Chapel Hill-based power pop cult favorites The Mayflies USA—Matt McMichaels, Matt Long, Adam Price, and David Liesegang—have reunited to release Kickless Kids, their first new album since 2002.
Brooklyn Vegan hailed “Calling The Bad Ones Home,” the album’s recently released first single, “a lovely two-minute power-pop earworm. They haven’t lost their touch.”
Produced, recorded, and mixed by Tim Harper, longtime sound engineer for North Carolina’s The Connells, Kickless Kicks delivers a catchy 12-song collection of melodic classic alt-pop, a Mayflies hallmark going back three decades to their earliest days at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. “We got these songs down so organically,” says bassist and singer Adam Price, “it never felt like we were trying to get the final, album version of anything. We just got a good version here, a good track there, an overdub here, a remix there, and the album slowly started to come into focus. It’s the way you hear about bands we love making records in the sixties and seventies, this slow, accretive process—a labor of love.”
Formed in 1996, in the afterglow of the Chapel Hill indie rock scene that introduced bands like the Archers of Loaf and Polvo to the world, The Mayflies USA’s first three albums garnered wide critical acclaim. For their early albums, they connected with producer Chris Stamey from North Carolina legends The dB’s and the unofficial “Fifth Mayfly”--Stamey reprises his latter role on Kickless Kids with post-production additions to several tracks. After logging 350 shows in six years of touring and no commercial breakthrough, the band disbanded in 2002.
“We all went off and did our thing,” says McMichaels. “Adam’s an acclaimed novelist; Matt Long became the Rolling Stones’ production assistant and learned a lot about guitar just being in Keith Richards’ orbit; and I really had to step up playing with Chris in his Big Star thing [Matt plays in Chris Stamey’s long-running Big Star tribute ensemble].” The original drummer, David Liesegang, had to bow out of the reunion due to a chronic arm injury, although he does appear on one Kickless Kids song, “Less Lost.” Stepping in for the rest of the album is Tony Stiglitz, an old friend of the band who McMichaels calls the Bun E. Carlos or Clem Burke of Chapel Hill. “In the old days we might have sounded like the Raspberries, but we were living a lot more like The Replacements, almost feral. But we’ve all learned how to actually play since then. I think we’re a really good rock band now.”
