Defined Spasticore With TheMint Chicks

Wed 8th Sep, 2004 in Features

For anyone who has witnessed the manic onstage energy and visceral rhythm oozing from each pore of these 20 something Kiwi lads, you’ll already now they’re an exciting prospect. But what one seldom expects when conducting an interview with a punk band is a quiet, contemplative individual recommending Miles Davis albums and generally speaking with a reserved and measured tone – not to mention a Dizzee Rascal album playing in the background. Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to present Ruban Nielson from New Zealand four-piece The Mint Chicks.

Ruban is affable and friendly, and somewhat assured in his tone when the call comes in from his home town of Morningside, Auckland. Fresh from recording sessions off an isolated stretch of beach, he is excited to chat about the new songs, touring the UK and USA, and coming back to Australia playing some shows and supporting Sparta.

“We’re coming out to play with Sparta, and do a couple of our own shows, so I’m looking forward to it a lot. We just got back on Sunday actually, we went out north of Auckland – like a bay north of Auckland, sort of this isolated beach house. It was really cool.”

It seems to be the done thing – get as isolated as possible and scream your heart out…

“Yeah I don’t know that many bands that do it. Not many punk bands anyway, there’s no road to it, so you have to drive across a beach, and you can’t get to it at high tide. It was really isolated, and you could make as much noise any time of the day or night. It was very intense but it was kind of what we needed to get the record done.”

And making big noise is what you guys do well? Ruban sheepishly laughing, “Yeah I guess so…”

Making a big noise, or at least a grand entrance is something that The Mint Chicks have inadvertently done, touring with The White Stripes even before they had a record in the shops.

“Well I guess, it was kinda weird…I guess it’s just a convoluted ‘stars aligning’ sort of thing. The White Stripes have a connection with New Zealand, their tour manager is a Kiwi…and it’s just really weird, because his wife was a really big fan of ours, and she would come to shows when there were like 20 people there, and I guess that’s kind of how that came about through that connection. And The White Stripes had been to New Zealand about three times before, so I guess that’s how it all worked out…”

For a little country, New Zealand sure does tend to get noticed:

“Yeah I guess…I don’t know what it is about New Zealand. I guess New Zealanders are always trying to punch above their weight because we’re so influenced by Australia, and England and America but at the same time our economy is almost third world, and we get flooded with all this culture and kind of everybody wants to get somethings done. So there’s a lot of people getting busy, doing stuff.”

Getting busy ‘doing stuff’ is one of Ruban’s specialties, not only is he the guitarist and songwriter of the group, he is also the artist for the band, doing all their release artwork, as well as the DVD art for their small Indie label, Flying Nun.

“I went to art school I finished a couple of years ago. I guess I always thought that I was going to be an ‘artist’ and I guess we just kinda screwed around, and it got a bit out of control. So know I have had to focus on the music. Like I guess it’s important for my sanity to keep drawing and keep, I guess a more visual person. It’s important for me to go from the insane music world, and come home and do something a little more individual…introspective.”

It’s quite an opposing force when you consider the band has just returned from a fleeting visit through the UK, playing a gig with The Datsuns, and for UK Indie taste making label Fierce Panda, and then an even more manic set of shows in the USA. So how did it affect a guy, who’s only ever previously been to Australia?

The UK:

“Well I don’t know. I kind of saw most of it form the inside of a van, a hotel room…and night clubs, but…what I wouldn’t really liked to have gotten into was some more of the garage stuff, like garage hip hop and the underground stuff over there. Like there doesn’t seem to be that much underground punk as in America…I would’ve liked to have seen how that whole record industry works over there. Like there were these record stores that you’d walk into, and I just felt completely lost, but it was kinda exciting at the same time. It was like the first time I walked into a punk record store. It was like ‘wow, who’s this band?’ you know what I mean? I would’ve liked to have gotten into more of that side of things but I still found it pretty exciting.”

The USA?

“New York was just amazing! When I got back to New Zealand I was really glad to be home, but now I’ve had a bit time to sit around, I kind of want to get back to New York and check more stuff out. Like we got a glimpse of the rock kinda stuff, and we hung out in downtown Manhattan, but there’s so much more. Like I don’t listen to that much New York hip hop, but I’d just like to buy some mix tapes and see what’s going on with those types of things. Check out some different scenes and stuff…

“It’s exciting, there’s so much art there and stuff and things that I didn’t get to see. I just want to go back and dig deeper.”

All throughout the interview Ruban chats animatedly about new music, different trends and the grittiness each city can offer up. So what were the guys’ main influences when forming a band?

“I guess, like a lot of it in high school, like earlier on, we were all kinda into Miles Davis and stuff like that. There’s a record called On The Corner, that’s a really important record for us. It’s like a rock-fusion-jazz sort of thing, I kinda went from that to getting into punk…”

How do you go from jazz to punk?

“Well if you listen to On The Corner it’ll make more sense. It’s a really great record!

Lately I’ve been getting into Lightening Bolt, TV On The Radio...we played with them when we went to England…it was weird, cause someone gave me the record and I’d just started to get it, so I was getting excited about the band, and then we got a show with them which was weird, and they were amazing. So I am pretty sold on them. There’s another band called The Young Knives who are from Oxford…I don’t know, a lot of the stuff that I am listening to at the moment is like bands that we’ve been playing with. I guess I have just come through a phase of listening to bands like the Ex-Models and Locust and Liars, I really enjoyed the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s when I saw them last year…”

Ruban trails off, lost in his thoughts and the music which seems to engulf him. The Mint Chicks are definitely ones to watch.

You can catch them at their own headline shows: Thursday September 9th @ Rics Café Brisbane, September 10th @ Northern Star, Newcastle and supporting Sparta: September 11th @ The Metro Sydney, September 12th @ The Hi-Fi Bar Melbourne. Their  Anti-Tiger EP is out now.