After years of traversing Melbourne's sticky-floored pub circuit, The Mean Times, a band known for its unhinged live energy and self-deprecating charm, have finally captured their chaotic essence in their long-awaited debut album, 'Feel More Dumb'. Released on 12th September via Golden Robot Records, the 13-track record is a testament to the band’s refusal to take themselves too seriously while tackling the often-absurd realities of adult life.
The album, a blend of post-punk fury, indie swagger, and raw garage-pop, sees the four-piece channel their inner anxieties into a cathartic and dangerously catchy sound. The band members—Tom Morgan (vocals/guitar), Eoin Clements (guitar), Rob Meerbach (bass), and Ryan Williams (drums)—have managed to create something both loud and literate, filled with the droll humour that's become their trademark. As vocalist Tom Morgan puts it, they "aim to be uncomfortably honest. To say the quiet parts out loud." It's this unapologetic frankness that makes the album so relatable and compelling.
With a sound forged in Melbourne’s vibrant live scene, The Mean Times effortlessly fuse influences from across genres and eras. While some might hear echoes of The Saints, Blur, or Pixies, the band themselves offer a more colourful description: they "sound like a shopping trolley on fire rolling down a hill into a dive bar with good chips." The album's tracklist moves with a slalom-like intensity, from the fiery opener 'Already Done' to the slacker-soul of 'Hook, Line and Sinker', and even includes three instrumentals that stitch the record together.
'Feel More Dumb' is a record about the jarring collision of youthful abandon and the slow, creeping realisation of mortality. It's a record you can dance to while falling apart, a collection of songs that acknowledges the uncomfortable truths of aging without succumbing to po-faced doom.
Produced by Anna Laverty (Camp Cope, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds), and recorded at the now-tragically-lost Head Gap Studios, the album is a perfectly imperfect document of a band at the top of their game. It’s loud, honest, and gloriously unhinged, proving that sometimes the best way to deal with life’s messiness is to laugh, turn up the music, and embrace the beautifully dumb feeling of it all.
Stream the new single above, and for more from the band, be sure to catch them on Instagram and Facebook.
