“Everything you do is a decision,” declares drummer Jay Eliot Mee, the loudest, smiliest member of Any Young Mechanic. “This Cecily Brown exhibition we saw in London recently, she was talking about how every few strokes you make with a brush – every decision – opens up more questions.” Typically, Brown’s colours move in a state of flux, unravelling into paintings that feel ceaseless. “Breaking free from the cliché of rock or indie and bringing some of that folk tradition in [is about being] mindful of where you sit in a continuum.”
Those analogies sum up Any Young Mechanic. Like Brown’s brushstrokes, each of the folk band’s thoughtful responses to NME’s questions opens another can of worms. Outside a Quaker meeting house, we’ve snagged a rare quiet spot of grass during the mayhem of Brighton’s The Great Escape. An unhurried hour with Mee, Luka Kilgariff-Johnson (banjo, guitar), Thea Martin (violin), Allan McBean (double bass) and Sam Wilson (guitar, vocals) allows them to articulate that continuum of their journey with the patience that has defined it.
Tonight’s (May 15) slot at the NME Stage is one of three sets in 36 hours, but broadly, the band’s story has been the opposite of hectic. After Mee and Wilson met at university in 2019, the latter bonded with Martin through creative writing classes. The three pinched McBean and Kilgariff-Johnson from other bands in Adelaide’s DIY circles, before squashing into Mee’s cramped family bedroom as Any Young Mechanic from 2023. Mee describes prolific violinist Martin as a “linchpin of the Adelaide music scene”, while Kilgariff-Johnson says the city’s size means like-minded lovers of alternative music can congregate fairly organically.
“Because there’s not much of a commercial industry in Adelaide, once you start enjoying making music, you don’t go, ‘Great, now I’m going to get management,’” suggests Wilson. “You can see these fully-formed, amazing all-timer bands on a Wednesday with 10 people. No one knows about them. The [international] bands you’re seeing at The Great Escape are often very good, but they’re just the ones that have made the right plays, and it’s not really indicative of their creativity. Because if we had enough money to fly everybody to Adelaide, you guys would be blown away.”
Although the persistent lack of respect for the arts in the “Australian mindset” meant all five were advised to find a ‘real job’ outside of music, Martin says the absence of an industry presence helps musicians in Adelaide make “the wackiest stuff they possibly could, without any worry about how it’d be perceived”. Blessed with that freeing, limitless creative context, Wilson also warns that although added infrastructure could help spotlight Adelaide on a global scale, it would inevitably attract a kettle of vultures looking to make a quick buck.
“In the UK, the moment that they’re halfway decent and they play the right pub…” people swarm on them, interrupts NME. “It’s a sad thing, because you see this band that clearly has not had any time to figure out what they want to do, and they’re instantly being hit with contracts or opportunities that will warp your brain,” the frontman continues. “We feel very privileged to push this record after we’ve figured out what we want to do. We were all making music in 2019. If we’d gotten any recognition in the first year or two, it would be garbage.”
That record is Any Young Mechanic’s debut album, ‘The Modern Shoe Is Ruining The Foot’, which they comedically plug via deadpan stage chat at The Great Escape and recurring signs in their music videos. With no EPs beforehand, the “hillbilly” folk-rock of ‘My House Divides’ and the country-tinged ‘Captain And Compass’ introduce their livelier side. ‘Write You Wrong’ takes a far more bare-bones approach, and Martin’s violin shines in closing track ‘Atlas, Here You Are’, where longing turns to relief: “It’s taken you so long, but here you are”.
Recorded strictly with no overdubs, there is zero amplification on this record by design. “It’s because I hate AI, really,” Wilson shrugs. “I thought we should make a record that is as human as possible. Putting yourself in a box is a great way of finding out how to get out of it.” Taken literally, Mee’s 5m x 2m rehearsal room or the boozer are two such examples. Much like Melbourne’s Folk Bitch Trio, the mellow folk they often make goes against the pub-rock grain of Australian alternative music.
“I thought we should make a record that is as human as possible. Putting yourself in a box is a great way of finding out how to get out of it” – Sam Wilson
“A lot of our musical environments that we come up in are pubs, and that really homogenises the decisions that bands make,” says Wilson, picking at the grass. “A lot of our decisions have been made in an effort to subvert that. Even when people think they’re getting that out of us, ‘My House Divides’ is a bit of a Trojan horse. You can go nuts and dance around, but it’s about housing inequality, and hopefully that gets through to somebody.”
Any Young Mechanic’s unified intent becomes crystal-clear over this hour. They give each other space to elaborate, just like their open-minded attitude to songwriting, as answers ricochet between this “hive mind”. “That is a greater sixth thing which emerges [beyond the five of us],” McBean confirms. “What [identity] means for you as a musician and a person, they’re so intertwined,” adds Mee, “and you need to be able to trust the people on that journey.” That means the world to Martin: “Being able to musically trust people is the best part of being a person.”
But behind the scenes, did they face challenges on the route to reaching this inter-band dynamic? “To be genuine, the most difficult conversations have been forced on us by capitalism,” responds Wilson. “You’ve just been friends, and somebody’s saying we need to decide what percentage your contribution is worth.” They accept that a desire for longevity means they will have to navigate this industry, and their togetherness will stand them in good stead. That said, Kilgariff-Johnson asserts: “Human connection can’t fit into 100 per cent.”
Any Young Mechanic are a band, not a product, which is precisely why they profess the modern shoe is ruining the foot. With sky-high standards of authenticity and musicianship, they’re ready to take it further afield from Adelaide, where the city’s breathing room helped them tap into folk’s core principles. Despite all the other bands they’ve played in, “this is the big one,” reiterates Mee, bumping into NME five minutes before showtime at The Old Market.
“A lot of people associate folk music with, ‘All things used to be better when it was a fellow with a guitar, no autotune,’ and that’s not how we feel at all,” concludes Wilson, before Mee spells out what they do feel strongly about: “The camaraderie and the togetherness of folk, the importance of people.” The vocalist joins the final dots together. “It’s about folk as a tradition of empathy and community, and that’s always radical.”
‘The Modern Shoe Is Ruining The Foot’ is out June 5 via 23 Recordings/Warner Records.