You put on any Mamalarky song and you instantly know it’s gonna be good. It’s easy to listen to but not for any lack of sophistication, complexity, or depth. It’s easy to listen to because it feels so honest — like it was written in one fell swoop in a fit of prodigious genius, but, like, at a party just having fun with it? Livvy’s melodies are conversational, bouncing and floating with a cantor of someone you want to get stuck talking to at that party (RIP parties). The chorus for “Hero,” for example, feels a little like a vocal warmup, like she’s reminding her voice to have fun, relax a little. Noor’s bass is the other half of the convo, agreeing or maybe offering a point to the contrary every now and then. Michael’s keys flit around, asserting themselves occasionally but often adding the texture and sound that keeps you buzzing, reminding you to speak up. Dylan’s drums are the room that holds it all and reverberates the sound with its walls.
The band comes together from different little corners of the same kind of musical world, with Livvy Bennett also having been Cherry Glazerr’s bassist, Michael Hunter recording and touring with White Denim, Dylan Hill with Big Wy’s Brass Band, and Noor Khan acting as Faye Webster and Madame Gandhi’s tour manager. Livvy, Michael, and Dylan all knew each other from growing up in Austin, but Noor came into the picture through a right swipe on Livvy’s Tinder account, which she’d set up to find said bassist. Why not, right?
Mamalarky’s self-titled debut album is out today via Fire Talk (Dehd, Deeper), and I literally couldn’t be more excited for everyone to hear it in full. This record has been for me that party feeling, that warm feeling, that social feeling, somehow. It holds an energy in it that I haven’t heard in anything else that, even in the slowed-down moments has this unstoppable lo-fi high-momentum.
3/4 of the band have recently relocated to Atlanta, GA, and when we all hopped onto Zoom, Livvy, Noor, and Michael were cuddled up on their big cushy couch together and ready to just chat.
by Sara Cath
How long have you been in Atlanta?
Noor: We’ve been here two months to the date basically now.
Why’d you go there?
N: My family lives here and when Corona hit I just was like, I want to be around family and then we kind of collectively ended up making the decision to all move here.
Livvy: It was an adventure of a move — the day before the move. Idk if you’ve ever tried to get a U-haul in a major city but our U-hauls were canceled and we were like we’re just gonna load up my really old car and do this. My really old car broke down in El Paso, like, so hot, so stressful.
N: It was like 120 degrees.
L: I am not exaggerating when I say like having y’all there made it kind of easy. I feel like we already work as a team so well that it never got to panic mode. It was like, my car broke down and I just couldn’t finish the rest of the travel in my car. We had to get a car rented from an airport. I had to go into the El Paso airport to get a pickup truck and cover all my belongings in the back of a pickup truck and tie it down…
N: Honestly it was, it worked, it happened.
L: It worked but like…
N: Were we traveling during mercury retrograde?
L: I don’t even know.
What’s it like in Atlanta right now?
N: Atlanta’s ridiculous, it’s almost completely open. I pass by clubs that are filled with people, line out the door, no masks on.
L: Yeah there’s bars that are filled up.
Michael: I stopped to get some coffee this morning, cafe’s packed with people.
N: It’s crazy out here, half the people are just like staying at home not doing anything and the other half are doing everything normally again.
Yeah it’s scary. I love the record first of all.
N: Thank you so much for listening to it!
Yeah of course, I feel like I’ve done a lot of interviews on e-mail recently but the only other band I’ve actually spoken to recently was Dehd, who’s also on Fire Talk. How you feel about being on that label?
L: We were very excited, we’ve been fans of bands on their roster for a while. We were really excited when we first started talking to them just like, yeah — knowing that, it’s really cool. It’s sad that we were supposed to go to Brooklyn this year and then we didn’t.
N: We were also supposed to play South By and play a Fire Talk showcase and meet all the other bands and yeah — that was sad to miss.
L: We’re just little virtual buddies now.
N: Exactly yeah, we all just kinda support each other in IG on social media put each other on our playlists, whatever, just waiting patiently for the day when we can see each other’s faces.
Yeah well hopefully, knock on wood, sometime in the not-too-distant future. A while ago, at the beginning of quarantine, you said somewhere, “I’m just so bored, we’re bored.” Are you still bored or have you figured out how to not be bored?
L: We figured out better how to not to be bored, and everyone else — that feeling of stagnation is something you get used to, but we also have a record coming out so now it’s more like there’s stuff for us to do all the time.
N: At the beginning of quarantine we were like figuring out our album release too, and like, we are a new band we could wait another year, two years? We were just like when and how are we gonna do this? And then just getting all that together.
L: I donno I still feel like it’s a groundhog day scenario.
M: And even if you’re constantly busy, you still have boredom that is just there.
I hadn’t specifically paid attention to the lyrics of your songs before just cause I was just like, listening to the music, but I love all of your lyrics so much. I was wondering if anybody studied writing or anything like that — who writes?
L: I write the lyrics and I really have no idea what I’m doing??
Well you’re doing great! Specifically for “Fury”, I didn’t realize how sparse the lyrics were. Was that intentional?
L: I didn’t have any lyrics written after we had recorded all the instruments. We recorded everything, and then I was just listening to it, and then I wrote down my first thoughts. And it’s kind of a short song so it just came out pretty quickly.
Awesome, I love that. I feel like there’s a lot of storytelling in your lyrics. Do you like to tell stories?
L: Yeah I think so a lot of my songs are about specific days, or usually it’s about the few days before I recorded the song or wrote the lyrics, but I donno, maybe they are telling stories. I almost feel disconnected from what I’m trying to achieve when I’m writing lyrics, I feel like I just really wing it every single time.
It comes off really very honest, and very immediate.
L: That IS a goal, I am always being very honest about how I feel.
I mean that’s a good way to be in life, right?
L: Unless it’s like a job interview and you have to say like
N: White lies
L: Like ‘you know I could kinda hate it here…’
N: Then maybe don’t be honest…
Right haha — a lot of these questions are about the lyrics cause I just kind of like went in — what’s “Hero” about?
L: “Hero” is about when you have a crush that’s so deeply in your head that you’re inventing storylines about it and you realize how disconnected from reality that it — I literally have a whole storyline and relationship in my brain in that reality we’re thriving, you know? But it’s like yeah, maybe you see that person and it’s like oh shit, this is not real. That’s kind of a dangerous game to play — you can really um, I can’t remember what I said. Oh! I think you can impose the things you think this person would be like in a relationship… or idealize that.
Have you ever been in a specific — this is me asking from my personal experience ahaha — have you ever been in an online relationship and then met the person?
L: No, I actually haven’t, but I would imagine that would be a very easy way to do that because yeah you’re not getting the times where it’s like, we’re waiting in CVS and the lights are really unflattering and this is really how we are together. No, when we talk on the internet we’re flirting, we’re trying to win each other over. I’m sure that’s very real!
You’ve talked a lot about what it means to love someone and what loves means, and can it mean the same thing — do you ever think about how every time you love someone it’s a different thing? Do you think it could ever be the same thing? What makes each time you love meaningful??
L: I think that’s very true and very valid, and as you grow you learn what you need in relationships and what kind of love you are seeking —
N: I feel like there’s a very basic principle of attraction like if you meet someone and you’re really attracted to them, that is a very specific feeling. There’s also feelings of, “wow we get along very well,” like we can build a team or something.
L: Sometimes those things feel very different, or people try to paint them at odds with each other.
N: It’s interesting to think about the different people you’ve loved through your life and whether the way that you loved that person then would translate to how you love now, you know what I mean? I feel like there are people that I’ve loved that now if I met them I don’t think I’d love them?
L: Yeah, I think it’s also interesting when you’re thinking about different relationships you’ve had and different strong points of different relationships, and it’s easy to transpose that onto future relationships.
N: Yeah that’s super true.
And also like you’re constantly changing yourself so how could you constantly put yourself on a different person at a different time…
L: That’s very true — I’m very interested in how this weird isolated, very intense era we’re going through is gonna change relationships. I think a lot of people really cuffed up because ‘we’re in this together. I’m not seeing anyone else, we are now a unit.’
Forced people to be more traditional about it.
N Yeah and they talk more…
L: Yeah and my parents — I was on the phone with my parents and one of my other friends was telling me their parents were saying, ‘we talk a lot now’ – my parents are like we’ve been talking about a lot of stuff and I’m like, okay? Haha — but I think that people just also have more time to go, ‘alright, we’re really together.’ And another cool part about that is building, especially in this house, building a self-sustaining pod. I think a lot of people are going back to traditionalism — growing things and trying to be low waste and stuff is important to us.
N: And investing in your own health, your own wellbeing, your own space. I feel like there’s a big focus right now on putting a lot of love into yourself because you can’t see as many people. You can’t really seek that out from other people right now.
L: My dream is that everyone comes out of quarantine super jacked, super — like they’ve done the inner work, they’ve faced their demons, and now they’re looking for love.
N: That’s so funny…
L: I think that’s gonna happen!
That would be awesome. Are there specific things you guys are doing to build those relationships with yourself?
L: Definitely, I feel like I’ve just had more time to invest in that kind of stuff. At the beginning of quarantine, I made myself dance every single morning. Um — because I was so sad haha — because I was like, I don’t know what to do. I don’t do that as much anymore, but the three of us do yoga together a lot. That’s really cool. Just like —
N: We go on a lot of walks.
L: Yeah — I donno, breathing slowly and really paying attention to your physical body that I neglect when I’m out and about a lot. We’re also fostering kittens, which is something we’ve done twice now. It’s just really nice to give back to little creatures that need you. Yeah, we just cook a lot of really good meals and just hang out.
N: Something they’ve been doing more than I have been is putting more time into mutual aid within the communities they’ve been living in. In LA [Michael and Livvy] were both really involved in the community fridges when they came up, and have gotten involved in Atlanta cause there one right around the corner from our house, so that’s been really important as well to us.
That’s really awesome! And important… but I gotta come back to — what kind of stuff did you dance to when you made yourself dance?
L: A lot of disco. I think disco’s really hitting a peak in our generation right now — I’ve always really been into disco — so have you (Noor), you’ve really been into ABBA! Which is not super disco, like the bass isn’t there but…
N: You’re right it really isn’t!
M: ‘Dancing Queen’ every day, 9 AM.
N: My least favorite ABBA Song, no offense.
L: She likes the Spanish ABBA album.
N: the Spanish ABBA album is SICK! They basically just rerecorded a bunch of their hits in Spanish and it LITERALLY slaps. So good!
I did not know that existed, wow.
N: Amazing. I would recommend, we’ll send you the link if you want it.
I mean yes haha. Curious, for the album art — that’s a rug right?
L: Yeah, it’s this artist I believe they live in Toronto, her name is Hanna Epstein, and yeah we were just looking at different textile arts and really wanting something that looked like you wanted to touch it. And we actually just saw the first physical copy, a CD, and it looks so good. It looks so fuzzy.
N: It looks like there’s a little carpet in it.
L: Yeah it looks like there’s carpet pressed up against the jewel case. You know what I mean?
Rugs are having such a moment…
L: Really true, I wanna learn how to um, it’s not, it’s a hook rug?
N: I know what you’re talking about, I don’t remember what it’s called. My friend Camilla has a gun that does it.
A tufting gun.
N: Yeah she has a tufting gun, and I think that’s probably what Hanna does it with.
L: I like the word tufting gun.
N: Yeah haha that’s funny.
I was trying to figure out why are people so obsessed with rugs right now? Maybe it’s just like people are finding new, more new crafty hobbies?
N: I feel like cross-stitching came back, and rugs were a really logical next step.
L: I also think that like, I’m staring at a rug right now ’cause I’m at home like I should be, so people were probably like really like what rug do I have in my living room because I’m gonna be looking at it all the time?
N: We’ve also been thinking so much about it ‘cause we moved and we were like this space needs to be so sick, you know? Put so much love into decorating our house. And it’s literally the cutest house I’ve ever lived in I think.
Can I see?
N: Oh I will GLADLY show it…
Noor picks up the laptop and shows me a cozy, big, bright living room and dining room, with someone’s sister’s dog lying on the floor. It’s so cute and warm and like home.
N: We have enough space for a studio too.
So nice, so nice
N: Sorry Brooklyn !!
I try to justify paying what I’m paying.
N: We have a massive backyard too, we’re en route for literally homesteading, we have a chicken coop we’re just gonna wait ‘til the spring to get chickens.
Does it not stay warm enough through the winter?
N: I mean kind of? Chickens are fine in the winter and they’ll keep laying eggs if you put heating stuff around their coop, so that it is warm enough for them to lay eggs. When it gets cold they usually just lay less. There are certain breeds that are also known for continuing to lay throughout the winter. I could go on and on.
Haha — ok I’m gonna circle back. How important is it for you to connect visuals — art, photos, videos — to what you’re trying to do with the music itself?
L: I feel like it’s super important to me, I have an extensive saved like different folders on Instagram ‘cause I just follow a lot of visual artists and I have dabbled in it but yeah, I donno, I feel like personally, I will remember a song better if I look at the art and I’m like ‘oh, that matches the song’ or that even is just burned into my corneas to the point that I associate it with that song.
M: I think it’s also one of the most fun parts of the process.
L: Yeah! Match-making cover art to a song is so cool. And sometimes it’s been like that where our cover art for “You Make Me Smile” — the digital cover art — I just found this photo on Instagram and me and this artist were just like, alright, let’s do this! But sometimes you know you make something from the beginning and that’s really cool too. But yeah! Instagram is definitely the main tool for me to discover cool people making visual art.
Do you mainly collaborate with people on the art? Or do you ever make your own?
L: We’ve made our own. The cover for “Hero” was actually something that we made on our own and that was extremely fun to do, but maybe again in the future. I‘m always looking for ways to put on really cool artists
It’s always cool also to just collaborate and lift each other up.
L: Yeahhh!
M: Totally.
L: Especially now, like, I wanna make friends somehow??
Haha, right!! What was it like coming all from being in different bands and musical experiences, what was the dynamic with all that — coming together from your different stuff?
L: When the trio which is me Michael and Dylan started playing together, we had not had any sort of experience really working with other bands and touring with other bands that had happened already, we had already started. So we kind of have this grounding of like, we’ve known each other before we were doing a lot of things in the music industry, and that’s really uniting, but I think as a whole, just having that backlog of experience and having the drive to do it… I think we all discovered how strong our drive was when we were all on the road for a whole year. Basically just cramming in Mamalarky tours in between different things we were working on and that was like, ‘ok we’re obviously ride or dies with this,’ and that is really empowering. And obviously, now we don’t do that as much. But I think it just helps us talk stuff out.
N: Yeah like visualize what we need and execute it really well. You know, ’cause we’ve all toured a bunch now with other artists, we know what we want with our tours, we know what’s possible, we’re more familiar with routing and all that stuff so having that experience was really valuable when you’re at our level, ’cause you’ve seen it and you can make it happen for yourself. Livvy and I would sit for hours and hours a day and book tours together and find openers. From top to bottom we’d do everything on our own. Knowing the process is only gonna help us in the long run.
How important is it to have fun when you’re making music?
N: Whaaaaat!!
L: Really important! I feel like there’s certain times when I’m recording in particular when I’ll get so frustrated but the best songs we’ve recorded I feel like are not stewed over, they’re just —
M: Fun, spur of the moment kind of thing.
L: Yeah! It just feels like an expression that — if it’s good, it’s good, if it’s bad, it’s bad. And I really like that part of it. That’s been a fun part of quarantine too, just recording a bunch of demos. Or varying levels of thought-outness that feel very real to us.
M: Yeah, playful.
L: That being said, I think also what makes us a strong unit is that we’ve really been there for each other on like the hardest of days? Like, we’re so tired from another tour and we’re waking up at 5 am to drive. That’s a special bond that a lot of people don’t go through with their friends. I think it’s really important. I think you can hear it in music. Like any of Marvin Gaye’s discog — I feel like you can hear the instrumentalist are having fun doing what they’re doing and that makes you wanna listen to it.
N: Haha yeah that’s a good example.
L: Some people would argue you can channel any emotion — some music is angry some music is sad so, I donno?! That’s a good question though, I’ll think on that.
Do you feel like you can have fun making sad music or have fun making angry music?
L: Yes?
Do you think they’re exclusive of each other?
L: I remember when I was recording the vocals for “You Make Me Smile,” it was so emotional for me. I was really in my feelings because I cared about the song so much, I kind of felt like I was putting myself in the emotional state of when I wrote the song, which it says, ‘you make me smile,’ but really it’s kind of a sad song?? But I donno. Do I think it’s possible — absolutely. But I think for me personally I kind of find if I’m singing a slower song I kind of put myself in that emotional state, and that’s why people talk about writing music, performing music, and putting it out as such an emotional experience; cause you’re really just putting your feelings for anyone to see and have an opinion about, and relate to in their own way or speculate about. And that is really uncomfortable for me, still. I imagine it’ll get easier but this is the first album so, I’m learning.
N: Because you put out music and then people like thumbs down your YouTube video and it’s like, what the fuck??
M: Not ok.
N: like WHO DID THIS?
L: YouTube is rude.
Since nobody’s been able to perform live everything that’s been online, do you feel any more or less vulnerable in that way, since you haven’t been able to actually physically be in front of people?
L: There’s like a weird tossup of whatever live set we record is just gonna exit in this one way completely surveilled by this camera. It just exists…
N: And we have to like, watch it back.
L: And yeah, we have to watch it back, but I feel like I think everyone misses that experiential thing of ‘you had to be there for the show.’ There was an emotion in the crowd which TRULY influences the performance of what’s happening on stage so much. And I love that. And I miss it a lot. But I, I donno, I think you can also hone in on being tighter, and making it sound really good when you’re doing streaming stuff. We’re gonna do our first drive-in show in a month or two. We’ve been talking about it — looking at people through their car windows. Haha, it’s gonna be weird but we’re gonna give it a go.
M: Sounds extremely vulnerable in a way.
Yeah — I hadn’t thought about the permanence of these live streams!
L: Right?
‘Cause music is such a temporary, temporal thing and when it’s live you have to be there, but now these videos, they’re just gonna still be… there.
L: And it really feels that way. Have you ever been at a show and you’re like, ‘this is so good, I’m not at all under the influence of any substance, this is just purely good,’ and you record it on your phone and you play it back and you’re like… what just happened?
N: It doesn’t even do anything.
L: It doesn’t capture it! you can’t capture that feeling — and I’m gonna be so happy when it comes back, haha.
N: Livvy and I went outside for some reason — I’ve been really into Pokémon Go so we were just gonna go walk to a gym, and we walked outside and we heard live music — we knew it was live music, and we couldn’t figure out where it was coming from. We were walking around trying to follow the sound but it was just bouncing off the houses.
L: We thought we were hallucinating. A certain points it was like, ‘it’s coming from here, it’s coming from here,’ and we walked around for like 25 minutes.
N: And we heard someone like, ‘ah thank you for coming’ — I don’t even know, and then we heard someone — saw someone pass by on a bike and we were like, ‘is there a show happening?’ And they were like ‘yeah, its like way back somewhere,’ I don’t even know. And we tried to find it so hard like we wanted to feel that feeling! You know? We wanted to see it so bad… and we never found it. But —
L: And for the record, they were, like, killing it.
N: They were KILLING it. They really were. It was jazz? Oh my god, it was amazing. And we would think we were walking towards it and then the sound would disappear. It was like that kind of thing it felt, crazy. Mysterious.
So what’s next?
L: We have a virtual show at Baby’s All Right on Nov 24th, we’re super excited about that. New music, and lots of online shows. Now that we’re living together we’re really signing ourselves up for that. But yeah! Putting out an album! Feels like the one thing but there’s all these little things that come along with it. I think my mind is just blown that we’re still doing that haha.
Did it get pushed back?
N: We could never tell if it felt like a good time to put out an album, but we were like, we should just get it out before the end of the year.
There’s no good time.
L: Exactly.
No good time, no bad time, just — time. I donno if this records the video — if you wanna pose I’ll take a screenshot?
L: Omg so fun — pants in pants out? Dang now I wanna do photobooth on my laptop just for fun.
If you wanted to — you could send to me and I’ll include! It was awesome talking to you guys
N: this was super fun, thank you!
I’m glad that you all get to be together and have a little family. I really really do love the record and I can’t wait to one day to see you live and hopefully say hello IRL
N: Mmm as soon as possible!
Follow Mamalarky on Instagram here, Stream their record out today via Firetalk here. Get tix for their virtual show at Baby’s next Tues, 11/24 here.