No and The Maybes : Q & A

No and the Maybes are an eclectic three-piece from Copenhagen, Denmark, on a mission to save and reclaim the catchy melody from wedding singers and the Eurovision Song Contest.
 
This Danish chamber pop ensemble have set their sights on creating vivid, engaging yet easygoing music with an after kick, taking inspiration from 60s sounds through to more thoughtful 80s New Wave music. No and the Maybes make it their obligation to bring something fresh and exciting to the table, celebrating that little extra something to catch your attention and make you fall in love: surprising hand claps, finger snaps, a choir arrangement or an unexpected instrumentation.
 
Their DIY principles mean that everything they produce is lovingly stamped with their own unique signature, be it their music, videos and graphical designs. Similarly their live set breaks down the conventional lead singer set-up and gives way to a more democratic use of the stage, the band forming a line with a standing drummer and all members sharing vocal duties.
 
No and the Maybes' eponymous debut album was released in Denmark on the reputed A:larm Music (The Raveonettes, Micachu and British Sea Power to name but a few) towards the end of last year and led to the band hitting no.1 in the Radio charts, being nominated at the Danish Music Awards, performing on national television and being lauded across the press and media.
 
Now, having successfully conquered home ground, 2009 see’s the band bring their warm electro-tinged pop to the UK for the first time, kicking off with single ‘Petra Petrified’.
 
“We wanted Petra Petrified to be something to keep on coming back to” explains band member Mikkel. “It's almost about something but if you start listening the meaning disappears. Petra Petrified would be about a girl - Petra - but the narratives keeps losing itself to leave the listener with traces of something familiar, but so they can't quite explain what it is.”
 
As yet unsigned over here, No and the Maybes released ‘Petra Petrified’ online on June 1st and are currently making plans to tour during the summer/autumn.
 
No and the Maybes are:
Anders Wiedemann - vocals, bass and acoustic guitar
Troels Tarp - vocals and guitar
Mikkel Bagge Lange - vocals, drums and keys

4TR: For anyone that hasn’t heard of No and The Maybes in the UK, tell us the story of how the band originated.
It started with the three of us getting together over a shared passion for catchy melodies and interesting arrangements ...shared passion or shared aggression towards music lacking exactly those qualities. So why not start your own band and revitalize the catchy melody from the hands of the mainstream pop-charts! It sometimes seems as if melodic material has been regarded as no-serious or superficial. However, we needed to dive into the essence of melodies and arrangements and leave everything else behind.

4TR: Why did you call yourselves No and The Maybes?
Well, that’s intimately linked to the previous question. The constant questioning of our own and other peoples production is something very dear to us. Sometimes also a bit too dear. We've never been the classic “hit and run” sort of band. Meticulous in almost everything we do  we've been weighing pros and cons since we started out on this journey. Starting out with the skeptic No and ending up somewhere around a “Maybe!” 

4TR: How would you describe your sound?
It's a little bit of this and that and huge chunk of ourselves. Happily engaged to the catchy melody we owe a great deal of influence to classic British pop music from the second half of the sixties. However, not completely ignorant of the music produced since. Someone once told us it was the marriage between the warm and fuzzy sixties and cool and artificial eighties. We kind of liked that description.  

4TR: Was that the sound you always aspired to create when the band formed?
Hmm, well. Not really. We started out thinking that catchy melodies would be more than enough to conquer the world. However, we soon found out that the packaging is half the message and developed a sound in the living room studio.

4TR: What influences you as a group musically?
A whole lot. Most recently it must have been the changes of structures within which we make our music. It seems almost boring to point toward yourself as an influence but it's the sad truth. We've been spending more time in the rehearsal room, which has proven to be very productive. Besides that we're influenced by music of course. Not necessarily music we like, but music that we want to surpass ...hmmm. Maybe defend ourselves from bad music?

4TR: Your debut album was released in Denmark in 2008 reaching No.1 in the Radio charts, was that an expected reaction from your Danish audiences?
That wasn't an expected reaction. We were still in the sort of post-production vacuum which follows from being alone with your material for an intense period of time. Still, there were much rejoycement when we received the news.

4TR: Your debut UK single ‘Petra Petrified’ was released on the June 1st, what is it about?
It's about ...well we can't really say. The judges are still debating. Obviously it concerns the girl Petra Petrified, but the story sort of loses itself from there. Any clues will be accepted with a great amount of patented No and the Maybes ambivalence. Anyone?

4TR: The album was released on the reputed A:Larm Music, how did that relationship start?
We’d been making demos for a year or so, collecting more and more songs. Having talked to a handful of different distributors, not sure if any of them were right for us, we set up a meeting with A:Larm, and happily they liked what they heard. The A:Larm people don’t interfere with the artists work, and they just seemed like ideal collaborators for us, so we popped a bottle of champagne and hit it!

4TR: Most of your work employs a DIY ethic to its creative aspects, is that because you feel the band are the only ones who can do it justice?
After a year of recording demos in the living room, we were pretty satisfied with our material as it sounded. Still we couldn’t resist the temptation of trying out the “proper” way of recording and mixing so we went to a studio and did some remakes of the demos. It turned out, that we weren’t really ready to hand anything over to anybody, so we ended up using only parts of the studio recordings and mixes, and virtually finished the process back in the living room.

4TR: Does this DIY ethic cover everything, from production, to your art-work to your videos, or do you bring other people in at relevant times as well?
The Monday video was made solely by a film maker called Michael Panduro. We brought him the idea of Babushka dolls, and after that we left him alone for half a year. Besides that we can’t seem to keep our clammy hands of anything. Yes, we bring people in, but we find it hard not to breath down there neck, fixing little details for them and stuff.

4TR: How does your writing process work?  Is it a collective effort?
Yes, indeed! A typically writing situation would be: Anders at the piano, Troels with a Guitar, Mikkel saying: “Try something like…”. The song is not written until everybody’s happy. Same thing goes for the lyrics. A melody never takes us more than half an hour to write, while the lyrics can lie around unfinished for months. Some lyrics was actually written 2 minutes before it was recorded.

4TR: In a recent interview you mentioned that as a band you employ a way of working which you call the Sparrow, so what is that concept about?
A Sparrow represents something appearing out of the blue and disappearing again in the landscape of sound, if you like. As before mentioned, we discovered, that our songs called for an extra layer of catchiness. It quickly turned out, that once we got the taste for Sparrows, they just flew in from every corner. Maybe we went too far on our rather heavily arranged debut album, but we have no regrets. Better a bird sanctuary than a dessert! Oh, we just used up our quota of metaphors!

4TR: Tell us about the animated video for ‘Monday’ and the concept behind it.
Even though we meet the creative process with a lot of No’s, we have a certain Yes-side allowing us to grab some spontaneous ideas without further doubt. Mikkel saw a Babushka doll at Anders’ place and said: This is great! And we all went: Yeah! So we asked Panduro, if he’d be interested and able to throw a video together with Babushkas doing some dancing and hopping. All the great ideas you see in video, is the work of the brilliant imagination of Panduro, however reflecting some of the lyrics here and there.

4TR: At the moment you remain unsigned in the UK, what kind of label or support are you looking for?
We're looking for the kind of people who really work with the bands. Not necessarily anything huge as the larger ones have a reputation of dumping their acts if they don't make ends meet. So someone who matches our ambitions. We don't need any loving and leaving.

4TR: How does music industry in Denmark compare to the industry in the UK?
Well it certainly seems a bit more specialized in the UK.  There's a company for every little aspect of the industry. In Denmark the record lables sort of manage press, radio, web and television simultaneously. The UK way is to divide these tasks between four different PR-companies. Another thing is the way concerts are organized around four or five bands per evening. That rarely happens in Denmark. We are perhaps a bit spoiled when it comes to the circumstances surrounding bands when you perform live in Denmark..   

4TR: What can audiences expect from a No and The Maybes show?
Pop explosions in different tempoes! We always try to set up a show close to the shows we enjoy the most ourselves. And that's the sort of performances where the audience are kept busy - not necessarily dancing throughout the entire concert ...it's entirely allowed to fall into the classical headnodding/listening  position from time to time.

4TR: What can we expect for the rest of 2009 from the band?
A lot of new music. A release of the debut-album later this year, hopefully. And a couple of concerts. Basically No and the Maybes vibes all around.

Words : Francesca Strange

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