{"id":25568,"date":"2021-01-09T17:33:04","date_gmt":"2021-01-09T22:33:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/?p=25568"},"modified":"2021-01-09T17:33:04","modified_gmt":"2021-01-09T22:33:04","slug":"interview-california-band-frat-mouse-releases-plywood-their-3rd-album-in-the-space-of-a-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/2021\/01\/09\/interview-california-band-frat-mouse-releases-plywood-their-3rd-album-in-the-space-of-a-year\/","title":{"rendered":"INTERVIEW: California band Frat Mouse releases Plywood, their 3rd album in the space of a year"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Jackson Tarricone<\/em><\/p>\n

Truman Sinclair and Griffin Meehan were just becoming friends when they formed Frat Mouse in 2019. They went to two concerts together to see their favorite artists at the time, Abhi The Nomad and Mom Jeans respectively. When they were seeing the latter, they said \u201cwe gotta do this!\u201d and Frat Mouse was born. Their first single, \u201cbo2 zombies,\u201d was a direct product of this spirit. They posted the song\u2019s modest curbside rendition music video to an indie subreddit and blew up that December. On January 5th of 2020, they released their debut album, Rat Pack<\/em>, which Griffin describes endearingly as \u201cMom Jeans fan fiction.\u201d A few days later, music YouTuber Alfo Media featured Frat Mouse in one of his videos, kindling a friendship between Alfo Media and Frat Mouse as well as garnering more attention towards the release. A few months later, Frat Mouse released their sophomore effort, The Frag Movie<\/em>, followed by the cattle rat<\/em> EP that summer.\u00a0 On January 5th or \u201cFrat Mouse Day,\u201d exactly a year after Rat Pack<\/em>, Frat Mouse released their third album, Plywood<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Although a mere 365 days have passed since the release of their debut, Frat Mouse has developed a lot and has three albums to prove it. Each album represents a different point in their lives, according to Truman: \u201cRat Pack<\/em> is so high school, unbelievably high school,\u201d while \u201cFrag Movie<\/em> is such a product of I just graduated.\u201d In the Plywood<\/em> era, they find themselves in a \u201climbo state of not really being an adult and still being treated like a high schooler,\u201d notes Griffin, the bassist, manager, and occasional screamer of Frat Mouse. This awkward stage has yielded what Truman and Griffin agree is their most mature record to date. In addition, Truman, who is studying music production at USC, continues to hone his production skills on Frat Mouse releases: \u201cAs I get better, the records obviously sound better.\u201d Truman, the guitarist, singer, and main writer for the project, has produced all the music. In fact, Truman submitted many finished mixes from Plywood<\/em> as school assignments. Truman wants to reassure fans that Plywood<\/em> still has a few \u201cemo bangers\u201d and that despite its maturity, it\u2019s not \u201creally bad dad rock.\u201d<\/p>\n

Along with being the most mature Frat Mouse release, it is also the heaviest, partially because this is the first Frat Mouse release to feature live drums. The drums on the first two records were programmed by Truman, <\/em>but Plywood<\/em> includes live drums from drummer Ben Lopez. Because so much has changed, Griffin says that Plywood<\/em> is \u201cnot even comparable\u201d to the first two albums and is \u201call over the place\u201d stylistically. The cohesion comes from Truman\u2019s production: \u201cThe thing that really ties it together is just how it sounds.\u201d Truman describes the sound of Plywood <\/em>as \u201cus playing in a garage as opposed to us just recording things into Logic.\u201d Griffin and everyone else in the band agree that Plywood is \u201cprobably the peak level of what we can make right now,\u201d adding that \u201call of us have never been more proud of anything we\u2019ve made in our entire life.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Frat Mouse, the first three albums represent a trilogy, with Plywood<\/em> signifying the end of act I. Although Plywood <\/em>is totally different from Rat Pack<\/em>, Truman still sees it as a \u201cspiritual successor\u201d to their debut, which is why it was released on the same day and has a similar color scheme: \u201cwe wanted it to be that kind of big brother to rat pack to see how far we’ve come,\u201d Truman says. To commemorate the occasion, Frat Mouse announced that they are doing a vinyl pressing of Rat Pack<\/em> and cattle rat <\/em>on vinyl. All the profits will go towards touring, whenever that is possible. Truman and Griffin remain optimistic for the summer, when hopefully everyone will be vaccinated.<\/p>\n

The band started as just two friends bonding over music and is now a whole operation with a national following. The Frat Mouse team, along with Truman, Griffin, and Ben, includes a number of contributors. Griffin met Emiko\u2014who makes excellent music under the moniker Cali Flora\u2014 and Keaton at an animation camp in 2018. Both of them assist the band with cover art and illustrations. Truman met Amanda through his friends from Chicago, where he used to live before his freshman year of high school. Amanda is studying Music Business at Belmont, so she helps the band with promotional content, mainly on Tik Tok.<\/p>\n

The record reflects the growth of both the band members and the project itself. As Truman puts it, Plywood asks \u201cwho am I gonna be in real life?\u201d He continues: \u201cYou really have to figure out how you want to act and how you want to compose yourself in the real world.\u201d As far as answering that question goes, Frat Mouse have kicked off this new and strange time in their lives with a great album.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Jackson Tarricone Truman Sinclair and Griffin Meehan were just becoming friends when they formed Frat Mouse in 2019. They went to two concerts together to see their favorite artists at the time, Abhi The Nomad and Mom Jeans respectively. When they were seeing the latter, they said \u201cwe gotta do this!\u201d and Frat Mouse […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17168,"featured_media":25571,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[16],"tags":[1727,29,1726],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25568"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17168"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25568"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25568\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25574,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25568\/revisions\/25574"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}