On their third LP, Mild Orange presents a fresh, expansive view of indie pop, folding it into a hopeful narrative. We chatted with them about the making of Looking For Space.
On their first two records, New Zealand’s Mild Orange honed an intimate atmosphere, drawing listeners into their insular world. On the band’s brand new third outing, the tables have turned. Looking For Space is doing just that — and it’s clear from the first listening that Mild Orange is relishing the expansion.
We caught up with frontman and producer Josh ‘Mehrt’ Mehrtens about the exciting new visual language that the band has explored in the artwork of Looking For Space, a hopeful perspective in the face of a health scare, and developing the album’s lush soundscapes.
HAPPY: Hey guys, how are things? What are you up to at the moment?
MEHRT: Kia ora! We’re good! In a few days, we’re leaving NZ for London to begin our album tour. We’re all currently in our hometowns enjoying some family and friend time before we jet off. I’m in Arrowtown, Barry’s in Wellington, Jah’s in Carterton, Jack’s in Westport.
HAPPY: I started this interview by listening to your album and reading the lyric book. It’s gorgeous, can you tell me about the process of putting that together?
MEHRT: Oh cheers! I made it in one night after Millie (our publicist in Australia) asked for a book of my lyrics to send to Lior Phillips, a writer based in Chicago. Lior was the first person outside of the team to experience the album, so I wanted it to be an immersive first impression. This was my interpretation of a lyric book, which sent me on a late-night design bender. Each page is made to look and feel like the music and lyrics feel to me. It features various photographs of mine, Jack’s, Cam Hay’s, and then some drawings that were done while making the album. We’ll add hard copies to our online store in due course.
HAPPY: It made me realise a lot of the songs on Looking For Space really do work as poems too. Do you ever write lyrics without a melody in mind?
MEHRT: I feel ya. I’ll write down phrases or lines from time to time in my notes on my phone. However, most of this album’s lyrics came from singing melody and fitting words into where syllables and words sound and feel right in the melody. Melody and lyrics get really intertwined for me. It’s kind of like the melody asks the question and the lyric is the answer to expressing that feeling. Once written, I enjoy reciting lines in my head like a poetic mantra.
HAPPY: You went through a bad spell with pneumonia during the recording. How did that contribute to how the album has turned out?
MEHRT: Yeah, I had double pneumonia and pleurisy. It was scary being in pain just to breathe. It threw me into some dark places, and affected the album schedule. It took months for me to come right and I got down about not being able to do what I love, which made me appreciate health, people and music far more. The band was super supportive through it all. Despite everything, that episode offered me some good new perspectives. I’m always an optimist, always trying to find light in the dark.
One day I was looking out at a storm smashing the coastline in Ōakura, and I realised that like the gnarly storms that batter our beaches, those turbulent moments eventually pass and are a necessary part of shaping us — it’s not going to be sunny every day, and if it is, then the beach remains much unchanged or growing. Despite the tests, it’s still a beautiful world. This Kinda Day and Music. were heavily influenced by this period.
HAPPY: Specifically, there’s a lot of hopefulness in the songs. Was this something that you had to reach out for while you were going through that experience?
MEHRT: I reached out for help when I was feeling down. I’m very grateful for the awesome people around me being there for me. If you are feeling low, talk to someone about it, please don’t suffer in silence. I wrote the video script for This Kinda Day in light of this.
HAPPY: I read you played your first show in six months in January. Would you say your relationship with these new songs was different to ones you’ve written in the past that get more of a live run? How so?
MEHRT: Damn, it was good to be back on stage! We’ve never been shy to play unreleased songs. In fact, road testing songs helps us with the recording process. So, we played a bunch of songs from the album already at shows in the past year, which placed emphasis on certain vibe and energy that we needed to honour in the recordings. I think the relationship with these songs is different to prior releases since a bunch of the Looking For Space songs were created knowing that we wanted to have some huge, epic songs to play when live music returned worldwide someday.
HAPPY: And to finish on one geeky question, there are some great tones across the record. Was there anything gear-wise that was critical to the guitar sounds of Looking For Space?
MEHRT: Love geeking out! Jah and I spend hours and hours together tinkering with our pedals and amps to find new tones. So when we recorded the guitar parts, we had a mental encyclopedia of tones that we could think of and implement when the time was right. A supercritical pedal for me was the Keeley Aurora, which adds a unique synth-like layer. I used it on nearly every song in a different way.
For instance, when you couple that pedal with volume swells, then you get a lush, spacey layer as you hear on The Time Of Our Lives, or a soaring guitar lead like on What’s Your Fire?. I think Jack and Barry sound better than ever on this record too with their drum and bass. They sound so full together. For the tones of all four of us, we got a rich analog texture fattening from Addy Hill at Roundhead Studios sending our tracks through their 1970s tape machine (same one as Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours) and The Who’s old Neve console (yes, it was actually owned by them, and still has Keith Moon’s cigarette burns on it).
HAPPY: Thanks for the chat!
MEHRT: Thank you! By the way, Australia is a top priority for us! Hopefully we’ll see you soon.
Looking For Space is out now.
