Discover Artists Q&A: ME REX
South London indie rock group ME REX, who released their debut album Megabear earlier this year, are performing in London later this month.
What started as a solo endeavor for singer-songwriter Myles McCabe in 2015 has now grown into a four-piece.
Over the last six years, McCabe has enlisted some of his former bandmates and collaborators to join the band, including Rich Mandel (Happy Accidents) on vocals, keyboards and bass; Phoebe Cross (Happy Accidents, Cheerbleederz) on vocals and drums; and Kathryn Woods (Fresh, Cheerbleederz) on vocals, while McCabe leads on piano, acoustic guitar, keyboards and more.
Since then the group have recorded two EPs, Stegosaurus and Triceratops, which they released as a double EP in 2020. Their debut album, Megabear, followed in June 2021.
Ahead of their upcoming show at The Lexington in London on Thursday 25th November, we caught up with front man Myles to find out more about the debut album - released in summer 2021 - and what fans can expect from their upcoming live shows.
What have you been up to recently?
Myles: I moved to Brighton last year so I’ve been swimming in the sea as much as I can. We’ve all spent a lot of time getting ready to go back to playing live as well. We also got to play a couple of festivals this summer.
It’s been out since June 2021, but tell us about your debut, Megabear?
Myles: It’s an album in 52 segments that can be played in any order to make one continuous song in infinite combinations.
52 tracks is quite a lot of songs to include? Was there any you left off?
Myles: I didn’t really approach the writing that way. It was more a matter of adjusting and cutting away parts of each segment until it all made sense.
The majority of the tracks are 32 seconds long, why 32?
Myles: The songs needed to be at least 30 seconds long to register as plays on Spotify. I figured at 120 bpm I could write each part in sets of 16 bars and have each one safely clear the 30 second mark.
It’s an interesting concept that they’re all in a similar key and time signature so they can be shuffled in any order to create one continuous song… was that the intention from the beginning or did the idea develop by chance?
Myles: The concept developed out of a few different ideas I was working on at the time, once I had latched on to the idea of a fully deconstructed album I felt obligated to see it through.
How will it work live? (Will you create unique setlists at every show? Or have you preselected tracks?)
Myles: There will be some variation in the live performances. It’s going to sound different to the album, more like the source material developed into “songs”.
It started out as a solo project for you, what made you decide to become a four-piece?
Myles: We had all played shows together with various bands over the last few years. We first started playing together when I recorded Flood with Rich. Phoebe was playing drums and I was already playing in Fresh with Kathryn.
What can we expect from the upcoming tour?
Myles: Plenty of Megabear with lots of tracks from the EPs mixed in. Something for everybody.
Do you have any rituals you do before shows? Or have anything fun or unexpected on your rider?
Myles: I like to have eaten something light a little earlier in the day, I don’t do well with either low blood sugar or feeling full on stage. Ideally falafel, soup or porridge. I also avoid fizzy drinks as the songs are all too lyrically dense to leave any space for burping.
Most of us in the band don’t drink so our rider doesn’t consist of all that much to begin with.
A vocal warm up, while it can feel like a chore, makes a huge difference to the quality of the performance. It wouldn’t be right to skip that, I like to warm up my hands by doing some major scales on guitar too.
Are you working on any other projects you can tell us about?
Myles: Nothing I can go into too much detail about at the moment but I’m in the early ideas stage of a follow up to Megabear.
What or who else are you guys listening to at the moment?
Myles: I’ve been listening to Townes Van Zandt, Caroline Polachek, Nana Grizol and the Wicked Soundtrack
Check out the new ME REX single, titled Never Graduate, taken from their upcoming EP Pterodactyl, due out on Friday 4th February 2022 on Big Scary Monsters below:
