Spend enough time in a magazine whose backbone runs through post-hardcore, hardcore and screamo, and it starts to look like that’s the only music we can talk about. It isn’t. Plenty of us still get excited about an Oasis reunion. Some of us still put on the kind of loose, sunburnt indie-rock a certain tough-guy shorthand tells us we shouldn’t. So this one’s about the record playing on our end this week, which happens to be Quiet as a Mouse’s second album “Nostalgia is fine…but…”, out since 29 May on Alex Moran’s own Over The Hedge.
Quiet as a Mouse is the project of London-born, Edinburgh-raised, Brisbane-based singer/songwriter Alex Moran. He’s lived in enough places to make the geography feel like part of the writing: thirteen years in Edinburgh, stops through Leamington Spa in the UK and Stanthorpe, Warwick, Hobart and Adelaide in Australia, and Brisbane since 2019.
Along the way QAAM have supported Hinds, The Orwells, Palma Violets, The Big Moon and The Orielles in the UK, had their debut album “Is It Funny When It Hurts?” funded through Creative Scotland, and picked up airplay from Tom Robinson on BBC 6 Music and Vic Galloway on BBC Radio Scotland.
“Home Is The Hardest Place To Find” was voted the 51st best song of 2013 and 27th best Scottish song of 2013 by The Herald’s Martin Williams, who called it “majestic offkilter alterno-indie.”
We asked Alex to sit with that trail for a minute. He doesn’t usually.
“It’s interesting and refreshing for me to look back on my career to date as Quiet as a Mouse as I don’t really spend much time thinking about my previous releases and history of Quiet as a Mouse. I’m always looking forward and focusing on what’s next,” he said. “I suppose it also makes some kind of weird sense with some of the new sophomore album ‘Nostalgia is fine…but…’ themes being nostalgia, memory and moving forward.”
The album’s themes are the album’s method too. So here’s the walk.
The first Quiet as a Mouse singles, “Home Is The Hardest Place To Find” and “Casketcase”, plus half of the “Memorybox” EP were produced by Marcus Mackay in Glasgow (the other half went to Geoff Allan at Ca Va Studios). Marcus had produced Frightened Rabbit’s debut “Sing the Greys” and Snow Patrol’s early work. “Working with Marcus was exciting,” Alex said. “I remember him being sensitive to the songs and music.”
The “British Flag” EP went to Liam Watson in London, whose studio famously runs only on 1950s and 60s equipment. Watson is Grammy-winning, credited on the White Stripes’ “Elephant”. Alex spent the sessions in the booth alongside him, watching.
“I remember hanging out with him in the booth the whole time, trying to learn and soak up as much as I could from him and the experience. It felt like we were on the ship in Stanley Kubrick’s movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, which is crazy as his gear is vintage not futuristic.” Liam also made a call that stuck: start “British Flag” with the chorus.
“Something I hadn’t thought of. So just learning arrangement ideas and tricks, were invaluable. Liam was firm that ‘British Flag’ was the key song on the EP, that meant a lot to me.”
The Daily Record covered the record with a line calling Alex “a genius and a prophet.” The Metro heard Pixies and Idlewild. Debut single “An Accident Waiting To Happen (Awoo Woo Woo)” was flagged by The Daily Record as “a contender for Scottish single of the year.”
Debut album “Is It Funny When It Hurts?” was recorded with Kris Pohl at Post Electric Studio in Edinburgh, the room run by Idlewild guitarist Rod Jones.
That session unlocked something Alex hadn’t been looking for. “Working with Kris was more fun and enjoyable. Kris and I got on well as friends which is something I’ve taken forward with me. That I enjoy having that feeling of friendship when making a record, I think it can lessen the intensity for me at times.” The Skinny called the album “a debut full of relaxed confidence and a leap forward for the band.”
That principle, that a session with a friend can lower the pressure without lowering the bar, carried into Brisbane. Alex’s 2022 six-track mini album “Passport” was his first QAAM record made in Australia, produced by his friend John Prefontaine at Resonate Music. Same room, same producer for “Nostalgia is fine…but…”, with John also playing guitar and bass on the record. “I think my experience, maturity and confidence have helped this feeling of having fun while still learning, pushing myself and developing,” Alex said, “but in a slightly more laid back way than when I first started recording with Liam and Marcus.”
The through-line across the press quotes is melody sat over guitars that don’t try to hide, songs that trust the chorus to do the work, and a vocal that The Courier Mail placed “somewhere between Dave Grohl’s and Neil Young’s.” The Sun heard something of Snow Patrol at their edgier moments in the earlier stuff. Edinburgh Evening News caught Teenage Fanclub shimmer next to Nirvana heaviness. AAA Backstage called the new album “deeply personal and emotionally charged.” Take that as a rough compass.
Two videos have run ahead of the album cycle. “Miss Melody” arrived on 27 February with b-side “French Bullet Blues“, set to footage Alex shot travelling through Hong Kong and Beijing in April 2025. “Peter Pan” followed on 22 May, filmed at sunset on Peregian Beach on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast.
The vinyl is small: ten translucent red, ten white, pre-order opening 31 July via Bandcamp. Over The Hedge is Alex’s own imprint, so the whole run stays in the family.
For someone who says he doesn’t spend time on his back catalogue, that was more of a look back than usual. Alex, by his own admission, is probably already thinking about the next one.
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