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The Mysterines: "The album is essentially a snapshot of, you know, everything"

It's been a long time coming, but The Mysterines' debut album is finally here. 'Reeling' is an expose of vocalist and guitarist Lia Metcalfe's formative...

It's been a long time coming, but The Mysterines' debut album is finally here. 'Reeling' is an expose of vocalist and guitarist Lia Metcalfe's formative years, and to be honest, she can't wait to let go of it.

"Once it's out in the world, it's not your record," she smiles. "It's other people's. I think I'm ready for the world to take on that responsibility now, not just us."

It's a fair comment since the journey the Liverpudlian band has been on has featured - much like most other bands - stop-starts, gradual releases, including 2019's debut 'Take Control' EP, and a rather intense recording period.

"It's essentially a snapshot of, you know, everything," Lia marvels. "Everything I was writing and going through at that point was in such a quick period, and then to come out of it so quickly also - to process it means the record needs to be out."

The intensity of their album, driven in part by long sessions and driving back and forth between producer Catherine Marks' (Wolf Alice, The Big Moon, PJ Harvey) studio, has resulted in 'Reeling' sounding like a bottled cathartic burst of rock energy, hell-bent on cruising from town to town in case anyone else is need of some raucous understanding. "It's definitely something we can all hear in the record, which makes it quite an emotional thing for us."

It's also the sound of a band figuring things out. "There's a beauty in knowing that and knowing that you've put it in a way that couldn't be any clearer or more personal to you," she says.

Along with the rest of her band, George Favager (bass), Callum Thompson (guitar), and Paul Crilly (drums), they've managed to finally get a handle on things. Even if things are currently more full-steam ahead than ever.

Life is all about moments. It has to be, especially when you're in a band. It's something Lia's all too aware of, mentioning that when bouncing around the UK going from show to show, she likes to "get lost somewhere. I always try and get lost somewhere. Just to speak to a stranger because you never know what's gonna happen."

Last year, when they were down in Cornwall for Boardmasters, Lia and Paul decided to find a pub at, er, 1 am. "It was in the middle of nowhere, and I was like, 'I've just got a feeling there's a pub around here'," she laughs. "And then we found one that was having a lock-in! We blagged them that we were locals, and they let us in."

A conversation with an "old guy and his biker friends", meeting people at a petrol station, and a trip to a forest later, eventually they landed back at their hotel at 6am. "The next day, everyone was like, 'where the fuck have yous lot been?' It was a pretty good night!"

Such is the life of a rock'n'roll band. With The Mysterines' first US tour and Lia's first-ever visit to the continent coming up, the swirling, whirling, chaotically rambling life she's chosen leads to a fair few hangovers. "Sometimes I'm just like, really out of time with reality… I don't know what's going on."

"There are a few songs on the record that I wrote when I was super young"

With their debut album finished, The Mysterines have completed one of the significant establishing checks on that list of 'being in a band'. Has it met all their expectations so far?

"I don't really know. I never really had an idea of what it was like to be in a band," Lia ponders. "I never really ever made a conscious decision to even be in a band. It just sort of happened. All I've ever done is music, and so it just sort of fell that way. I suppose you just learn about being in a band from being in one. We've been in The Mysterines for so long, like since I was 14, I'm still learning now. You've just got to figure it out for yourself."

A big part of that, particularly when dealing with being a new band, is knowing how to balance being ambitious while remaining grounded. The key to Lia is in keeping any goals simple. "If success is a personal thing, rather than a visual thing, or financial thing, that's what keeps people grounded," she reckons. "And also to have ambitions to go wider with the career. I don't know; people ask me all these questions. I don't know. I'm just doing well…I think," she grins.

Interviews are indeed an odd part of being a band. You create this music from whatever's kicking around your head, and then all of a sudden, people are on the phone asking you what it all means. "A counselling session sometimes, in a good way," Lia laughs. "Like self-reflected, what do I actually think about this? And then you give some sort of advice, and you're like, that's something that I should be taking!"

Giving advice, inadvertently or otherwise, is part and parcel of writing songs. You end up showing someone out there a way to deal with emotions of just about any scale. "Going back to talking about ambitions and goals," Lia suddenly piques. "Especially with this record, one thing that I hope to achieve is that people do find connections with the songs and have their interpretations of things."

"It would be a big thing for me as a writer to be able to connect to someone on a level where they think they can talk to me about the song," she smiles. "Sometimes I listen to Leonard Cohen, and I'm sure I know exactly what he's talking about, and like I could have a really good conversation with him about it. I would hope that people connect to some of the songs on the record and have some sort of personal intimacy with them."

Does she consider herself a musician first or a writer?

"I probably say more of a writer, I guess," she ponders for a moment. "I've never had any musical training; I've just always done it. I've been lucky enough to have parents that completely supported me with that. We've always had instruments in the house. I was writing before I was playing the guitar.

"I started writing when I was eight, and I used to go into all these poetry competitions in school and all these English things. Then I started learning guitar, and that's when I combined them both. So, I'd probably say I'm more of a writer first and then a musician second."

'Reeling' features these little paving stones of Lia's past. Picking elements of pieces she's written throughout her lifetime, one of the standout moments is the vulnerable finale 'The Confession Song'. Rounding off both the band's momentous step forward and Lia's ultimate dumping of everything she's gone through, it's the bonfire surrounding her own effigy.

"I wrote 'The Confession Song' so long ago," she recalls. "When I was 16/17. I had those words for two years, and I added to them for ages. It was a poem of sorts. Then I wrote a riff to it. Then we made a demo of it, and it changed so much. It's a good way to end the record; I think it'll lead into album two pretty nicely."

With 'Reeling', The Mysterines are ready to keep going. Unleashing themselves from the project they've been building up to for so long, and with Lia picking from her past, this is no time for dwelling. Lia of the future is happy to chat to Lia of the past occasionally, but for now, it's all about whatever's next - which is hopefully understanding more about who she, and The Mysterines, can be.

"There are a few songs on the record that I wrote when I was super young, and I think I didn't realise at the time what I'd written," she recalls. "They were sort of flukes because everything else was writing at that time was awful. Weirdly, I can relate to those moments more now as I'm older. They were pre-empting, sort of. It was quite weird.

"Now I look back and go, 'oh, that's what that song was about' after it existed for a while," she says, ready to embrace whatever comes next once the intensely necessary 'Reeling' belongs to the world. "It created its own place in my life, so I suppose I'm not dwelling on it - it's more recognising that time as it is."

Taken from the April issue of Upset. The Mysterines' album 'Reeling' is out now.

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