Just Mustard, ever-evolving memories, and sonic nostalgia
I moved into my uni halls with the determination to change my life at 18, and it was the first time I’d ever moved house, let alone spent more than a few days at a time in an actual city, one bustling with constant movement and endless noise. However, those first few months, before the imminent Covid lockdown sent me back home for the Spring, became the most important of my life.
Naturally, then, the music I was listening to at this time brings back floods of memories, not necessarily for a wild night out or anything crazy, but often, just of sitting in the library, eating chocolate buttons in my new room while putting off my required reading, or traversing 16 floors to get to the laundry room, and if I had to select any album that defines this period most, though, it would be Wednesday by Just Mustard.
The Irish band released their debut album in 2018, just one year before I set off for university and became my soundtrack and go-to record for studying in the library, their noisy shoegaze sound, some tracks considerably more abrasive than others, scratched the perfect itch in my brain, and I would listen to it, almost as routine, when I stepped inside the massive library or walked through campus.
I was having the time of my life in many ways, but I was also anxious, suddenly being thrust into an intense environment with deadlines, imposter syndrome, and a fear of sharing my own opinion in a seminar. It makes sense, then, that I was drawn to the scraping, mechanical sounds of opener ‘Boo’, for example, which spoke of the anxiety I was feeling. Perhaps it wasn’t the most suitable musical accompaniment, but it worked; I Pavloved myself, you could say.
Every time I listened to the album, I put myself in the zone to read my required texts and write essays; just the opening screech of ‘Boo’ was all I needed to get in the mindset to study, while the more upbeat ‘Pigs’ gave me the momentum to keep going. The haunting sounds of ‘Tennis’ were almost like a warning that this was no time to quit.
It got to a point, though, when I couldn’t listen to the album without seeing the library in my mind, imagining the smell of the wooden desks (God knows how long they’d been there), recalling my constant habit of people-watching as the door swung open and disturbed an otherwise quiet room. Just Mustard soundtracked that period of my life like nothing else, and seven years on, the memories that flood back when I hear Wednesday are just as potent, but more nostalgic now.
It’s funny how things change yet memories linger with the same vividness, their meaning and emotional effect altered, and now, the band have two more albums to their name. I caught them on their Heart Under tour in 2022 and thoroughly enjoyed their performance, but I’d admittedly taken a break from listening to them for a while, as the memories associated with the songs were still too strong in my mind, always bringing me back to an era of my life I was trying to move away from after graduating, and I didn’t want to think about being a student anymore.
But now, I’m almost 25, and I listen to Just Mustard with great fondness; I’ve pulled them out of my memory, out from the past, and perhaps their latest album, WE WERE JUST HERE, is waiting to become the soundtrack for a new era of my life. That’s how it felt when I let the beauty of their track ‘Pollyanna’ wash over me at their recent Leeds show at Brudenell Social Club, the same venue I’d seen them in almost four years ago. They were just as good, just as noisy, and the show felt just as special. I felt older (although judging by the amount of drinks I knocked back, perhaps I’m not all that wiser), ready to associate Just Mustard with potential and the future.
The band played with little interaction with the crowd, instead allowing the raw vivacity of their instruments, paired with the lightness of lead vocalist Katie Ball’s voice, to penetrate the room, and I was locked into the zone, only this time when I heard songs like ‘Pigs’, I didn’t have essays and dusty bookshelves and revision on my mind, but rather a blissful sense of appreciation for the past. There’s no time to linger in the past when you’re standing in a sold-out crowd, though, because for all the mixed memories a band like Just Mustard bring up for me, they’re too good not to appreciate in the here and now. It’s rare to stand just a few feet away from a band that flawless, that piercing, on a Friday night.
