Project Description
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Interview with
MENAJERIE
(1st October 2023)
Interview with Dave Bruce
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Previous Support For MENAJERIE
“Australia’s Menajerie light a scorching fire on “Holding Pattern,” unleashing their inner heat with raw, smoldering passion and radiant, seductive soul.” (Atwood Mag)
“With ‘Holding Pattern’ as a tantalizing glimpse into their sonic journey, Menajerie’s forthcoming EP ‘Selective Deafness’ promises to be an enchanting exploration of soulful depths and rhythmic delights.” (AAA Backstage)
“With this enticing single, Menajerie is poised to make waves as they prepare to release of their EP.” (Purple Melon)
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How did everyone come together musically to form this great group? Is one of you the “driving force”, or do you all make decisions together?
Menajerie started as bandleader Gracie Mack’s brain child. She had been conceiving of a band that centred around women who sang in harmony. She reached out to Mel and Rosa, then with the addition of Andrew, Beau and then Lee, Menajerie was born. Menajerie is a partnership and so we make all our decisions together.
How would you describe your sound? Why do you think fans resonate with your music?
Our sound is a mixture of old school soul and neo-soul. Something we try to create in our music is a sense of honesty and playfulness. Finding a blend between treating the music seriously and delivering something heartfelt as well as imbuing it with joy and playfulness is a really important blend to us.
Fans at our gigs have told us that this plus the bond between the three girls on stage is a heartwarming thing.
Which artist’s music and/or performance, past or present, inspires you today?
Oh lordie, there’s so many! Being that we have six band members and we all create together our influences are pretty broad. But I would say a huge amount of inspiration comes from the local music scene. Meanjin has some powerful artists that we share bills with, play in the bands of, and attend their gig and they bring a huge surge of inspiration.
Your new EP ‘Selective Deafness’ has just been released! Describe its origin and evolution.
We have quite a lot more songs that we’re keen to record and release. But we decided it would be ideal to do an EP first to get a body of work out there quicker than if we did a full album. So when choosing which songs for the EP, we went with what felt like the best representation of all the facets of us as a band as well as being some of our earlier repertoire.
Which are the signature tracks, and do you have a favourite to: listen to/to play live?
Melanie’s track ‘Is everything alright’ was the first song she’d ever completed and it’s a banger. Then the tender ‘Shape you’ showcases Rosa’s mix of vocal fragility and power. The second last track ‘Marmalade’ is led by Gracie Mack and traverses all the depths of female friendship. These three tracks definitely feel like highlights from the EP and each bring something really special when we play them live.
Is there an Album on the drawing board?
Absolutely! We really wanted to get something out in the digital world with the EP, but now that we’ve released that lil baby, we are working on a larger body of work.
Any tours or events coming up soon? What are you looking forward to, and what can the fans expect?
We’re so excited for our EP launch gig at Arcana on Fri Oct 20th. Info and Tickets HERE
It’s going to be a night celebrating feminine and non-binary creatives and we’re absolutely peaking.
We’re also really pumped to join the stellar lineup of Concrete Jungle at the Princess Theatre in November. Info and Tickets HERE
Both shows we’ve crafted unique experiences for and are selling tickets now!
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If you could perform with any music artist, Alive or Dead, who would you choose? And why?
Very hard to choose just one. But queens Aretha Franklin and Erykah Badu would certainly be up there. They represent the old and new school soul in equally powerful ways, and would be so impactful and inspirational to be in the presence of.
What are your long-term aspirations as a music artist and how are you progressing towards them?
The dream is to be able to make music unencumbered by all the other music business tasks. We’d really like representation to take away that stress and just leave us free to create and collaborate with wonderful musicians.
With that in mind, what piece of advice would you give to an artist starting out?
With 6 people in the band, who are all busy working musicians as individuals it can be incredibly hard to find time to rehearse and create together. Our biggest advice to a starting out musician would be planning. We use an app called arrangr where we send a poll out for all potential dates people vote on to find a good time. And if we don’t do that far enough in advance it can be impossible to find the right time everyone can make work.
The best thing you can do as a new band is spend time together to form musical bonds and grow ideas. Don’t let your band plans fall away by inaction! Get on top of planning early.
What is the best thing about performing to a live audience? What’s been the career highlight so far?
Performing live is one of the best things about being a musician. The magic that happens when you offer something up to an audience and they receive it beautifully is an enchantment like no other. We were lucky enough to have a monthly residency at Meanjin mainstay The Bearded Lady in 2022. That experience of playing live so regularly was really formative. We had a different outfit/music theme each month as well as invited awesome local artists to feature. In December at our final gig for the year, we held an All Stars event where all our features from across the year came back and played with us. The theme was ‘Big summer blowout’ and the vibe was incredible.
We also opened for Naarm silly boys Sex on Toast this year which was very cool.
Finally, a few questions for some quick answers –
FAVOURITE:
Album – Choose your weapon – Hiatus Kaiyote
Artist – Prince
Movie – The room
Place to visit – The Northern Rivers
Venue to play – The Tivoli
Food – Pizza
Drink – Red wine
Person in History – Maya Angelou
Tattoo – (If you don’t have one, what would you get?) Some of us have several already, the girls are planning to get a little pussy tattoo on their ring fingers
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Follow MENAJERIE
Website – Spotify – Apple Music – Youtube
Bandcamp – Facebook – Instagram
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Press Release 29th September 2023 (below) HERE
MENAJERIE
combine sophisticated soul, sultry
grooves and playful passion
on Debut EP
‘SELECTIVE DEAFNESS’
Debut EP Out September 29
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AMNPLIFY – DB
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