Today, rising Leicester-based trio Mouth Culture have announced their signing to US independent InVogue Records with a flourish of a new release – their ‘Mishaps Of My Mid Twenties’ EP. It features opener and brand new single ‘Sharkbait’, which swaggers with a kind of grunge-meets-indie originality and a vibrancy that’s ripe for both radio airwaves and moshpit singalongs.
Since their inception in 2019, Mouth Culture have ridden a wave of ups and downs, lessons and learning curves. Through every ebb and flow, Jack Voss [Vocalist], Mason Clifford [Guitarist] and Todd Groome [Bassist] have operated with a sense of earnestness and sincerity, resulting in art that reflects not just where they have come from but where they are going. Growing up watching a blossoming British rock scene take on the world and brought together by their love of everyone from You Me At Six and My Chemical Romance to Lower Than Atlantis and Maroon 5, they have spent the last four years creating music that they hope reflects the same power and purpose that helped them fall in love with it during their teenage years.
Mouth Culture have already shared stages with the likes of Beauty School Dropout and Declan Welsh and the Decadent West and they recently hit the road with Acres. The band are also set to support While She Sleeps in Sheffield next month. Their debut single, 2019’s ’15 Missed Calls’, has racked up over a million Spotify streams, as has their 2021 mixtape ‘These Days’, showcasing their consistent knack for penning an array of addictive hooks.
A lot of the milestones Mouth Culture have reached so far come as a result of their collective closeness. They have been living together as a band in the same house from the moment they kicked off their adventure, and it has allowed them to develop a brotherly bond that verges on family more than just friends. Of course, such a setup is an intense way to exist. Experiencing the toils of the every day, of growing up together and of navigating everything from member departures to music industry lessons all under the same roof could drive many a band to the brink. But for Mouth Culture, it only served as inspiration. Knowing they had a vessel to express every frustration and epiphany that crossed their path, they set about crafting something that could truly represent what they had been through at such a pivotal time in their lives and careers.
The result is their new EP ‘Mishaps Of My Mid Twenties’. After previously self-producing their work, they brought producer Jamie Ward [Bury Tomorrow, Maybeshewill, Gallops] into the fold. Bringing texture and tenacity to the band’s varied and volatile soundboard, they forged a seven song battering ram of what it means to love, lose and learn during the most formative years of your life. Bringing together indie sensibility, pop-punk earnestness, alt-rock curveballs and quintessential British cheek, it is an EP that perfectly places everything the band have been striving for over the last half a decade under one umbrella.
There’s the wide-eyed and woozy ‘Sunny Smile’, which has been Track Of The Week on BBC Radio 1’s Introducing Rock Show with Alyx Holcombe, rubbing shoulders with the buoyant storytelling of ‘Don’t Pull Up’. You have the brutal takedowns of new single ‘Sharkbait’ standing side by side with the vibrant expression of ‘Cherry Red Rage’. Then it’s all held together by the title track, an epic piece of emotionally vulnerable rock that will send shivers shooting down your spine. It is a coming-of-age story as much as a reminder that we all experience the same thing even when it feels like we are alone; it’s the band at their most honest and heartfelt. It’s also their finest work to date.
SEE MOUTH CULTURE LIVE:
8th December Black Prince, Northampton
22nd December Octagon, Sheffield supporting While She Sleeps
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