Take what’s yours and take your time
I thought you could be mine
I’m finding a way
Closer to you
Desire often arrives in fragments: a fixation you cannot quite explain, a pull that keeps returning, a thought that hardens into impulse before you have fully named it. On Closer To You, London’s Mouth Ulcers keep that feeling deliberately open-ended. The lyrics never overstate the relationship at the song’s centre; instead, they circle pursuit, surrender, and failing self-command. The result is not a straightforward love song, but something murkier and more compelling: a portrait of attraction gathering force until it starts to feel like obsession.
Closer To You, the latest single from the band’s forthcoming debut EP, Silent Pictures, sharpens the qualities that have made Mouth Ulcers one of the most exciting young names in Britain’s current goth and post-punk resurgence. It opens on propulsive drums, a tenebrous bass pulse, and a rush of cold guitar that cuts clean through the mix before settling into an arresting minor-key figure that gives the song its severe, magnetic shape. Zak Watson’s vocal holds itself in check even as the arrangement suggests that control slipping away, mirroring the lyric’s repeated movement toward someone just out of reach. Longing is not treated as sentiment here, but as compulsion.
The video renders that gripping tension with a stark, stylish economy, placing the band inside a raw industrial space of white brick, bare concrete, narrow corridors, hanging fluorescent strips, and engulfing darkness. Throughout the clip, Mouth Ulcers appear between bleach-bright overexposure and blue-black murk, while red gothic title cards, looming shadows — and their shadowplay, blurred movement, and isolating close-ups turn the room into something between a rehearsal space, a ritual chamber, and a fever dream. The camera repeatedly shifts from intimate faces to distant full-band tableaux, giving the performance a restless, unstable energy that suits the song’s themes of pursuit and slipping control.
Watch the video for “Closer To You” below:
With Closer To You, Mouth Ulcers continue to make a strong case for the renewed potency of guitar-driven darkwave and moody post-punk in the UK. Their sound shares some broad terrain with contemporaries like Twin Tribes, but leans further into an older post-punk lineage: the stark drive of The Soft Moon at its most guitar-led, the dark abrasion of Mesh and Lace-era Modern English, and the elegant desolation of Modern Eon, Snake Corps, and Sad Lovers and Giants, with traces of early The Cure and Bauhaus in the bones. Yet they do not feel trapped in revivalism; they carry that language with a chill, discipline, and urgency that feels slick, modern, and fully present-tense.
Silent Pictures is out July 10yh via LAB Records. You can pre-order the EP here, and listen to “Closer To You” below.
Silent Pictures – EP by Mouth Ulcers
Upcoming Live Dates
May 16th — Sheffield, UK — Get Together Festival
May 23rd — Bristol, UK — Dot To Dot Festival
May 24th — Nottingham, UK — Dot To Dot Festival
July 3rd — Leeds, UK — The Warehouse
July 29th — London, UK — Paper Dress Vintage
August 15th — Liverpool, UK — District
August 29th — Eindhoven, NL — Hit The City Festival
November 29th — Porto, PT — Post Punk Strikes Back Festival
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The post “I Can’t Seem to Control Myself” — London’s Mouth Ulcers Chase the Shadow of Desire in Video for “Closer To You” appeared first on Post-Punk.com.