In 'Barcelona City Tour' Video, Mourn Is Young, Punk And Over It

You know the kinds of teens and 20-somethings who listened to PJ Harvey and Sleater-Kinney and wore Mary-Jane Doc Martens with socks? The cool ones in those art films you saw in high school?

Mourn's video for "Barcelona City Tour" is that art film and its recently-teenage members are those people. Save for some smart editing and coordinated claps, these Catalans resist any outside attempts to direct or control them as they romp around Barcelona. It's also the first single from Sorpresa Familia, out June 15.

Mourn's oldest founding members, Carla Pérez Vas and Jazz Rodríguez Bueno, were both born in 1996, but have already dealt with their fair share of label nonsense. The recklessness of the music video is a response to the last two years the band spent embroiled in a legal battle with their Spanish label Sones that effectively prevented them from touring or recording.

"What a shame! / You're not ashamed!" the band yells in its blunt English, at once mimicking the voice of a faceless label executive and responding in the same breath, old enough to know when they're being exploited and young enough to not let them go down without a fight.

"This song is the result of a lot of things we got to endure from people who prefer to remain quiet and live exploited, in exchange to be part of something they consider exclusive," the band writes in a press release.

The song closes with a mounting battle cry: "They can let you in / They can kick you out." Yet their inflection makes can sound like can't, and in sound like win. They can let you in, but they can't let you win.

"Barcelona City Tour" is Mourn's first major single since the Sones debacle, and consequently sounds more ragged and urgent than previous albums, 2016's Ha, Ha, He. and 2014's Mourn. The upcoming Sorpresa Familia is equal parts joy and rage, a sober early-twenties journal entry about exacting a gentle revenge. It's a reaffirmation of the silliness and collective power that makes bands surprise families.

Sorpresa Familia comes out June 15 on Captured Tracks.

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