“You should at least try everything once,” says Jacob Cooper, the drummer for Los Angeles electro-punk outfit The Mae Shi. He’s acknowledging what I had already inferred from repeated listening, which is that the democratically minded Mae Shi boys aren’t ones to say no to a potentially viable idea. That includes booking 18 performances during the four days of SXSW this past March, or releasing a concept album of high adrenaline spazz-rock songs based around stories from the Bible. At the moment, the band’s in the middle of a two-week national tour that also includes a stop in New York on Friday.
It’s better still that I’m getting such a thoughtful commentary from Cooper, who has been the band’s drummer only since the start of this year. Yet he seems comfortable discussing not only the group’s shared ideology but also HLLLYH, their early ’08 self-released full-length album recorded before he even came on board.
And if it might seem peculiar for me to draw so much from the kit-manning, recently added Cooper, it’s because you don’t understand that The Mae Shi is the sort of group that can lose a lead singer (in this case founding member Ezra Buchla) but remain comfortably intact, enlisting a brand-new member (Jonathan Gray) to yelp into the mic without losing its manic stride.
“[This band] is a vehicle for me to do whatever I want,” says guitarist Jeff Byron. “And it’s an excuse for anyone to come and join us. I have this idea that The Mae Shi could go on forever. Not being a band where the same four dudes keep playing but just continuing to be a concept that’s motivating and inspiring.”
What the group is, really, is sprawling. In the same way that its home base of Los Angeles covers a preposterous glut of square mileage, The Mae Shi blankets a vast terrain of indie rock. That aforementioned Bible opus, HLLLYH, opens with the overdriven, synth-on-synth assault of “Lamb And Lion.” It then closes with gentle, ukulele-graced “Divine Harvest” and, square in the middle of its 14 tracks, is “Kingdom Come,” an 11-minute dance megamix of every other song on the record.
“We really liked the concept of vinyl records having an A-side and a B-side,” says Byron, explaining “Kingdom Come” as an outgrowth of their all-ideas-embraced attitude. “We wanted to recreate that on CD. And the only really obvious way is a moment where something changed. Something like making people turn the record over.”
In live performance, of course, the band’s “Say yes!” spirit keeps things equally interesting. “We don’t even use set lists,” Byron admits. “We really like the spontaneity of playing live. Anyone in the band is free to start up any song we know how to play.” The rest join in as needed, fleshing things out with cranked synths and four-man harmonies. Plus they use a relatively unknown but beautiful sounding Suzuki-built instrument called an Omnichord: a thin sounding, electric autoharp of sorts that the Shi reach brief transcendence with at the end of foot-tapping single “Run To Your Grave.”
As I’m nearing the end of my time on the phone with The Mae Shi, I finally ask my big question. It’s some rock-crit idea about the sprawling nature of the band (its members, its ideas, its live shows). I ramble about sprawl. Byron sounds a little confounded.
“What, exactly, is the question?”
I feel silly. I’m telling him that The Mae Shi are Los Angeles, that both the band and the city are sprawling, vast, dynamic. “Are you sprawling?” I ask, aware that I’m cashing in my analogy. I need him to verbally assent so I can craft my theory of The Mae Shi with the band’s explicit agreement.
Suddenly there is discussion in the background. I can hear the guitarist talking to the other passengers, his mouth away from the phone. Byron comes back on the line. “Hey man,” he says. “We actually need to use this phone to get directions into Chicago.” They offer to call me back, but I tell them I’ve got what I need.
The Mae Shi is actually out there, it seems, crossing the nation on the ground, and the band members don’t have time for my theories; there are directions to get and sound checks to make all across the country. Sprawl on.
The Mae Shi play July 18 at Cake Shop, 152 Ludlow St. (betw. Stanton & Rivington Sts.), 212-253-0036; 8, $8.
It’s better still that I’m getting such a thoughtful commentary from Cooper, who has been the band’s drummer only since the start of this year. Yet he seems comfortable discussing not only the group’s shared ideology but also HLLLYH, their early ’08 self-released full-length album recorded before he even came on board.
And if it might seem peculiar for me to draw so much from the kit-manning, recently added Cooper, it’s because you don’t understand that The Mae Shi is the sort of group that can lose a lead singer (in this case founding member Ezra Buchla) but remain comfortably intact, enlisting a brand-new member (Jonathan Gray) to yelp into the mic without losing its manic stride.
“[This band] is a vehicle for me to do whatever I want,” says guitarist Jeff Byron. “And it’s an excuse for anyone to come and join us. I have this idea that The Mae Shi could go on forever. Not being a band where the same four dudes keep playing but just continuing to be a concept that’s motivating and inspiring.”
What the group is, really, is sprawling. In the same way that its home base of Los Angeles covers a preposterous glut of square mileage, The Mae Shi blankets a vast terrain of indie rock. That aforementioned Bible opus, HLLLYH, opens with the overdriven, synth-on-synth assault of “Lamb And Lion.” It then closes with gentle, ukulele-graced “Divine Harvest” and, square in the middle of its 14 tracks, is “Kingdom Come,” an 11-minute dance megamix of every other song on the record.
“We really liked the concept of vinyl records having an A-side and a B-side,” says Byron, explaining “Kingdom Come” as an outgrowth of their all-ideas-embraced attitude. “We wanted to recreate that on CD. And the only really obvious way is a moment where something changed. Something like making people turn the record over.”
In live performance, of course, the band’s “Say yes!” spirit keeps things equally interesting. “We don’t even use set lists,” Byron admits. “We really like the spontaneity of playing live. Anyone in the band is free to start up any song we know how to play.” The rest join in as needed, fleshing things out with cranked synths and four-man harmonies. Plus they use a relatively unknown but beautiful sounding Suzuki-built instrument called an Omnichord: a thin sounding, electric autoharp of sorts that the Shi reach brief transcendence with at the end of foot-tapping single “Run To Your Grave.”
As I’m nearing the end of my time on the phone with The Mae Shi, I finally ask my big question. It’s some rock-crit idea about the sprawling nature of the band (its members, its ideas, its live shows). I ramble about sprawl. Byron sounds a little confounded.
“What, exactly, is the question?”
I feel silly. I’m telling him that The Mae Shi are Los Angeles, that both the band and the city are sprawling, vast, dynamic. “Are you sprawling?” I ask, aware that I’m cashing in my analogy. I need him to verbally assent so I can craft my theory of The Mae Shi with the band’s explicit agreement.
Suddenly there is discussion in the background. I can hear the guitarist talking to the other passengers, his mouth away from the phone. Byron comes back on the line. “Hey man,” he says. “We actually need to use this phone to get directions into Chicago.” They offer to call me back, but I tell them I’ve got what I need.
The Mae Shi is actually out there, it seems, crossing the nation on the ground, and the band members don’t have time for my theories; there are directions to get and sound checks to make all across the country. Sprawl on.
The Mae Shi play July 18 at Cake Shop, 152 Ludlow St. (betw. Stanton & Rivington Sts.), 212-253-0036; 8, $8.
