"POP IS NOT A DIRTY WORD!" To mark the 10 year anniversary of their debut (and only) album release, Mr. Mustache returns with "THE LOST TAPES" -- 12 songs, straight from the vault! "Broken-Hearted Dance" - an early watershed moment for MBR and the skeleton key to much of our collective approach and sound - was released February 25th, 2012 with a crowdfunded vinyl pressing and a sold-out show at Raggamuffin Music Hall (does that still exist??) in downtown Roswell, GA. Marching Banana had, at that point, about a year under our belt, a handful of primarily digital-only releases and zero (ZERO!) grasp on how to arrange & present songs that could stand on their own outside of hazy aesthetics. Anthony "Tony" Aparo and Jacob Chisenhall, the principal songwriters of Mr. Mustache, arrived to a fledgling young scene with a seemingly inherent understanding of how to do these things; to execute hooks with a level of melodic density that betrayed its pleasant demeanor, and to make it seem fun while doing it.

There's a balance too, exemplified in their writing, between the ability to use pastiche and even camp as a vessel to convey earnest, forward-thinking pop. In truth, they had both been hard at work for years, though both still shy of 18 at the time of writing most of the group's material. Quickly following the release of “Broken Hearted Dance”, Mr. Mustache set off on writing a follow-up. Between 2012 and 2013, Anthony Aparo, Jacob Chisenhall, Jack Wucher, and Jordan Tumlin produced a 4-track EP that was recorded at Studio 1093 in Athens, GA with the help of Patrick Ferguson and Richard Salino. This EP, tentatively titled “Black Vines” saw the band branching off from their folk roots into a handful of adjacent genres. It was, perhaps, for these reasons that the band was baffled with the results, and the record was eventually shelved after completion.

After those recording sessions, Jacob and Anthony broke off from the rest of the group and continued writing and deconstructing the project itself: alone or together, both hi-fi and lo-fi; even planning to change the name at one point -- it’s from this period where the lion's share of these recordings were actually produced. The group would eventually disband entirely by the end of 2013 to move on to new projects, and many of these recordings were thought LOST to the band - some still are! Says Chisenhall: "This compilation is a thank you to everyone who supported us all those years ago and elevated the group to feeling far more than a band of youngsters from a podunk town."