Melbourne/Naarm’s The Mean Times have always existed somewhere between a raised eyebrow and a clenched fist – equal parts party and panic attack. With their debut album ‘Feel More Dumb‘, out 12th September through Golden Robot Records, the four-piece finally delivers on years of glorious potential, fusing post-punk fury, garage-pop swagger and sharp-tongued absurdism into one dangerously catchy pressure valve.
Written throughout Melbourne’s seemingly endless lockdowns and recorded at the now sadly incinerated Head Gap Studios in Preston, Feel More Dumb is the band’s most complete statement yet. Produced by Anna Laverty (Camp Cope, The Peep Tempel, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds); mixed by the band’s guitarist, Eoin Clements, and mastered by Nao Anzai (Rolling Blackouts CF, Teskey Brothers), the record sharpens the band’s unruly edge without sanding it down – capturing all the raw energy of sweaty gigs, functioning alcoholism, and half-shouted therapy sessions disguised as lyrics.
Thematically, ‘Feel More Dumb‘ dives headfirst into the triple threat of sex, death and depression – but don’t expect earnest navel-gazing or po-faced doom. These songs wrestle with the absurdity of adult life: lust without romance, grief without clarity, and a nagging anxiety that maybe your best days were five years ago at a pub you can’t remember the name of. It’s loud, literate, occasionally filthy, and always uncomfortably honest.
From the fast, fiery and over-it opening single, ‘Already Done’ to the sex-positive, chaotic swagger of ‘Hell’. and the slacker-soul anti-domestic violence messages of “Hook, Line and Sinker,” the album moves like a bad thought you can’t shake – groovy, grimy, and impossible to ignore. It’s a record you can dance to while falling apart.
‘Feel More Dumb‘ is also a testament to a band that’s stuck together longer than most marriages. Formed in 2011 via a trail of missed messages, kebab-fuelled jam sessions and accidental auditions, The Mean Times – Tom ‘Captain’ Morgan (vocals/guitar), Rob Meerkat (bass), Rhino Williams (drums) and Eoin Clements (guitar) – have built a reputation for self-deprecating charm, musical tightness, and never doing anything the easy way. This is the first time they’ve captured that live-wire chemistry in full on record.
But beneath the chaos and distortion, ‘Feel More Dumb‘ has a clear throughline. It’s an album about what happens when the wild freedom of youth crashes into the slow realisation that you’re not invincible, not special, and maybe not even coping. It’s funny until it isn’t. Then it’s funny again.
The Mean Times aren’t offering answers – but they’re damn good at describing the question. ‘Feel More Dumb‘ is what happens when four musicians hurtling toward middle age with no plan, no filter, and no sense of when to stop decide to make something honest. It’s clever, cool, loud, flawed, cathartic, and weirdly beautiful in its refusal to fake it.
Thomas Morgan – Vocals, guitar
Robert Meerbach – Bass
Eoin Clements – Guitar, backing vocals
Ryan Williams – Drums
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