Cutting vocals in the woods behind his college dorm. Mixing in the backseat of a sedan. Sneaking into the music department after hours to teach himself to play new instruments (and sneaking out before the faculty arrived in the morning). From the start, Mobley’s work has been marked by solitude, ingenuity, and a drive that could only be called obsessive. Whether you experience his music on record or at one of his incredible live shows, the passion is palpable. Mobley grew up all over the world, from the Spanish Mediterranean to the California coast. Perhaps it’s because of this itinerant childhood that he finds it so hard to sit still.
Over the last few years, he’s composed dozens of pieces for stage and television (with placements on HBO, ESPN, Fox, and NBC), played hundreds national tour dates (with the likes of Phantogram, JUNGLE, Mutemath, Robert Delong, & Wavves and at festivals like ACL, SXSW, CMJ, Float Fest, UtopiaFest, and Savannah Stopover), and recorded (then scrapped) two entire albums in pursuit of the songs that would become his forthcoming full-length debut, Fresh Lies. Mobley wrote, produced, and played every instrument on the album. The music — which Mobley calls “post-genre pop” — defies easy classification, drawing liberally (often simultaneously) from an array of musical traditions.
This summer and fall, he’s touring as a one-man band, singing and playing keys, guitar, bass, drums, and samplers. He’s spanning the North America, western Europe, and Japan in support of his newest EP release, Some Other Country, out now on Violent Films.
