The Maple State

Rocklouder catches up with The Maple State's Greg for a chat just prior to the end of their recent tour with Tellison...

What do you get when you put five Manchurians in a room and pump through some American Football, The Format and Hot Rod Circuit on a continuous loop? Well, five distressed Manchurians no doubt, but perhaps if you’re lucky you’ll get The Maple State. Made up of Greg and Christian Counsell, William Pearson, Richard Higginbottom and John Goodwin, these guys have been spreading their distinctive pop-racket for four years. Now in their early twenties the boys have shed the raw indie guitars of debut EP, 'At Least Until We’ve Settled In' to make way for light distortion and erratic pace. The band carries heartfelt melodies in an energetic way and Greg sings with a tinge from across the waters that perhaps hadn’t caught on so well in the Manchester scene until now. “The Manchester music clique, like the Stone Roses, is still going on for some reason,” says Greg, visibly puzzled. “There’re all these other bands there doing amazing things and people just push it to the side a little bit, so we went unnoticed for three years.” And why should we start taking notice now? “This is going to sound really arrogant,” he grins. “But I just think we’re very honest and we don’t try to be anything that we’re not. Someone coming to see us will go away thinking ‘they’re a good band’ whether they liked us or not.”

Having just released their second EP, 'Say, Scientist', and almost finished a nationwide tour with Tellison and Furthest Drive Home, Greg reflects on the highs and lows - the touring, the recording and the fans. “There’s some girl from Tunbridge Wells that’s got some of my lyrics tattooed on her arm, and they’re not even good lyrics.” From ‘The First Law Of Thermodynamics’, the second song The Maple State ever wrote, the lyrics are: ‘My perfect blue begins to grey’. “I don’t know what to do with things like that. I try not to talk to people whenever possible.” Singer and bassist, Greg Counsell is clearly a shy guy. As he sits under the heated umbrella in the cold beer garden of Camden Dingwalls he’s smiling, but his hands never stop fidgeting. Every time someone nearby laughs rowdily his eyes flick over them before reverting back to the table. “I’m not rude”, he states, defending his timidity. “I never try to be, but I think some people get a bad idea. Especially if you’ve just played and you’re distant. Or when they shake your hand and don’t let go for ages, or have secret handshakes amongst their friends that I don’t know. What am I supposed to do [when] some guy’s playing with my hand for a few minutes?”

The Maple State went on tour before Christmas last year minus their guitarist Christian due to illness and things got a bit “wild”. Greg calls him the “father figure” in the band because he keeps off the booze and keeps the rest of the band in check. “Because he wasn’t playing the songs we thought ‘Well, they’re not gonna sound good anyway so we don’t have to play well’. So we took on the role of some drunk, punk band for a week,” he laughs. But they couldn’t be further from a drunk, punk band if they ripped their clothes, dyed their hair and picked a fight with the Sex Pistols.

For this tour they’ve warmed to the sense of travelling in a family-like gang. “It’s like being at school”, Greg quips. “When you have the same people there every day and you can just carry on a joke from the day before.” And luckily there have been no scrapes for anyone. “Not to be really boring, but everyone has got on really well. But there was a guy that caused a bit of trouble in Manchester. He came up to Will (keys/vox) after we played and said ‘How come you guys are so good on CD but you’re shit live?’ and Will thought ‘How do I answer this? Stop being a dick’. This guy was getting confrontational [so] I used my rock star charm by...” he pauses, grinning at the thought of his non-violent nature before admitting to “waving the bouncer over and having the man escorted out.” But being in a band has its downsides, and not just out-of-hand fans. “The music industry seems to work on the principle of ‘Say one thing and do another’ and as much as you don’t want to get your hopes up, there are times when you think ‘Oh this might just happen for us’ and then it doesn’t and you think ‘How many more times are we going to keep going through this?’. But the fact that I’m driving around the country with my best friends, and we get to play for 45 minutes a night - there’s no better job than that.”

Taking a shared influence from Death Cab For Cutie and the Get Up Kids, Greg is particularly fond of Saves The Day and Band Of Horses. “And I like Dropkick Murphys”, he says. “I know I’m not allowed to say that because I’m never allowed to play it in the van.” They recorded 'Say, Scientist' in a Manchester studio over two weeks with producer and trumpeter with The Earlies, Tom Knott, before sending it off for mixing by their buoyant Belgian friends Das Pop. “From start to finish it was probably about three months”, says Greg. “We recorded it in two weeks but we didn’t actually have a finished product until four months later. Which is a long time for an EP but we’re really happy with it now.” The irregular-rhythms and harmonised shouts are spread throughout six tracks, whittled down from old reworked songs and some new ones too. “We thought the EP songs sat really well together and there was no point trying to crowbar the new songs in. Someone always says ‘This would have made a great EP’ rather than an alright album, so I thought ‘Why don’t we just put out a great EP?’” Lyrical influences, Greg explains, are drawn from situations. EP track ‘Starts With Dean Moriarty’ is based on the Jack Kerouac character in On The Road. “I was reading it when I wrote that song and I thought – this is a really tenuous link –the character, Dean Moriarty, in that book is a distraction and I suppose that song is about the fact that I should probably be doing something other than being in a band. But I’m in a band and for now I’m happy to follow this, to see where it goes, and Dean Moriarty in the book represents that sort of escapism. But someone listening to the lyrics will have no idea,” he laughs. But what they will get an idea of, is just how much they’ve been lacking without The Maple State in their life. And if you’re doubtful about absorbing yourself with these guys, let them convince you with three little words: “Really, really, great. That works actually,” Greg beams “Yeah, we’re really, really, great.”Danielle Goldstein

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