The mildly mischievous band Mae and the Midnight Fairground sing of mortgages, morons and multi-faceted romance

By PRSD, on Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Mildly mischievous, with touches oom-pah, Mae and the Midnight Fairground are a band with a whirligig of colour, tone and texture. We got in touch with Mae to find out more

Describe Mae and The Midnight Fairground

We are a mildly mischievous six-piece band who play songs inspired by a combination of children, animals, delight and fun, and all of those other things that humans encounter that aren’t quite so pleasant, like mortgages, morons and multi-faceted romance.

The name plays on my particular love for colour contrast… it’s sort of like painting bright images on a black background. Something that Susan Seddon Boulet does really nicely. The result is form with ambiguity of line, it is neither dark nor light, tonally vibrant or monotone. I like to play between the blending of these two elements – Fairground plays on colour and fun and twee-ness, and Midnight plays on the unknown, the ambiguous and the seductive. Of course, the name has yet to be perfected in my mind, but I think it gives the right idea.

Oh, sorry, you said describe! I have spoken of concept but not of reality – there is a girl playing keys and singing earnest – that girl is me; and there are men playing instruments (our line up is in perpetual shift). At present, we have drums (slightly militant, with touches of oom-pah and reggae) and double bass (slippy-slidey naughty and just plain nice bowed stuff), we have organ (psychedelic fusion between 1970s jazz pop and just silly) and we have saxophone (loud and 1980s slinky) and clarinet (rough and vibratey, eastern and western, dark and musky).

You’re inspired by eastern europe / oom-pah / waltz / klezmer / jazz and folk – what’s your musical heritage, and how do all these influences meld together?

I’m not totally sure I understand what you mean by musical heritage – I find the question about what music I listen to, or have listened to hard to answer and pretty boring to read! So I hope I have interpreted that correctly.

In the teenage-boy dominated Karthauser-compound I was fed with David Bowie and Pink Floyd and Cotton Eyed Joe. And my early teens was spent with grunge and celtic folk music, interspersed with the likes of Bjork, Ella Fitzgerald and Mike Oldfield. And then came the jazz and the blues and the international ‘folk’. I got into Bulgarian, Indian and Javanese vocal music in a big way when I was out in California studying at Cal Arts. And my Eastern European influences, I think, originally came from the old musicals with their big nasty basslines – I have always been totally under the spell of that maniacally slow circus waltz that speeds up and speeds up faster and faster til the point of almost certain death. Wheeeeeeeeeee!

As to how these elements combine, we certainly use elements of jazz harmony, we use folk structures and language and we use Eastern European harmony and rhythm, as well as compositional techniques such as the maniacal builds.

You’ve got a distinct visual style with your publicity material. Where do your graphics come from, and how important is that feel to the band?

Our graphics come from various places. Some of the images I design myself, and others are taken from pre-existing designs that have caught my eye (the most recent Barrelhouse poster for example was taken from the cover of the book Lotta’s Bike by Astrid Lindgred –one of my favourite stories when I was a small one).

You are right about the visual style being distinct. I try to reflect the music in the images – our artwork is playful, child-like and carefree, as is the music. I consider design to be really important to creating the right picture (literally) for the listener. It drives me mad when I see CD artwork and then think ‘YES this is going to be good!’, and then I listen to it and it really doesn’t bare any relation at all.

Who writes the songs, and what inspires them?

I write the songs (when I am lucky) and then take them to the band. Each song is different and has varying levels of specificity concerning the arrangements. I often record them on the computer and then multi-track all of the parts on top so that they can be transferred to instrument, but sometimes they are pretty basic.

What inspires them? Hmm. This is tricky. I am in the habit of writing only when a massive energetic gust of inspiration whips me up and carries me to a piano. Which means that the topics usually tend to be things that upset me (!) or make me feel pretty useless. However, over the years I have learnt to be more creative about how I present these (actually rather uninspiring) emotional conditions so that they involve images and stories that can be followed without needing to know the specific details. And that is how I will answer that. I’m sorry. If you listen to the songs now, it might be clearer…

You’re looking for a bassist at the moment – and you mention when you’re lucky you get a cellist, plus you’re being affected by the move of Dartington College to Falmouth. What’s your dream line up for the band and why?

Dream line up! Oooh…

I think I’d be playing something different for a start! Like a twangy guitar or a newly designed instrument that is small and portable, has all the keys of a piano and thus all the harmonic potential available with all of my fingers, and is wooden and nice and deep and earthy but is not heavy and impractical like a piano or keyboard… let me know if you think of something.

And then.. other instruments! Probably fiddle or viola – preferably viola with its darker tone, and then accordion (sometimes), double bass still, pots and pans – instead of drums and definitely still clarinet… and I do love the organ too… ooh, this is tricky.

Is there anything you’d like to add?

Nice challenging questions man! Thanks for that. Last time I answered questions, they were more along the topic of “who is in your band?” and “are you planning a gig in the future?”

Listen to Mae and the Midnight Fairground on their Myspace page