Right from the title, Mobley’s new release is a mouthful. “Young and Dying in the Occident Supreme” has a great deal to say about America, capitalism, religion and sundry Big Ideas™.
It doesn’t always hit. Mobley apparently recorded “Occident Supreme” sojourning in Thailand. You can kinda tell. Several tracks have an ineffable parochial “college freshman comes to Thanksgiving after a year abroad and has Ideas” dullness. The top track in particular sounds like a barely produced spoken-word take on your least favorite TA’s favorite Medium article. The politics of “You Are Not The Hero Of This Story” are true and righteous altogether. It just doesn’t slap.
Thankfully, it’s a rare misstep. Start at track two, the danceable but lethal “James Crow,” and this release stops being homework. From “Crow” onward, Mobley’s music lives up to its lyrical pieties. The hooks are tight, the grooves are luscious and playful, soulful vocals sweeten even the most earnest lyrical excesses. If anything, a track or two errs on the side of hooky pop and romantic angst rather than depth.
So yeah, “Young and Dying in the Occident Supreme” is a bit all over the place. But, and this is everything, it’s not boring. “James Crow” is a standout, in contention for top tracks so far this year. Even “You Are Not The Hero Of This Story,” the album’s one inarguable miss, swings for the fences. Mobley’s EP is a catchy, urgent and utterly timely attempt at agit-pop, something lacking from the otherwise utterly politicized American conversation of 2021. If Mobley’s music is more earnest than its cultural moment, that can only be to its credit. It’s music that gives a damn.
– Matt Salter
“Young and Dying in the Occident Supreme” dropped on February 19, by way of Last Gang Records.