by David Wilikofsky
Mura’s origin story is a familiar one: three high school friends (Kota Inukai, Masaki Endo and Sho Shibata) decide to start a band, sporadically gigging around town but largely languishing in obscurity. For most groups, the story would end there. They might stay together for a few years, but inevitably the members would go their separate ways, perhaps forming new projects or even leaving music in the rearview as they transition into adulthood. Not so for Mura. More than a decade into their existence, the band are finally ready to unleash their debut album on the world. Recorded over the titular thirteen year period, 2008 – 2021 is a wide-ranging portrait of a band filled with seemingly limitless potential.
Thirteen years is a huge swath of any young persons’ life, and 2008 – 2021 represents many of the band members’ most formative years (vocalist and guitarist Kota Inukai was only fourteen years old when the group originally formed). Most bands’ sounds also evolve tremendously over a decade plus of existence, and based on this album Mura are no exception. Opener “Badmington” is animated by jagged guitar lines weaving in and out of pulsing beats and shifting time signatures. “Shinobi” is a scrappy garage rock tune that features ragged, raw hardcore vocals. Elsewhere you’ll find everything from brooding, contemplative ballads (“Younger Brother”) to twitchy indie rock (“Toyo Toyo”). Counterintuitively, it’s the eclecticism that binds the album together; it’s the sound of a band pushing themselves and their sound to the limit, reconfiguring themselves over and over again into a dizzying constellation of possibilities.
I’ll admit that Mura’s backstory is a bit of a double edged sword. The romanticized images of a band perfecting their craft in relative isolation builds a sense of mystery and mythology around the band; it’s a common story, but the music attached to it rarely lives up to the sounds you imagine in your head. 2008-2021 is the rare exception to the rule, music so idiosyncratic and personal that you can’t help but be swept up in their little sonic universe. It may have taken them thirteen years to get here, but it was well worth the wait.