MOLLY KARLOFF – AN INTERVIEW WITH SIMON GEE
Like countless other bands who had their schedules disrupted by Coronavirus, the Oxfordshire-based Hard Rock trio Molly Karloff have weathered the storm to emerge with news of a highly anticipated debut album and tour plans for 2023. I spoke to frontman Simon Gee about the upcoming new record and discovered that working with complete bastards may actually be the best route to world domination!
[Anne] Your second EP Supernaturalation (the follow-up to the 2018 debut EP Dancing for Money) was released in March 2020 – what has the band been up to since then?
[Molly Karloff] Well, apart from being locked down and having to cancel our tour, we’ve been mainly writing tracks for the new album, then getting into the studio to actually record the thing. Oh, and we ran a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign to help fund some of it!
[Anne] How were you and your plans affected by the pandemic and lockdown?
[Molly Karloff] I think it’s fair to say they were completely fucked up, haha! Without the pandemic, we’d have toured, played various cancelled festivals, recorded the album a good year earlier, and we’d have taken over the world by now, obviously! But we were or are in the same boat as every other band, apart from the taking over the world bit of course!
[Anne} How would you describe your distinctive sound to someone who’s never heard your music?
[Molly Karloff] Oh I hate this question, haha! It’s hard to put music into words, but I do have a penchant for big hooks and catchiness. That just seems to be what comes out of my brain, usually while stood in the shower with no way of writing down or recording my idea! I think it’s heavy-ish Rock, with big riffs and choruses. When I ask anyone else to describe us, nobody ever says the same thing, so make of that what you will!
[Anne] Last year saw the re-release of your brilliant single “She Said”, mixed by renowned producer Romesh Dodangoda. What was the reason for the re-release?
[Molly Karloff] Yeah, we did! There was a lot of talk as we came out of lockdown (and went back in and out) of how it was affecting the mental health of everyone. Some of us are lucky and have outside spaces we can use, just to get to some nature and chill, but if you’re in an inner-city apartment or flat, you’re kinda fucked in that respect really. Cabin fever doesn’t even come close – the isolation from friends and family had a massive negative affect that is still being felt now, I think.
So, re-releasing ‘She Said’ seemed like a glaringly obvious thing to do, just because of the subject matter of the song, about trying to get your shit together, burying how you feel inside and presenting a nice face to the world even though you wanna just scream and destroy shit! We had a chat with our local MIND charity and asked their advice and whether they’d be into backing our idea.
Luckily, they didn’t tell us to fuck off and loved the idea. So that’s what we did, and got our new label, Off Yer Rocka, to agree to donating all the royalties to MIND. It was amazing that Planet Rock decided to play the track on their main playlist for three weeks which would’ve been great for boosting the royalties, so kudos must go to the guys at Planet Rock too for helping out with our cause (whether that was deliberate or not).
[Anne] “Do It Again” which was another of the singles mixed by Romesh, was accompanied by an insane music video in which the band dressed up as medics in a hospital, where things went a little crazy! What’s the meaning behind the song and the video?
[Molly Karloff] Haha! Yeah, shooting that video was basically us fucking around with loads of medical equipment that a mate who is an orthopaedic consultant surgeon let us use. He also has a film studio, so we did it all there. The song is loosely about when things fuck up and just owning it and not regretting what you’ve done. Regret can eat you up, so just admit you’d do it the same way again, even if it does seem mental after the fact.
There are lots of things you can do that seem stupid afterwards, and hopefully you just laugh about it. That kind of led to the subject of the video, which as you say got a bit crazy as we started adding more and more inappropriate things to a medical environment such as the doob and the drill, etc.
[Anne] Spring 2023 will see the release of your debut 10-track album Breaking Out! What can you tell us about the album?
[Molly Karloff] Well, I think it’s fair to say that it’s fucking awesome! I’m only slightly biased though, haha!
A lot of it was written during lockdown, and I even recorded some of the demo vocals with Covid. It was just a manic writing-fest going on, we threw a lot of material away because it didn’t quite cut our “would you buy it’ filter, but we ended up with 23 tracks that we wanted to distil down to ten tracks with the intention of getting it all onto a single 12” vinyl record along with CDs.
We started recording with one guy, and we weren’t getting the results we were expecting. Cut a long story short, we ended up working with Mike Exeter who basically came in to rescue the project and bring some normality to proceedings.
He won’t mind me saying that he was a complete bastard, and kicked our arses the whole way through, in a good way, to raise the bar. He just didn’t accept any old crap! There’s no “that will do” with him. You realise why he won a Grammy for that Black Sabbath album, and with that in mind, you realise you should go with what he suggests even when you wanna kick against it; he always ended up being right which was obviously annoying, haha! He even helped with re-writing some of the material such as lyrics and other stuff, so he’s got a writing credit on the album too.
The album took around a year to complete just because of schedules, and our stuff being fitted in around Mike’s existing commitments. For example, Mike was brought in to work on the closing ceremony of the Commonwealth Games that Black Sabbath played and so work on the album had to be put to one side for a couple of weeks. It was stuff like that, but in the end it’s definitely all been worth it.
We’re planning to release the album on 10th March 2023 with a supporting tour following. The launch date kind of coincides with HRH Spring Break that we’re playing at which is kinda cool. We’ll call that our launch party, haha!
[Anne] What are the songs on the new album about?
[Molly Karloff] Ooh! Anything and everything! I guess there’s that recurring theme with my lyrics about social injustices, etc. The title track is about trying to “make it” in the entertainment industry and getting a bit long in the tooth with all the bullshit. ‘Black Flame’ tackles greed destroying the planet and everyone’s lives. ‘Higher Than The Sun’ highlights how women have to work twice as hard at the same things and still get nowhere even when they’re better, just by virtue of a lack of a penis! I guess you get the picture…
[Anne] What are some of your favourite lyrics off the new album and what do they mean to you personally?
[Molly Karloff] Wow, so we’re getting deep then?! Shit! Haha! I thought this was gonna be an easy interview?! Have you been talking to Mike Exeter?!
Okaaay! Well, that’s a tough one to be honest, because lyrically what I like best kind of depends on my mood. Erm, I think maybe ‘Ain’t Gonna Dance’ has the most personal meaning. “Self-esteem isn’t something you can clean” would probably be the line I’d pick. The song is about abusive controlling relationships and having witnessed that kind of behaviour first hand as a kid. The chorus then imagines, what if you went back to before that relationship started and it never happened? What if you never spoke to that person, or agreed to dance with them?
[Anne] Will you be releasing any of the tracks as singles prior to the album launch?
[Molly Karloff] This is still kind of in flux at the moment, but yes, there is a single release planned for the New Year. Currently, it looks like “You Don’t Know My Name” will be the first release, but that’s all I know for now.
[Anne] Where can we see you play in 2023?
[Molly Karloff] Well, we have a few dates already announced. As I mentioned, we’re playing HRH Spring Break in March, and we’re supporting a local Oxford band at their album launch party in February too. I guess the only thing I can say at the moment is the old “watch this space” when we announce more dates to support the album.
[Anne] What’s next for Molly Karloff?
[Molly Karloff] Come on! That’s obvious, isn’t it?! World domination of course! Hahaha! More of the same is the real answer, but with less of pandemic induced interruption!
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