Mourn

Like punk Doogie Howsers, MOURN use intellect and talent beyond their years to muscle their way in amongst the grown-ups and blow them all out of the water.

Mourn is a hearty, eye-popping reminder just how far we have swayed from rock music’s embryo nowadays and how awfully contrived the revivalist stabs have been.

There's no denying the highly enjoyable nature of their raw, emotive debut; that they're so young only means there's potential for even better things to come.

As such, Mourn is the sound of outcasts congregating in a basement on a Friday night and making a savage racket to forget about the fact they weren’t invited to the big house party that all the popular kids from school are attending.

You’ll be hard-pressed to find a band who knows who they are at such an early point in their career, fully formed but still willingly malleable, like a stained-glass window that can’t possibly hold its shape over time.

MOURN, while still struggling a bit to overcome their influences, still sound no less than incredible and compelling on their debut.

Mourn comes in at just over 20 minutes, making it a blisteringly succinct mission statement, but a no less compelling one. It’s a surprising debut album that delivers on what many first records don’t: consistency and organization. 

‘Mourn’ exhibits a young band fully aware of their own qualities: fierceness, confidence and brutally simple songwriting.

The first album by this very young quartet from Barcelona is what folks used to mean by alternative rock: a genuinely contrary fury of jagged-granite guitars and severe pop discipline.