Their arms may be short, but with seven members in the band they'll have no trouble reaching high places.
Mummy Short Arms, who hail from Glasgow, are capitalising on the success of their 2011 singles 'Change' and 'Cigarette Smuggling' with the imminent release of their debut album 'Old Jack's Windowless Playhouse'. Due out on May 14th and filled with catchy songs, it's likely to bring more fans their way. We caught up with the band to ask (bug) them some questions.
Hello, how are you?
We are all doing very well, thanks. How are you?
None too shabby thanks! It's the question everyone hates, but could you tell us a little bit about
your music and your influences?
There’s probably a pretty big difference between what we’re trying to do
and what we actually sound like, but the basic idea is to write fairly
short, snappy pop songs and have our singer (James) yelp over the top of
them in a vaguely Captain Beefheart/Frank Black manner. We want you to be
able to tap your foot along to our songs, but we also want to frighten and
confuse you. In terms of influences/comparisons, we tend to get the Pixies,
Captain Beefheart and Tom Waits brought up a lot in reviews, which is fair
enough in the case of the first two (who we’re big fans of) but we’ve no
idea where Tom Waits entered the equation.
What's your song writing process like?
It usually starts off a bit like a primary school music lesson when the
teacher has left the classroom for five minutes. We all like to make a
racket, but out of the cacophony we’ll settle upon an idea and from there
it’s a simple matter of wrestling with each other’s emotions for a few hours
until we get something everybody’s happy with.
What could we expect to see from a live show?
Our singer (James) is known for his dance moves. The two favourites at
present are the ‘wobbly knees skier dance’ and another move which looks a
bit like an irate preacher with a back spasm. Generally speaking the rest of
us just try and stay out of his way, though we have occasionally been known
to do some choreographed twirls.
If it were all to end tomorrow, what would you say has been your greatest
achievement?
This is going to sound a bit like the conclusion to an episode of The
Waltons, but probably the best achievement is in keeping it fun. We’ve been
playing together as a band for nearly ten years and, as of today, we’ve yet
to have a major act of violence.
What have you got planned for 2012?
We have an album coming out in May then we’re going to play a few gigs
around the UK, some festivals and hopefully release some new music towards
the end of the year. We still play quite regularly in Glasgow, but this is
probably the first year where we’re going to take recording and touring a
bit more seriously.
At Scottish Fiction we focus on new Scottish music, how do you as a band
view the Scottish music 'scene'?
There’s a huge amount of variety in the Scottish music scene which makes
it a lot easier for a band like us to find an audience. It’s quite difficult
to pigeonhole Scottish bands or put them into simple categories, which is a
good thing as far as we’re concerned.
What other Scottish artists would you recommend to the Scottish Fiction
readers?
Some of us play in another band called It Girl that we would have to
mention here, but we like the Phantom Band, Mouse Eat Mouse and Mitchell
Museum amongst others.
Thanks for speaking with us, would you care to share a joke with us?
What happened to the magic tractor? It went down the road and turned into
a field.
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