Quick-fire Questions: 10 minutes with Greg Mendez
For around 15 years, Greg Mendez quietly recorded his musical meditations on the world without much of a fuss. Flitting between New York and his native Philadelphia, his songs humbly captured the saudade of a sleepy East Coast sundown.
This quietly resonated with a few, and Mendez was glad to be able to share his wares with the world. Then, in 2023, his self-titled album caught a window of good fortune, and suddenly he was out on tour with Waxahatchee, Angel Olsen and Allegra Krieger.
Not much had changed. And not much has changed since. Now with Dead Oceans, his latest album, Beauty Land, captures that same sombre, 8pm reflection with weary acoustic detail. In fact, it was recorded in the same windowless, makeshift home studio in Philadelphia where much of Mendez’s moody music has hailed from. Given his journey to this point, it stands to reason that it’s filled with the same paradoxically confident yet demuring spirit of: if you like it, you’ll like it.
But as ever, while the tracks might be modest, and Mendez’s approach might be measured, that doesn’t make their meaning any less profound. As this poetic reflection in relation to the new record reveals, “I spent most of my childhood in the suburbs, surrounded by the American Dream. Grand and lonely, strip malls and housing developments,” Mendez muses.
He adds, “Cathedrals of consumerism and reconstituted culture. The stores weren’t built for the towns, the towns were built for the stores. No one really belongs. The dream is close enough to smell, but as soon as you reach out, your hand passes right through – a hologram of a promise.” That suburban malaise is poised in his music, but rather than feeling dour, it gives Beauty Land a noble sense of purpose and the quilted comfort of knowing you’re not alone.
That listless feeling of how human ‘experience’ and ‘societal system’ can’t truly be divorced makes Beauty Land quietly crushing, but he’s thankfully got the knack of catchiness, too. So, with Mendez in laidback, resplendent form, we decided to catch up with him for a quick ten minutes regarding his thoughts on everything and anything.
Quick-fire Questions with Greg Mendez:
1. What song would you want played at your funeral?
“Nirvana – ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit'”.
2. What is Beauty Land to you?
“It’s a disembodied head on a coin, an amusement park with no exit, a beauty supply store in the suburbs, a commercial for a cartoon gambling app.”
3. Where is the most beautiful place you’ve ever been?
“Maybe the desert in the Southwestern US. I had the urge to just walk out into it and never look back. Or maybe the New Jersey Shore, a peak example of our amazing ability to turn everything into a theme park. It’s beautiful, I love it.”
4. Where is the weirdest place you’ve played a gig?
“I don’t know if I have any truly ‘weird’ ones. There’s this place, Healer, in Indianapolis that’s mostly a huge maze of strange and beautiful installation art. I played to about three people there, but it is a music venue, so it wasn’t weird in that sense. There were a couple of years where I would busk on the sidewalk for money, maybe that’s unusual for someone being interviewed in a magazine across the ocean.”
5. Who would be your dream collaborator?
“I already get to work with my dream collaborator and creative soulmate, Veronica Mendez.”
6. What album have you listened to more than any other in your life?
“Honestly, probably Enema Of The State by Blink 182. I would bet I listened to that more times from the ages of 12-13 than I have listened to all other music for the rest of my life combined. And I still love it.”
7. What would you say would be the perfect way to listen to Beauty Land?
“Front to back in headphones. Or in a car built between 1994 and 2007, because new car sound systems aren’t made for rock music.”
8. What has been your favourite release of 2026 so far?
“Webb Chapel – Vernon Manner“.
9. Where do you stand on Geese?
“This is the first I’m hearing of it.”
10. Did the success of Greg Mendez (2023) surprise you?
“Yes.”
11. What is the Philly sound to you?
“To me, the best stuff from here sounds unbothered and unconcerned with being cool or relevant. There’s a lot of people out here just making shit for themselves and their friends. I think that’s sick. Art that tries to be cool and relevant is doomed to be uncool and irrelevant, either now or later. Shit you make for your friends is eternal.”
12. What is one conspiracy theory you kind of believe in?
“I don’t know if there’s a meaningful difference between conspiracy theory and ‘official’ narrative at this point. The internet has always been a tool of mass surveillance and social control, and we have access to such an overwhelming amount of information that it actually becomes disinformation.”
“We’re so hopelessly addicted to our ‘devices’ that we can’t even begin to comprehend how it’s altering the way we feel and the way we behave. Is that a conspiracy theory?”
13. Can you recommend us an album we probably haven’t heard?
“Nyxy Nyx – Dream Junkie.”
14. What was the last great book you read?
“Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston.”
15. Are The Beatles overrated?
“No, they’re eternal.”
