Mal de Mer
d ropping their new single 'Wet Sock' in june
“I guess everyone writes songs differently. For us, the main songwriters are me and John. We kinda just sit in John’s loft and mess around with different ideas until we manage to mush the two aspects together somehow. Either he plays me a chordal progression or a riff and I’ll write lyrics and a melody to slide over the top, or I sing him something and he writes chords to suit what I’m singing; we keep our ideas pretty loose though so they can be built on and tweaked by the other person. And then its almost like show and tell- the band comes over and then we play the new stuff and everyone just one by one joins in and figures out where their instrument slots in. Its kind of magic the way it all works and comes together, we’re heaps lucky.”
- Saskia Fleming (lead singer of Mal de Mer)
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We’re releasing our first ever child/single into the world in June and we’re throwing a little party at Four5nine bar on the 22nd of June to celebrate! It’s called ‘Wet Socks’ and it’s definitely one of our funkier songs- we’re really proud of it, we hope other people love it as much as we do!
We’re mainly just super excited to finally get some music out!
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Originally, we were a four-piece band, and we all met one way or another through WAAPA in 2017. I guess it all kicked off when Sas and John wrote a song together for class, and the way they both wrote meshed pretty well. After that I think Sas texted John something along the lines of “when will you agree to be in a band with me” and John just said “I’m a yes man,” and that was that. The original four included our amazing friend Richard Lilje (bass), John Harvey (guitar), Saskia Fleming (vocals), and Claudia Genovese (drums); but when Richard started focusing on his solo stuff more, we dragged superstars Emma Gushlow (bass) and Emma Crawford (keys/sax) along for the ride.
interview by: ella wylynko
We all are just really good mates who happen to play instruments, and we were lucky enough to start jamming and just click style-wise straight away.
John is our beloved skinhead- he’s our slightly unhinged dad of the band, and he loves Hungry Jacks nuggets (with spicy sauce) probably more than us. Claudia is just this angry little mouse who kinda scares us all a little bit, she's super fierce and protective, and she absolutely shreds it on the drums. Emma Crawford is our little baby of the band (even though she's the oldest) and our eco warrior- she loves dogs and the Earth, and her and Sas tend to go on off-topic rants about plastic, and animals, and how they’re gonna single-handedly save the planet during rehearsals. Emma Gushlow is bomb as hell, her bass solos will kill you, and her makeup is always out of this world. And Sas is our mum- she tells us where to be and when, she cuts her own fringe when she's stressed (which is often), and she has an affinity for Coolabah Goon (sweet fruity white only).
Our music could be classified as indie, surf pop but we’re starting to head in a funkier direction, so you’ve been warned…
All of us really want our careers to be music. We don't wanna have a band and be working jobs on the side to make ends meet, you know? It’d be really sick if our primary income could be having fun and playing music, so we’re working hard to try make that a reality.
We performed at Fairbridge Festival this year- which was really cool; getting asked to play something like that was just one of those ‘fuck yeah’ kinda moments!! That’s the biggest thing we’ve done so far, we perform a fair bit around the Perth scene though- Mojos, The Rosemount, The Sewing Room, Jack Rabbits, etc. which is always good time .
favourite dance move? do you dance on stage?
Any move that John Harvey whips out can probably be classified as our favourite dance move. We have a boogie on stage, but it’s usually nothing major though- a pretty laid-back sorta vibe.
funniest moment?
There was an older lady in the crowd twerking and trying to get her husband to slap her ass along to our music at El Grotto once- we had never really thought of our music as ass-slapping music until then (we still don't)!
Sas writes the lyrics and usually they are about love, but they aren't the typical ballads or sad songs that you expect- she tries to promote the message that you don't have to be sad and whinge and beg for them back, not all love songs have to be sad; you can allow yourself to be angry if you were mistreated, you can stand up for yourself, and you can be empowered by what you’ve been through. The main message we promote is that you’re no-one’s damsel, you know your worth, and you can’t afford to let people treat you badly. But in saying that, each song is about different situations (romantic/non-romantic) so they are all very different lyrically and topically.
Any advice you have for upcoming artists?
Email everyone- venues, booking agents, people in the scene, we even used to message Facebook pages to get emails of booking agents! If you don't get a reply from someone- email them again, there’s no harm in trying, the worst thing that can happen is they just ignore you again. When you land that first gig you need to crush it- you never know who is in the audience! Also, be sure to always thank people for their hard work- it takes a lot of work behind the scenes to put lineups together, thank the booking agent, thank the sound person, thank the venue; everyone in your scene is working ridiculously hard to keep things running smoothly so you’ve gotta always remember to be grateful!
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