Most bands are inspired by where they first came together. Whether it be a college dorm, a flashy record studio, or a local venue, all of these locations foster community, allowing a group of musicians to create something bigger than themselves. But nomadic rock band Mamalarky throws this notion out the window by seemingly being from everywhere.
Despite the band’s insistence on never staying in one place, hopping from Atlanta, to Austin, to Los Angeles, Mamalarky has overcome this geographical spontaneity.
Officially forming in Austin in 2016, the four friends, vocalist/guitarist Livvy Bennett, multi-instrumentalist Michael Hunter, drummer Dylan Hill, and bassist Noor Khan, are all based in different cities across the U.S. However, the group melds together despite the distance between them.
“It’s a long-distance relationship, and we’ve learned a lot about how to work through that,” said Bennett in an interview with The Beacon. “I think we’re just so used to it being a band that doesn’t all live in one city, it doesn’t seem crazy to us, people are always like, ‘How do you practice?’ And we’re like, we don’t really, and that’s just our normal.”
Mamalarky is planning to spend some coveted time together as a group as they tour for their third album “Hex Key,” making a stop at The Rockwell in Somerville on May 13.
Just like their ever-changing home base, Mamalarky is not defined by a singular sound. Bennett said that while she enjoys albums that have a central sound you can absorb yourself in, Mamalarky strives to create music that is spontaneous and experiments with styles.
“We’re [not creating] an album you can lie back into; it’s not something we’ve ever strived to create,” said Bennett.
Bennett added that making an album for Mamalarky is like a quest in a video game.
“If you’re playing a video game and there’s an underwater level, and then a fire level, and a forest level, that’s kind of like how I feel like we’re traversing, making an album,” said Bennett.
Khan elaborated on this idea; she notes Mamalarky is not about achieving a perfectly refined result, but creating something off the cuff. Something natural.
“When we record, it’s capturing a moment. I feel like every day is different and every song is gonna be different,” said Khan. “We don’t ever write a song and then record it and then think it sounds bad and rerecord it, the recording we get is the recording it is.”
“Hex Key” is a beautiful mess of various sounds. It is an album that, on a complete listen, can seem more like a collection of songs from different artists entirely, but its cohesion comes from its “shoot from the hip” recording method.
Bennett and Khan also know they’ve created a key to a bizarre world.
“When we’re asked what our genre is, we always have this reaction of—I don’t even really know. We just make different palettes song-by-song,” said Bennett.
With the band often splintered across the U.S., and with the group always moving around and touring with all sorts of different bands, Mamalarky emerges as an exciting, rag-tag, happenstance musical act.
“When we’re recording, we’re just trying to do something we haven’t done before,” said Bennett, “we’re always trying different things out and seeing what sticks and what makes sense.”
