John Davies, who goes by the stage name John MOuse, is an alternative artist from Cardiff. John MOuse was born out of Davies’ previous band JT Mouse, which featured members of Zabrinksi, The Spencer McGarry Season and Steven Black AKA Sweet Baboo.
Davies’ debut album, It’s A Universal released in 2006, on Crocfinger records was a collection of home tape recordings. The album showed off intriguing lyrics, which would become a staple for future John MOuse albums. In 2010, Davies released Humber Dogger Forties, the first of many albums with his songwriting partner with Philip Pearce, as well as working with Faye Davies. The album featured TV’s Steve Jones duet-ting with his step brother on the lead single “The Last Great Rhondda Romance”.
In 2014, The Death of John MOuse was released and was considered to be the last John MOuse album. The album title was born from the deterioration of the songwriting relationship and the album went on to be Davies’ most successful album to date. Leading up to the release of the album, “I Was a Goalkeeper” was released as the lead single, in collaboration with Los Campesinos!’s Gareth Paisey.
The single was released prior to the 2014 World Cup and garnered unprecedented coverage for any previous John MOuse release.
A new era of John MOuse was born out of the album and, after taking a break from releasing music for an extensive tour, Davies released “Replica Figures” in 2018. The album saw him return to work with JT Mouse member Stephen Black (Sweet Baboo).
In early 2019, Davies attempted his most ambitious release to date.
He attempted to write, record, produce, mix, master and release an album over a single weekend. This resulted in The Fen Sessions, which was only available until the Monday morning, before being deleted. However, the album has since returned to Davies’ Bandcamp page. The album was Davies’ reunion with long term songwriting partner Phil Pearce, as well as seeing collaborations with Faye Davies and Jon Hodges.
The follow up to this was 2020’s The Goat, a departure from Davies’ previous work to create an electronic synth pop album. Written, recorded and released weekly during lockdown, the album was praised for its dark witty lyrics and vintage synth melodies.
Davies’s most recent project was The Fashion Weak, a development of the sounds forged for The Goat, with Pearce being the driving musical influence steering the production down the road of Thomas Dolby and other New Wave acts such as The Normal and OMD. The short lived project saw 3 singles, including collaborations with Gruff Rhys and Miki Berenyi.
2024 will see Davies once again moving away from working with Pearce, though the planned album will be a hangover from the material forged during the Fashion Weak. There is also a collaboration album with Indie Stalwarts Helen Love scheduled for release in the same year under the guise of The Double Diamond Club, to be released on Alchopop! Records.
Free entry. Music from 8pm.