We're all about responding to things in a positive way: TLOBF meet Maybeshewill

Leicester instrumental band Maybeshewill have been building quite the reputation over the last few years. Capable of switching from soaring, bludgeoning metal riffs to becalmed electronically aided intricacy, their third album I Was Here For A Moment, Then I Was Gone sees them focus and shift up a gear and away from most of the easy comparisons that could have been thrown at them. Somewhere between a week in mid-Europe and the start of their three week album tour, guitarist John Helps explained their working methods, the DIY aesthetic and breaking out of their local scene.

For those just catching up, run through the story of the band so far.

To keep it short, Robin and I started writing music together in bedrooms around Leicester about five years ago, we stole a drummer from an awesome band called Fight Fire With Water in the form of Jim so that we could start touring properly, and recently Jamie joined on bass after parting ways with his previous projects Kyte and Tired Irie. That’s missing out a whole cavalcade of history and previous members in the intervening time, but it’s the gist of it. We’ve been putting out albums and EPs under almost everyone’s radar for the last four or five years, trying to fight our way into people’s consciousness by touring as much as humanly possible. We’ve covered two continents so far and hopefully the next year will bring more of the same.

What was the approach going into making this album?

We decided to think of it as if we were starting work on our first album all over again, by forgetting every bit of press we’d read about ourselves or expectation people might have, and then just trying to write a record we’d all be proud of at the end of it. Once you’ve released two albums to good reviews but you still don’t feel like you’ve been ‘accepted’ that’s the only way you can proceed really, or you’d drive yourself mad.

You’ve talked about there being explicit, often political meanings and imagery behind the songs before – do you still write with a message in mind?

We’ve never written a ‘political’ song, though I think we’ve occasionally been accused of doing so. We’ve always said we’re a ‘socially aware’ band, rather than politically so – our last record in particular was written during a period of sea-change in the way we saw society as a whole, which became quite a bleak outlook for a while. If there was a message behind that record it was that we were looking for a spark of hope that’d get us past the torrent of bad news on rolling news channels and the pissed up end-of-the-world type nonsense that occurs around you on Friday and Saturday nights in almost any city. It’s pretty easy to become numb to it, but at the time we were feeling this wave of enthusiasm and collaboration within our city’s music scene – everyone seemed to be pulling in the same direction and it was fucking wicked, it still is to a great extent – so that’s where we found our positive outlook which ran through Sing The Word Hope In Four-Part Harmony. That said, I think it’s healthy to be appalled on a daily basis. Hopefully it doesn’t make what we’re saying when that social element of what we do creeps in to things in any way negative. We’re all about responding to things in a positive way.
I think with the new record, the focus has perhaps been a little more abstract. We still write with certain themes and imagery in mind, but there are no samples or lyrics on the new record and the titles are more obtuse, so you’ve got to scratch a little deeper and find your own messages with this one.

There seems to be more awareness of space and sonic layering on this record. Having essentially made two albums for nothing, is there an amount of liberation in getting to use a proper studio?

Absolutely. This record still cost us virtually nothing, which is the benefit of having a bassist whose day job is running his own studio, and having two albums worth of experience behind us. Using the spaces at Seamus Wong and Park Farm was the biggest boon to this record. Being able to record drums which sound huge because of the room they’ve been recorded in rather than having to compromise with post-production is such a satisfying process. There are pros and cons to both approaches, but taking to the studio was the right choice for this record I think. ‘Widescreen’ has been the buzz word.

Is there a deeper meaning behind the album title?

There’s meaning behind every title, even the slightly naive, extremely ridiculous ones ones from our earlier releases. Obviously It’s about the semi-permanance, but there are specifics. I can’t really go in to it. It’s better that way.

Is being seen as DIY important to who the band are?

I like the ‘seen as’ in this question! Being a DIY band has been really important to us, more because it’s the only way we’ve gotten things done as a band up to now than because of how we’re seen. I know amongst our local scene there are bands who are decidedly more DIY than us and we’ve had a bit of stick for giving up some of the things we used to do ourselves whilst still claiming to be a ‘DIY’ band. We chose to follow that route because we didn’t see the point in asking people to do things which we couldn’t do ourselves. We booked ourself tours, sent our records out for press and tour managed ourselves, but as we’re spending more and more time on the road, and working on other projects we’ve had to involve more people in the process. We’d stall pretty quickly at this point if we didn’t have the help. It’s become about choosing the right people to work with. We started working with a chap called Haydn for tour booking this year, who we know from his running the Brainwash festival in Leeds and a guy called Simon at iLiKEPRESS does our PR who’s involved with Brew Records, so everyone we’re working with has incredible indie credentials above and beyond anything we’ve ever done. We know we can trust them to make the right decisions, so it works in tandem with what we’re doing. Basically, we wouldn’t be able to book the shows or promote the album ourselves because of the constant touring and recording and then fitting in our day jobs, so we can pass it on to those guys without any worry.

Conversely though, we turned up at a festival the other day and every band on the bill had three or four crew, a tour manager, drivers and masses of gear, and the four of us just turned up in a van. There was a vaguely palpable astonishment that we were loading in and sound checking our own gear, which is something to be proud of.

I get the impression you don’t like being called post-rock…

Ha ha! We’ve come to accept it, but i don’t see the comparison between us and say Slint or Godspeed or Explosions In The Sky, aside from the fact that we rarely have vocals. It’s sometimes a useful banner to be collected under if it helps people find new music, but we don’t tend to listen to much of it personally. We tend to draw inspiration from other sources.

How has your inspiration and attitude to making music changed over the course of three albums?

It’s evolved for sure, but not consciously really. When we first started we weren’t writing to play live, then when we got to the second record we wrote with the live element more in mind, which changed the sound pretty significantly. This time around we can reproduce more of the electronic elements live, so we’re able to draw from a broader palette, I guess. We’re always drawing inspiration from our current circumstances and the people and musicians we interact with on our travels, so that constantly changes us as a band.

How do you write?

Each song can be different, so this question’s always pretty hard to answer. Sometimes we find ourselves with a finished track and we don’t know how we got there, so trying to answer this is fairly futile!

Is forming a visual aesthetic through your videos as important?

It’s always fun to work with people like We The Conspirators and Enter The Tree House, but the visual element isn’t something we’ve focussed on yet. We’ve not really found our feet I think.

You go to eastern Europe quite a bit. Have you noticed much about how differently bands like yourself are seen?

Yup, massively. Instrumental music seems to really click with folks out there – particularly in Poland, Russia and The Ukraine – shows can be pretty wild. The guys we meet after playing are unbelievably enthusiastic and so, so friendly. We’ve always had a great response at UK shows, but there seems to be a broader acceptance of Instrumental bands across mainland Europe in general. Perhaps it’s a language barrier thing, but i suspect it’s something more than that.

You’ve said up and coming Leicester bands seem to be better known outside the city. Is it difficult to make a proper impact without the backup of a unified local scene?

I think there *is* a very unified scene in Leicester – everyone tends to support each other and gets behind bands that might be breaking out of local shows in to national touring. The issue in Leicester is that in general gig attendances can be a lot lower than you’d expect for a city that’s producing some really incredible music, and no-one really knows why. Perhaps we have a rose tinted view because we’re involved with the Robot Needs Home collective of bands, which is a label we set up to help get music out of the city and in to other people’s hands, but I’ve not met another group of bands that had such confidence in their city for a while. There’s a real positive vibe going on at the moment with bands like Kyte, Her Name Is Calla, Sisterland and ourselves slowly digging away at the edge of the indie consciousness, and tonnes of younger or newer acts pushing the envelope. I think everyone is expecting Leicester to produce another Kasabian, but I don’t think that’ll be the case. I predict it’ll be something a lot more leftfield that finds it’s way out of the city next.

What’s your current listening?

Ah man, I always fail to speak for the whole band when answering this. Locally Herra Hidro, Codex Leicester and I Am In Love have been pushing my buttons, and we’re working with a couple of them on releases through Robot Needs Home at the moment. The new And So I Watch You From Afar record is incredible, and everything i’ve heard from Brontide recently has been wicked too. Having said I didn’t really listen to instrumental music, I’ve just totally backtracked.

What have Maybeshewill got coming up for the rest of the year?

We’re days away from heading out on a twenty date UK and Ireland tour, culminating with some shows with Earthtone 9 and The Ocean, which will be interesting being as we never imagined ourselves as a metal band! Then we’re going to hit a couple of festivals, including the incredible 2000 Trees, which we played last year. Then we’re taking a little bit of time off to get our lives back in order before we tour again in October with a band we can’t mention yet but whom we’re very excited about. It’ll be great. Our album comes out at the end of May, and we’re hoping to have another little something to put out around the October dates… We’ll have to see though.

Maybeshewill’s I Was Here For A Moment, Then I Was Gone is released on 30 May via Function Records. Their UK and Ireland tour runs as follows:

May
2 – The Well, Leeds
3 – Cafe Drummond, Aberdeen
4 – Sneaky Pete’s, Edinburgh
5 – Mad Ferret, Preston
6 – O2 Academy, Leicester
7 – Rock City, Nottingham
8 – Harry’s Bar, Stoke
9 – The Shipping Forecast, Liverpool
10 – Druid’s Arms, Brighton
11 – Edge Of The Wedge, Portsmouth
12 – White Rabbit, Plymouth
13 – Frog and Whistle, Cheltenham
14 – Spring and Airbrake, Belfast
15 – Crane Lane Theatre, Cork
16 – The Twisted Pepper, Dublin
17 – O2 Academy 3, Birmingham
18 – Live Lounge, Durham
19 – Stereo, Glasgow
20 – Club Academy, Manchester
21 – Thekla, Bristol
22 – Relentless Garage, London