Manchester’s Mat Mills makes heartfelt lofi indie and dream pop, with hints of shoegaze and 90s alt rock, touching on themes of lost love, lost youth, legacy, and the beauty and danger of living in the past. His first album, Mirror Skies, was released in June 2024 and his music compared to The Wedding Present, The Smiths and The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart. His forthcoming sophomore album, out on 24 August on Subjangle, sees Mat explore further his poppy dreamy universe across eleven heartfelt tracks, taking in influences from the Field Mice, New Order and The Railway Children to late 80s and 90s US indie, such as Yo La Tengo, Dinosaur Jr, REM, Nada Surf, Sebadoh and Sonic Youth, in addition to more recent Bay Area jangle pop. Unashamedly pop and proudly lofi, the new album recorded in Mat’s bedroom, feels slightly more urgent and grittier than the first record. While it doesn’t have an overarching theme, one sense which comes through is that of the different types of love one can experience throughout a life – the fizziness of new love, the fleeting love that still leaves a mark, unrequited love and the complexities of love and life in a long-term relationship.

What He Says: “Always Looking Backwards is the third single from the forthcoming album, Anything of Us, which comes out on 24^th August on the Subjangle label. Sonically, I feel this one has a bit more of a 90s alt rock vibe than the previous singles, drawing on Dinosaur Jr, Sebadoh, early Nada Surf and the Lemonheads, while still retaining some indie pop wistfulness and my general lofi approach. This song is about missing your teenage friends and realising there are some things you just can’t get back. It touches on the mixed feelings you can have when you leave home, family and friends. When I was 19 I left home to go and teach English in China. It was a wonderful life-changing experience, but I also felt I’d left true friends at a formative time and in some ways abandoned them. When I returned three years later, everything had changed, including some of that closeness, and certainly the innocence of youth. So there’s some guilt and sadness in this song as well as yearning for those innocent times of teenage friendship, but also celebration of those times. This one’s actually for a certain friend, in particular, and partly inspired by a drunken conversation with him last year in which I was confessing how I still felt guilty for leaving.“

“The second single from the forthcoming album is an unashamedly catchy guitar pop track about lost love and trying to escape the (inescapable) past. Chiming rhythm guitars and dreamy lead meet a sparkly electric drum beat, creating a hazy platform for wistful melodies and longing vocals“.

“A jangly, fizzy pop song about first loves, their tendency to fail and the marks they leave.“

His Mixtape: “The last time I made a physical mixtape would have been back in the late 90s or early 2000s for a girlfriend at the time, and I’m sure some of the artists I’ve chosen would have been included, which is perhaps fitting since my own music often talks about how those formative years shape us (for better and worse). I also reckon once you fall in love with a song or a band, it’s a love that lasts forever.” 

Humdrum – Ultraviolet

I completely fell for Humdrum’s Every Heaven album last year. It’s a masterful and emotive pop record full of jangling guitars and gorgeous melodies. I appreciate the imagery in the lyrics on this one. I take the song to be a slightly melancholic celebration of a love that was perfect for a time but didn’t last, and now feels like a dream, and that strikes a chord with me.

Hood – The Field Is Cut

Hood are a band that mean so much to me. Their music had such a range in terms of emotional complexity and style – from lofi-pop, post-rock to electronica and elements of hip hop, yet they were never anything but uniquely themselves. They opened so many different musical doors for me that I feel you can trace a lot of the music I listen to back to them. This track, which opens their Silent ’88 album feels like a bit of a microcosm of their sound – opening with hazy ambient electronic tones, before the jangling guitars and pounding drums kick in. Then the yearning vocals and pastoral themed lyrics, the build and climax before the track ultimately gives way to noise. It’s a beautiful introduction to an album I regard as a masterpiece.

Yo La Tengo – Today is the Day

Another band for whom I feel a deep affection, and the band I’ve seen the most times live.  This is one of their quieter songs (from their underrated Summer Sun album). You can just feel the longing in Georgia’s voice and the lyrics seem to be imbued with so much weight and meaning beyond what is actually said. The general theme of the passage of time and the symbolism that the little things take on in retrospect really resonates with me.

Japanese Breakfast – In Heaven

A brilliant, raw, heart-achingly sad pop song about dealing with the passing of Michelle Zauner’s mum, who’s pictured on the cover of Psychopomp, the album this song is taken from. I’m a fan of all four Japanese Breakfast albums but particularly appreciate the dream poppy sound of the first two records, which In Heaven epitomises. I became mildly obsessed with Japanese Breakfast when their second album came out in 2017 in a way I hadn’t felt about a band/artist for a long time and they’ve definitely been an influence on my own music. There may even be an oblique reference to Michele on my first album, Mirror Skies!

The Rosslyns – Things Are Different Now

The Rosslyns are a new discovery for me, following the release of All We Ever Did Was Try, a compilation put out by Harriet Records in 2022 – beautifully poppy, very lofi-out-of-necessity recordings made by a group of teenagers from Essex in bedrooms and front rooms from 1989 to the early 90s. What I hear in Things Are Different Now is that complete heartfelt purity of youth – both in the rawness of the playing and Kieron’s revealingly vulnerable lyrics. It’s accentuated by the the lofi sound – and I wouldn’t want it any other way. It’s also a total earworm. Honestly, it makes me feel like I’m 15 again writing with all that purity and boundless possibility – a real inspiration in making my new record.

Nada Surf – Amateur

Ending with another band that mean the world to me and a song that was definitely on one of my physical mixtapes. For me, The Proximity Effect (the album that Amateur appears on) is an alt rock classic, full of warmth and energy, earnest lyrics and so many beautiful hooks. The simple but affecting imagery of being around friends and the theme of how the people we love can transform us really get me in this one, and I also have lots of personal memories attached to this song. I still recall waiting outside Manchester’s Roadhouse venue as an excited teenager after school for the band to arrive, asking if they’d be playing this one. Matthew Caws reassuringly told me they would be…it was an amazing gig.

Anything of Us will be out on 24^th August via Subjangle. Look Here for more information on Goodbye Wudaokou.