Thirsty Merc are back with another rollicking album, this time heading past the heartbreak into more groove and funk laden territory. Lead singer Rai Thistlethwayte spoke to OUTinPerth about the band’s new album, Mousetrap Heart, and their upcoming Australian tour.
For the readers not familiar with you can you describe your style? It’s melodic hip hop rock. Our new album is more funk-based than any other of our albums, so that’s a fresh new sound for us.
We’ve got a new guitarist called Matt who’s right into reggae and soul as well as rock and blues guitar playing and I think he influenced it a little bit. Also, I think a huge amount of the sound comes from the fact that I was writing songs on a lot of our old stuff on guitar, but for this one I went over to the piano and started writing songs on the piano for this album. And that brought out a lot more of that soul and funk and groove element.
We actually recorded the album over in Los Angeles and I think the producer over there, Matt Wallace, was not afraid of bringing that groove and funk element out in the music as well. He always said it’s better to way overstep the mark than have to tip toe up to something. That was good because he let us go freely with that.
At its core, what’s Mousetrap Heart about? It’s an up tempo feel-good album. It’s got a lot of humour and cheekiness. It’s got a lot of levity. Hopefully it’s the kind of album you can put on when you’re driving and it just feels good. The first seven songs are pretty much a ride. They start from a groove and they keep that groove. The first two thirds of the album are heavily based in that.
How long have you been playing piano for? For me piano is a very natural place to go and write because I’ve been playing the piano longer than the guitar. I’ve been playing piano since I was five.
So what was it like working with Matt Wallace, who has worked with the likes of Faith No More and Maroon 5? A lot of producers will say that they don’t actually change the sound of what the band does, they’ll just take parts of what is already there and bring them out. And I think Matt is brilliant at that. Just look at the things he’s done with Faith No More he took a band who sounded like hip hop or rap and melded it with heavy metal. And at the time is was quite ground breaking. People said it was never going to work. Of course that song epic came out and the rest is history: it was a huge hit and they ended up touring all over the states and all over Europe. And they’d been a genre busting band. That’s what Matt’s good at: bringing the elements together. They may seem disparate but he brings them together in some kind of way. He’s just a key believer in that it’s going to work. That’s really encouraging for a band.
Mousetrap Heart is out June 18. Thirsty Merc play Prince of Wales in Bunbury on Wednesday July 21 and then Fly By Night Club on Thursday July 22.
Scott-Patrick Mitchell
