Describing themselves as making indie 'pop-smack', Mellor are a four piece from Reading whose sound and image has been compared to that of The Libertines, Arctic Monkeys and Miles Kane. Tomatrax caught up with Sam from the band to ask a few questions.
Where did the name Mellor come from?One of Gary's (frontman) favourite bands of all time is The Clash and Mellor is the real last name of Joe Strummer. Coincidentally it's also the name of the town in Manchester where his Grandad's from but only realised a couple years after the band was formed!
You're about to release your latest EP, what's it like to have it finished?
It's always exciting finishing up a piece of work you're all really happy with, the best part is getting the reactions of everyone who hears it! We're just looking on and forward to the next project.
You've received a fair amount of acclaim early on, has this made you feel any pressure going forward?Not at all, as an unsigned band you simply have to take what you can from everything. Whenever we get to play big gigs and gain national radio play, it just filled us with confidence and suggests we're doing something right! We're confident in our abilities and in our song writing to keep progressing.
Why did you name your EP Damage/Joy?One of the tracks on the EP is called Schadenfreude. It's a German word which means to gain pleasure from ones misfortune, and it quite literally translates to 'Damage Joy' and we thought it was a cool concept to base our EP around.
Your bio says you work collectively to create the sound you're looking for, do you know what sound you are looking for when you start writing?We've been told we have a distinctive sound, wether that's guitar tone, Gary's vocals or just the whole thing collectively! Gary writes most of the material then brings it forward as a rough demo, from that point everyone puts their slant and input until we're all happy. I guess it's one of those things... If you can't think of any ways to change a song, why change it? That's your sound.
What was the inspiration behind the video for 'Dolly daydream'?It came out a lot different to how we first imagined it, originally it was going to be set in a city (presumably London) and have a lot of different things moving backwards whilst 'Dolly" was moving forwards. As time progressed we wanted to play more on the 'Daydream/wonderland' aspect which is where we started thinking about flares, fireworks and confetti.
You'll be playing a few shows around England, what can fans expect from your shows?We give it our all every show, so it'll be loud, very energetic and sweaty.
You've released a couple of singles and a couple of EPs, are there any plans for an album?We all dream of that magical debut album, but because you only get one shot at it, we want to be completely certain that we wouldn't change a single track. At the moment our set is very strong, but we always feel a bigger and better tune is round the corner. When it arrives we may just have to think about it...
Do you ever listen to your own music?If we've just come out the studio it'll be over played for a couple weeks, then we won't want to hear it for a while after! We play the set all the time so we hear the songs in that format. We take a lot of pleasure in listening to old songs we don't play anymore, especially if they're songs Gary wrote in his early teens, gives us a great sense of nostalgia!
What other music do you listen to?We all listen to all kinds of different music, we share a lot of the same favourite bands and artists, and think it gives us a lot more flexibility in terms of what we're capable of writing. Josh likes Rock and Soul/funk/blues, Evert likes literally everything from Motown to Power Ballads to Indie, Sam's into a whole host of indie bands and Gary's into all kinds of stuff from Smiths and Velvet Underground to Taylor Swift and Fetty Wap; it's all pretty varied!
What do you plan on doing after your upcoming shows?We want to get onto some festivals and we plan to jump back into the studio and quick as we can! Possible a couple of new singles on the way.. we'll see.
Check out Mellor's Facebook page to find out more!
