“I kind of have to keep an eye on things at the same time,” begins Men’s Mike, all available limbs apparently occupied by administrative tasks, “but I’m pretending to take a break”.
As a music journalist, it seems downright unreasonable to expect your average self-respecting rock star to answer the phone from anywhere but the most outlandish locations. Back of a van, crack den, someone else’s bed – it’s all part of the hedonism quota bands are no doubt required to meet in their label contracts. But the office?
In the course of arranging this interview, we start to form an image of Mike; similar to Flight of the Concords’ Murray, managing band affairs from the office whilst continuously having his feathers ruffled by colleagues who have the cheek to bother him with business calls. The reality, as it turns out, is even scarier.
When asked as to what Men’s plan of action would be if the band’s exposure continued at the rate it has done in the past few weeks, Mike’s replies almost apologetically: “I don’t know. We’re all supervisors or managers in offices for national companies or councils, and actually we kind of really enjoy it, which is a bit… weird, but I’m getting older. We have things like mortgages and children”.
We’re a long way from the Gallagher-style world-beating oratory most new bands feel obliged to take part in, that’s for sure. As well as full time real jobs, two thirds of Men – Mike and Jem – also play in surprisingly mellow post-hardcore act Pennines, and it soon becomes clear that these are men playing for fun rather than finance.
“Everything to me is a hobby, really. It’s the same for all of us – they’re expensive hobbies, but…” Mike lowers his voice. “But I don’t view it as any different to most of the people I work with playing football on a Sunday, or something. It’s kind of at the same level to me”.
We could have guessed. After all, Men do have more than a whiff of commercial suicide about them. Perhaps their most radio-friendly song to date is entitled ‘Big Fucker’ – by the band’s admission a “working title that never got changed” – and all their studio recordings thus far have been released for free. Mike refuses to even consider the band as a viable career move. “You throw so much money into petrol, travelling, practice, everything like that – even if I did this for the rest of my life I don’t think there’d ever be any kind of financial return from it. So doing it for financial reasons would be the dumbest thing ever, I think. The fact is it’s loads of fun, you get to hang out with some really nice people and that’s why we still do it.”
Maybe this is the future of UK music in an environment where, quite simply, not enough people pay for their music. Artists don’t make nearly enough from proposed legal solutions like Spotify and no one, not Lord Mandelson, not the major labels and certainly not Lily Allen, seems to know what to do about it.
If the artists themselves can’t make a living out of music it follows that we’ll have to start looking to talented hobbyists for the best of it; weekend punks with enough fire in their bellies to keep at it without the promise of private jets and supermodel girlfriends at the finish line. And let’s make this clear now – Men are really, really talented hobbyists.
The trio have been playing together for “probably about five years” in various different incarnations of the band. Most recently they were Fun! Yeah! but a departing keyboard player provided them with an opportunity to change the name. “We just wanted something with a single syllable, and so we went with Men, because it made us laugh. Anything that encourages heterosexual males to state that they love Men is a positive thing in my eyes”.
As Men, they started to write winding punk tracks, unashamedly melodic and interlaced with Jem’s yelping of things like, “Turned on! / The extremities are safe!”
Already though, they’re a band in transition. More recent songs from sessions in June unveiled new skills to add to their collective CV; the likes of ‘Calculators’ feature an altogether more measured sound, with lyrics distinguishable and genuine – if yelled – vocal harmonies in places.
“We kind of moved away from riff-based stuff, where me and Jem would be playing the same thing, trying to make things a little bit more structured. Then all of a sudden Carl started singing, which he’s never really done before, and it was just absolutely amazing. We were all kind of shocked”.
There’s a positivity in Men’s songs that we suggest is lacking in a UK music scene filled with bands terrified of being dubbed the new Wombats, but Mike disagrees: “It depends on the kind of stuff you listen to but if you go back a few years and look at somewhere like Wakefield, for instance, you had Dugong and Nathaniel Green – it’s all positive and it’s all really good. From our perspective, all we’re trying to do is sound like a cross between Dillinger 4 and Huey Lewis and The News. I don’t know whether we actually pull it off or not. We’re all old punks who just love pop, really”.
Ah yes, Huey Lewis, pop-rock pioneer of the late ‘80s and also namesake of Mike’s son. “He obviously doesn’t know that yet, ‘cos he’s only one, but when he’s older I’ll introduce him to the first Huey Lewis and The News record and he’ll understand”.
As the interview draws to a close and Mike returns to his desk, we begin to understand something ourselves: Men might just be our new part-time heroes.