Austin-based artist Mobley re-emerged at the beginning of the decade with a pair of EPs signifying his broad range of influences. The latter release in particular, 2022’s Cry Havoc!, explored the Reagan era both politically and musically, as the radio hits of the politically conservative 1980s proved to be one of the most musically diverse moments in popular music to this day. In the midst of all of this was the project’s fictional hero, Jacob Creedmoor, an everyman among a revisionist ’80s America who was radicalized by the greed-is-good mentality that’s ultimately to blame for much of today’s economic and racial inequality.
Later this year, Mobley promises to re-open the Book of Jacob with a full-length album titled We Do Not Fear Ruins (seemingly named after a Buenaventura Durruti quote), which will pick up in media res where the figure’s story left off. Before then, we’re getting the existential lead single “No Exit,” which blends a truly ambitious number of familiar musical styles with introspective lyrics paying respects to the writer of the song’s namesake, among other literary figures. “‘No Exit’ takes its title from the Jean-Paul Sartre play of the same name (best known for the often-misunderstood line ‘Hell is other people,’)” Mobley shares. “The song starts with a Morricone-inspired whistled motif, but beneath the cinematic swagger and groove, it’s a meditation on the ties between the intimate and the infinite.”
Zooming in on the narrative as it pertains to his protagonist, Mobley continues: “We find Jacob contemplating solipsism, solitude, and the ‘undiscovered country’ of the afterlife (an allusion to the famous Hamlet soliloquy). The tension between the song’s laidback verses and earnest, pleading choruses mirrors the tensions in Jacob, a perpetual loner who nevertheless proclaims his love for humanity, crying out, ‘What am I without people?’”
Check out a video for the track created by Mobley himself below, and expect We Do Not Fear Ruins to arrive April 23 via Last Gang Records.
