THE SHAKE UP

MEMPHIS MAY FIRE ARE BACK, AND IT FEELS... FAMILIAR. MATTY MULLINS EXPLAINS HOW HE AND HIS BAND WOUND BACK THE CLOCK AND MADE SOME OF THEIR MOST VITAL WORK YET.

- BEN TIPPLE

Matty Mullins still thinks about the taste of ham and cheese M hot pockets.

He'd often pick one up on the walk to the studio to record Memphis May Fire's debut album, 'Sleepwalking'. It was the back end of the noughties, and he had just uprooted his life, jetted across the United States to settle in Dallas, only to end up in Seattle on the phone to his wife ahead of recording sessions.

Hot pocket in hand, he said all the things he couldn't say in the studio. How excited he was to be part of something he knew would be massive. How he felt out of his league but had experienced nothing like it, standing in the studio's vocal booth with producer Casey Bates at the helm.

How right it all felt.

"They say you have your whole life to write your first album, and after that everything is just chaos," he smiles.

And now, almost a decade and a half later, and working up to his band's seventh album 'Remade In Misery', he found himself more preoccupied by demanding touring cycles, being pulled in every direction by countless voices in his ear, and a general lack of focus from just being caught in the tide.

"You never end up devoting the amount of time to a record that you should," he nods.

"But when everything shut down, all we had was the music. Every other aspect of being in a band was gone and we were right here making music the way we started. When it was simplified, everything started to make sense."

Ham and cheese hot pockets aside, Matty admits he is looking at the band's early days through slightly rose-tinted glasses.

"Getting halfway through recording that first album, I realised I had no idea what I was doing, but I was going to keep faking it. 'Blissfully ignorant' is a great way to put it," he grins.