Little Hand Says It’s Time To Rock n’ Roll With Mt. Seaside

Mustard had the pleasure of speaking with Mt. Seaside (Örebro, Sweden.) The band just recently released their debut EP “Sorry, Something, Summer” (which Mustard will be reviewing later today.) Together we discussed their origins, band name, their country of Sweden, and of course their EP! Check out the interview below!

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1. Hello! Mustard thanks you for being here. How are you?

Thanks for having us! We’re good! We just released our first EP and we’re riding the high from all the nice things people have said about it, both online and in real life. We’re all gathered here in our makeshift studio in my (Jonatan) parent’s basement. 

2. Mustard loves your band name, Mt.Seaside. They visualize a beautiful landscape. Could you share how you got your name?

We wrote up a bunch of name suggestions on the fridge in our rehearsal space. Most of the suggestions were inspired by water or mountains, we’re big on mountains. Then Adam wrote Mt. Seaside and no one could come up with a better name so it stuck. We could probably have come up with an easier name for Swedish people to get. It’s a bit tedious sometimes to have to spell it out, my family still pronounces it “Em Tee Seaside”.

3. Was the band formed by the seaside? What is the band’s origin?

We basically live in the middle of Sweden, so we got neither seasides nor mountains, unfortunately. We’re surrounded by forests and fields. 

Adam and I were playing together with other people and then eventually found ourselves without a drummer. Jonatan had played with Benito before so he asked him “pretty please” and Ben immediately said no. But after a few more attempts and some bribes he said yes. Since then Benito has shifted focus to play bass. We haven’t really considered bringing in a drummer, since we started playing for real and recording during the pandemic, so we’ve never had to deal with live situations. We’re careful not to ruin the group dynamic by bringing in another member, so Benito takes care of both bass and drums for now. 

4. Your first single “I Am Loud” features a song called “The Life and Death of Laura Palmer.”  Should listeners have knowledge of “Twin Peaks” before listening? Is this a favorite TV show of the bands?

No, there’s no need to catch up on Twin Peaks lore to listen to our music, or vice versa. I was watching Twin Peaks at the time of writing that song, which was long before Mt. Seaside was Mt. Seaside. Twin Peaks has one of the greatest soundtracks of all time and I tried to the best of my ability to recreate the sound of the theme song. I was new to doing any kind of recording, but felt like I got close. So, we just ran with it. Benito hasn’t actually seen the show. He doesn’t know what he’s missing. 

5. Mustard has heard incredible things about Sweden. Can you confirm this to be true?

That would depend on what you’ve heard. The sun barely goes down during the summer and barely comes up during the winter. We have a king who’s a silly little guy. We have a 9500-year-old tree. People like to keep to themselves and mind their own business. We complain a lot about the government, like everybody else, but it’s generally pretty easy living here.

6. Your debut EP “Sorry, Something, Summer” just dropped! Could you share more about it? How does it feel having an EP released?

It’s a project we’ve been working on since the summer of ’21. It’s all been recorded and mixed in the basement of my childhood home, where we’re sitting. It’s got this, at least to us, nostalgic feel, it’s like you’re longing for the good old days or waiting for some good days to come. But right now, things might be a little rough.

The EP kind of picks up where I Am Loud left off. I think of it as a relationship story or the end of a love story. Christmas is a kind of sequel to It’s Not. And after that the chronology gets a bit thrown around. But I feel like you could place the songs along a timeline and move them around to get a coherent story. 

It feels great! We’ve been working really hard on this, mulled over every detail to get it just the way we wanted it to be heard. We have little to no idea what we’re doing really, production-wise, so it’s been a lot of trial, error and headaches. But we finished it about five months before release so we’ve just been sitting and waiting eagerly to share it. 

7. Mustard saw that you describe your music as “emo trash.” What is emo trash? Is it recyclable? Were you influenced by other “emo trash” bands?

There used to be a great podcast called Emo Trash, which were two people, who every week would sit and discuss different emo albums or bands. I listened to it a lot during work at time I wrote the bio. So, it’s just a little nod to a great podcast that sadly doesn’t exist anymore. 

We started out trying to emulate the sounds of the bands we all liked, some kind of blend between pop- and folk-punk. Then eventually we decided to stop trying to sound like other and start trying to sound like us. Nowadays there’s little overlap in the music we listen to. I’m listening to a lot of country or alt-rock, Adam listens to a bit heavier pop-punk and Ben is an emo-boy by birth. 

8. How has social media helped you as a band? Would you recommend it to others?

We’re still trying to get a good grip on our social media presence. We used to only do Instagram, but we’ve been quite active on Twitter for the last couple of months. It’s been really cool to see the response to our music from complete strangers. Most people who interact with us on Instagram are people we know in real life, but on Twitter it’s 99% strangers. We don’t have ton of followers but the ones we do have are really cool and supportive. If you’re not on social media, you should, 

9. What is your creative process?

It usually starts with me sitting alone at home or in our studio (basement) just playing guitar. If I find something I like, I try to elaborate on that a little, and then try to find a melody and put some words to it. I’m very careful about the words and try to pack as much weight as I can into them. I find it hard to express myself in the fast-paced day-to-day conversations, but when I’m writing, I get the time to really think about what I’m trying to say. I also like to lie a lot in real life, for fun, but the one place where I try to be completely honest is in the songs. Then, whenever I feel ready, I make a quick demo and slap some drum loops over the parts I think the drums should go, send it over to the others and then Benito programs the drums, since he actually knows how to play. After that, we all sit for hours trying to come up with some cool guitar parts and add as much spice and flavor as we can.

But lately Ben has been writing some cool tunes, almost finished tracks that we’re just trying to figure out what to do with. 

10. Where can readers listen to your music?

We’re probably anywhere they usually do, Spotify, YouTube, Apple Music, in the car or on the bus. We’ve got some cool videos up YouTube, music videos, lyric videos and a live session we recorded in Benitos mom’s barn.