Old Mervs - ‘Get Better’ EP Launch Interview
Written by Robert Hume
Perth based two-piece band Old Mervs put out their debut EP ‘Get Better’ this past week. They’re riding the waves of Australia's surf-rock renaissance, with an incredible rise over the past 18 months. Having just come off their first national tour and brand new release I had a chance to chat to them about the last year and stories behind the EP.
Rob: Old Mervs, thank you for taking the time out of your day to chat!
Dave and Henry: Thank you for having us
Rob: As a band, I can only imagine that this year has been one of the busiest. Releasing singles, touring and now the EP. How’s it been?
Dave: Yeah, it's been good. It's been sort of like an interesting change for us, you know, through covid we were working things out together and writing as well. We very much were a weekend band, doing it all as a hobby but, yeah this year changed that with having a proper national tour and releasing proper music that we’re very happy with. It’s been a big change and it has been really nice to focus on it and have more structure around it all
Rob: It can be hard when you’re gigging for fun and then next thing you know you’re touring around the country. Has it been a little daunting growing to the scale you find yourself?
Dave: Yeah, it definitely has. It's been weird. Talking about record deals and just generally talking about the band as a business. Like I'm used to it now, but at the start it definitely felt a little weird. You know, you start writing music and playing music cause it's fun and then you grow and it’s a little scary at the start but you get used to it and you gotta roll with it and just enjoy.
Rob: I suppose I mentioned earlier that, you know, you’ve had so much happening this year, including the tour that you’ve both just finished. Was there a favourite show from the tour?
Dave: I think like our first two shows in Melbourne, cause we sold them both out at the Workers Club and that was just a bit of a like, well, there's actually people in another city that actually like our music. People buying tickets on the East Coast was just a weird thing for us. We'd only ever really played in Perth, so the whole idea of being able to play with people just not in our hometown, that's huge for us.
At the start of the band, it was always just our mates rocking up to shows and then slowly in Perth we started getting more people that I guess sort of liked our music and weren’t just there because they were friends.
Rob: So your EP, ‘Get Better’ came out this past week. It’s pretty grounded in self-reflection. Was it a cathartic experience writing and producing?
Dave: Yeah, sort of. The whole self-reflection thing sort of came after as a bit of an accident, it was not written with that in mind when we started it. The title track itself was sort of a reflective track and it sort of represented the EP. But I think always, whenever you're sort of writing, you're always writing about the past and you're always sort of writing out what you see, so it happens naturally most of the time.
Get Better, just works as a perfect track to tie it all together.
Rob: The second track on the EP, ‘Be There,’ to me feels like it’s all about feeling a little stuck in life and figuring it all out. What’s the story behind it?
Dave: That was kind of like, I was unemployed and just doing nothing at home and it was kind of a reflection on that and that time period and the way we did it, we wanted it to be a fast song but also one that worked really well live.
Rob: And following ‘Be There’ is the title track we spoke of earlier, the themes they both have a flow to me. Is there a lyrical flow throughout the EP?
Henry: To be honest, our lyrics are pretty random. Like we're writing will try and write like a melody first or something that sort of sounds good and that people might remember and then the story or lyrics might come after, but 'Get Better’ was one of the songs that we jammed like last minute before going into the studio and the self-reflective story came second.
Rob: One of the tracks on the EP stands out to me on name alone. What’s the story behind ‘How I Met Your Mother?’
Dave: The name of it came from the one line in it - ‘How I Met Your Mother on repeat for the weekend.’ We played it 5 or so times before the lyrics were set in stone, however that was the only line that was there the whole time. I had this story in my mind, but it wasn’t until we had to record it that I had to figure out how to actually express it.
Rob: Which track on the EP are you most excited for people to hear?
Henry: How I Met Your Mother and Get Better are both the main ones for me. I think they are both express the band and what it has become and are also inspired by what we were listening to at the time. I think that hopefully people that have listened to us for a while will enjoy the progression of our writing. We think the EP is more of a refined version of our style.
Dave: I think ‘Back and Forth’ is also an interesting one as well. It’s a little different to our usual sound so I’m keen to see what people think
Rob: What were you listening to that inspired the EP?
Dave: We had a few, I was listening to a lot of Sam Fender and while we don’t really sound like him, it was more of looking up to him in his songwriting. I was not really writing much and listening to him made me get more into gear in that regard. THE VANNS were also a huge inspiration in the mixing and the production of the songs on the EP.
Henry: The funny thing for us was at the start we sat down, and we were talking about what we want to do and what we didn't want to do and the two things that came up was that we didn’t want to be just like Hockey Dad and we were also recording in the same studio as Spacy Jane, and while we were doing our own thing we would keep coming back to their mixes and look at the techniques and production ques that they used. Going back, we even took notes from Maddy Jane, Great Gable and to the other extent Skegss. At the end of the day what you create is always a culmination of what you are listening to and what you think people will enjoy.
