Mighty Mighty will be releasing a new album, Misheard Love Songs due out in July. This month (12th June) sees the band returning to London’s 100 Club and playing the Hare & Hounds in their hometown Birmingham, with more dates to come following the release of the album.
Mighty Mighty are an indie band formed in Birmingham, England in 1983. After building an enthusiastic following in their home town they came to prominence when featured on the NME’s C86 compilation, and around the same time they released their debut single Everybody Knows The Monkey. This was soon followed by a 12″ single, Is There Anyone Out There? before the band signed to Chapter 22 Records, releasing a string of well-received singles and the album Sharks in 1988.
During 1986-87 they recorded three sessions for John Peel, and one for Janice Long, broadcast originally on BBC Radio One. These recordings continue to get regular play on BBC 6Music.
Guitarist Mick Gerohegan said of the album:
‘As you may know, we had a bit of a career in the late 80s. We sent John Peel our first single self-financed on our own label – and he played it and booked us for a session and that helped us get a track on the “legendary” NME C86 cassette. We went on to release six singles and an album, Sharks. Since then we have released several compilations (including BBC sessions) and, a few years ago, an album of unreleased demos (The Betamax Tapes on Firestation Records).
‘The new album – Misheard Love Songs – has been nearly three years in the making. We made the decision that if we wanted to carry on as a band we were not satisfied playing the occasional gig doing the old songs like a being your own tribute band. Some of the songs are ones that we never got round to recording before our initial split at the tail end of 1988, but the majority are new, written over the last three years. I suppose when you have families, full time jobs and live in different parts of the country it’s inevitable that it takes a bit longer than it did back in our younger days. And then of course it’s that time of our lives when you tend to lose parents – a total of three during the process. Long periods of limbo for illness, loss and mourning. First mine and Pete’s mom, then both H and Russell lost their dad’s. Weirdly me and Pete also lost our dad during the recording of Sharks back in 1987. If you get to hear the album, you’ll spot the not-so-subtle reference to Horace Silver’s Song For My Father on the intro to The Invention Of Love (OK – it sounds like Steely Dan as well).
‘So, why Misheard Love Songs? You may notice the lyric appears in two songs – Weather Girl and The Invention Of Love. A consequence of my writing process – piles of note books with ideas and songs at various stages of completion. An overlap was inevitable at some stage. It is an album of love songs of one type or another, perhaps with the exception of The Profit And Loss Blues. The album title refers to how little we really understand each other and how everyone hears and interprets things differently. The actually meaning of a song is less important than what it is taken to mean by the listener and how it makes them feel. To quote the greats – “Words are trains for moving past what really has no name ” (Paddy McAloon) and “It’s only words and words are all I have to take your heart away” (The Bee Gees).’
Check out single Where Would I be? below!
The band split in 1988, but continuing interest, particularly from Japan, saw the reissue of Sharks in 2000, the release of a compilation of BBC session tracks in 2001, and two compilations of singles and unreleased tracks in 2000 and 2001.
They reformed for the Indietracks music festival in 2009 and then played Popfest Berlin in 2010, followed by Firestation Records of Berlin issuing their ‘lost second album’, The Betamax Tapes, on vinyl and CD, 25 years after it was recorded, in 2012.
In 2013 Cherry Red Records released a major double CD compilation entitled Pop Can – the Definitive Collection 1986-88 which collects most of the band’s released material, namely all their singles, B-sides and EP tracks, alongside several tracks from their only album released during their career, Sharks, and tracks from The Betamax Tapes.