In the talk, Sleeman discussed the upcoming “General Public” EP and Alone LP, co-Girl Sacha Lucashenko, SXSW, outdoor shows, light shows, moving from Australia to New York (including a seven-hour immigration check at LaGuardia…), Japan, silence, a story he can't share, and much more…
QRO: Are you finished with your upcoming Alone LP?
Martin B. Sleeman: Yes, we actually finished about the middle of last year.
QRO: How has it compared to making first album Shadows Evolve?
MS: Couldn’t compare, in many, many ways. We experienced a hell of a lot more, in terms of ourselves, since finishing the first album and undertaking the recording of the next one. What tended to influence the making of this album was very, very much our personal and shared experiences, which ended up completely shaping how the album ended up taking its shape.
QRO: Have you found a label?
MS: No, we haven’t yet. We’ve got a few things in line. It’s a very interesting age, I guess, that we all find ourselves in, when we’re looking. There’s certainly more other avenues than there used to be. I’m just coming to terms with it myself.
QRO: Do you feel there’s any extra pressure on Alone, being that it’s your first since moving to the States?
MS: Not at all, to tell you the truth. The only pressure that we ever get is definitely what we put on ourselves. What we love is what we do; I never feel any external pressure, if that’s what you mean, at all. I feel more at peace with ourselves and what we do, with the music that we share with people, than ever before.
The Morning After Girls playing "Alone" live @ Mercury Lounge in New York, NY on January 27th, 2009:
QRO: Why did you choose “The General Public” as your first Alone single?
MS: Um… That’s a good question. These are the things that there are other people who look after that sort of thing. We don’t tend to choose singles. I don’t think we write anything any of those sorts of things. Not to avoid your question or anything…
QRO: No – that’s what most people say…
MS: You work hard on the release, and it gets to the point where every single song on the album is a single, every single song on the album should be released on their own, so when that song was brought up, I was totally fine with it. Like every other song on the album, it’s one definite chapter of the story of this album.
QRO: Where did the b-sides come from?
MS: The song “Turn Away” was a song we worked on before the album, we’d worked on that for a while. We recorded it and just felt it didn’t belong on the album because we prefer to make albums that are not just a group of songs, and that song didn’t fit the journey that became the album.
I believe the Stealth remixes, a friend of ours from Japan, an electronic, guitar-based band, we’d been in contact over the last few months. We’d done a few vocal things for them, for a couple of their songs for their album, and they thought they’d have a go a remixing one of our songs as well.
QRO: Did you record Alone in New York City?
MS: No, we recorded that in Australia.
QRO: When did you move to New York?
MS: We moved to New York about a third of the way through last year? April, May?…
QRO: How do New York and Melbourne compare?
MS: I guess, like most cities, they’re similar in some respects. Most things are quite similar, when you step back from them, but every city is something more than that.
So, in that sense, it’s just completely unique and like no other else. And a beauty of its own, I believe it has an optimism all of its own. It has a positivity that just keeps giving, and giving, and giving, if you’re happy and want to give back as well. That was one of the many reasons we looked forward to living here, because a love for what New York has shown us, you can achieve wonderful things and a wonderful life, I guess.
QRO: So that’s why you moved to New York?
MS: It was more of an extension of ourselves, actually. We’d seen ourselves living in New York, in terms what we do here, some of our favorite clubs in the world are in Eastern countries, but in terms of realism, we needed to come here and start sharing with a lot more people. So in terms of ‘Western’ places, New York’s always been our favorite place to play. But it was a very, very natural move, something that we’d been talking about for a long time, and one that’s very overdue, I think.
QRO: What’s the Melbourne music scene like?
MS: I think it’s a bit like most things in a cool music scene these days. I was saying recently that it is really the case that our music is allowed to be received in general population now. I know that people talk a lot about how you can do everything yourself, use these ultimate communication outlets that allow you to get your music out there, get it recognized. But I don’t think any scene has really changed, in terms of ‘a lot of people being exposed to good music’.
And I think that speaks for anything that you’d want to call a music scene. I don’t think that they’re great anywhere at the moment.
QRO: Is there any ‘Aussie expat’ community in NYC to plug into?
MS: No, not at all. I think, if anything, myself and Sacha tend to gravitate away, and I think that’s one reason why we do love New York so much. You can find people who are not from where you’re from, and it’s so nice to share stories about life when you’re talking to someone who grew up in a different community.
QRO: Have you ever lost your passport, or had problems with immigration?
MS: [laughs] Actually, this is a loaded question, if you ask me – Oh, mate, I don’t know how long you’ve got…
I’ve had a few instances. Back in Australia, a few years ago, just before we were about to do a tour with Black Rebel [Motorcycle Club – QRO album review], I think we were about to leave for three or four days or something, and I believe a person I was living with actually threw out my passport, she was cleaning up the room. And I ended up taking about three days to get a passport, and then get the visa put in there as well. That was pretty nasty, to say the least.
I must say, late last year, we had had everything organized, but getting back into the country was the… I’ll say, ‘the most unique ordeal’ I’ve ever endured. I’d flown in from Australia, and I arrived at [LaGuardia] at about eleven in the morning, and left about 6:00 PM at night – after basically having my soul and body completely turned upside-down…
QRO: Did you find the rest of your band, outside you & Sacha, in New York?
MS: Yeah – one of them lives in Pennsylvania, but I guess we found everybody in New York.
QRO: How did you and Sacha meet?
MS: Me and Sacha met through a mutual friend, a long time ago, when we were both kind of just talking to most of our friends. I’m really into sharing music with people this way, and we hadn’t really met anyone who we’ve connected with, not just on a musical level, but on a personal level. Because, as much as you enjoy making music together, it’s very nice if the connection is about something you can’t describe.
I feel a connection with Sacha that I’ve never felt – and I will never feel – with anyone else, I think. I feel that strongly about that, over anyone. And I’ll always be very grateful that he came into my life.
QRO: How was South-by-Southwest (QRO recap) last month?
MS: I have to say, and I think I speak for all of us, it was probably our most enjoyable, ever. We didn’t get caught up in playing, you know, ten shows in two days. We weren’t worried about a lot of the things that can suffocate you when you’re trying to enjoy something like that.
It was very nice to play one show. Had a really good time, very relaxed.
QRO: Why did you only do one show?
MS: As I said, South-by can be way too hectic, and you can really run the risk of losing the reason why you play music and share music with people in the first place. You can tend to rush the whole time, and make sure you’re in all these different places, and by the end, you kind of scratching your head and going, ‘Uh – what are we actually doing?’ And that can really spoil it.
The reason we did it this year – we weren’t going to go there. It had to be one really good show that made sense. Met Perry Farrell, connected with a lot of people.
QRO: Do you notice any difference between American & Australian crowds?
MS: I guess I don’t have enough time to put it into the words that I want to, but I, personally, don’t have anything against America or anything like that, because
– not to say that it’s any better or worse, but they seem to be into it, I think, for the right reasons, into it for reasons I feel I can share.
America, I think, has something of a bad rap, sometimes. I’ve had a wonderful time in places like Dallas. I love American audiences everywhere.
QRO: When do you think you’ll be doing a full tour?
MS: That’s a great question. We’ve been thinking about it, just trying to find the right fit and schedule. Ideally, late May or June, something like that. But who knows what’s going to happen. It’s going to be a long one.
QRO: Do you do anything differently when you play outdoors?
MS: We try to make it so that whatever we’re playing can easily translate to an outdoors audience. You’re always contesting with the elements, the main one, I think, being wind.
The Morning After Girls playing "There's a Taking" live @ Mercury Lounge in New York, NY on January 27th, 2009:
QRO: Your music’s relatively dark. Is it difficult to play outdoors, during the day?
MS: I don’t think so. I think everything just depends, for me, anyway, on how I’m feeling, how the band’s feeling, and what sort of energy the audience is giving you.
No matter how big a group of people are – whether it’s a few hundred indoors, or a few thousand outdoors – energy is transferable, can be shared. For me, I really believe it doesn’t matter. It depends on the connection that you have.
QRO: At Mercury Lounge (QRO venue review), you seemed to have a pretty major light show. How much effort and work have you put into that?
MS: Well, Sacha’s very, very big on that sort of stuff, and he’s got a very keen eye. He’s got such a good eye; it doesn’t take much at all. He has a vision of the look, and how to put it into place. And we don’t have any colors or anything, just an idea that we like to get across. And if you have someone, it’s very, very easy to put it together.
QRO: Does that ever get messed up when you’re playing outdoors, by the sun?
MS: [laughs] I guess so, yeah. If the light’s coming from the front of the stage is greater than the light coming behind. You just play, do your best.
QRO: How much have you played in Japan?
MS: We’ve played in Japan three or four times, every time in Tokyo, which has always been a tremendous experience. I find the audiences that we’ve had there, every time, to be the most attentive audience anywhere, ever. We always have the most wonderful time there.
QRO: When you fly, how do you make sure your equipment isn’t lost or broken?
MS: You can’t actually. We’ve been thinking, with security, that we actually shouldn’t put the ‘fragile’ sticker on our cases, because you tend to feel ‘fragile’ sticker actually means, ‘Please throw me as hard as you can’…
You just have no control over that, I think. It’s just something you have to come to terms with. If you don’t have control over it, the less you worry about it.
QRO: How do you fight ‘tour burnout’?
MS: Don’t suffocate yourself. Don’t lose the reason why you’re touring.
One of the things that inspire me and Sacha, outside of music, is silence. Silence, or rather our love for silence, is one of our greatest assets. We find a real peace, a real time out, in being completely and utterly silent, and not talking, and not necessarily describing all the experiences that you’ve been enduring.
QRO: Canada, Sweden, and some other countries have government programs that give state support to their musicians. Does Australia?
MS: [laughs] No – with a capital ‘N’.
QRO: Usually don’t ask about politics, but did you get a chance to vote in the last Australian election – and vote for Labour, which includes MP Peter Garrett, the singer of Midnight Oil (QRO’s Musicians as Politicians)?
MS: He’s always been politically minded, and when the band decided to call it a day, he decided to take a much more active role. And now he’s a minister in Parliament.
I voted for party that he’s a part of, yeah – not because he’s a part of it, or not because necessarily he’s a leader of that, but because, just like this country, in Australia, we so were in need of a drastic change from the hideous creature that was controlling politics over there for too long – longer than your last administration, actually. We just needed a change.
QRO: Has the worldwide economic collapse affected you guys at all?
MS: I talk to my family and couple of friends over there quite a bit, and I heard recently that the unemployment in Australia is going to reach at least nine or ten percent by June.
QRO: Are there any songs that you particularly like playing live?
MS: I don’t mean to sit on the fence, mate, but it’s just purely how we’re feeling, on the day. I guess, at the moment, we prefer the newer songs?
We tend to, whenever we get new songs, into the set and share them very regularly. So that’s something we enjoy doing, but we haven’t been able to do it as much as we’d like to.
There might be a song we haven’t thought of in a while, and one night, we might just go, ‘We need to play it tonight’, and have a wonderful show.
QRO: Do you have any songs you’ve written since recording Alone?
MS: Oh yeah, definitely, definitely. Not that we’ve sort of ‘fleshed them out’ in the band yet, but we’re definitely writing all the time.
I think we want to start recording the next album already. We’ve already got a few songs that we’d like to put on the next album. If we could be in the situation where we could be recording and touring at the same time, that would be wonderful.
QRO: What cities or venues have you really liked playing?
MS: Again, not to be biased, but we really love playing New York. San Fran’s great, always had a great time over there. Had a great time in Dallas. I myself have always had a great time in Seattle, and Chicago, as well. And the last time we played Manchester, in England, I had an absolute ball.
QRO: Do you have a favorite tour story?
MS: I can’t really share my favorite tour story with you… It was at one of our last gigs, and it involved someone not being able to control certain parts of his anatomy that ended up affecting other members of the band, which ended up affecting him in not a very nice ways. But, at the end of the day, it all ended up being an extraordinarily funny experience.
The Morning After Girls playing "Chasing Us Under" live @ Mercury Lounge in New York, NY on January 27th, 2009:
