Birmingham's Mighty Mighty coming back with a new album
Brummie indie stars Mighty Mighty are making a comeback with their first brand new material in three decades via Firestation Records.
The five-piece – vocalist and bassist Russell Burton, brothers and guitarists Mick and Pete Geoghegan, DJ Hennessy on drums and vocalist and harmonica maestro Hugh McGuinness – will release Misheard Love Songs in July both physically and digitally.
“The album is actually our first new recordings in more than 30 years,” says Mick. “We had a bit of a career in the late 80s. We sent John Peel our first single, self-financed on our own label, and he played it and booked us for a session and that helped us get a track on the legendary NME C86 cassette.”
That compilation led to them garnering nationwide attention, and their period of popularity grew from there.
“We went on to release six singles and an album, Sharks. Since then we have released several compilations. including BBC sessions, and a few years ago we had an album of unreleased demos called The Betamax Tapes on Firestation Records.”
They’ve been gigging on and off for a while, but the new album came out of a feeling of wanting a bit more from their time together as a band.
“Misheard Love Songs has been nearly three years in the making,” Mick adds. “We made the decision that if we wanted to carry on as a band we were not satisfied playing the occasional gig doing the old songs like a being your own tribute band.
“Some of the new songs are ones that we never got round to recording before our initial split at the tail end of 1988, but the majority are new, written over the last three years. I suppose when you have families, full-time jobs and live in different parts of the country it's inevitable that it takes a bit longer than it did back in our younger days.
“And then of course it’s that time of our lives when you tend to lose parents - a total of three during the process. There were long periods of limbo for illness, loss and mourning. First, mine and Pete’s mom, then both H and Russell lost their dad'. Weirdly, me and Pete also lost our dad during the recording of Sharks back in 1987.
“You will spot the not-so-subtle reference to Horace Silver's Song For My Father on the intro to The Invention Of Love. Okay, it sounds like Steely Dan as well.”
But the main influence for the material is a little lighter than that.
“Why Misheard Love Songs? You may notice the lyric appears in two songs - Weather Girl and The Invention Of Love again. It’s a consequence of my writing process - piles of notebooks with ideas and songs at various stages of completion. An overlap was inevitable at some stage.
“It is an album of love songs of one type or another, perhaps with the exception of The Profit And Loss Blues. The album title refers to how little we really understand each other and how everyone hears and interprets things differently. The actual meaning of a song is less important than what it is taken to mean by the listener and how it makes them feel.
“To quote the great Paddy McAloon, ‘words are trains for moving past what really has no name’, and The Bee Gees sung ‘it’s only words, and words are all I have to take your heart away’.”
If fans of their 80s material want to hear the new Mighty Mighty material before the album becomes public property, they’ve lined up a show at Hare & Hounds on June 12 to whet their appetites. It will be a special occasion for Mick.
“There are still some people out there who may be interested,” he jokes, before adding: “This is very much a hometown gig for me as I was born about 100 yards from the Hare & Hounds.”
Tickets for that Hare & Hounds gig, priced at £11, are available here.
