“Robert Smith thanked us for supporting The Cure before they played Boys Don’t Cry. It was one of the songs my guitar tutor taught me. I burst into tears!” Just Mustard on learning from The Cure, growing up with Fontaines D.C. – and horrible impulse buys

Although the age of guitar plug-ins is upon us, for many players nothing beats an old-school amp and pedal setup. And few do that better than experimental Irish quintet Just Mustard.

Originating in Dundalk in 2015, their debut album Wednesday – featuring guitarist/vocalist David Noonan and guitarist Mete Kaylon alongside vocalist Katie Ball, drummer Shane Maguire and bassist Rob Clarke – delivered a soundscape of unpredictable shoegaze, cutting post-punk and textually dark immersion, which quickly gained praise from Robert Smith, securing the band a support slot with The Cure that year.

“Robert Smith is respectful to his crowd, who know he actually likes the bands who support him,” Noonan says. “The crowd are receptive and open to the show. It doesn’t feel like you’ve been thrown on and no one wants to watch. It felt comfortable – but terrifying.”

Oddly, the most memorable moment for Just Mustard was watching people watch The Cure at an open-air show, as the openers squeezed past 30,000 people towards their dressing room on the other side of the field. “Fans lose their minds during Friday, I’m in Love,” Noonan says. “The connection people have with music is inspiring.”

For Kalyon there was a more emotional moment in store when Smith thanked Just Mustard before diving into Boys Don’t Cry. “It was one of the songs my guitar tutor taught me. I burst into tears – happy tears!”

Just Mustard share a heartfelt connection to near neighbours Fontaines D.C., who started roughly around the same time in Dublin. “We watched them grow exponentially every year,” Kalyon says. “We watched the crowds double every time we toured with them. Now we’re watching them in arenas.”

“I definitely had an emotional reaction – obviously I was quite drunk,” Noonan laughs “One day we saw Fontaines play the 3Arena in Dublin. I view it as a rock biopic in my head: ‘I’ve seen these boys play to 50 people, and now they’re playing an arena.’ It was weird!”

Noonan and Kalyon both picked up guitar in their teens, when a school project introduced Kalyon to just how wide-ranging the instrument could be. “We made a track putting guitars up to amps, creating a lot of feedback and speaking over it,” he says of his first tracking experience.

Three albums later, after learning the difficult lesson of “simpler is better,” Just Mustard have their eccentric sound set in concrete, characterized through reverb-soaked abrasive guitars, which contrast with Bell’s ethereal vocals.

“Forcing a part doesn’t mean it’s right – the right parts will just work instantly,” Noonan says. “I learnt that towards the end of the album. It’s hard to not destroy the thing that might be magic about it.”

“There’s compulsion to do more in life,” Kalyon adds. “There’s always an impression of ‘Is that it?’ It’s easier to just let things be; it’s hard to accept it could be that simple.”

The pair have similar pedalboards, with every pedal used to the last inch of its life, since they “always write with the sonics in mind.” Noonan plays a HH Fender Jaguar plugged into a Fender Hot Rod Deville 2x12; while Kalyon plays a trusty Fender Telecaster alongside his Roland JC-120.

And because simplicity is key, the pedals used most by both are the Electro Harmonix Stereo Reverb & Delay, and the like-no-other ZVex Machine which “cuts through everything with a piercing industrial hardness,” Noonan says. It’s their go to for “making everything sound super loud.”

With a never-ending cycle of effects, what’s the method behind remembering which track needs what setting? Noonan answers: “You learn a muscle-memory dance of making your way through the songs, which we rehearse in the set order. Effects are built into the writing; for the most part it’s different textures of distortion, fuzz and overdrive.”

On the rare occasion a new pedal makes an appearance, it will have have been considered for a while, after Kalyon’s purchase of a Phase Shift MXR rocked the boat a little too much. “I impulsively bought it – and that’s the last time I impulsively bought anything,” he admits. “It was like, ‘That’s all you’re gonna hear now!’”

Noonan says: “I remember you buying that and immediately thinking, ‘Get that off your board!’” A rapid course-correct followed, as heard on latest record We Were Just Here.

“We got a bit lost in the previous album,” Noonan accepts. “Some of the songs suffered live from how difficult they were to get right. I want We Were Just Here to be an album we can enjoy playing, without stressing out for five minutes and not even hearing the song.”

• We Were Just Here is on sale now.