| | | |  | With a debut EP about to be released, a plethora of live dates crowding into their schedule, and a brand new member joining the band onstage, the present is pretty sweet for Sydney band The Mares. Their magnificently named Love Billows From My Soul To...
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| Interview | Access All Areas.net.au: You release your debut EP later this month. Are you boys excited about it finally being out there in the public?
Jamie: Yeah. It’ll be good to get it out there. We finished it a long time ago, but because of various things (don’t begin to ask…) we haven’t been able to get it out till now.
Access All Areas.net.au: You’ve been around since 2004. How come its taken you so long to release any material commercially?
Jamie: We’re pretty perfectionist. We did do a bunch of recordings when we first formed – demos which got played a lot on the radio. We were even going to release some of them for a while, but we changed our mind. We even did a launch for one of them – Charleston – which a lot of Sydney people remember.
Jamie: Basically, this is the first recording we’re really happy with. I think that waiting has been good for us, because its allowed us to mature behind closed doors. We’ve played something like 50 different songs live in that time, and some of them were pretty cool, but we’ve settled on an aesthetic – dark, brooding, noisy but tinged with pop - which works for us. A lot of the stuff when we started was camp pop – songs like ‘I Love My Life’ and ‘My Boyfriend is so Handsome.’ That’s all gone now.
Access All Areas.net.au: Can you tell us a bit about ‘Love Billows From My Soul to Consume You Splendid People as an Avalanche Does a Mountain?’
Jamie: Well it traverses a bunch of different kinds of sound – from trashy pop (Biscuit Tin) to droney freakout (Copilot). We get compared to The Pixies, The Drones, Television, and Nick Cave a lot, but people are talking about different songs.
Jamie: We recorded it in a few different places over a couple of months, with a couple of different people. Its got lots of guitars.
Access All Areas.net.au: Before we go any further… whoa! What a name for an EP! Where did the name orginate from, and the length?
Jamie: Its something Nick said one day. We were hunting around for a name – we had a long list of shit ones – and that was the one that stuck. There’s was just something about it that felt kind of right.
Access All Areas.net.au: You’ve already toured with so many other high profile bands: Eskimo Joe, The Grates, Red Riders, Midnight Juggernauts. What was hat like and did you learn anything?
Jamie: We’ve played so many shows… yeah, its always fun playing big shows. Bigger audiences give off more energy, and I find it easier to lose myself in the moment when there’s hundreds of eyes rather than dozens. Strange as it might seem, its more nerve wracking playing to a small audience than a large one. You notice every expression when there’s only 50 people in a room, but once there’s 500 it’s a sea, and you just pick up on the general vibe. You can go mental, but you feel stupid when there’s not so many people there.
Access All Areas.net.au: You’re about to tour the country with Kisschasy. You must’ve been pretty excited to hear the news?
Jamie: Yeah, it should be good. I’m looking forward to checking out the kinds of crowds they’ll pull – they’ll be different to what we’re used to, and I think they’ll be a lot of fun.
Access All Areas.net.au: When a fan goes to a Mares show, what can they expect to see?
Jamie: What to expect if you get roped into going to a Mares show? First there’ll be standing around, chatting with your friends and drinking whilst you wait for us to set up and do line-checks and that kind of thing. Then there’s a noisy interlude while we play. During this period one will be forced to endure lots of guitars and bass and drums, and some singing and whatnot. Then after a while we will stop playing, and you will be free to go home.
Access All Areas.net.au: How important has Triple J and the like been for The Mares?
Jamie: Radio is vital for a band like us, who aren’t really a “scene” band. We can’t really rely on patronage and rent-a-crowd to give us vital inertia early on, so getting spins of radio is vital for lifting our profile.
Access All Areas.net.au: So what’s ahead for The Mares?
Jamie: We’re recording in the middle of the year and ideally want to have it out by the end of the year, but we’ll see how that goes. Then plans are to take that around Australia, and then concentrate on getting stuff happening overseas. I want to live in Italy and spend my days in art galleries and playing guitar in parks, and my nights in pasta joints. I haven’t really talked to the guys about that one yet. They might have some other idea. Who knows? |
| Biography | With a debut EP about to be released, a plethora of live dates crowding into their schedule, and a brand new member joining the band onstage, the present is pretty sweet for Sydney band The Mares. Their magnificently named Love Billows From My Soul To Consume You Splendid People As An Avalanche Does A Mountain EP will be hitting stores on April 28 2007, and will be celebrated with a string of live dates – including supporting Kisschasy as they tour through out Australia in May.
The EP from The Mares is long awaited, after songs on their first demo received national attention from independent radio across the country. The first single from Love Billows… is the mania-twinged Biscuit Tin, which has been well-loved by radio, with Triple J playing the song on medium and spot rotation since November 2006.
Produced with the help of Jorden Brebach and Chris Townend (who between them have worked on records as diverse as You Am I, Portishead, The Presets and The Church), Love Billows… consolidates upon the music that The Mares have made their own – sounds filled with thick paranoid balladry, numb minimalism and raucous punk. It is music touched by the heaviness of obsession and lust, and mixed with blues, folk and pop influences.
It is a sound that has garnered the band the chance to play with chart-destroying Aussie’s The Grates and Eskimo Joe, New York art rockers Liars, with The Presets, Louis XIV, Midnight Juggernauts, Red Riders, Expatriate and Sweden’s Shout Out Louds, and to join the bill at festivals such as Come Together in 2006, and the Playground Weekender in 2007. And soon, they will be able to add a tour with Kisschasy to that list, when The Mares join the band on their May tour.
Brand new member – guitarist Eddie Prevan – has picked a great time to join The Mares, hitting the stage for the upcoming tour, launch dates and festival show at the weekend’s Great Escape festival.
The Love Billows… EP will be launched through out Australia in May and early June. It will be released on April 28 2007 through Boundary Sounds and Inertia Music. |
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