Fresh Lies – Interview with Mobley

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 the Austin-based artist on record or at one of his incomparable one-man band concerts, the passion is palpable in every aspect.

He singlehandedly writes, performs, & produces his music, designs his artwork, directs his videos, produces his multimedia live shows, and even builds new instruments to carry out his vision.

Most recently, he’s composed dozens of pieces for stage and television (HBO, Fox, NBC), played hundreds of US and international tour dates (with the likes of Phantogram, JUNGLE, Cold War Kids, Mutemath & Robert Delong and at festivals like ACL, SXSW, CMJt), and recorded (then scrapped) two albums in pursuit of the songs that would become his next release, ‘Fresh Lies, Vol. I’.

The music — which Mobley calls “post-genre pop” — defies easy classification, but uses the familiar form of love songs to explore the intricacies of his relationship with his country.

The project is the first installment of what Mobley envisions as a career-spanning song cycle dealing with the theme, with plans to release a volume for each generation of his family since his ancestors were first brought to the continent.