When you grow up and grow into the fabulous eighties you feel somehow blessed by the imaginative transition that some bands managed to work out from the mere pure rioting fury messages of Punk anarchy to some angst ridden uneasiness known as Post-Punk. During the past three and a half decades many things happened to the Post-Punk movement since Joy Division transmuted their genuine punk roots to herald not only a new sonic reality, but also the translation of existentialism into the routine of a more introspective, artistic and enlightened generation of working class young adults. Anger, despair and darkness. Such a plot against mainstream.
I only knew of Mayflower Madame’s existence since three weeks ago through David Alison from Custom Made Music who sent me some stuff to see if I was interested in publishing something about it. Of course, I was interested. I did hear the music that he sent and felt the urge to dig for more.
Mayflower Madame emerge from Oslo, Norway, and they are a four piece whose members Trond Fagernes (Vocals and guitar); Rune Øverby (Guitar) Petter Gudim Marberg (Bass) and Ola Jørgen Kyrkjeeide (Drums) crafted some delightful pure dark Post-Punk perfectly mixed with a slight touch of neo psychedelic reverberation. I could not be more well impressed. This band is stunningly good!
As I was saying many things happened in the past 35 years with a lot of come-and-go from many bands which could not stick to the Post-Punk “aesthetic guidelines” because they felt the need to get more commercial, play bigger venues and big summer festivals. Let’s be honest about it. Most bands out there no matter their musical genre seem to get satisfied just for being copycats of those who influenced them, Mayflower Madame decided that was too little for them to do so.
The band managed to create a refreshing haunting melodic sonic reality where you can spot most of their main influences like The Velvet Underground, Joy Division, Echo and the Bunnymen, The Cure, The Church, Sonic Youth and The Black Angels but you cannot say that they are imitating or merely reproducing their influential references because they really aren’t. They have sewn all of them into one soundscape and that is Mayflower Madame musical DNA.
This peculiarity made Mayflower Madame gain attention from fellow countrymen which lead them to open for Night Beats and Crystal Stilts and also to play the Underwood Stage (displaying the eight most promising bands in Norway) at the 2013 Norwegian Wood Festival edition headlined by Nick Cave and My Bloody Valentine.
In August 2013 Mayflower Madame released their four song debut EP titled Into The Haze available here on vinyl or digitally recorded and mixed by Bent Bredeveien and Mayflower Madame and mastered at Strype Audio by Martin Bowitz. Early this year Custom Made Music released a limited edition cassette single available here featuring "Into The Haze" and the B-side "Confusion Hill".
After repeated auditioning the most obvious reference that rises above all in Into The Haze four song EP Into The Haze exhales insistently to Echo and the Bunnymen albums Crocodiles and Heaven Up Here with all the swirling guitars, gloomy angry bass lines and hypnotic drumming masterfully blended with quite a bit of Sonic Youth from the Dirt album in particular due to the fuzzy distorted guitars cutting the songs in the middle like melodic chainsaws if this is sounds any possible, alongside with the dense neo psychedelic haziness of The Black Angels.
One very interesting aspect of this EP resides upon the fact that due to tonal similarities consisting in some strange vocal blend of Ian McCulloch, Wayne Hussey and Steven Kilbey which results in Trond Fagernes quite good personal vocal style exceeding expectations from a performative point view giving a much richer twist to each song with vocal nuances avoiding tonal linearities so typical of those who don’t know how to build a personal singing style apart from their influences.
Mayflower Madame along with a few other bands suchlike Cockatoo, Hamsas Xiii, Desperate Journalist, Viet Cong, Vacant Lots, Jennie Vee or Clustersun just to mention a few of them are taking Post-Punk and its derivatives to the heights again, leaving the listener with a feeling of impatience and eagerness for their debut album due to be released this year.