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The Mules
The Mules will perform at The Big Chill festival 2008 A-Z line up | Ticket infoThe Mules - Biography
For a band who've pitched up in exactly the right place at precisely the right time, The Mules are admirably unbothered by the hoopla of the industry launch pad, refreshingly disrespectful of its rules and couldn't bow to expectation if their lives depended on it. With so much music currently being leeched of its difference lest it spook the natives, and 'idiosyncrasy' neatly tailored to fit any given demographic, The Mules are guaranteed not only to challenge, but also to charm and - in their inimitable way - cheer everyone up.
'Save Your Face' is a strikingly unique fusion of stylings old and new, taking in post-punk, skiffle, country, blues and vaudeville. Featuring erratic time signatures and favouring rhythm over melody, it has a terse, kinetic power that recalls Talking Heads and Gang Of Four, but rest assured, The Mules have not hitched themselves to the punk-funk bandwagon. They understand that it don't mean a thing if it ain't got no swing and it's the album's topspin - applied via an appreciation of everyone from Bob Dylan to The Ink Spots and Hank Williams to Kurt Weill ¬- that gives The Mules their distinctive kick.
The band didn't so much form at Oxford University as accrete slowly around songwriter and vocalist/drummer Ed Seed and pianist/synth player Tim Burke. Originally a kind of appreciation society for The Band, they first recruited James Lesslie (on bass), then Duncan Brown (guitar) and lastly fiddle player Nico Beedle - the current line up, as fixed at the end of 2003. They started playing covers (The Flying Burrito Brothers, Dylan etc) and practised in a room beneath their college chapel, but soon Ed was bringing his own songs to rehearsal. He cites Ry Cooder's version of 'Jesus On The Main Line' as helping nudge the band along the road to its own identity.
"I liked short songs and wanted to do something that was very, very rhythmic," explains Ed. "With most new bands I heard, the rhythm was just so uninteresting; all the instruments were playing a variation on what happens when you strum a guitar - the 'Wonderwall' effect. It was really dull! Tim got me listening to stuff like Public Enemy, where there's one driving rhythm but there's all these cross rhythms, too. It's the same with Talking Heads. I wanted to do something that was rooted in the country and folk music traditions," he adds, "but chuck in things that were more difficult or experimental, to make them interesting and danceable. Someone like Ry Cooder plays guitar in a way that's extremely complicated, but very basic and very direct. I wanted a band that could do that."
The Mules' first (limited edition) release was the six-track 'Grab Your Musket' EP in January 2005, recorded in their then soundman's house and now sold out.
The single 'Polly-O' followed in December the same year, then 'Here To Help' in June 2006. "'Polly-O' ushered in a new direction of the band," James declares. "Prior to that, a few songs in our set were still rooted in country music and it was a big watershed in terms of how complex the music could get. I remember it being really hard to learn!" he laughs.
"That's why I'm playing drums and Jim's playing bass," adds Ed. "It's partly our desire to make things deliberately uncomfortable for ourselves. Those are not our instruments; we're both primarily guitar players, but put people outside their comfort zones and they'll respond. Push it and they'll get even better. We wouldn't want to be trapped into recording 12 variations on 'Polly-O' for the next record, though, and we'd hate to be in the position whereby every song has to have a 36% angular quotient and a third degree of spikiness. It should change."
This refusal to fix on a formula is a deliberate ploy on The Mules' part, but it's also partly a result of their diverse musical talents. Nico's background is in jazz (they discovered him playing with scratch bands in Oxford bars), while Tim currently works rehearsing singers at the National Opera Studio and will start as an assistant conductor on the Royal Opera House's Young Artists Programme later this year. James, meanwhile, not only runs Organ Grinder Records, but also writes songs and plays guitar in his own band, Fireworks Night - a more contemplative and layered, slightly folky project that also includes Nico and Duncan.
If kinetic energy and a restless imagination make up half The Mules' picture, then a feeling for theatricality and a slightly sinister humour complete it. This isn't all down to the fact that Nico is distantly related to Kurt Weill (true). Take a song like 'Live Feed', whose twisted cabaret suggests nothing so much as an inebriated Radiohead covering Roy Orbison's 'In Dreams'. Or the terrific mix of chunky cow-punk and glittery stomp with barrel-house piano that is 'Tule Lake'. Or the madly see-sawing rhythm that drives the sophisto-hillbilly 'Ham Shank'. These are moments of comic subtlety, not gags, but The Mules do like a laugh. "Humour, particularly lyrical, can become very cloying in music," Ed reckons, "but the vaudevillian element to our music is just because some particular thing pleases us; it won't be included or excluded because it is or isn't funny." Duncan's distaste for the po-faced goes even further and underlines how little in awe The Mules are of the accepted canon of classic rock. "I've been bored by records that took themselves extremely seriously," he claims, "like 'Entertainment!' by Gang Of Four. There are no jokes!"
James admits that in some ways The Mules' music "can be quite cold and almost alienating; even as a band member, I'd say it's not a record for all seasons. It's not a feel-good hit of the summer!" he laughs. This, of course, is A Very Good Thing. "I wouldn't want to make a record that was fit for all occasions," declares Ed. "That implies that there's a compromise been made in its becoming acceptable in every situation and that wouldn't make it very interesting. The Mules never set out to be funny, but we do hope our music is fun."
THE MULES:
Ed Seed (vocals, drums); Duncan Brown (guitar); James Lesslie (bass); Tim Burke (piano, synth); Nico Beedle (fiddle)
www.themules.co.uk
www.myspace.com/itsthemules
The Mules will perform at The Big Chill festival 2008 A-Z line up | Ticket info
Written: 13th Mar, 08
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