All you need is love

Love can change the world. This has always been the Mowgli’s motto, and it’s a message that’s grown stronger as the seven-piece continue maturing, both musically and emotionally.

Though the band’s relatively new to the mainstream alt-rock world, they’ve been playing music together for the better part of a decade. “It’s kind of been this every-step-of-the-way process,” vocalist/percussionist Katie Jayne Earl explains. “And I feel really lucky that it’s going this way because you really get to see your hard work paying off.”

And pay off it has: In the past few years the band has toured the world, played on television and even performed the national anthem at a San Francisco Giants game, all the while staying true to themselves and promoting positivity.

Before hitting the road to support their sophomore album, Kids In Love, Katie took the time to chat with Myspace about the new tunes, the pressures of a successful debut album and, of course, love.

Your new album is coming out soon!

Katie Jayne Earl: I can’t wait to get it out. I have this anxiety...like can we release it now?! Can we push up the release date...but we can’t.

Even though Waiting For The Dawn came out in 2013, you wrote those songs years ago—they must feel ancient to you now!

They’re so old to us! We’ve been playing the songs off Waiting For The Dawn for six years, so it’s really exciting to know we’re going out on a tour that revolves pretty heavily around this new material. We’ve been practicing it a lot, and it’s so much fun to be playing new music. We’re having the time of our lives playing new songs.

Kids In Love’s got a lot more of a pop feel to it. 

Yeah, we got to work with some really cool producers who added a lot of that. We’re all fans of pop and rock and country and you name it, but it was really cool to work with this guy Matt Radosevich on “You Are Not Alone” and “Love Me Anyway”—he added this country radio pop thing that we couldn’t believe really.

The first album is kind of folky, and we did it ourselves in our apartment with the help of this producer for pretty much no money, and it was just such a different experience. This was real. It was like, oh, we’re in the music industry now making a record. We’re working with producers who have songs on the radio and are working to make our songs sound like they should be on the radio, so it was just kind of this whole new level of “whoa” that we experienced this time around.

I know you’re excited to get this album out, but since Waiting For the Dawn was so successful do you feel any pressure with this release?

I don’t personally. I’m really proud of the album, so whatever people think about it is irrelevant. I think it’s a cool album and I’m excited. I think we have a pretty cool fan base, and really that’s what it’s all about. That actually went into the process of writing the album—we knew that we’re a live band and made an album of songs that are going to be fun to play live. I think we have a pretty solid group of fans who are going to keep coming to shows, and I think as long as we keep having people to play shows for, I’m not super worried about it. 

Unsurprisingly, the new album is all about love—from intimate to universal—how are you hoping fans will feel after listening to this record?

I hope that when people listen to anything we do—whatever emotion or feeling that song is exploring—the person listening understands they’re not alone if they’re feeling that way. There’s a lyric in “You’re Not Alone” that goes, “I’ve been broke out of love / Got beat up, drank too much / Crashed my truck,” all these things that seem like the worst thing that could be happening to this person, but he’s not alone. We’ve all been there. And that’s actually a theme we’re running with for this next tour. We’re trying to link up with a suicide prevention organization because we all feel like that message should be heard loud and clear. 

What’s so wonderful about the Mowgli’s is that you support numerous charities, your music advocates love and togetherness and you try to instill this positivity in everything that you do. It’s really inspiring.

Thank you! I would hate to dedicate my life to a message that I didn’t stand behind. I think we all feel that way. It’s easy to stand behind something that you agree with, and as long as you continue to work with people that you support and that support you, and organizations that you think are great, you can’t really go wrong.

Kids In Love is out April 14 via Photo Finish/Republic.