracks general manager] saw one of these videos and wrote to us on Facebook. He asked for our email, and he asked us if we had any label in America, and we said no. He was glad because he wanted to release our songs there. We introduced him to our label in Spain, so all that happened.”

Signing with Captured Tracks was the catalyst for Mourn playing overseas, including shows in the United States, where the band members were amazed at the reception they received. “Playing in America was like being in a movie, it was really fun,” Bueno says. “People there were really different to people in Catalonia or Spain. I think they are more inside the music culture – they feel it more. It was more impressive that people came to our shows because it’s the United States – it’s so far away! It was a great experience.”

For their second album, Ha, Ha, He., Mourn again sought to recreate their live intensity, though this time around they not only took longer in the studio, but also chose to disguise the subjects of the songs – though Bueno says the results are more sincere than their debut. “It’s not as obvious what we’re talking about. It came out as writing not as directly. I think it’s kind of clear what we’re singing about, but it’s different to the songs on the first album.”

The fact Bueno sings in English helps with the subterfuge. “Singing in English is kind of a protection or shield,” she says. “When we finished recording the songs, I thought it would be more difficult for me to sing the songs without thinking about those things.”

Catalonia remains proud of its cultural heritage and radical political tradition. In 1936 the region was the home of the world’s first (and only) anarchist government; when Australian art historian Robert Hughes went to write about the great art of Barcelona, he found himself drawn to the unique culture and politics of Catalonia as a whole. “We feel Catalan, not Spanish,” Bueno explains. “We’re Catalan and have our own traditions, so we don’t feel that we’re Spanish – but I don’t know how that’s influenced our music.”

In particular, Bueno isn’t so positive about the economic future in Spain. Youth unemployment levels remain in double figures, and Bueno and her colleagues are not looking forward to what lies ahead.

“I think there’s no hope,” she says. “It’s frustrating because nothing’s changing. Hopefully there are some political movements that are trying to change this, but it’s a slow process. But a lot of people here are angry with the world, and I don’t feel comfortable here. I’m studying and trying to make my own things, so I hope the situation changes, because it’s not very good now.”