By Sydney Moyer

Remember that one friend in high school? The one who, sometime in middle school, grew their bangs over their eyes, taught themselves how to play guitar, inherited a cool older sibling’s CD collection filled with gems you’d never heard on your shitty top 40 radio station? Everyone has that friend, right? Carla Pérez Vas and Jazz Rodríguez Bueno, the frontwomen of Catalonian four-piece Mourn, are kind of like that friend—unassumingly cool, collected in a way that seems improbable for their age (they’re all in high school), and filled to the brim with a passion for art and punk music. Mourn, armed with only a single record under their belts, have burst onto the scene with a furious, inimitable sound, ready to take their first U.S. tour by storm. We caught up with them recently on what that whirlwind’s been like so far—and we plan to catch them again at Great Scott this Tuesday.

Allston Pudding: Let’s start with the basics. How did you guys come to be a band? How did you meet, and what made you start writing songs together?

Carla Pérez Vas: I met Jazz two or three years ago. We were studying arts at school and we didn’t have friends, so we’re started playing together on the weekends. After a year being friends we wrote some songs. Then we asked Antonio if he wanted to play with us. Jazz and Antonio have been friends since they were 12 and he plays drums like a boss. Then we asked Leia too to join the band – Leia and Jazz are sisters. So, yes, we created a family.

AP: What first got you into punk rock? What did you grow up listening to?

CV: We grew up listening to a lot of music like 90’s music, rock from the 60’s, rap, new wave, hip hop, et cetera. But one of the sounds that we liked the most was punk rock—obviously, for the rage, the power of the music. But for the message too, the idea of it. Its philosophy.

AP: Do your classmates listen to similar music? What does the scene look like in your town? What do you wish it looked like?

CV: No. They are used to listening to easy music, commercial music. We’re from two different villages, Cabrils and Argentona. They’re 30 minutes away from Barcelona. In Barcelona, the music scene is bigger than our villages. There’s a lot of garage and hardcore bands. We want more bands of people our age to share this moment.

Jazz Rodríguez Bueno: But there’s a little scene in Cabrils! Not in Argentona…but in Cabrils. There’s a restaurant called Can Rin where there are shows every summer. People can enter free and a lot of national bands come. It’s cool because the manager of that restaurant has a band with my father. They’ve been playing together for 20 years. Lots of bands have played in Cabrils. 20 years ago more than now, but Antonio, Leia and I are a product of this.

AP: Your music and lyrics pack a frenetic, heavy punch. Where do you get your songwriting inspiration? Do you draw from real experiences? What does the writing process look like for you?

CV: Our writing process is random. Sometimes we write about something that we feel, that we don’t like, or something that makes us feel angry. But sometimes we just let our imagination work. I really like to read poems, but I don’t know if it’s an inspiration for Mourn.

JB: We like to write about anything. We once wrote a song about not hearing anything when we chew. Also about a dead worm.

AP: I saw you guys are slotted to play at Pitchfork Fest this year—congratulations! What has it been like to suddenly garner so much international interest?

CV: It’s crazy! We are so excited because that’s something that we didn’t expect when we started. Well, it’s something that any band can’t imagine is gonna happen.

AP: What’s it like being branded as “young”—both within the music world and outside of it?  Does that affect you within the context of the band? How do you deal with it?

JB: It’s tiring. A lot of people only talk about our age…but since we started playing abroad, people that have come to our shows just don’t think about it. We’re not only youngsters, we’re people and we like to play. We enjoy doing it a lot and we want to learn about it every day. So people notice that and they really listen to us, to our music.

AP: What drove your decision to sing in English? Will we hear any songs in Catalan in future releases?

JB: Don’t know, it just came up this way. A lot of bands here in Spain sing in English. Yeah, sure you’ll hear songs in Catalan! We have one recorded at the moment.

AP: Have you guys ever been on tour before? What are you most excited or nervous about?

JB: We had never been on tour before this January. It’s awesome, we feel so good. Also we end up really tired, because it’s really short and intense by the moment. We do three shows in two days in another country and Sunday evening we come back home, and then on Monday go back to school. But it’s satisfying, we’re waiting all week until Friday or Saturday to play!

AP: Has it been hard to balance going to school with the lifestyle that comes from being part of a band on the rise?

JB: Yes, a bit hard. Because we’re just all the weekend doing something that we love and makes us feel realized, and then on Monday we have to come back here and do things we just don’t care about or don’t like at all. But that’s like lots of people. Also, we can’t make band stuff during the week because I study during the afternoon and Leia does during the morning, so we can’t coincide. When we have to skip school one day for any reason, like taking a plane or going to a TV show, we have to bring a document the next day at school to justify our absence and all that.

AP: What’s one band from back home that Allston Pudding readers should definitely listen to?

JB: There are a lot of cool bands here in Spain, I don’t know if I’m able to choose one… I’ll say Beach Beach! They are from Mallorca and they’re pretty cool. They just released a new album this year. The bassist, Tomeu, made the artwork for our album.

Catch MOURN at Great Scott this Tuesday with supporting acts Coke Weed and Feral Jenny.