Mên An Tol find themselves, as a band, at one of the more ambitious ends of this spectrum. Drawing from the sounds of Cornish folk and filtering them through the experience of the London-based emerging band, they draft tracks that are as bold and imposing as the set of standing stones the band is named for. Their debut EP, ‘The Country’, has piqued the interest of audience and got critics listening, and a second is now on this way, forging ahead on the same path, suspended between tradition and experimentation. We met up with frontman Bill Jefferson to discuss the past, the future, and the way that lies ahead.
You have a new EP coming up. What can you tell us about that?
Well, it's our second EP, and it’s going to be kind of the other side of the coin from the first one, because it's all recorded in a very similar setup. Same studio, same producer, engineers. But I guess it shows a few more other sides of us as well. There’s a few more popular tracks on there, and the lead single, ‘Not Ideal’, which is out now, was produced by Carlos O'Connell from Fontaines DC. So that's a big difference, having a song with an actual producer coming in and working on it. It was really cool to work with someone like him.
How was that experience of working together?
It was amazing. We were all fans of the band and he heard, I think, our first single, and then came down to one of our gigs and liked it. We got chatting, and I went for a pint with him a few days later. It all happened quite quickly, really, because he's very busy, as you can imagine, being in a huge band. So he was very generous with his time, also just to get in the studio as soon as possible. He's got an amazing ear. You can tell that he's obsessed with sound and bringing out the best in songs. So he played a bit on it as well.
He completely understood the emotion of the song and brought it forward.
You are named after Neolithic standing stones in Cornwall. What's the connection with that and what's the story behind it?
I grew up in Cornwall, so I'm partly Cornish. I feel like I am, because I spent my formative years down there and that's how I sort of picked up playing the guitar and getting into music in general. I don't think I would have necessarily played music at all or certainly not the kind of music I do if I'd grown up in the Southeast. Growing up in Cornwall, I used to go to folk sessions and take a guitar along. And that's how I learned the guitar and I guess fell in love with the simplicity of folk song and how it can deliver a message quickly. Folk songs are always for people, about people. It felt right to call the band something connected with it.
It's a cool name for a folk rock band. These big heavy stones, you know, it made sense visually, too.
I follow an Instagram account that's all about standing stones and things like that, and I just saw it and it just looked right, really. But mostly it's a nod to my musical heritage.
In a way, your music has two souls, a folk one and a more rock, almost quasi-punk one. How do you reconcile them and blend them together?
It's just come completely natural. I guess it's what you grow up with, isn't it? What goes in comes out. And that was a lot of folk sessions in the pub, like I said, but then also listening to alternative guitar music, rock music. My parents would play a lot of The Cranberries, and traditional Irish stuff as well. And yeah, heavier rock music. Then I got into other guitar bands. It was the same with all of us, really. We've all got lots of different influences, but mainly it's a lot of guitar music. Folk as well, we kind of bonded initially over knowing who Nick Jones was and loving his work. He's a 1970s folk guitarist really, but sings songs as well. We didn't try and fuse it together, it just came naturally.
There are several bands emerging now from the alternative scene, blending folk and rock. Do you feel like you're a part of that?
Not really. I mean, I guess we are, just purely out of what genres we do, but I don't know. I feel like for us, the folk thing is less the genre, and more the kind of feeling and the kind of ethos behind the songs being sing-alongable and reasonably simple. We have a mandolin, which is a nod to it as well. We haven't done it because we've heard it's a thing. I'm not a big fan of doing folk as a revival kind of sound. The traditional, finger in the air, kind of singing folk. That was what they were doing in the 70s. We're going to move on a bit, you know, and just make it actually resonate with people.
You've got this connection with Cornwall and now you're based in London. How did you navigate keeping that connection, especially he music scene right now being so London-centric?
I think there is a Cornish element, purely because a lot of the melodies and, like I said, the beginnings of my songwriting. That has always been influenced by this sort of jigs and reels and the songs that I would have been singing like growing up. So I guess it's just intrinsically in there a bit, whether I like it or not. But it's also, I think, quite a crucial point that knowing the band is actually born and bred in London. So I think we can afford to have a slightly romanticised view of London because we kind of came here because it's the place you go to sort of, you know, fulfil your dreams or whatever. I think it helps that we're not from here. It's the cliche, the romance of the big city, you know, and so we've got that. I guess we've got rose tinted glasses for London, a little bit. Well, maybe not rose tinted, maybe more kind of cider tinted.
Any gig in particular you've enjoyed playing?
What really meant a lot was our first show that we put on. We decided not long into being a band that we'll put on our own headline show, and we did it. It was quite a big room, but we just tried it and we put it on.
And it was really busy. It was quite early on that probably like a real highlight was, you know, just it was mainly just like friends and family. The band didn't really have fans at that point. So it was just nice to have a room full of people and having a good night. So that was a highlight. But recently we played a festival in the Netherlands called Valkhof, and that was quite an experience. We arrived maybe like two, three in the afternoon. They were already just blasting happy hardcore with a guy dressed as a slice of toast crowd surfing. It was the most Dutch thing. It felt like, OK, we're definitely in the Netherlands now, because it was like so early. That kind of thing might happen in the UK, but not until early hours of the morning. But they know how to have fun in the Netherlands, for sure.
Anywhere you haven't played yet that you'd like to play, or that you're planning to?
We would like to just play bigger and bigger venues, really. I'd love to play the bigger London venues at some point. We're ambitious, we want to do bigger gigs. But we want to do it step by step. So maybe a Forum or an Academy or something like that, in a few years. That's a real dream. We want to write big songs, we're not trying to be a cool indie band. We want to write big songs that connect with as many people as possible.
As Music Is To Blame, we do like to ask: what is to blame for your music?
I guess having parents that want to go to the pub and having to go with them, and then thinking, someone had a guitar, you borrow that person's guitar and just jump in there. I guess that's what to blame for me.
Do you have any more long term plans? Where do you see the band going next?
The second EP is out on the 26th of September, and that at the same time as that coming out, we're putting out a 12 inch like physical vinyl of both of the EPs as well. Then we're going on tour, a UK tour with a band called Cardinals. But we are also writing all the time. We've always got stuff on the go. After these September dates, we've got a bit of time just to actually purely concentrate on getting a good handful of songs that could be maybe an album, maybe another EP. We haven't even spoken to anybody about what we're going to do yet. For us, it's just about getting it's all just about getting the best songs we can.
Chiara Strazzulla
Image: Cuan Roche
If you enjoyed reading this article please consider buying us a coffee. The money from this pot goes towards the ever increasing yearly costs of running and hosting the site, and our "Writer Of The Month" cash prize.