Just Mustard on ‘We Were Just Here’ & Irish Music Scene

Last Updated on 2025-12-20 by a-indie

Ireland has undoubtedly been the hotspot for indie rock since the 2020s.

Led by Fontaines D.C., bands like Inhaler and NewDad are achieving global success, and remarkably, every album released is outstanding.

What they share in common is a reassuring aggressive stance that continues to discover new possibilities in indie rock, and everything is dark, thrilling, and intoxicating, never boring listeners.

A solid sound that will never fade away resides in the works of Irish bands.

Further heating up this Irish band scene is the new album ‘We Were Just Here’ by Ireland’s Just Mustard, released this time.

‘We Were Just Here,’ their third album, delivers something sweet and melodic while retaining industrial noise colors.

With its specialized design, this work is also dark, thrilling, and intoxicating without exception.

It’s an overwhelming work that even gives the premonition of becoming a milestone for both the scene and Just Mustard.

This time, with Just Mustard’s Japan performance scheduled for January, we conducted a second interview, following up on their previous work, exploring how this overwhelming work was born, using “the Irish music scene” as a starting point.

Also, please read the cross-review of ‘We Were Just Here’ written by myself and Argentinian writer RAM, and look forward to their upcoming Japan performance!

New Talent Born from Ireland, Just Mustard

Artists: Shane Maguire (Dr.), David Noonan (Gt.)　Interviewer: Yuuki Takita　Translation, Editing, Proofreading: BELONG Media / A-indie

The Band’s Journey and Bond with Fontaines D.C.

Shane Maguire: Well we toured in support of Heart Under fairly heavily across 2022 and 2023, which culminated in our first South American tour supporting the Cure, which was a surreal experience. Then in 2024 we slowed down touring so we could concentrate on writing new material and recording the album. It is a lot easier for us to write when we aren’t regularly interrupted with touring.

The band situation was more or less the same as before except there was no more COVID! We all still live in our hometown. The writing, recording and producing of We Were Just Here seemed to be a much smoother and fruitful process compared to Heart Under, even though there’s always bumps in the road when it comes to creating an album. This could be a reflection on our mindsets at the time or maybe we’re just more experienced at the whole album making thing now?

That’s very cool of Fontaines to give us a shout-out in Japan! They’re good friends of ours and have supported us in so many ways over the years.

Performances Worldwide and Festival Appearances

-Yuuki Takita: This year you’ve performed at music festivals across various countries—Wales’s “Green Man Festival,” America’s “Seisiún Festival,” and Germany’s “Reeperbahn Festival”—and you’ve been doing a world tour as well. How have those performances been in each country? I’m also curious about how you’ve been received in countries outside Japan.

Shane Maguire: The shows this year have been going very well generally, and the response has been great! It was very beneficial honing some of the new album material while on the road. The Seisiún festival in Boston was an interesting one because it was mostly an Irish folk/trad lineup and we were one of the only “straight-up” rock bands there but it was amazing to hang out with all the other bands and to catch The Pogues live of course, as we’re all big fans.

We are always delighted with the response we get whenever we play in other countries and we hope to never take it for granted. We are always especially excited to play in new places where we have been waiting to play for some time, and Japan is definitely around the top of that list!