We Rock Harder Than
Dave Math thews Band

Math The Band sounds inherently excited. The speeding bpm’s, twirling synth lines, megaphoned voices in unison and general insanity sounds like it’s produced by a couple of kids that never sleep. Well, it could be partly true; Kevin Steinhauser and Justine Mainville definitely have the crazy streak, making hyper animated speed Atari rock, chock-full of vintage synthesisers and giddily excited, youthful voices. And they play roughly 140 gigs per year.

Yet broach them about their own energy levels and you’ll find they hardly rival that of their music’s. “A lot of times people are surprised when they hang out with us that we’re pretty mellow people,” Justine laughs when I interview the duo via Skype. “Yeah, like we don’t usually listen to anything as crazy as we write, or don’t usually act like our songs might make us seem like we would,” says Kevin. They’re hanging out watching their cat Meatball watch an animal documentary. “We turned the TV off and he’s lookin’ all around it to see where the bird’s gone,” she giggles. “He’s adorable.”

In MTB Kevin writes all the songs and lyrics himself on his obscene collection of vintage synthesisers. He’ll then show these to Justine, who will find her parts and add instruments. “We’re a live band, I mean our recordings are fun or whatever but we really pride ourselves on our live shows,” says Justine.

The couple met by chance when Kevin came as Math The Band to play at Justine’s college. She was in another band at the time, she says, “He came and played and I thought he was really funny and cute or whatever, and we kind of stayed in touch. We played another show together a few months later and basically made plans and then a couple days later we were boyfriend and girlfriend! It was pretty easy.”

‘Easy’ is a recurring theme in MTB, everything stems from a natural inclination to promote a fun and varied environment. They’re inspired by other high energy performers such as Atom And His Package and Andrew WK, the latter they’ve covered acoustically (download below). “We get along pretty well, especially when it comes to band stuff, we get along pretty easily,” Justine says.

“I’ve had other people in the band (before) too, and Justine’s been the easiest band member, she’s the only other band member that’s lasted more than a couple months,” says Kevin.

Their songs are infectiously happy in a screaming-from-the-roof-tops-in-ecstatic-glee sort of way. With latest album Don’t Worry, released in May, they “just wanted an album that exploded for 25 minutes,” says Justine. And it definitely does. Upbeat and anthemic college rock melodies dealing with issues such as horse racing, bigfoot and friends, all collide into each other, save for the gong sound at the end of every track.

“You know how artists sign their paintings?” Kevin asks, “That’s what we sign our songs with. From this point on every song is going to have a gong at the end of it, on every album. That just started with this album, it’s the new tradition,” he says. “We think it’s really funny,” laughs Justine.

“Gongs are really expensive, but once we can afford it we’re going to hire a professional drummer to come with us and just hit the gong at the end of every song,” continues Kevin. “That’s the dream, and then to have a conductor. Kevin wants to “have somebody in a tuxedo just stand at the back in the stage and hit the gong after every song.” “We’d put him to work throughout the day, too,” chimes Justine. “Yeah he’d be our driver too.”

Recently the band has grown to the size where it needs a bit of help. The pair has signed to Slanty Shanty records in the states, and are now looked after by the New Jersey-based Underground Management.

“We’re still recording ourselves and booking all our own tours and shows and things like that, but what Cory (Slanty Shanty)’s doing is getting our CDs in stores, and getting the CDs out to radio stations and press people. All that stuff that I didn’t wanna not necessarily waste my time on, but stuff that I didn’t really think was as important. So all we’re doing is spending our time writing and playing shows, and they’re doing the businessy things that we didn’t do before.”

The band moves fast. Don’t Worry was only released a few months ago, but they have already begun work on the next album, “hopefully we’ll have the new one done by the Spring time,” Kevin says.

There would have been a new triple album from MTB’s acoustic brother project, Acoustic Math, out already, but it was lost in a technological black hole. “This might make you a little bit sad, but I recently had my computer die, and we had three completed albums that are completely gone now, like 100% nowhere. We had I think just about two hours worth of stuff. We’re working on recording all that again now, but that was like two and a half years of working on that, it was like a triple album. I was so bummed out, but oh well.

“I still remember how to play most of the songs, so we can go back and make ‘em again, but yeah, it was completely done, we were going to put them all out on cassette. They were going to be out now, but they’re all gone now.”

Joining the recent cassette revival (“It’s cheap”), Kevin says “We’re putting out another one of our CDs on cassette, and I think we’re putting out all of our old acoustic stuff on cassette too.” Though in some ways impractical for sharing across one’s scores of music players, it retains the sentimentality of the commodity. “If I’m only going to make a couple hundred copies of it, I can either burn CDs, or I can get cassettes made. And I don’t know, I just think having cassettes made is a little bit prettier than burning CDs.”

“There are a couple of cassettes labels we’re actually working with, and we’ve got our new album coming out on eight track also. Hopefully we’re putting the new album out on 12” also – we’re gonna try and have as many mediums as we can!” he says.

The band’s dedication comes across easily. “This is our job right now,” says Justine. “We’re both full time students, and other than going to school this is what we do. So it takes up a really big portion of our lives, but we love it.” Justine is a studying film in Rhode Island, working on a documentary about independent touring musicians in the states, and Kevin is training at the University of Massachusetts, to be an elementary school teacher. His energy and enthusiasm makes this other career path seem like a natural choice.

While he isn’t turning the mirror on himself to write his upbeat anthems, Kevin tries to live by his own words. “I try to be (happy), but a lot of the time the songs are more advice than how we necessarily always are.” Like a self-prescribed happiness oath, treat MTB as a life-enhancer. “It’s kind of like how we know that we should be and that people should be.”

Math The Band- It’s Time To Party (acoustic Andrew WK cover): MP3

Math The Band- Why Didn’t You Get A Haircut: MP3

Math The Band- Myspace

Posted by Sarah Gooding under Massachusetts, Rhode Island, U.S.A