Mourn

Drawing from the unvarnished intensity of Throwing Muses and Patti Smith, Mourn began shaping a bold sonic identity in Barcelona during their teenage years. The group proved equally comfortable exploring themes of romantic zombies on their self-titled 2015 debut or skewering exploitative record executives, ultimately surmounting contractual obstacles to issue the exultant Sorpresa Familia in 2018 before sharpening their arrangements further on 2020’s Self Worth.

The project originated when guitarists and vocalists Jazz Rodríguez Bueno and Carla Pérez Vas, longtime school friends from El Maresme in Catalonia, Spain, began writing together. Growing up in a household steeped in music, Bueno received early exposure to Patti Smith, PJ Harvey, and similarly uncompromising artists through her father Ramón, who records as the New Raemon and helped shape her direct songwriting approach. Once Vas and Bueno discovered their mutual appreciation for ’90s indie rock, they started creating material as a duo and posted videos of stark acoustic performances that soon attracted the Spanish imprint Sones.

For their debut recording, the lineup expanded into a quartet with the addition of drummer Antonio Postius and bassist Leia Rodríguez, the latter only fifteen at the time she joined. The band completed the self-titled album in a pair of days, after which Sones issued it in September 2014; Captured Tracks then re-released it the following February. Just over a year later the quartet returned with Ha, Ha, He., whose songs reflected the jagged style of Throwing Muses, mid-’90s Chicago post-rock textures, and the verse of William Blake. Lingering disputes with Sones nevertheless curtailed promotional efforts, until the band reached a settlement in 2017 and launched its first North American tour behind the covers EP Over the Wall later that year.

Mourn funneled those legal struggles into the exuberant third album Sorpresa Familia, which Captured Tracks released in 2018. After its appearance the group parted ways with Postius and recruited Victor Álvarez Ridao on drums. To create their fourth album the members relocated to a house in the Pyrenees, transforming personal and political grievances into the cathartic material that became Self Worth upon its October 2020 release.