The Mules

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We interviewed The Mules on our seventh show. Listen to it on our pop up player on right.

From:
Oxford/London

Label:

Organ Grinder


Albums:
Save Your Face (Organ Grinder) August 22nd (Crossthepond pick)


Singles:
Here To Help (Organ Grinder) May 29th
Grab Your Musket (Marquis De Cha Cha)

“Hello everyone. Legion apologies, but we've had a slight delay with getting 'Save your face' CDs into shops. Jim and I are about to drive to Slough Trading Estate to go and get them, and then they'll be dispatched post haste,” So read a Mules MySpace message upon the self-release of their debut album. Release an album on your own label, and it ends up sounding like a scene from the office.

Release an album on your own label, and you also do so on your own terms. And with a band as impossible to pigeon hole as The Mules, that’s not a bad thing. Indeed ask a Mule to name a contemporary of similar ilk, and prepare to be met by five blank faces. Otherwise attempt to imagine a happy medium between Dexy’s Midnight Runners, The Libertines and Captain Beefheart, and you might have some idea of their blend of Band era country music and late 60’s US garage punk. Something that guitarist Tim Burke aptly described it as, “country music with a Z.”

Drummer Ed Seed and guitarist Burke met at university in Oxford over their mutual adoration of The Band. They needed a guitarist, and curiously discovered Jim Lesslie in an Oxford bathroom. An original eight-piece was slimmed to five with guitarist Duncan Brown and violinist Nico Beedle completing the line up. Two years of touring was, until May’s release of ‘Here To Help’, and this weeks album release, interspersed only by the ‘Grab Your Musket’ EP.

But if you really want to get a handle on The Mules, their consistently thrilling live shows should be your medium of choice. Well that, or listen to what Ed and Duncan have to say for themselves on Crossthepond Podcast 7.

Sounds a bit like: Phew, the above-mentioned Doherty-Beefheart-Rowland happy medium might be close. Then again it might not.

Like this? Try this - Johnny Flynn

For more:

The Mules on Myspace




Photo by Alice Rosenbaum.