Mouth Culture today announce their long-awaited debut album – “The Wire” – will be released on April 2nd, 2027, via Killabop.
The announcement comes alongside a new single “Fool”, which vocalist Jack Voss says: “is about the kind of attraction that makes you completely lose your head. It’s that push and pull of wanting someone so badly, even when you know they’re probably not good for you. There’s a real sense of back and forth throughout the song, where someone can make you feel like the best version of yourself one minute, then completely knock you down the next. I think there’s something quite universal about knowingly putting yourself in that position, convincing yourself it’ll be different this time, even when you know exactly how it’s going to end. Sometimes you just can’t help being a fool for someone”.
Ever since their inception, Mouth Culture have been walking the wire.
While we all navigate our own tightrope of life, theirs is a story of “Mishaps of My Mid Twenties”, performances in the fields of Reading & Leeds, 2000Trees and the hallowed grounds of Download Festival. But guitarist Mason Clifford, bassist Todd Groome and frontman Jack Voss aren’t tiptoeing along in single file. As Mouth Culture, they are brothers in arms, fighting for each other as they push this rock up the hill together.
The reality of the 21st Century rockstar is the double life. Jack works in construction, around the Midlands. Mason has had a corporate office job for 11 years. Todd had to choose between the sack or a You Me At Six tour. Hours together remain precious, so when they arrived at the idyllic Otterhead Studios for the first recording stint of their debut album “The Wire”, the pressure to enter the headspace and knock this record for six was visible. As ever, they point to their unity as the key to their focus.
The trio, who finish each other’s sentences, found their element at the live-in Otterhead, playing football in the garden and Rocket League on the PS4 between studio sessions with their producers, Jamie Ward and Max Helyer. The tranquility of home soil, bacon sarnies and the studio dog all fed into the most suitable setting to commit “The Wire” to tape. A playground where they could toy with the idea of recording “Brisbane” during August’s solar eclipse.
Propelling Mouth Culture far beyond their alt-rock beginnings, “The Wire” launches them in the mix to become Britain’s next great guitar act. Foals, Turnstile and Hayley Williams come up as influences. The Romesh Ranganathan-featuring “Dying to Stay” carries moody echoes of Fontaines D.C., while the lead guitars on “Outta Here!” and “Never Been Closer” scream Queens Of The Stone Age at their most visceral. But these touchpoints only come in flashes. “We don’t want to mimic anyone”, asserts Jack. “We let each song take its own course”, agrees Todd. “It’s a feeling that we’re all very much locked into”, adds Mason.
Jack’s gritty, impassioned lyrical voice shines on “The Wire”; his metaphorical bond with the weather, the increasing patience he’s learnt in his daily life. “I don’t want to write my problem out and tell them all my shit, but I’m more than happy to open up and then let them know how I’m feeling”, the vocalist explains, conscious of this online cesspit where people are constantly instructed what to think. Fundamentally, the results are euphoric and uplifting: “You’ve not forgotten what you’re sad about, but you’re not feeling the way you did”.
“If this is what it’s like when we can only give a certain per cent of ourselves, imagine when we can go full-throttle”, smiles Jack. “That opportunity to get off the wire”. Unlike the plank, the wire is infinite; a pathway to that evergreen future. The lads picture a Mouth Culture cul-de-sac in Leicester, as their kids play on the lawn while they watch from their studios, preparing to headline Reading & Leeds. “I genuinely believe it”, Jack says of the latter.
“Each of us knows exactly what each of us have done to get here”, he summarises. “You can’t take that away”.
If Mouth Culture continue walking that wire, it’ll take them stratospheric.
Physical pre-order bundles of “The Wire” are also available here, with an exclusive instant grat download of album track “Dying to Stay”, which features a spoken word turn from comedian Romesh Ranganathan. The cut will enjoy a wider release in due course but this is fans’ chance to hear it early.
Tracklist:
1. Growing Pains
2. Outta Here!
3. Fool
4. Dying to Stay
5. I Don’t Care
6. Spiralling
7. Lucky Number (925)
8. Dive
9. Brisbane
10. Never Been Close
