The Mint Chicks - Apparently there's a pizza shortage in New Zealand

The other morning, I had the pleasure of receiving a phone call from New Zealand. In my everyday circumstances, I would have been quite excited by that fact alone. My additional delight though, was fuelled by my interviewee. Kody Neilson, The Mint Chicks frontman, I pray, was oblivious to my nervous excitement. My fingers are still (figuratively) crossed (literal crossing made typing an impossibility) in the hope that the poor fellow saw it as youthful enthusiasm and perk. The Mint Chicks hail from Auckland and present to the world a force of power-pop-punk that’s largely unrivalled by current popular music.

I began my questioning with an obvious opener: who are The Mint Chicks? Answer being: “A male four piece from Auckland, kind of, pop-post-punk, kind of experimentalish sort of music.” An appropriate response, I thought. I pressed on.

The next question proved more difficult than the first. You’ve had a bit of a style change; I posed. In my mind this would herald a simple response of “yes, we’re a bit poppier now” or the like. In reply I received, “style change,” his kiwi accent intonated in the style of a question. After some gentle goading Kody proceeded to tell me about his new haircut. After hearing about his new orange shoes, an epiphany seemed to come to him. “Damn it, that’s not what you mean, is it?” Once we were on the same wavelength I elicited a reply in the vein of what I’d prepared for.

“I don’t know if it’s changed so much. I mean, we’ve developed a little bit. We’ve probably just gotten a bit more like…sort of simpler. More focused on one sort of idea of music I suppose, just more melodic. And not being afraid of being a bit more repetitive. Where as we used to just sort of cut ideas short, just keep it changing. I dunno, we don’t really do that so much anymore.”

An infamous episode at the Big Day Out saw The Mint Chicks appear on stage with a chainsaw. Apparently, this is a one time only performance. “That was just because there was like an advertisement in front of, like blocking, part of the stage off, y’know; it was going up to like knee height. So I just took that along, just in case it was still there and just took it out before we started. Um, yeah, no, it’s not a big part [of our performance].”

Whilst on that account the shows weren’t quite as wild as I’d come to suspect, after researching. Mr Neilson was still quite the dancer, as demonstrated by the video clip on their website. “Ah, nobody ever taught us [to dance], maybe just watching heaps of different people…like James Brown and Cedric from Mars Volta and there’s heaps like Michael Jackson and shit.” A pause, while what sounds like a herd of non-specific emergency vehicle’s sirens wailed in the background. “Oh, my mum was a dancer, she’s like been dancing since she was teenager. She was a Hawaiian hula dancer. Not that she’s tried to teach us any of that stuff or anything but maybe it’s just sort of natural, I don’t know.

After that somewhat startling revelation I went for a more traditional question. Before I knew it the cliché, ‘who’s your biggest influence’ had slipped from my mouth. He pondered. “Iggy Pop…Miles Davis…Frank Zappa.”
Again, I moved forward, asking a question that I thought showed my superior journalistic ability. It didn’t. I asked, “What was it like working with Howie Weinberg.” Weinberg being one the names behind recordings by Nirvana, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and the White Stripes. I thought Kody’s opinion would provide a fascinating insight. It didn’t…well not as fascinating as I had hoped. “Well, we didn’t actually work with him. We just gave him our album…we sent it over to New York and he just mastered it. Like I would have liked to have gone over and met him and stuff like that, but it would have been quite expensive.” At least, I suppose, I’d cleared up my own confusion.

He has however worked with his brother and father. He says “it’s cool.” He said he’d worked with his brother (Ruban) “for ages, so it wasn’t that much different doing this record, apart from getting at each other’s throats more, because we were working on something more intensely.” He also said getting his dad’s opinion was good due to his different taste. “He’s more into a bit more like just jazz and Latin…and Latin jazz and stuff like that.”

As my pauses between questions grew whilst I searched for fresh lines of interrogation, I was told that I sounded like I was “in space or something.” The discussion eventually diverged to the speed at which the Big Days Out sold out in Australia. He seemed surprised.

Inspiration came and I asked what tickled his musical fancy. He gave Not So Experimental a plug. “They’re pretty loose. The singer sounds like he’s like a strangled jack russell dog or something…it’s like real high pitched, it’s pretty crazy.

After positing my wisdom on the nature of the jack russell, I put on my serious journalist chapeau (it’s French for hat). I discovered that it’s Kody’s belief that “marijuana” (he laughed and offered a half hearted retraction “nah, nah, nah”) “too much procrastinating” and a sort of self consciousness are the biggest problems facing New Zealand’s music industry.

Finally, as my allotted time fast approached its end I threw my chapeau out the window and discussed lunch with Kody Neilson. And that I will tell my grandchildren.

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