Interview The making of MOURN, a Catalonian band with a cause

Mourn co-founder, singer and guitarist Carla Pérez Vas, is alone tonight. Her founding partner and best friend Jazz Rodríguez Bueno is studying, drummer Antonio Postius is in Rome with his other band (Red Bears) and fifteen year old bassist Leia Rodríguez is having her dinner then going to bed. It’s safe to say Mourn (bar Antonio perhaps) aren’t yet quite embracing the rock-and-roll lifestyle. All sitting between fifteen and eighteen years of age with as few as twenty-five live shows under their belt, they can hardly be expected to be. This is all part of the Mourn charm, they aren’t rock-stars or punk anarchists; they’re just teenagers from Catalonia with an incredible depth of musical knowhow and an attitude to boot.

Carla and Jazz met in school and immediately bonded over anger, boredom and a love of ironic criticism of their schoolmates. That, and “90s sounds and punk”. The next logical step then was to start making music. Bored in the back of class Carla and Jazz began to throw a few ideas around, beginning with PJ Harvey, Eliott Smith and Nirvana covers before moving on to the beginnings of Mourn. Within a year Carla and Jazz had rounded up a suitably talented, suitably badass group friends and recorded, in less than a few takes, an authentically brazen collection of punk anthems.

Carla is the first to admit she didn’t think the band would get anywhere. She is still seemingly slightly dazed by the fact that Mourn are being booked for shows the world over and requested for interviews in a language she hasn’t even fully mastered yet. But with their debut self-titled album out in February via Captured Tracks and bookings at the likes of Primavera and La Route Du Rock Mourn are picking up momentum faster than their young legs can carry them out of school.