On June 21, Mouses released their second album bwywtb.
Meaning ‘be who you want to be’, the album is 13 tracks long and has a vaguely Green Day-esque pop punk sound. Aiming for a mixture of garage punk and lo-fi. It’s quite a nice, DIY-sounding album, with uplifting messages and relatable themes. I really liked it, though there were some things that I felt could be improved.
The first few tracks, I’ve found that there’s an emptiness to the sound of them. They’re not bad songs, by any means, but the emptiness is a little bit off-putting. It’s been a little while since I’ve revised mixing music, so forgive me if I’m not exactly on the right track (pun not intended), but I feel like it could benefit from an equaliser, or a different type than what was used. It could also be that the stereo is not wide enough. It could be as simple as lifting the bass or drums up. I could also be completely wrong, like I said, it’s been a while. Either way, the tracks need a bit of density, to have some power behind them.
There’s also an argument that tidying it up could take away from the DIY sound. Luckily, it is just the beginning of the album that has this problem. It gets better at Illusion and is completely gone by Inigo. Inigo, I’ve found, is one of the stronger songs on the album. It’s a nice, softer song. Fiends, Planet and Worm, I’ve also found myself enjoying a lot more.
I have a couple of stylistic points for bwywtb. The first is that a few songs could have been cut. It’s a bit of a longer album, and there are a couple of songs that, compared to others, are a bit weaker. With a bit more ruthlessness, it could be a great album.
I also think it could have flowed a bit better if you swapped Untitled with Inigo. That way, we’d still have a nice softer song to end with, but not with the punk vocalisation towards the end. Untitled changes the mood up, but then reverts back to punk towards the end. It creates calmness, and then fires you back up. It can be argued that it’s good way to end, reverting to the start. I think that finishing with Inigo, and just leaving the listener calm, would have been nice.
Of course, this is completely my opinion, and very much just down to preference. If Mouses feel pride and joy with what they’ve created, that’s what’s important. They should feel proud, because it’s a good album and I hope that my review doesn’t make it seem like I hated it, because I didn’t. Far from!
This is only Mouses’ second album, and I look forward to hearing more from them.