It is not every day that we come across bands that remind us of why we fell in love with music. We grew up listening to the psychedelic sounds of The Dandy Warhols, Zero 7 and The Shins. The beauty that is exuded from these 90s bands, both instrumentally and vocally, is largely non-existent in the auto-tone society we live in today. Despite this “factual” statement, we will not spend anymore time discussing the musical negativity of the 21st Century because we have found a band that has resurrected the 90s traits we have been missing since our teenage years. So, there is hope that the whimsical sounds of the past will defeat the overproduced ways of the present.
Let’s introduce you Shockya readers to the band that we are resting a majority of our faith on, The Morning After Girls. The fanciful sounding band consists of co-founders, vocalist and guitarist, Sacha Lucashenko and vocalist and guitarist, Martin Sleeman, as well as, keyboardist, percussionist and backing vocalist, Alexander White, bassist, EJ Hagen and drummer, Anthony Johnson. The Australian natives have released three EPs and three studio albums through a variety of labels across the years. “The Morning After Girls EP 1” dropped via an Australian label, Rubber Records in 2003; “The Morning After Girls EP 2” via Australia label, Fly Music in 2005; “The General Public” self-released via iTunes in 2009. As for studio albums, “The Morning After Girls: Prelude EPs 1 & 2” dropped in 2005 via Rainbow Quartz; “Shadows Evolve” via Fly Music in 2005; “Alone” via NYC based label, Xemu Records, on January 11th, 2011.The Australian group relocated to the Big Apple in 2008. Hopefully, The Morning After Girls will also find a permanent home within the walls of Xemu Records. In our opinion, the future looks bright for the group!
The band is set to perform tonight, September 1st, at The Mercury Lounge in NYC. Since we will be a part of the audience, we will give you guys the latest scoop on the show. Until then, check out our interview with The Morning After Girls co-founder, Martin Sleeman, as we discuss the band’s upcoming NYC performance as well as their most recent release, “Alone”.
Can you tell me the story behind the band name, The Morning After Girls?
I can’t actually because one of the driving forces behind it was that we are very fascinated with preconceived ideas on why certain things come up and why people actually ask the question where did you get your name from. We try to focus more on what it means for you. We try to remain focused on the fact that anything artistic, any form of expression, once you actually put it out there it becomes more about how other people view it. We certainly believe that art is purely for the spectator. If it was something that we did purely for ourselves, I would probably let you know why we are called that, but in terms of music and forms of expression that are made public, it’s sort of about how the viewer and spectator views it. We like to think that once we share something with anyone, it’s whatever they want it to be.
That’s pretty cool. Can you tell about the band’s that inspired your music?
Well actually we are more inspired by visual art more than music, to tell you the truth. I tend to be more inspired by film, sort of visual art, theater, all silent movies, characters and how they interact within film. The way the silent film without talking interacts with their movement and the soundtrack over the top is very, very inspiring to me. I sort of write more music after I watch films like that than after seeing a band. Certainly, my mother and father brought me up a lot on off-stage and stage music. The first musical experience I ever had was Gilbert and Sullivan. I grew up with a lot of classical music and so did Sacha. From there, I discovered a lot of bands that my mother listened to, like the Beatles, and then sort of grew into other things. I guess, as I get older, I was madly in love with Nirvana and that’s an influence on both myself and Sacha. They remain to this day one of our favorite bands.
I am a big Nirvana fan too.
Ya, they are sadly missed. They had an energy and a way of expressing their art that I don’t think is being equaled yet. For me, they are one of the last great American bands, at least, of our time anyway. I miss them a lot.
You guys have toured in America, Australia and Europe. Have a favorite city to perform in?
Well, to tell you the truth, we’ve had some fantastic shows in Dublin. We’ve had a fantastic experience there in 2002. We’ve played so many shows there that we just grew to call it home for a few weeks. We were only supposed to stay there for two days. The show that we did there was part of a small festival and it was received so well that without knowing where we were staying or how we could get a change of flights, we just decided to stay and play show after show there. We had a great time, but honestly we are still quite bias with New York. Every time, we rehearse, practice, record or play any sort of show here, we just love it so much.
What was it like releasing “Alone” with a NYC based label? And recording it here in New York?
To tell you the truth, it was very difficult. The last few years of myself and Sacha’s lives, everything that he and myself recorded, has always been aligned to what conditions we have been met with at the time and the process, leading up to recording alone, has been extremely difficult for me and him. The process of releasing it, physically, was extraordinarily difficult. There was a lot of hoops to jump through, a lot of bureaucracy and very tiresome. I think every band has this story. We’ve been tested a lot in the last few years. I think once we released it, it was a big weight off our shoulders. The album release with Xemu has been absolutely fantastic. Cevin Soling who owns the label with Steven Kille are just fantastic to work with. They are lovely guys, very professional and extremely efficient. They really care about us as artists and as people who have been doing what we do for so long. I am really happy to be involved with them.
What was the writing process like for “Alone”? Is there a general theme throughout the tracks?
There is not usually a general theme in terms of our song writing. Myself and Sacha do everything together. We write and record, do everything together. There might be times where he will bring a more formulated idea of a song to me and I’ll sort of converse with him about what I like about it and what I don’t like about it. Or I’ll bring a more formulated song to him and he’ll tell me what he doesn’t like or what he likes about it. We will reach a point where the song just evolves through us sharing our ideas together. There are times where they will be completely created from us together from scratch. We have something together that I don’t think we can describe. We have very uniquely different personalities, but we become something that I think we rely on to do what we do. There is nothing I think I could do musically without him. It just works.
How did you and Sacha first meet?
There was a mutual friend of ours, who was quite savvy. She realized, at different times, how dissatisfied both of us were with the music that was coming out in Melbourne. We shared a vision that we both had as individuals at the time and fortunately, she introduced us to each other. I think we met on a Friday night at a little bar in Melbourne and we got together the first thing the next morning. I went over to his apartment in Melbourne. I think we jammed for about 14 hours straight, got really wasted, woke up the next morning and said let’s keep doing this.
Awesome. You guys have been touring throughout the summer. Are you mainly playing tracks off of “Alone” at Mercury Lounge?
To be quite honest, since it’s been so long since we’ve played a full band show, we are going to be playing a few new songs tomorrow night at the Mercury Lounge and will probably take a few new songs with us on the road when we tour in September and October. Most of the songs will be off of “Alone”, but with that said, as time has gone on it’s been a while for me and Sacha doing what we do, so we are falling in love with some of our other songs as well. We like to recognize the fact that those songs existed. We don’t like to forget what we’ve done and how good we felt about certain songs. We felt like it should be an even split between “Alone”, our new songs and some old ones as well.
Are you guys looking forward to your show at the Mercury Lounge? The Morning After Girls played there two years ago right?
Ya, we did. We are much excited for that show tomorrow. At the same time, we are just excited to play now. As I said to you, the last couple of years have been very exhausting. The last two years have really threatened the beauty that me and Sacha have within ourselves to do what we do. There are many people who have struggled with immigration laws and the bureaucracy. It can really be damaging. So to be where we are now, playing tomorrow night, we are just excited to play as much as we can and share what we love so much with as many people as possible.
Do you have a track that you are looking forward to playing most tomorrow night?
Everything because we don’t separate one song from the other when we play live or when we record a record. We see a live set exactly the same way we do a record. It is just one big, full journey that we want to take everyone on. We look forward to each set as one kind of big song. I don’t think I could ever look forward to one song over another because each song is one part of something beautiful that we try to create.
What are your plans leading up to the Mercury Lounge show tomorrow night?
We’ll probably do a few naughty things tonight, chill out a bit and do a few boring things tomorrow night leading up to the show. There is always stuff we got to take care of. We have a certain routine that I probably won’t divulge to you now. We’ll probably take it easy for a bit, get a sound check and retire to our private sanctuaries that allow us to get into the space that we need to get into.
Planning on releasing a new album soon?
The sooner, the better, cause we have more than an album’s worth of songs ready to record. We’ve demoed a lot of them. Some of which are brand new songs; some of which have been sitting around for a while that we have been trying to refine. Ya, we’d like to get back and record as soon as possible, but we know we have to tour for a while as well.
by Lonnie Nemiroff
