Since their first EP Tales Told By Dead Friends, was released in 2005 when they were only 19-year-olds, Mayday Parade have toured relentlessly ever since. They’ve supported everyone from All Time Low, Plain White T’s and You Me At Six while being regulars on the Vans Warped Tour. Averaging 200 shows a year, Sanders sounds just as in love with being on the road as he’s ever been. “We’re not home super often but every now and then we get a break, it all works out,” Sanders says with his enthusiastic tone. “It is tough to say how we’ll handle it in the future though; we pretty much went full steam ahead from the beginning. What started this band, or the idea behind it, was the notion that we wanted to push ourselves and take this band as far as we can. That’s been the mindset the whole time, but I do think that maybe we’re at a point where we could slow down a little bit.”
There have been persistent mutters about when their fourth studio album will appear and Sanders seems to think they’ll manage to get into the studio sometime after the Christmas break. “We all enjoy writing and the time we spend writing is very productive,” he says. “We’ve got a whole bunch of ideas that are coming together well and we’re at a point where we’re really excited about getting things going for the new album. We’ll start getting that going when we return after the Australian tour, we’ll spend maybe a month writing and then we’ll go into to record and keep things right on track.”
With a growing back catalogue of CDs, there’s the dilemma of what to play and what to omit with every world tour. First World problems, yes, but it’s still something Mayday Parade need to tackle to keep their live set interesting. “It does make it hard now because there are some songs that we’ve never played and there are the staple songs that people expect to hear every tour. We try to mix it up so we’re not just playing the same set over and over. It’ll get more and more difficult as we keep putting out new music,” he says.
Despite the rhetoric that every band’s latest release is, without question, their best, Sanders genuinely feels that Mayday Parade have grown with every recording. The problem that can arise from this, however, is the cringe-factor that comes with listening to previous releases. Does Sanders every look back on their first EP with frustration or embarrassment or is it all viewed through the romantic lens of nostalgia? “It’s mostly positive, I’m very proud of everything we’ve done and with that first EP there really is a lot of nostalgia there,” he says. “I was 19 when we wrote that EP so there’s a lot of good memories but there are a few things that make me cringe when I listen back. I’m mostly referring to the way we recorded a few things and also my voice back then, yeah.”
The thing that sets Mayday Parade apart from their pop-punk contemporaries and that helps them break free from the shackles of a fairly restrictive genre is Sanders powerful and textured voice and the harmonic complexity of the band’s music. Given that it is his voice he is noticing the most in those past recordings, it is important to note it’s also one of the band’s strongest qualities. He’s humble as he receives this compliment, seeming genuinely surprised while offering up a possible reason. “I think playing close to 200 shows a year for years has helped my voice build up and become a lot stronger,” he says. “When I started out, Jason Gleason from Further Seems Forever was one of my favourite vocalists and is still one of my favourite singers; he has such a strong and powerful voice and I wanted to have that as well.”
Taking part in the Punk Goes Pop compilations, Mayday Parade chose none other than our own indie-anthem-gone-global Somebody That I Used To Know. Surely Gotye’s penultimate hit song must be close to surpassing Hallelujah as the most covered song of all time? “It’s just such an awesome song,” he says. “When we were asked to do that compilation, we thought we’d do a really good job of that one. We nearly changed our mind because of how popular that song is and how many covers there already are of it but we stuck to it and I’m glad we did.” Hey, they might even pull it out down here.
BY KRISSI WEISS
