A minute or so into the video for MT’s Alpha Romeo, it all starts to make sense. The camera settles on guitarist Frederik Tyson-Brown, moustache and carefully-curated do included, while in the background Michael Tomlinson is an uncoordinated blur. He’s stamping his feet, flailing a mic lead and generally having a good time. It's about letting go.
On Alpha Romeo, MT, or Many Things, condense ELO strings, a soaring melody and their overarching desire to dance into three minutes and 57 seconds of pop music, displaying both Tomlinson’s introspective lyrical style and a dizzying array of musicianship. “I’m tired of lying, when people ask me if I’m alright. I'm tired of lying when I say that I'm OK,”Tomlinson sings, before an explosion of colour.
“Alpha Romeo is about catharsis,” he said at the band’s north London rehearsal space. “A lot of the songs that we play are quite jubilant, but they come from the dark. The creation of the song and the performance of the song is a transformation of that darkness into light, it casts that off and transforms it into something good. The lyrics aren’t upbeat, but the song itself is upbeat.
“Playing these songs over the past year or more, the sonics are so important to the conveyance of the true message, which is that energy and feeling that the song might give you, no matter what the words are, what the chords are. The result is a feeling, or an emotional response.”
Completed by drummer Macks Faulkron and pianist Gabi Woo, MT premiered the video on November 4, following a countdown on their website, and it's a tribute to their origins as a live act. Directed by Emil Charlaff, it reboots the spirit of their earliest residency shows at Ridley Road Market Bar in Dalston, with a little help from some friends and a few bottles of rum.
“The video is inspired by the shows we did when we were first starting out, at the Market Bar, Wu’s,” Tomlinson said. “We did a residency there. We started off and we had five, six songs and invited all our friends down. The next month we had more songs, and the next month we had more songs and more people came. It was really amazing and the first chapter of our band. It’s a really important part, the community and the friends that we have. That is precisely what we were going for. All those people in the video are our friends.” Woo added, succinctly: “It’s a song. When you hear it, you want to have a little dance. So why not have people dancing in the video?”
MT’s live show forms the backbone of their appeal, but recreating their ebullient sound isn’t always the simplest of tasks. They’ve built up an arsenal of kit since their inception and learned to make it work, steadfastly refusing to cave in to the modern reliance on backing tracks.
“I always thought the sound should be like magical realism, sounding like real performances,” Tomlinson said. “We’re definitely not a drums-bass-guitar band, in any way. We’ve just collected all this shit, all this gear that allows us to make those sounds.
“If we ever want to make a sound, pretty much any sound, we can make that sound. Fred covers guitar, organ and bass, as well as some synthy-style things, with just his baritone guitar, bass amp and some pedals. He’s a bit of a wizard. Gabi plays piano and synth, she’s got four or five synth patches that she plays throughout the song. Macks plays the drums, damn well.”
Acting as musical glue is Tomlinson, who’s front and centre, jumpsuited and ready to tackle even the ‘coolest’ crowds. MT’s music and performances are designed to act as a pick-me-up and so far, according to Faulkron, it’s worked remarkably well. They'll launch Alpha Romeo with a show at Oslo, a new venue in Hackney, on November 28.
“He [Tomlinson] is always the same, so the crowd are always the same,” he said. “The music has quite a universal nature to get people up and be happy, and then you’ve got this lunatic in a jumpsuit in your face. Then everyone’s in a good mood for a bit and you take it somewhere else.
“People go to gigs to have fun, but if you go to indie gigs they’re really fucking moody. Miserable. We did a couple of support tours and they’re the more indie dates that you play. First song, quite a moody vibe. But it always ended up being a joyous occasion. People can’t stand there and just be like that with this. We change people’s moods.”
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