We think they should pose even more!
Despite still acquainting themselves with this current tour of the UK and singer Jon Gray struggling under the weight of being ill, when SUPERSWEET catch up with The Mae Shi, the band are, after a little coaxing, in a talkative mood. A working man’s pub in Hackney may be an odd place to discuss all manner of things - from religious subtext to spoof pop songs- with four indie punk 20 somethings from LA (you can literally see jaws drop and eyebrows raise at the very concept of “skinny jeans” entering the pub) but, despite this, the pre Barden’s Boudoir gig interview is a success. The four band members share the spotlight of the interview equally, each chipping in to the answers of others or offering their own interpretation to questions.
SS: You’re playing these current dates at the moment with Abe Vigoda, was that a conscious decision by you as a band?
Brad Breeck: Yeah, we’ve always played with them in LA but never gone on tour with them outside of that really…we’re really great friends with Abe Vigoda and it’s great to be finally touring here with them.
Jon: We live really close to all those guys and always hang out with them when we get back off tour but yeah it’s great to be doing this tour with them now.
SS: You tour with four band members, even though officially the Mae Shi has six members. Why is this?
Jon: We have four people that tour…but everyone’s still involved. We’ve got Brad who plays drums and joined us about a year and a half ago but we all still write together.
SS: How about recording all together?
Jon: Yeah, the way the Mae Shi has recorded in the past, it’s not necessarily always everyone together but maybe just one or two people working together on an idea. Anyone in the band can and does come forward with an idea for a song then it’s usually worked on with all of us. It works out.
SS: A lot of the themes and lyrics on HLLLYH are often based on religion, is religion something that’s played an important part, for whatever reasons, on your life?
Jon: Religion plays a really important part on my life but for the rest of the guys I think it’s just another medium for story-telling. It’s just like...you know, it’s more about the metaphors and the imagery, but for me it’s pretty real.
Jeff Byron: I think the ideas [of religion] are something that everyone’s familiar with. The concepts are things that are so part of culture, especially in America. Growing up in America, you’re faced with religion so much and all these stories and metaphors and concepts stay with you. For me personally, religion is more about the stories and a way of telling stories rather than a literal interpretation.
SS: Yeah, a lot of your lyrics can often seem quite bleak but when you play live there’s a definite feeling of celebration and joy - is this something you agree with and purposefully aim for?
Jeff: I dunno…personally, I don’t see the lyrics as being all that bleak. I guess people interpret our songs in different ways, which is a good thing. We have a song, 'Young Marks', which people always come up to me and ask if it’s about war and death, but it’s actually just based on some film we watched ages ago. The lyrics to our songs can mean different things for different people. We definitely try to be as much fun as possible live, regardless of what interpretations different people gather from our songs.
SS: When we’ve seen you live before, you’ve used a sheet to cover the audience. How did this even come about?
Jon: It’s upgraded to a parachute now!
Bill Gray: Someone stole our sheet. Let them know, if they’re reading this, that we know who it is and where you live. We’re coming for our sheet.
SS: Can you tell us who stole it?
Bill: Oh, they know who they are….(laughs)
Brad: With the parachute, that’s our kinda crude way of connecting with the audience. If you can do something physical with your body while you’re listening to music, you can understand it and enjoy it so much more. If people can grab and hold onto something, I think they connect much better with what’s going on musically.
SS: Connecting with your audience seems to a big part of The Mae Shi. When we saw you at Matter in October, you were fighting with the bouncers during Hot Chip’s set…is this a regular occurrence?
Jon: No, that’s the only time really…when you see the security not treating the fans, and us, how they deserve to be treated, that’s definitely something that winds us up.
Bill: They don’t even treat anyone like human beings at that place…what is it with all the airport style security to get in? It’s a horrible place and we were treated with no respect there. Matter can burn in the hell…the hell they hath created!
SS: You recently made a song called 'R U Professional' featuring the heavy sampling of Christian Bale’s famous rant. How did this come about ?
Brad: That’s kind of a funny story actually. Jacob Cooper, who is part of The Mae Shi but doesn’t tour with us, called me up at, like, 3am one night. He’s the kind of guy who’s never awake at this time and would never normally call me like this unless it was really important, so I was really thinking something must be wrong, but he was like “Oh me God, you’ve gotta hear this!”. He was just playing around on YouTube one time and came across the Christian Bale thing and…decided to make a song using it!
Jeff: For us, swearing for ages and screaming on a film set at a co-worker about “being professional” is totally ironic as that’s the complete opposite of being professional! It’s like us screaming for hours at the sound guy and holding up everyone else’s soundcheck…it’s pretty stupid, so we just made a song out of it. We get requests but are yet to play it live…
SS: Do you have any plans for anymore songs like this?
Bill: No, not really. These kind of things just work best when they’re spontaneous. Maybe more will come in the future…who knows?
Words: Gavin Williams
Photography: James Berry