Something special was afoot at Northcote Uniting Church last December.
Shadows swayed across the walls of the chapel, the sound of guitars and brass echoing on. All nine members of indie group Mouseatouille, performing in full their seismic concept album Out Of The Hospital, Into The Morgue, a gig six years in the making.
“It was always in the back of my mind, ‘We gotta do that gig,’” says frontman Harry Green. “We know we’re closing in on finishing the next album and we love Out Of The Hospital, it’s so important to us in terms of our teenage-hood and us becoming friends and the formation of the identity of the band.”
Check out our gig guide here.
It’s been an eventful time since that record dropped in 2019: support slots for Black Country, New Road and Your Arms Are My Cocoon, a radio show via Skylab, and the odd single peppered here and there. It’d all been a gradual lead-up to closing the chapter of Out Of The Hospital and beginning a new one with DJ Set, released in September.
“We’d been working on [DJ Set] for so long, in various degrees of seriousness in terms of when it was gonna be done or released,” said Harry. “Then the gig was a success, and it was like, ‘Well, you know, maybe it’s time now to put out something new.’”
After years of moulding these tracks together, DJ Set showcases the group at their most rambunctious, yet simultaneously very diligent. The album constantly weaves, throwing around new instruments and unconventional structures, while also maintaining a constant feeling of attentive detail in every section.
“I think it’s definitely a dichotomy. A lot of how we present ourselves, and the reality of it as well, is this quite chaotic and disorganised [group of] people,” said Harry. “But I think truthfully, we do obsess, maybe almost too much, over everything. It’s a decision to leave in people coughing in the background of the song. We’re obsessed with all that shit.”
DJ Set also sees the band at their most collaborative. Harry cites bandmates Fergus, Sofia and Chloe as important contributors to songs’ structures and arrangements. Guitarist Dan brought forth the penultimate track Theme From 2021, as well as the core riff found on opening track Tom’s Lament.
“[Tom’s Lament] came together pretty easily I think, which we all felt very proud of. It was one of the last things we did. I think it kind of showed that we had become a functional, traditional band,” says Harry. “It isn’t this recording project led by me or Spencer or anyone anymore; it’s just a very democratic sort of process.”
Each song is thoroughly put together, confident in its intention. Mike & Melissa is a fun indie romp with a soaring ending, glued together by a charming guitar solo. Meanwhile a track like My Love fuses Harry’s uniquely candid lyrical style with huge guitar tones before dissipating into a spacey, ambient second-half. Not a moment feels rushed or ill-considered.
“We love the process…which is why it takes us so much time to make anything,” Harry says. “We love recording and writing and nerding out about arrangements and just doing that for each other. A lot of the making of the album was just showing each other stuff and being like, ‘Oh, isn’t this cool?’ The audience, we weren’t thinking about that.”
This is best exemplified by the album’s finale, an abrupt cut to silence halfway through lyrics describing memories of solace. It’s confusing, then silly, then weirdly poetic. It’s really just what they do best.
“That’s our kind of sense of humor,” says Harry. “We really mucked around with exactly when to cut it to make it sound the most unintentional.”
There’s a world wherein Mouseatouille continued to tinker away at DJ Set, perhaps for eternity. Songs were being rewritten and edited after already being fully recorded. Changes were being made up until the very last minute. It took the album’s mixer Joseph Buchan (“Other Joe”), label interest by Remote Control and Dot Dash Recordings, as well as the band’s close friends to convince them to finally release it into the wild.
“Someone else has to tell us that it’s done,” said Harry. “It’s one of those things where as soon as you step away from it, you’re like, ‘What was I even doing?’”
Mouseatouille are playing Meredith from 5-7 December. More info here.
