Gothenburg, Sweden’s Mundane formed as a side project in 2018 and eventually became the main focus of members Hannes Wijk, Felix Grennard, Linus Bech, and Melker Lilja. While releasing songs here and there since that time, this full-length debut is the fruits of their labor. Melding their influences of bands like Weezer and the Pixies with Midwest emo, Mundane brings us Ultra Sound. A twenty-seven-minute record that will have you head-bopping one minute and getting lost in its meditative songs the next.
Ultra Sound kicks off with “Riff Raff,” a song about the waxing and waning of drinking excessively and its effects on those around you. It’s not the car is in the front yard of Lit’s “My Own Worse Enemy”; it is closer to ruining the relationships you may have by running your mouth a little too much. The lyrically self-deprecating “Fast but Lazy” keeps your head bopping, but ups the ante on the tempo before stabilizing with “Never Change.” While these first two tracks are great, “Never Change” is where Ultra Sound finds its direction by transitioning into a 1990s emo album with traces of Mineral, Built to Spill, and early Further Seems Forever on the tracks going forward. The second guitar is complementary, with its repeating riffs, and mostly does more than just double up the rhythm guitar. “Summer Day” laments waking up alone after a breakup and is a good halfway point for this record. “Had to Be Good” picks up the back end of this record. “Our Bodies Differ” and “Lately” continues our journey into the emo filtered through Mundane. Ultra Sound closes with the track “The Great Indoors,” a song about letting anxiety and depression win this round and staying in bed all day.
Ultra Sound basks in the loneliness, isolation, and longing of being young. Despite being at an age where I know these feelings will pass, these sentiments still hit. Are these feelings nostalgic or residual? The answer probably differs day to day. In a year that saw the release from Suburban Eyes, veterans of the genre create new sounds of their pasts, Mundane is filtering their own future on those bands’ sound. There would be no reason to not stock this album next to some of the classics. Ultra Sound is a great album to put headphones on and get lost into. The songs aren’t dragged out, which is sometimes my criticism of 1990s emo and the bands that try to emulate it. Mundane has this locked in perfectly.
