Mobley Announces New Album 'We Do Not Fear Ruins'
Today, Austin-based writer, performer, producer, filmmaker, and one-man tour de force Mobley announced his new album We Do Not Fear Ruins, set for release on April 23 via Last Gang Records. The genre-promiscuous, sonically expansive concept album continues the story of the character Jacob Creedmoor, first introduced in Mobley’s 2022 EP, Cry Havoc!.
Pre-save 'We Do Not Fear Ruins'
Alongside the announcement, Mobley has shared the album’s lead single + video “No Exit,” first premiered via FLOOD Magazine. Blending retro rock, modern alternative, and futuristic indie sounds, the song opens with a Morricone-inspired whistled motif. Yet, beneath the cinematic swagger and groove, “No Exit” is a meditation on solipsism, solitude, and the “undiscovered country” of the afterlife (an allusion to the famous Hamlet soliloquy). The accompanying video counters the track’s weighty themes with a healthy dose of cheek and dry humor.
Mobley expands, “‘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’). 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?’”
Mobley will also be performing a live showcase in Los Angeles on January 28 at The Moroccan Lounge before making his way to Brooklyn on February 11 to perform at Baby’s All Right.
When you don’t fear ruins, “apocalypse” is just another word for opportunity. This is a central theme of Mobley’s forthcoming full-length debut, We Do Not Fear Ruins, an exploration of the intimate, the infinite, and time itself. The project follows the character of Jacob Creedmoor – first introduced in Mobley’s previous EP Cry Havoc! (2022) – an ordinary man who became radicalized into a Robin Hood-esque hero in an alternate version of the early ‘80s United States. Against a backdrop of futuristic art rock, Jacob fought fascism, pulled off daring heists, and was eventually captured by the government and imprisoned in suspended animation. We Do Not Fear Ruins is the next chapter in Mobley’s ongoing sci-fi epic. The story leaps nearly 300 years into the future, when Jacob awakens in a post-apocalyptic, post-U.S. world. Having lost everyone he's known, he navigates grief, memory, and heartbreak through a range of sonic textures as expansive as the wastelands (or possibly afterlife) he finds himself wandering.
When deciding on the most effective sonic palette for his current project, Mobley turned to 1981, the year when Jacob was frozen. "When I listened to some of the songs in the air during that period, I was stunned by the incredible diversity of popular music,” he says. “You had Bruce Springsteen and Michael Jackson, but new wave and funk were still happening. Pop and country were doing a bunch of interesting things. R&B was huge, and there were the first rumblings of hip-hop, as well as vestigial traces of disco."
Despite the sweeping audiovisual scope of Jacob’s saga, the lyrics of We Do Not Fear Ruins remain decidedly internal: an examination of loneliness, yearning, and cautious hope – feelings that are universal, no matter what time period we’re stuck in.
The time spent between Cry Havoc! and now saw Mobley touring coast to coast, writing a forthcoming novel that expounds on We Do Not Fear Ruins’ concept, and composing musical scores for film and stage. Mobley has produced and directed the music for an Adidas commercial during the Paris Olympics and composed the theme for Webby Award-winning SiriusXM & Smithsonian podcast All Music Is Black Music, hosted by Selema Masekela and featuring guests like Kelly Rowland, Ne-Yo, and St. Vincent.
Mobley's songs have racked up millions of streams across Spotify and Apple Music and has landed sync placements on HBO, FOX, NBC, ESPN, and CW, seen airplay adds on Alt Nation, KROQ, KUTX, ACL Radio, and KEXP, and has received praise from outlets like Billboard, Noisey, Rolling Stone, the New York Times, Consequence, American Songwriter, and beyond. He's played festivals like ACL, Lollapalooza, and SXSW and has opened for acts like Cold War Kids, Phantogram, James Blake, WAVVES, Sylvan Esso, Matt & Kim, and more.
The present moment finds Mobley focused on the future. He says, “Living with and working through these songs and stories has been the most fulfilling challenge of my artistic life. I can’t wait to share it all and see the life it takes on when it’s no longer just mine.”
We Do Not Fear Ruins Tracklist:
1. The End
2. Only
3. No Exit
4. Let Go
5. Had To Be There
6. Y’r Ghost
7. Phantom Hand
8. Infinite Sunrise
9. Morning Woodwinds
10. Can’t Make You Stay
11. Worriboutta ‘81
12. Ego is
13. Now Forever
14. A Story You’d Tell at a Party
15. Yesterday’s Another Day
16. The End?
Live dates:
Jan 28 Los Angeles, CA @ The Moroccan Lounge
Feb 11 Brooklyn, NY @ Baby’s All Right
