Mediocre’s Debut Album Growth Eater Looks at Life’s Complexities

Transmission 121: Interview with Mediocre

As they look for solace in an increasingly unsettling world, Mediocre, a rock duo headquartered in Los Angeles and consisting of guitarist/vocalist Piper Torrison (she/they) and bassist/vocalist Keely Martin (she/her), present their own growth-centered meditations with their first album Growth Eater. For twentysomethings who perceive the pressure to grow—often in pointless ways—is all the more alienating in a world that has systematically adopted a growth-at-all-costs attitude, throwing normal people into financial tailspins and offering a hamster wheel of false promises from society.

Their new record is more about how that angst permeates everyday life than it is about general existentialism and restlessness, despite the fact that these fresh-out-of-college musicians fear an impending dystopia. The new record is a paradox and a heartfelt plea for hope. Rather than allowing mortality and relative insignificance to break them, why not embrace them as inspiration to create life-affirming experiences and relationships? When the world finds new carpets to pull out from under you, Growth Eater, Mediocre’s debut album, offers comfort and a firm foundation on which to remain.

Featured image: Photo Credit: Ginger Port © Mediocre
Mediocre‘s Bandcamp, Instagram, Spotify, Youtube

How did you meet and decide to form a band? The name, “Mediocre” is interesting, bizarre and bold. What’s the story behind this choice? Is there a specific meaning or intention and how does it reflect your approach to your philosophy of life and music? 

The two of us met during freshman year of highschool in 2015. We had a bunch of classes together that first year and quickly became friends, but it took about a year of talking about forming a band until we actually did it. We honestly just thought Mediocre was a funny name and would manage expectations as a new band who didn’t really know what they were doing. I feel like it started as a bit of a defense mechanism, but as we’ve grown into the name, it’s become something of a badge of honor. We don’t focus on being the best, or trying to seem cool; but rather just doing what we like, trying our best, and hoping to find connection through the art. Also most things we do still have an air of humor to it – so that’s been a solid through-line. 

What are the biggest challenges you’ve faced as a band and how have you overcome them? 

It’s been hard to stay connected with each other and where we’re at in life. Trying to grow and find ourselves as individuals while also nurturing the musical partnership that we’ve been working on since we were practically children. It can get complicated and difficult, but it’s necessary when you’re doing this with someone you care about. 

Which artists or bands would you say have been key in your musical development? What are some non-musical influences: books, films, visual art, that have had an impact on your sound and lyrics? Is there anything in particular that fuels your creativity? 

Metric, Tegan and Sara, The Hives, CSS, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Amyl and The Sniffers, Caroline Rose, Liz Phair, Broken Social Scene to name a few. Some of these are individual influences, some are collective, but I think all of them have bled into our sound and shaped us as artists in one way or another. We’re always creatively fueled by going to live shows together, getting excited over a band and screaming the lyrics together. It reminds us why we like doing this as both musicians and fans. 

Keely: Big fan of contemporary art that isn’t centered on realism or conventional technicality, but more so character and style. Artists that come to mind are Yoshitomo Nara, Felicia Chiao, Aya Takano, their work is just so unique and playful. You can tell the artist is pouring themselves into a creative outlet and having fun with it. 

Piper: I’m a somewhat big reader, though it always finds me in waves, and I find myself especially drawn to authors who explore the beauty of everyday moments. I love Joan Didion and Sally Rooney specifically. I find myself entranced by their worlds, which is very inspiring.

Mediocre has a lengthy history. The band was founded when the two members were sophomores in high school, and they began by jamming in Torrison’s garage before performing in the do-it-yourself scene in West L.A.

Alternative/Indie music allows freedom. How has the evolution of the indie music scene shaped your sound? How do you define your sound within this expansive genre? 

The expansiveness of the genre has definitely allowed for a lot of personal exploration and self discovery. There is so much contained within the terms indie and alternative that it almost means nothing without a long list of qualifiers attached, but that in itself is freeing. There just isn’t a wrong way to do it. In terms of our specific sound, we have always performed as a three piece – except for our very first show – so we’ve grown to lean into that arrangement and figure out how to get the most out of each instrument. We incorporate a lot of harmonies, but we also like the more brash, in-your-face musical elements. We typically use a combination of the words indie-rock, post-punk, and power-pop to describe our sound, but we also thought the term “Post-Garage” was funny and less mouthy. 

According to the band, the new album is about realizing that everyone can be constantly disorganized and caught in disorder, filling their surroundings with their own clutter and their minds with never-ending noise. The thing that hurts the most is realizing that these problems are self-made, and the only way to actually find the courage to start picking them up is to accept that we are responsible for our own garbage.

Your songs have a balance of raw emotion and intricate sound design. Can you describe your songwriting process? When crafting your songs, do you start with lyrics, melodies, or is it more of a collaborative experiment where things evolve organically? 

It really depends. One of us can open up a conversation with a seed of an idea; like a chorus, or a chord progression. And then the other helps form the structure after that. Piper has tended to be more lyric forward while [Keely] is more music forward, but that isn’t always the case. She’s just very good with words so I often write temporary lyrics to a chord progression in hopes that they’ll be replaced with Piper lyrics. 

We don’t keep ourselves too closed within certain sonic boundaries, but we did bond over shared albums and music that we were both into at the time, so that influenced cohesion in our songwriting approaches / what we brought to the table when playing together. But other times, we were just messing around and suddenly were like “Woah! That was cool. Can you play that thing again?” and then suddenly we’re writing a song. 

The album title “Growth Eater” can be interpreted in a variety of ways, such as the detrimental ways we undermine ourselves and, consequently, our own chances for development, or even the constructive methods by which we break negative habits that prey on our health.

What inspired you to create the album “Growth Eater,” released on September 27 through Dangerbird Records? Can you tell us the story behind it? What thoughts and feelings do you want to get across with this new release? 

We wrote “Growth Eater” over most of 2023, slowly gathering new ideas and bringing them to each other to see what sticks. I don’t think there was ever a specific moment where we sat down and decided what we wanted to express. It more so came about naturally. We had both just graduated college when we started writing most of these songs, and that period of life and the feelings and questions it comes with definitely ended up being captured in “Growth Eater”. Somewhat by accident, but mostly by nature of how emotionally intense the period of life we’re in is. By the time we were finishing the last few songs, we had more of an awareness on the themes of growth, nostalgia, and inner-turmoil that the record portrays and were able to write a bit more intentionally. But for the most part, we were just writing songs for fun, and to cope, and with the vague vision of an album in the future, and “Growth Eater” is what came out of that.

Photos courtesy of Mediocre

Dominique Musorrafiti

Ciao! My name is Dominique. I’m Italian and I’m proud to be a mix. My father was an Italian chemical engineer and high school teacher, with Greek and Polish heritage. My mother is Haitian, she was high school language teacher, with Dominican, Spanish, French, Portuguese, African and Native American heritage. Being a mix makes me appreciate to want to understand different cultures and lifestyles. I grew up in Italy, lived few years in Haiti, travel around main European capitals, lived many years in China, in Spain and UK. Traveling makes me feel that we can learn something from every situation in every part of the world.