Show Review: Just Mustard, Catcher at Bowery Ballroom, NYC.
May 26th, 2026.
----------
"If they're shoegazers, then we're stagegazers" -Anonymous
May 27th, 2026
It’s been a quiet month at RCR. We’ve been seeing someone, we’re playing it cool but on the inside our whiskers are in a tailspin. Is it even possible to not get burned by a fire you carry? We needed the racket of the shoegaze revival to shake our spirit and point us north, to light the way. So we crawled to Bowery Ballroom to see Irish outfit Just Mustard on one of the last legs of their U.S. tour, with support from noise rockers Catcher. Here’s the sound we found:
The bricks that Catcher built their wall of sound with were made up of two guitarists, a bassist, violinist, drummer, and lead singer. Violin served a fascinating role as a high frequency noise drone, like a synth pad but with real strings. Combined with two distorted guitars, a constant wash of music poured down on the audience. Drums provided propulsion, with frantic rhythms that carried us through the roar. The singer, head slightly bowed, often held the microphone with clasped hands and elbows together, like a prayer.
Touring off the success of their acclaimed third album We Were Just Here, Irish band Just Mustard tested the limits of low end guitar music. Bass so loud that the floorboards trembled, crunchy guitar riffs played in reverse, drums punchy and tight. Woven into this violent storm of music were breathy effeminate vocals delivered slowly, calmly, in drawn out syllables. Their set felt like being dropped dead center into the eye of a hurricane. Every song was a different visceral shade of loud. If Model/Actriz is one side of the avant-noise coin, Just Mustard is the flip side.
We stood in front, four rows back, for the entire show because we knew this was going to be a physical experience. We left feeling our heartbeat in our psyche from the full-body shakedown we just endured. It was a soothing feeling. The questions we had beforehand now had answers. On a warm spring evening, we crawled north up Bowery with a CD copy of Just Mustards We Were Just Here and a fiery conviction to see things through. See you around, Rrrat Pack.
| Keywords: | New York City | Bowery Ballroom | Just Mustard | Catcher |
|---|
