FEATURE: Spotlight: Mandy, Indiana — Music Musings & Such

FEATURE:

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: Harry Steel

Mandy, Indiana

_________

A band…

PHOTO CREDIT: Harry Steel

that are definitely on the rise and catching a lot of love from the press, Mandy, Indiana should be on your radar. They have undergone a name and line-up change, so I am going to include only one interview where the then-trio were just coming through. Formerly known as Gary, Indiana, they wisely changed their name! A lot of bands do acquire new members, and that is the case with the Manchester group. The trio originally consisted of Valentine Caulfield, Scott Fair and Liam Stewart. I am going to stick with the here and now. Before coming to a recent NME interview, here is some information and biography and background to an incredible band that are going to festival mainstays pretty soon:

“Mandy, Indiana “excel at making an impression” (FADER). Today, the Manchester-bred quartet announce their debut album, i’ve seen a way, out May 19th on Fire Talk Records. Recorded in caves, crypts and shopping malls, i’ve seen a way is everything at once: an exquisitely rendered debut, expertly twisting genre to channel the chaos of everyday life. Mandy, Indiana draw on a broad sonic palette of experimental noise and industrial electronics, with frontwoman Valentine Caulfield’s lyrics of fury and fairytales completing the band’s soundworld.

Lead single “Pinking Shears” is all rude swagger and rhythms that strut on metal legs, with Caulfield expressing (in her native French) frustration at the state of the world. She runs through the myriad of inequalities, everyday aggressions, and grievances that plague our existence in late stage capitalism.

Mandy, Indiana thrive in the unexpected, and their live sets have become a vehicle to explore the boundaries of tension and release. The accompanying “Pinking Shears” video, recorded in Manchester, captures their thrilling live performance. The band will make their long-awaited US live debut at SXSW.

Mandy, Indiana’s music is made from their place within the world, having formed out of the fertile Manchester scene and arriving fully-realized. The group initially came to fruition after Caulfield and guitarist/producer Scott Fair met sharing a bill with their former projects. Joined by Simon Catling (synth) and Alex Macdougall (drums), Mandy, Indiana have generated a sound that is once chaotic and precisely tuned. The “Berghain-ready” (them) early single “Injury Detail” was released to a wealth of critical praise from the likes of FADER (deeming the track a “Song You Need”), Stereogum (previously naming Mandy one of 2021’s “Best New Bands”) and Pitchfork, who hailed: “Mandy, Indiana have mastered the sound of mechanized violence.”

Their first recordings emerged around 2019, with a smattering of early singles released not long after, culminating in 2021’s acclaimed “…” EP, released via Fire Talk, which saw the band draw early cosigns including a Daniel Avery remix and support slots from Squid and Gilla Band. The latter’s Daniel Fox mixed several of the tracks on i’ve seen a way, alongside Robin Stewart of Giant Swan. Produced by the band’s own Fair, the album was mastered by indie stalwart Heba Kadry.

Unlikely off-site recording locations with novel acoustics were crucial to achieving i’ve seen a way’s unique sound, from recording screaming vocals in a Bristol mall to live drums in a West Country cave — the latter’s session cut short by literal spelunkers. Other sessions happened in Gothic crypts, where Mandy, Indiana’s physical bass frequencies and experiments with volume competed with underground roadworks in upsetting a yoga class above. i’ve seen a way is a manifesto for these moments of openness and disruption.

i’ve seen a way manipulates chance recording operations into percussive geometries, one where gnarled guitars sit in thickets of distortion and vocals spin knots of lyrical repetitions. Fair explains, “We wanted to alter textures, create clashes, and craft those moments when what you’re expecting to happen never comes”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Holly Whitaker

In Valentine Caulfield, Mandy, Indiana have an incredible and unforgettable lead. I cannot wait for i’ve seen a way. The fact that it was recorded in caves and shopping malls. It gives this sort of natural, unusual, and everyday sound. The band are definitely primed for big things. I am quite new to them, but I do feel like they are going to rank alongside our very best soon enough. Go and pre-order their album. With their new name and solid line-up, Mandy, Indiana are poised for world domination. They already have a footing and fanbase in the U.S. I can see them traveling all around the world and headlining festivals. I will finish up with the NME interview and take portions from it. There are archive interviews with the band but, sometimes referred to as ‘Gary, Indiana’ and listed as a trio, I am sure that they would prefer the Mandy, Indiana quartet to be what we know them as. NME showed them a lot of love and support:

“As students, they each got a taste for eardrum-blowing noise in Withington and Fallowfield basements, and started to play in bands around the city; Fair was interested in combining experimental chaos with visceral, dark vocals in Caulfield’s native French. The band soon signed to New York label Fire Talk [PACKS, Dehd] and were playing big shows and festivals all over the UK, including opening slots for IDLES, Gilla Band and Squid – and a recent slot at Austin’s SXSW. They don’t feel particularly tied to their hometown; Caulfield, who’s originally from Paris, recently moved to Berlin, citing Manchester’s rising costs and disappearing identity.

While recording ‘I’ve Seen A Way’, the band took that idea to a logical if surprising endpoint, by leaving the studio and recording parts of the album in different, bizarre locales — a shopping centre, a “Gothic crypt,” and most challenging, a West Country cave. The band had to haul as much gear as they could carry from the van to the cave’s mouth, then return for another load of it; they had to navigate past cheese-ageing rooms that smelt “like death” and through pools of water. In an eight hour day, they only managed to spend two hours actually recording.

“We couldn’t monitor anything, because the reflections were so loud, even with headphones on and your hands over it with the volume turned up you couldn’t hear,” recalls Fair. “So it was only the day after we got out of the caves that we could actually listen back to what we’d tracked. And luckily it sounded amazing. That basically would have fucked the album if it hadn’t worked, because we spent a big chunk of the budget on that.”

The approach resulted in a roughly-hewn sonic patchwork affect — chaotic, intense and proudly ugly. Each element of the album is geared towards a sort of disorientation. “I embrace chaos, and I think sometimes the vocals and the music butt heads with each other,” says Fair. “Certainly in a live setting, people are like can you turn your amps down ‘cause we can’t hear the vocals loud enough? It’s like, no. It’s supposed to be that battle between those elements. It’s supposed to be about that immediacy, and chance as well sometimes — taking it back to raw, elemental feelings.”

That urgency is crucial to the themes in Caulfield’s lyrics, as well. The tracks on this album, delivered in French, look at political exhaustion and rage, resistance to fascism, and revolution. “I no longer want to wake up when we let humans die in the Mediterranean sea,” Caulfield sings (translated to English) on ‘Pinking Shears’; “Always remember that we are more numerous than them,” she repeats on ‘2 Stripe’.

“We’ve had such a massive drop towards fascism here, but also in France where I’m from,” she says. “We’re destroying the planet at a speed that I think is just unbelievable. It’s hard for me at this point to not be in the state of mind where I’m like, ‘What the fuck is going on here? How are we letting this happen?’ But then again, if you know me as a person, that’s kind of the only thing I talk about”.

If you are new to Mandy, Indiana, then do make sure that you add them to your playlist. With their debut album out next month, there is a lot of excitement around the group. They have this wonderful lead, and a chemistry within the band that is sensational! If there is a level of pessimism in the music of Mandy, Indiana, then fear not. Even though they do document a level of grim reality that is hard to shake off, they provide this music that is nourishing, moving, thought-provoking, rich, and transportive. Inside their incredible songs, you can find…