Body Maintenance are a post-punk band, but they don’t sound like Joy Division, they sound like Body Maintenance. The band started in 2017 and now it’s 2023, I’ve been in the band since 2018. We’ve always wanted to put out an album.
Hailing from Melbourne, Body Maintenance sounds like a band you would hear in a club in 1980s Manchester rather than at Melbourne’s The Curtin Hotel in 2023. While taking inspiration from the likes of Sisters of Mercy, The Sound and Echo and the Bunnymen, their sound is unique and unlike any other bands in the realm. In April released their debut album “Beside You”, the follow-up to their 2021 self-titled EP.
Zoe Mulcahy said, I think for bands that have been around for that long and don’t put anything out, there is a lot of pressure associated with that first big release.
That’s something that I think we’ve done well with, not letting that pressure get the best of us and overthink the songs too much, overdoing how it flows and what it means. I think because we write our own parts and come together as a group, we were all able to help make sure we wouldn’t psych ourselves out. Luckily the EP release took the weight of doing an LP.
“This six track EP merges melodic post-punk with elements of stark goth adversity. With nods to The Chameleons and Second Empire Justice era Blitz, these songs are evocative of the anxiously bleak yet anthemic sounds of early 80’s Manchester, delivered in a contemporary Australian context.”
‘Ends’ on the latest record, Riley wrote that himself before the band existed. In the original recording, he recorded it in his bedroom and dubbed the vocals over the top with the microphone of his headphones. A few of the other songs on “Beside You” were ideas that James, Riley or I had been bouncing around during lockdown. We would send them to the group and when we’d finally get the chance to get together, we would work on them and evolve them into what they eventually came to be. Usually, for most songs, there’s an initial idea that someone has that gets brought to the group and we’ll jam it and decide ‘let’s run that’, ‘let’s not run that’ and then everyone adds their own parts from there. There’s a lot of brainstorming at practice between us all but everyone is usually on the same page.
Listening to “Beside You”, you are taken on a journey beginning at the hard, fast and uplifting ‘Silver Yarns’ that makes you feel as if you can take on the world. Four songs in you are met with ‘Time Enough’ which brings you back to the sad reality of the world that we really live in. Isolating yet inspiring, aggressive yet intricate, their music is the perfect soundtrack to accompany a walk home or even a late-night drive.
The band consists of Riley Stafford on Vocals and Guitar, James Kane who is also on guitar, Nick Garth who plays the synth and bass and Zoe Mulcahy on the drums.
The Fat Angel Sings 