After their sets at both Reading and Leeds Festival, we caught up with Todd (bassist) and Mason (guitarist) from the band Mouth Culture to talk a little bit about the band, new music, touring, and their experiences at both Reading and Leeds over the weekend.

Tell us a bit about yourselves, who you are and what are your musical backgrounds?

Mouth Culture: We’re a band from Leicester. We’re a three-piece. We’ve been writing music together for—what—six years now? We lived together for five of those years, and basically that formed what Mouth Culture is today, pretty much. So yeah, we’ve kind of been in each other’s lives day in, day out for the past five–six years.

Who are your musical influences?

Mouth Culture: Quite an array—tough to dwindle them down. Do you mean in the sense of just our sound at the moment? (Yeah) Probably easier to narrow it down. Yeah, I mean, I’d probably say from a guitar point of view for myself, I would say My Chemical Romance. They’re one of my main ones. They kind of form the way that I write and, like, play the guitar in general. One of mine I do say quite often, but it’s a band I always go back to, is a band called Quarters of Change. They’re from New York, and I feel when I listen to them I get the same feeling when I listen to our stuff, where I have, like, ‘oh, that’s a song that I really enjoy.’ So yeah, I’d say them.

Who would your dream collaboration be?

Mouth Culture: Like anyone? Paramore, for me. It’s a good one. I’d probably have to say someone absolutely left field… I’m gonna say Flatbush Zombies. Just on a basis of doing a song that’s completely out of, like, pocket for us to do, but I’d love to do something just a bit out there—so yeah.

A bit of a fun question- If you could describe your music as a scent, what would it smell like?

Mouth Culture: I’d say—there’s a lot of ones I’d say. I keep thinking fresh bacon in the morning. I’ve got it—it’s if you’ve ever drove past, like, a bread factory and you smell it and it’s like ‘oh my god,’ and it’s a sunny day and it’s warm, and your windows are down, and then it just came in that point there—smells like home. Yeah, smells like home, smells familiar. Well, we made bread all the time, metaphorically and physically.

Whats your writing process been like for your music?

Mouth Culture: Well, to be fair, it normally… so we have a studio that we work out of in Leicester, and it’s been like a space for us—how long have we been there? Like two years. And we used to obviously write at home, so it’d be a case of just having the studio accessible to us. But me and Mason would either go to the computer, write a riff that we have, an idea or whatever idea it may be, and then we kinda just go in. Like, we come back from work and you hear it upstairs and you’re like, ‘what are you working on?’ and then you do your little bit on it, and then they sort of create themselves in that way. But cause we lived together, it’s very organic.

Now we don’t live together, and we’ve got the studio, we’ve kind of had to switch it up in that sense, but it feels way more streamlined now, and there’s not a ceiling with the stuff we do. There’s no, like, competition or anything—we all love what each other does and what everyone brings to the table, so it’s just a very organic process now. Which is nice. We rarely have any problems when it comes to writing; it’s just finding the songs we wanna pick. Because we write so much, it’s like sometimes you got so much choice that you don’t really know what is representative of you at that time. But we’ve got better and better each year we’ve been doing it.

So would you release an album of unreleased songs?

Mouth Culture: Yeah, I mean, we’ve contemplated what to do with that sort of music, cause you don’t really want it to go to waste, cause it’s not moving with the times of the band. But yeah, we’re still umming and ahing about what we can do with it, because obviously we’ve got like a Patreon, which we think would be a great thing for people to use. It’s a lot of time and effort we put into those songs, even if they don’t make it to the light of day. So obviously it makes sense to utilise them and then to get people, because I think I’d find it super interesting if a band was just putting out songs that they don’t put out. You know, let me listen to this—like you have that sort of exclusive and inside knowledge of the band.

You guys have a tour coming up, what city are you most excited to play at?

Mouth Culture: For me, probably not like a city so to speak, but like—we’re playing The Garage in London. That’s quite a bucket-list venue for me. I think one of the smaller ones, because everyone says once you do that then you go to like… I can’t remember the venue now, it’s gone from my head. Academy? No, no, no. But it’s like one of those venues that launches you to the next bit in London. So yeah, we always have a good time in London.

I’d say Manchester for me. It was the one that sold out the fastest and I feel like—I don’t know—there’s always that element of when it does go first, the people who have gone to get a ticket are really wanting to see you, sort of thing. So I get that sort of energy from Manchester. (Which venue in Manchester is it?) Uh, it is Deaf Inst—no, it’s been upgraded! Academy 3, yeah. So it was Deaf Institute before, was it? I think yeah. Sometimes people even ask me the day and I’m like ahhh, I have to check on the calendar.

Do you guys have any pre or post show rituals?

Mouth Culture: We used to slap each other on the back; we don’t really do that anymore. We kind of do the stereotypical all-hands-in-the-middle—yeah, yeah, yeah. It kind of breaks the seriousness of it a little bit, which is nice, and it sort of puts you in like a—I don’t know—but you’re locked in, but you wanna be chilling. I feel like as well, because we have quite bad ADHD, just before stage everyone knows we gotta be there at that time. Everyone’s kind of running around and being like, ‘Where is this? Where is that?’ Trying to keep your singer and drummer in one place is near impossible. I bet that’s kind of our ritual—I guess it’s a bit of chaos before the show. And then post, we have a cigarette, that’s pretty much it. Wish it was more exciting—maybe we’ll have something more exciting for the next time and then we’ll be like, ‘Yeah, we do this now.’ (Next time I interview you guys…) Yeah, we’ll have something crazy. Yeah, absolutely wild.

How have you been finding the festival so far, what has the fan response been like?

Mouth Culture: Ridiculous, really. The tent—it’s so strange—’cause obviously like the people can disperse so quick from the show before, and you think there’s no one there, and you’re like, ‘Bloody hell, we’re on in 20 minutes, where is everyone?’ But both times we came out from both Reading and Leeds, we’ve just been like, ‘Oh my god.’ It’s literally from front to back, like stacked with people, and you just don’t see any gaps. And it’s like, I don’t know, it feels like more of an energy when you have a big group of people all in solidarity, rather than in portions and stuff. Yeah, so obviously why everyone tries to get people to come forward so that, like, group together and have that sort of cohesion. But yeah, it’s been surreal—wasn’t it? Just the fact that we’re playing here in general, and then to have come out and have a packed tent both times is—yeah.

Last question- will you be back next year?

Mouth Culture: If we’re invited, we will 100% be there, yeah! You never know, a lot can happen in 365 days. So yeah, fingers crossed!!

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