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ON THE COUCH WITH: The Mint Chicks

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ARTIST INTERVIEW

Access All Areas.net.au: Hey Ruban. How are you?
Ruban: Good thanks.

Access All Areas.net.au: So what's it like to have 'Crazy? Yes! Dumb? No!' out and in the public eye?
Ruban: It's a real relief actually. I'm a little glad that it's out of my life. It took a total of 8 months to work on. I really wanted to hear the finished product about 3 months into it. We're really glad it's out in Australia as well. We can expand our fan base.

Access All Areas.net.au: You guys played some shows in Australia recently. How did they go?
Ruban: Really well. They went so good. It was really encouraging to see the amount of people turn out. We're actually thinking of moving to Australia sometime late next year. The shows just went really well. He had heard some real horror stories about performing around the same time as Meredith Music Festival. A lot of people had said, "People don't come" if you had shows during Meredith. The shows went way beyond our expectations. A few people had come along just because they were curious, but most of the audience were singing along with the band. It was great.

Access All Areas.net.au: Now you guys have supported bands like The White Stripes and The Yeah Yeah Yeahs. What was that like?
Ruban: It was good. We learnt a lot from those bands and it was just great to watch them each night. It's weird to see how everything works overseas. It all runs on a whole other level. We strip back our production. It’s all D.I.Y. The White Stripes have passed their careers. It used to be D.I.Y. but now it's a really big production. I was really naïve and thought it all just happened. Jack White actually has two sound guys. There's one for the fold backs and one for the audience. It’s been good though. We've picked up the best of bands and the worst of bands, from picks to lighting. We don’t really get big shows in New Zealand or many bands for that case, so it's all been good experience.

Access All Areas.net.au: Is there someone that you would love to go on tour with?
Ruban: Lots (laughs). Some of the bands I would love to support are The Bad Seeds, Bob Dylan, The Beatles and Led Zeppelin. Those kinds of bands. Also Miles Davis and Frank Zappa. They would all be cool. They’re just the bands that I’ve been into for a long time. They’re all really cool.

Access All Areas.net.au: You boys are playing at the NZ Big Day Out. Are you excited about that?
Ruban: We’ve played the BDO a few times now. I’m really excited, even though it’s a month or so away. We were hoping to scam our way onto the Australian tour, but it didn’t happen. It’s amazing playing the NZ BDO though. The whole country comes together to this one event. It’s magical.

Access All Areas.net.au: What are you currently listening to?
Ruban: I’ve started re-listening to a lot of Bob Dylan, because of reading his books. There are so many books concerning that man, whether it is written by him or about him. One of my friends actually has an encyclopaedia on him. He’s just a poet and a musician at the same time. I’m listening to a lot of stuff though. There’s some Roy Orbison, Gram Parsons, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Smiths and The Bad Seeds.

Access All Areas.net.au: What was it like having Chris Nielson, your father, working on the album with you guys?
Ruban: It was pretty amazing. He’s usually helped us with stuff, but it’s usually just little things. It has never been hands on for the whole time. He was the one who originally taught us how to record and we used his computer to record some of our E.P’s. We really wanted to make a big jump from our previous album. We wanted to make a big shiny pop punk record. After we recorded everything, we just didn’t have the sound that we were looking for. We had loads of songs, but just didn’t know where to start. Dad offered to help, so we gave him only one song to work on. Dad was a big jazz guy and knew what he was doing. We were hesitant to let him come in and wave his wand. We gave him one track and when we got it back, it was the sound that we were looking for. He ended up finishing the album. He pretty much co-produced the album. In the studio, Cody and I fight a lot, so adding Dad into the mix was a little interesting, but we feel we made a better record.

Access All Areas.net.au: Finally, what plans do The Mint Chicks have for 2007?
Ruban: Hopefully we’re coming back to Australia to do some more tours. We’ve reached critical mass in New Zealand. We’re too big for the underground, but we’re not big enough for mainstream. We’ll hopefully tour Australia as a support act for someone and then we’ll hopefully play SXSW and tour The States. Then we’ll come back to Australia and do a Flying Nun tour with Children Collide. Maybe try and work on Japan and then hopefully move to either Melbourne or Sydney at the end of next year.

Access All Areas.net.au: Cool. Thanks for your time today Ruban.
Ruban: No worries.

Interview by Simon Finck

ARTIST BIOGRAPHY

The Mint Chicks make spazzy, heavy, poppy music with lyrics about things like sports teams, love, death, obsession, and drug addiction. Turn ons: the Buzzcocks, comic books, A Clockwork Orange, Refused, speedfreaks, Devo, At the Drive In, Flying Nun Records, Public Image Ltd, bright colours, black, the Beach Boys, Naked Lunch, Slayer ringtones, Pro tools, Miles' electric period, Grand Theft Auto, Black Sabbath, ring mod pedals, psychedelia, Roy Orbison, and the Locust.

Playing packed out little venues in New Zealand since 2002, the Mint Chicks (singer and wurlitzer piano player Kody Nielson, bassist Michael Logie, drummer Paul Roper and guitarist Ruban Nielson) have climbed all the P.A's, back flipped off all the drum risers, bloodied all the fingers, scrapped all the haters, broken all the hearts, ripped all the clothing, bashed all the microphones and smashed all the bottles in preparation for the release of their newest and most exciting record: 'Crazy?Yes!Dumb?No!'.

'Octagon, Octagon, Octagon' came in 2003, the Mint Chicks had just signed to legendary NZ label Flying Nun Records. It's influences were varied and it's local impact was felt immediately, taking student radio by storm with 4 number 1's and 5 'bnet' awards, even though it was only a six track document of youthful enthusiasm and little bit of home made inventiveness (the band militantly self produce/engineer their records, do their own artwork and designed their own website). This was the sound of hardcore damaged beyond repair by bubblegum, LSD and artschool.

The following year, after a single on the highly respected Fierce Panda label in the UK (hyped as a 'one minute masterpiece' by Kerrang) they released their second E.P: 'Anti Tiger', which placed even greater emphasis on both the chaotic and the melodic. It was well received, earning four K's from Kerrang, and '9/10' from Blunt magazine.

The year after that, the band had released a couple of E.P's and toured New Zealand a trillion times (as well as doing a couple of trips to the U.S, one to England and half a dozen to Australia, having the good fortune to play support slots for the White Stripes, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, TV on the Radio, and the Blood Brothers). They decided to shut themselves away and try their hand at a long player. They hired a house on a lonely beach in New Zealand's 'far north' (accessible only at low tide) and without as much as an engineer to guide proceedings they churned out 'F**k the Golden Youth'. Not quite the debut anyone was expecting, it has an abrasive sound and was by no means universally praised, but the Sunday Star Times called it 'revolutionary stuff' and Australia's Blunt magazine called it both 'one of the best albums of 2005' and 'pop trying to kill itself in the most sadistic way possible' in the same review.

The Mint Chicks latest record, 'Crazy?Yes!Dumb?No!', sees a few important progressions from the previous records:

Firstly, we find singer Kody Nielson's former disaffected, bratty screech practically smooth to a croon.

Secondly, we find the Nielson brothers songwriting finally in full flight. The Beach Boys have, for the moment, gained the upper hand on the Locust. Does this mean that this new record has seen the Mint Chicks hone their disjointed, noisy assault into an album of shiny pop anthems? Well, in short, yes.

Thirdly, although once again the band have recorded with very little interference from 'grown ups', there are a few exceptions. After the band had been recording and writing for six months in Kody's garage, they went to Chris Nielson (the father of the two brothers in the band) for help. A seasoned musician, Chris helped pull a gem from the quagmire by adding an experienced ear and some much welcome Pro-tools expertise. The Nielson brothers were helped through the mixing process and some additional recording sessions to get the record perfect with their father before handing it over to mastering legend Howie Weinberg in New York (Nirvana, the Mars Volta, Modest Mouse, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs).

Howard Devoto said that Punk was a way of 'trouble shooting modern forms of unhappiness' and when you listen to the Mint Chicks you'll see they must have taken this to heart in a big way. Kody puts it like this: 'don't cut your wrists, you've got beautiful fists'.

www.themintchicks.com

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