Just Mustard: "We listen to a lot of traditional Irish music and ballads, and English folk as well – so I think it definitely bleeds into it"

In the summer of 2019, Robert Smith watched from side-of-stage as Just Mustard played what was then probably the biggest gig of their career – a support slot for The Cure at a sold-out Malahide Castle.

It was a momentous show for multiple reasons. An early iteration of NewDad, then barely out of their teens, were among those standing in the crowd – with the Galway band having since described witnessing that transformative opening set as “the reason why we all started taking it seriously”.

For Just Mustard, it marked the beginning of a strong connection with The Cure that carries on to this day. With the Dundalk five-piece having already toured South America alongside Smith and the band in 2023, they’re now gearing up for something of a full-circle moment, with another massive Dublin gig with The Cure lined up for June 2026 – seven years, a pandemic, a coveted record deal, two acclaimed albums, a recent Later...with Jools Holland performance, and millions of streams on from that first support slot.

“Sometimes you support bands and they take no interest – and that’s fine, it’s whatever,” vocalist Katie Ball reflects. “But we’ve sent him records over the years, and he’s been so nice, and very supportive. To go to South America was amazing. It’s class to be able to do it again, in Ireland.”

“It’s really inspiring as well, getting to see how much The Cure and their crew all really care about it,” adds guitarist/producer David Noonan. “And how much they put into it – they’re not just showing up. They do it out of the love for the music, and they genuinely have such respect for their fans.”

2026 will also find Just Mustard bringing their own headline tour across the UK, Europe, and North America, in support of their boundary-pushing third album – and second with Partisan Records – WE WERE JUST HERE.

Photo: Conor James

Released in October, the new LP came together during a year away from touring.

“We were trying to balance gigging with writing, and it wasn’t really working for us,” Katie explains. “I know some bands can do it, but we found it hard. So we took last year off gigging completely – and started doing five days a week, trying to get it together.

“Maybe a bit of separation from playing all our older songs live made us able to write something fresher,” she continues. “It was good to just go, ‘Okay, no gigs – what can we do from here?’”

Their previous album, 2022’s Choice Prize-nominated Heart Under, found Just Mustard exploring themes of “sadness and sorrow”, as they described it at the time, and the heavy sensation of “being underwater.” As they approached the new album during their time-off, the band – also made up of Mete Kaylon, Rob Clarke and Shane Maguire – knew they “wanted to do something different, and a bit less moody,” Katie says.

“Less depressing and dark!” she laughs. “Heart Under was kind of written in lockdown, so we didn’t really have access to any other moods…”

A word that continuously comes up in discussions about WE WERE JUST HERE is ‘euphoria’. While the band have by no means abandoned the heavily textured sonic world they’d mapped out on their first two albums, Katie pushed herself to carve out a brighter, more joy-driven space in her songwriting this time around – exploring the sense of freedom that comes with pure elation.

“I feel there was a flip,” David nods. “Previously the tension in our music was always pulling in towards something darker. With this one, it feels like the music is being led by the vocals – so pulling towards more lightness and euphoria. It’s like the tension is in a different direction.”

“You try to feel euphoric to get away from heaviness,” Katie reasons. “That’s what I was trying in my personal life! And musically it made sense.”

That’s not to say it’s easy to write from a place of lightness, while living in an increasingly dark world. Or, as Katie recalls feeling: “I want to write happy music. What am I going to write fucking happy music about?”

“Looking inwardly, I personally wasn’t ready to write happy songs about what I was thinking, because I wasn’t there yet,” she says. “And then outwardly, there was nothing in the world that was making me excited. So it was a tough thing to try and do. But it’s always harder to write happy songs – it’s easy to write sad songs.

“So I tried to put myself into physical spaces where you can get immediate joy,” she continues. “Like dancefloors and rollercoasters. I’d think of those kinds of places and write songs from there.”

Did she physically put herself in those situations as part of the process?

“Not nightclubs, but rollercoasters, yeah!” she reveals. “As much as I can. I say rollercoaster, but I mean the carnivals that come with the waltzers and all. I love that ride so much.”

As for nightclubs, the kind of dancefloor exhilaration that she was trying to capture wasn’t “drug euphoria”, she tells me.

“It’s more the way you can completely let yourself go to music on a dancefloor,” she says. “Not that I do that often. I’m actually a terrible dancer – but in my head I’m unreal.”

Inspiration came from other unexpected places too – with the stripped-back ‘The Steps’ feeling almost like a folk song.

“We love that music and it’s definitely an influence on us,” David reflects. “It maybe doesn’t always come out in the music directly, but we listen to a lot of traditional Irish music and ballads, and English folk as well – so I think it definitely bleeds into it. It was cool to wear that on our sleeve a bit more, and to show off something really purely, without having to force it.”

So it wasn’t just the sneaking influence of fellow Dundalk band The Mary Wallopers, who David works with as a producer?

“Well,” he smiles. “Hanging out with them in their house and listening to five hours of ballads – I suppose it has its effect eventually…”

Alongside those strong hometown ties – including a recent appearance at Dundalk’s new alternative music festival Bold Frontiers – Just Mustard have also continued to build up a major international following since the independent release of their debut album, Wednesday, back in 2018.

“When we released Wednesday, it got featured on the Bandcamp homepage that week,” Katie recalls. “And that was a massive thing for us at the time. Loads of people found us from that, in Japan and America – whereas we were only expecting to try and sell records to our friends in Dundalk. So that first instance of it was crazy.”

“We were having bets with each other about how many albums we’d sell, being like, ‘30?’” David adds. “We had no expectation of selling albums outside of Dundalk, or maybe Dublin.”

With a busy run of international dates lined up for 2026, they tell me that getting the songs of WE WERE JUST HERE gig-ready is the band’s central focus these days.

“I sing very soft on some of the songs on this album, so I’m trying to find a way to get that out live really well,” Katie elaborates. “We’ve done a lot of work already and I think it’s paying off. It’s sounding pretty good, apparently!”

“Sometimes, if you’ve been in a band for a long time, you can kind of be like, ‘Yeah, we know how to do this,’” David adds. “But it’s good to keep trying to push ourselves – and see how far we can take this, and develop it.”

• WE WERE JUST HERE is out now. Just Mustard play 3Olympia Theatre, Dublin on May 1, 2026. They’ll also support The Cure at Marlay Park, Dublin (June 26) and Belsonic, Belfast (June 28).