Just Mustard Reflect On How Touring With The Cure Shaped Their New Album

Just Mustard have spoken to NME about how the “mad experience” of being personally chosen to tour with The Cure helped shape their acclaimed new album, We Were Just Here.

The Irish noise-rock five-piece released their third LP on Friday (October 24). NME praised the project as “a blinding effort, full of feeling and perfect for goths twitching to lurk in the shadows of the dancefloor”, comparing it to “My Bloody Valentine coming up on a pinger”.

We Were Just Here also prepares the band to return as special guests for several of The Cure’s major outdoor shows across the UK and Europe next summer, after Robert Smith first invited them to support the group in South America in 2023.

“Whenever we played those stadium shows in South America with The Cure, it definitely influenced the new album because they made us want to write more songs for people to dance and sing along to, songs that had a clear melodic centre,” singer Katie Ball told NME. “It made us want to play tracks in those sorts of places, although I do not see us headlining stadiums any time soon!”

Guitarist David Noonan agreed, saying, “The Cure’s music is so melodic, where every element feels like a hook. We saw people singing along to the guitar parts, the basslines, the drums.”

Receiving many of Smith’s famously “funny as f***” emails written entirely in capital letters, Ball said the frontman was always “quite hands-on and will help out in any way he can”.

Noonan added, “What is crazy and inspiring is just how involved he is in every part of the production. He runs the whole show purely out of love for The Cure. Everyone is coming from a good place. And for us to watch The Cure and also watch Cure fans experience The Cure was such a mad experience. It can feel overwhelming.

“We were watching them in Brazil and had to walk through a crowd of sixty thousand people to leave the stadium. Seeing so many people absolutely losing their minds is something that will always stay with me.”

The new album follows their 2018 debut Wednesday and 2022’s Heart Under, and the band say it has a more “upbeat and light” mood and personality.

“From playing gigs, we wanted to play more upbeat music that was more danceable and more direct,” Ball explained. “Also, I started to feel like I was a miserable person to be around. I wanted to let go of the heavy feelings I was carrying and try to become a more positive person to be around.”

However, Noonan made it clear that they have not transformed into a carefree pop band.

“Sonically, we still have a lot of tension,” he said. “We are working with tension in a big way, but on this album that tension is pulling in a different direction. Before, the light was getting swallowed by the darkness, but this time we are trying to move toward the opposite.

“All of our touring has had a very atmosphere-heavy and internal feeling. We wanted something that made us more excited and made us want to move.”

That sense of “tension” came from the fact that searching for joy is rarely easy. “The idea of trying to be happy means that there is something else underneath, you know?” Ball said, while Noonan added, “There is also the danger of trying to force happiness. You can chase it, but it will not always work out.”

Helping elevate the record, the album was mixed by Grammy-nominated David Wrench, known for his work with FKA Twigs, The XX, David Byrne, and Frank Ocean. Noonan said Wrench “added real character” using different instrumentation and also brought “huge depth” to the vocals.

“The melodies that were already there were expanded in a three-dimensional way and given more weight,” he explained. Ball added, “With the demos, we were always thinking about the finished song. It is just cool to hand a song to someone else and hear it come back sounding way better in ways you never imagined.”

As with their past work, We Were Just Here shows Just Mustard’s ability to use guitars to create sounds that feel far removed from traditional guitar music, although this time the instrument is featured far more prominently.

“We started the band by making the music we wanted with the instruments we knew how to play, and those were not the same thing,” Noonan said. “We wanted to make electronic music with guitars. With this album, you can feel that we are letting the guitars through more. Texturally, we became more drawn to screaming fuzz guitars. We wanted to amplify that rush, like a light moving really fast.”

In a four-star review of We Were Just Here, NME wrote, “Album number three from Just Mustard is a more three-dimensional, glorious noise, reaching for euphoria while capturing the rollercoaster of comedowns and the spaces in between, driving melody through the malaise on a psych-driven neon bullet train.

“This time, there is light on the horizon, a once blackened sky now awash with bleach. It is a blinding effort, full of feeling and perfect for goths twitching to lurk in the shadows of the dancefloor.”

We Were Just Here is out now via Partisan. Just Mustard will be heading out on tour in 2026. Tickets are on sale now, and you can find them here (UK/Ireland) and here (US).

Just Mustard will play: 

APRIL 2026
8 – Stockholm – SE, Debaser 
9 – Oslo, NO – John Dee 
11 – Copenhagen, DK – Loppen 
12 – Hamburg, DE – Nochtspeicher 
13 – Cologne, DE – Helios 37 
15 – Amsterdam, NL – Paradiso 
16 – Brussels, BE – Botanique 
17 – Paris, FR – Le Trabendo 
19 – Norwich, GB – The Waterfront 
20 – Birmingham, GB – The Castle & Falcon 
21 – Newcastle, GB – The Grove 
23 – Glasgow, GB – Glasgow School of Art 
24 – Leeds, GB – Brudenell Social Club 
25 – Manchester, GB – Gorilla 
27 – Bristol, GB – Thekla 
28 – Brighton, GB – CHALK 
29 – London, GB – Electric Brixton 

MAY 2026 
1 – Dublin, IE – 3Olympia Theatre 
8 – Seattle, WA – Tractor Tavern 
9 – Vancouver, BC – Fox Cabaret 
10 – Portland, OR – Polaris Hall 
12 – San Francisco, CA – Cafe Du Nord 
14 – Santa Ana, CA – Constellation Room 
16 – West Hollywood, CA – Troubadour 
17 – Phoenix, AZ – Valley Bar – Music Hall 
19 – Denver, CO – Larimer Lounge 
21 – Chicago, IL – Empty Bottle 
23 – Toronto, ON – The Garrison 
24 – Montréal, QC – Bar Le Ritz PDB 
26 – New York, NY – Bowery Ballroom 
29 – Philadelphia, PA – Johnny Brenda’s 
30 – Washington, DC – Songbyrd Music House 

JUNE 2026 
26 – Marlay Park – Dublin, Ireland* 
28 – Belsonic – Belfast, Northern Ireland*