Hailing from the skirts of Haarlem, Make Out Molly are a new two-piece fuzz band based in Amsterdam city. With a few gigs on their back and a new EP coming out on the 1st of April, they are slowly crawling into the Amsterdam’s tight but welcoming music scene. They will be playing our first Heatwave gig of the year together with Londoners More Kicks, so make sure you come down to check them out at Cinetol on the 29th of March.
Rens de Vries, 23 (Guitar and vocals) and Koen Fris, 23 (Drums and vocals) met at the back of philosophy class in high school when they were 16 years old. “We bonded over music and wanted to make music. Soon we started making music together.” They had other bands before of course and something else in the pipeline, “We played in loads of different formations but our main band was The Hedrens, an indie-rock band with friends we knew from high school. We played together for a long time and did a lot of shows. Eventually we were both looking for a different kind of music to play where we both could be totally free creatively. We also started a new band with a friend of ours Lars Woldhuis. We’re called Tamagotchi Paradise and it’s an experimental, melancholic, moody kind of electronic music. But this band is still a bit of a secret.” Well, not anymore…
I always end up asking this stupid question about the band names meaning and I always end up with some really interesting answers. When asked about it, MOM said “We both are not entirely sure, it came to us on a night where we were both inebriated to say the least. Maybe it is a drug reference, maybe it is just a playful reference to mommy. We do use the MOM thing a lot which is quiet cutesie. But as far as the meaning behind the name goes, take your pick. Do you want cute or grimy?” Grimy, always, of course 🙂
The band composes the music together or jointly as they say. They have no limits, which is always a good piece of advice in not getting stuck in the same rhythms. Although they are really fond of the concept of short and sweet most of the songs come from a long jamming session and a good build up. “We are not very high energy guys but as soon as we start playing there is a lot of energy that we can’t turn off. This transcends into our music. We want you to move your body and get hyped.”
They have a big array of influences. Koen is into a lot of Rock music from the 60s and 70s like the Who but also the Clash, more indie and psych, the Verve and Together pangea. “They all have something different that I am in love with.” While for Rens, it is an eclectic mix of the most cheesiest love songs like Lovin’ you – Minni Riperton ‘till the most dirtiest sounding duo known to mankind The Garden. “I just listen to whatever I’m in the mood for. Sometimes it’s something sweet and sometimes it’s something salty.”
Their first release is coming out this 1st of April and you’ll get to hear, I’m sure, some if not all their repertoire next 29th March at Cinetol. The album’s art is DIY, “We are very much into the DIY, lo-fi kinda approach of this release. Just do shit yourself. You are the one who knows how you want your music to sound, just do it yourself. We like the full creative control we have over our music and everything around it. Even though it comes with limitations, everything that we do, is us. So yeah we liked the artwork to be a bit tacky and ugly. In a good way though.”
When asked if there are any plans on touring soon and what are the plans for the future, MOM said, “We are currently doing a fair few shows to promote our EP the coming months and there will be more added soon. In Haarlem we are doing a month long Make Out Molly take-over of the Wolfhound. We will be playing with different bands to promote ourselves and the bands we are playing with. We want to create more of a following and wanna play more shows so we can work on a full album. And we need to make it on vinyl since owning our own music on vinyl has been a childhood dream of ours. We’ll be posting some live videos soon and are working to get a new single out in the summer.”
Amsterdam’s been bubbling with new bands and this year defo can only get better. We, as always, are in the pit of it and MOM is no less hopeful than the rest of us. “We think there is definitely support for our music but we are working into actually getting our music to them. The music scene is very diverse so to actually find places where your music fits in well with the crowd and the rest of the bands that are playing can sometimes be a bit tricky. But when it does, it’s great. We are very sad to see the sugar factory and pacific parc go as they were great for upcoming artists. So we hope that those kind of places will keep getting support so they will keep afloat cause they are very important to us. There are a lot of opportunities in Amsterdam but there are many other places in the Netherlands that are just as exciting as Amsterdam.”. They also want to show their support and give a little grain to the sand with a new project, “We are trying to organize our own shows so we can create nights the way we like it. We think it is important to see more female (fronted) bands and so we made it a point that when we organize a night, we want to have either an all female band or a female fronted band. We see so many dude bands and we think that having more female bands is good for everybody.”. Agreed of course. In case you are wondering, Skatepark Noord has really good Female only nights and shows that are worth checking out.
Some good bands MOM recommends from the Netherlands and worth to check out are FLOWERS, Pizza Knife, OOO, Charlie and the Lesbians. So go to the shows kids and support the bands, the venues and your local scene. We are all in the pit.
Check them out here:
Heatwave Magazine 