We speak with Mac The Knife frontman Bryn Chapman Parish about their new tune and what it’s like being slipping in and out of personas.
At first listen, Mac The Knife are everything you want from a punky “rock” band. Their tunes are high-octane, with twists and turns in all the right spots, complete with vocals that pivot between moody and anthemic. On second listen, the lyrics jump out at you, revealing a deeper, more cerebral side of the band – you realise the reason you’re singing along is because they’re everything they’re saying is deftly resonant. On third listen, they’re your favourite band.
Listen to ‘Less Than Familiar’, the Sydney quintet’s latest release, and you’ll feel the same. The track is their third single from forthcoming sophomore EP In The Shadow Of It All, following ‘Curb My Bite’, ‘Labour In Vain’, ‘Blood of My Blood’, and conitnues in the same unrelenting vein; Chapman Parish’s continued philospohical wrestlings with young manhood juxtaposed with feverish performances all round.
“Things change in your early twenties,” Chapman Parish says. “Groups divide, couples break up, doors fling open and slam shut, friends you thought would be there for life move on. This period is one of extreme highs and crushing lows. You return home to a town you love, and everything feels just the same… except it’s not.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SM5Z9Do50ys
The band will also be heading out on the road for a run of East Coast shows, kicking off on EP release day, April 4th (dates below, tickets here). They’ll be joined by Private Wives and Megafauna in Sydney, Grub and Devils Dogma in Newcastle, with more guests to be announced.
We spoke to Bryn, who you may also know as Spider in the Netflix series Heartbreak High, about everything MTK and a little bit more. Check it out below.
You play a “bad guy” in ‘Heart Break High’ while being a forlorn and angry poet with MTK, but in reality, you’re a nice bloke. Do either of those personas bleed into each other?
Hahahaha this is a brilliant question. I think at the heart of any “bad guy” is a sad little broken guy, and I guess for me Mac The Knife is a way of giving voice to that lil guy inside me. As is playing Spider, it lets me let out frustrations and feelings that usually in life I don’t allow myself the opportunity to let go of. It’s very cathartic really. So I guess the main way they would bleed into each other is that both serve as a vessel for me to let go and explore parts of myself that I usually don’t connect to.
Do you find it easy to come back down into nice guy mode after a show or when the director says “cut”?
Yeah to be honest mostly it’s like the flick of a switch. For both Heartbreak High and Mac The Knife I’ve had enough time with the characters in my body that I can slip in and out of where each sits inside me pretty easily. That being said, there are definitely some days on set where we are shooting heavy content where I get a bit of an emotional hangover for the next little while. Some gigs too, but mostly that’s just a standard run of the mill hangover.
The ‘Curb My Bite’ tour run looked like a boatload of fun. What was the wildest thing to happen on the road for those shows?
The first thing that comes to mind was one of our members at kickons passing out against the two-metre wide smart tv at our Air BnB. Woke up a bit later to find that there was a giant head shaped grease stain left on the screen. Spend most of the next morning figuring out how to get it clean off with various online hacks. Honestly, we didn’t do that great of a job, but good enough to still land a five star review so cheering.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DORUcNl5t9Q
“Where did we go wrong?” is one of the most poignant lines in the song – tell us what that is in reference to.
I wrote this song when I’d just moved back to Sydney after three years at uni in Perth. I’d come back to my home town, living back with my parents, seeing all my old mates, and on the surface everything was kind of as it was before I’d left. But slowly small things started to happen that shifted my perspective on life. A friend tragically passed away, people changed, mate slipped away into darker circles and places and actions. The reality of the uncertain nature of life really felt like it started to hit me.
“Where did we go wrong” is a reflection of this malaise. Where did it all start to fall away? But, it’s not all gloom and doom. The Lyric before it is “Fate has struck, yet we go on” which is articulating that life can throw you in the shit, but you can get through it and things can get better.
The track is about the anxieties of your early 20s as you forge a path ahead in life. What makes you anxious looking forward? What makes you optimistic?
I’m anxious as heck about the new AI stuff that’s rearing its head. It just has so much potential to damage so many creative professions. But I am optimistic that humans will always recognise and identify with art created by real people, not a program, so in the end I think we’ll be ok… I think?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLMy3HRCEmw
What was the inspiration behind the clip?
We wanted the video to feel like it lived in this liminal space. Inside of an echo, a memory of a different life. We wanted to show time’s inescapable effect of everything. Roger is an absolute genius and figured out how to achieve the stunning ripple effect you see in the video and Bob was our uncle. We shot the whole thing in a day in his garage with a couple lights and a dream.
‘Less Than Familiar’ is taken from your upcoming EP. Tell us about the themes that connect this body of work.
The E.P is really about what life feels like existing in the aftermath of a turbulent time. In The Shadow of it All speaks to being in the shadow of massive change and how it impacts your life. Personal growth, mistakes, loss, global meltdown, relationship breakdowns, highs, lows, love and hate. The tracks are about unlearning the ways that you have navigated life that are causing you to struggle, and learning piece by piece what it is to be human. It’s a letter to myself in my early 20s, saying it’s ok. It’s all going to be ok.
The EP’s gonna have some remixes on it too. On the surface, you probably wouldn’t think that MTK are the kind of band who dig remixes. What do you like about this idea?
I think we all appreciate such a wide variety of music amongst the band, so when the opportunity presented itself doing something like this seemed like a no brainer. Barley Passable and LLUX are both such phenomenal musicians who we are so so lucky to call friends, and we’re over the moon to be able to feature their mixes as bonus tracks on the E.P. Both 100% certified BANGERS.
What else is coming up for MTK? When are you gonna give us an album?
Literally had a meeting about this TODAY! Let’s just say things are cookin and they are pretty good lookin.
