Locals Only: Any Young Mechanic

Your music blends folk with some pretty unique sounds and ideas. How do you navigate five different musical perspectives whilst building the band’s identity?

Sam Wilson: Well, at least for this record, I wrote the songs. This was kind of a project born out of my writing, and then we kind of brought everybody in, and everybody arranged their own parts. So, it was actually quite easy to not have people run into each other, in the sense that everybody here is a very considered and thoughtful musician. They don’t really play for the sake of playing; they tend to play for the sake of the song.

Thea Martin: I think we all already had a lot of respect for each other musically, and because we played together in different configurations, we already had that kind of musical trust and respect. That’s grown the more that we’ve played together. It gets easier and harder to navigate, but not harder in any negative sense.

How did 'Snug Barber' take precedence as the lead single for the album?

Sam: It was the fastest and shortest one, and we also thought it was good.

Luka Kilgariff-Johnson: Back in the good old days, a single only had to be two minutes long. I think we're actually at the sub-two-minute mark with 'Snug Barber'. That was genuinely quite useful to us because radio shows always have got like two minutes to fill, and its like, "Oh, so many songs are three minutes, what track should I play?” And that's, I think, how we found our way into some of the radio stations that we had no right really being played on at that time.

What did you hope listeners would take from your debut single 'Snug Barber', and what did this track signify for releases to come?

Sam: We hoped that it would garner interest in our forthcoming record, The Modern Shoe Is Ruining the Foot, as I suppose is the intention with most singles. But I guess I have to say I found it quite difficult to think about how anyone would be perceiving the music because we’ve been sitting with it for so long, and our affection for it hasn't really waned.

So, we kind of hoped that they would be able to see something or hear something underneath the surface of it. Because I think you can listen to it in a surface-level way, and I think you can listen to it in a proper way. It also just feels like one piece of the album.

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Your debut album The Modern Shoe Is Ruining the Foot has been a huge success for the group. How did you come to the decision that an album was right for the band, particularly in an era where the relevance of albums is questioned?

Sam: For me, the album as a form is kind of the way I experience music, and it’s the way that I think all of us want to contribute to the medium. So, there was never really any question or any moment of, "OK, it's time to do an album, even though that's not the thing to do."

Jay Eliot Mee: Yeah, I actually love albums more. I think if you live your life by what people tell you is dying, "Oh, the album is dead", and you love albums. Fucking hell, that's really grim.

Thea: The idea of releasing a bunch of singles, never being able to create a cohesive body of work, is just like a mechanism of capitalism and consumerism. It's not interesting for making art.

Sam: Some artists take to it quite well and work it into something genuinely, genuinely artful. But I think if I had protracted our creative timeline so that we released a single every year and then eventually, after three years of that, made an album, the songs would not have grown or developed at all.

Is there something about being an Adelaide band that you wouldn’t necessarily get from being based elsewhere?

Jay: What I love about being from Adelaide is the lack of industry presence. Someone said this to me very recently, and I can't remember who, but it means people aren't catering to the whims of what's selling right now or what's super popular. Because if you sell out in Adelaide, who are you selling out to? So, the fact that people feel emboldened enough to make things that they want to make and be really tapped into themselves, I think that's a really special and cool thing.

What I then wish is that we could get the magic flying bus and put on all the cool Adelaide acts to ship them off so that other people could see them, so they could get the flowers that they deserve.

You're about to head on a headline tour in Europe. Where are you most excited to play, and what vibes are you expecting from the shows?

Luka: I think we all are really excited to go back to a few places, but Glasgow, we really enjoy. We were only there for, like, three hours or four hours last time, so it'd be really nice to spend some more time up there. Anywhere north of London is, like, super cool. The people are really nice. Sometimes in London they suffer from big-city syndrome.

Thea: I'm keen to go to Rotterdam because we were there last time just passing through. We didn't actually play a show there. This time we're playing a festival that is spread out through the whole city. So that’ll be really cool to just run around to a bunch of venues in Rotterdam and see a bunch of bands.

The Modern Shoe Is Ruining The Foot is out now. Listen/buy here. Keep up to date with everything Any Young Mechanic @anyyoungmechanicband.