Barcelona’s fledgling rockers MOURN have announced their third LP Sorpresa Familia, which will be released on Friday 15th June via Captured Tracks / Remote Control. Today they share their first single and video from the record, ‘Barcelona City Tour’, via NPR. The video was directed and edited by the band, and follows them as they explore and celebrate their Catalonian capital and hometown.
A note from MOURN about Sorpresa Familia:
We like to understand records as personal diaries. Everything you live builds you as a person, so we think it builds your art as well. We use songs as a way to express ourselves and to organize our ideas and thoughts. We use them to understand our own feelings and to grow emotionally. This album sums up everything we’ve lived during the past two years, it wasn’t easy to open up, but we did it anyway without fear. Every frustration, disappointment, delusion, anger… We got everything out, we liberated ourselves and now we’re ready for everything that comes up. The lyrics are very literal; they are our raw experiences–without makeup. We show our most animal side, reduced to our most intense and visceral emotions. Of all we’ve lived, we keep the experiences, what was learned, all the mistakes and successes. Now we know life is SORPRESA (surprise), but above all it is FAMILIA (family).
MOURN began when Jazz Rodríguez Bueno and Carla Perez started to release songs they had written as teens on Youtube; soon after, Antonio Postius and Jazz’s sister Leia Rodríguez joined, completing the quartet. They quickly signed to a Spanish label and, after signing to Brooklyn-based label Captured Tracks in 2014, broke onto the American music scene with their self-titled first LP. Although MOURN have only been making music for a short time (compared to the lengthy careers of many post-punk and rock stalwarts) they have since seen more than their fair share of bureaucratic troubles and music industry red tape. The momentum gained from their first LP came to a halt upon the release of their sophomore album,Ha, Ha, He!, due to legal issues with their now former Spanish label. In 2017, the group was finally relinquished from legal chaos and through Captured Tracks released an EP of covers titled Over the Wall— at last they were able to tour North America to perform songs from their entire catalogue for live audiences.
Rather than letting unfortunate circumstances discourage them, they channeled their angst and mistrials into the 12 original songs on Sorpresa Familia, citing themes such as mistreatment by toxic figures, letting go of the past, and being quite literally abandoned in a foreign city as touring teenagers. A bit older, and certainly grown into their talent even more than before, MOURN is prepared to once again captivate the attention of international critics and fans alike with Sorpresa Familia.
