Sharing Stories: Martha interview

They may hail from a village called Pity Me, but Durham pop-punk quartet Martha's outlook has only ever been wholly positive. Not that there's no sense of drama to their effervescent clusterbombs of hooks'n'smarts – 1967, I Miss You, I'm Lonely is an identifiable tale of long-distance loneliness, filtered through the poetry of Frank O'Hara and a melody to die for, while Curly & Raquel boils overbearing infatuation down to the base urgency of Coronation Street's greatest romance.

Perhaps their sense of positivity lies in the delivery: a heart-on-sleeve fascination with the minutiae of life, and an unerring joy in celebrating even its subtlest details even as they slip away before your eyes. Thus far it's carried them across two sterling albums (2014's Courting Strong and last year's marvellous follow-up, Blisters in the Pit of My Heart) plus a seemingly never-ending tour across the UK and beyond. Listen to the records and you'll learn to love them; catch them live and you'll soon understand that Martha are a band people are beginning to live for.

Ahead of their appearance at Manchester Punk Festival in April, we caught up with the band's Nathan Stephens-Griffin to learn a little more...

The Skinny: It's been eight months since Blisters in the Pit of My Heart was released, and you've been on the road for a good percentage of that time. What else have you been up to?

Nathan Stephens-Griffin: "Eight months already!?! Christ! We've been playing here and there, and putting on a lot of DIY shows in Durham – we've recently had Generacion Suicida from South Los Angeles, and next week we've got Your Heart Breaks from Portland.

"We've spent a lot of time doing day jobs, and not touring as much as we'd all probably have liked to. Jimmy has been driving bands on tour. Naomi has been doing all sorts. Daniel, Naomi and I play in another band, Onsind – we celebrated our ten-year anniversary recently, and we've been working on stuff for a new Onsind record this year."

The Fortuna POP! label, who released both your albums in the UK, is currently in the process of closing down after 20 years. Martha are relatively recent additions to the roster, but how important has the label been for the band?

"I think that Fortuna POP! connection was crucial for us, because it set us on a different path to the one laid out for us in the DIY punk scene. It opened up a lot of different opportunities that I don't think we'd have had otherwise, but let us do things exactly the same as we would have otherwise. It also strengthened our connection with The Spook School and other bands on the label, and helped us to sort of problematise that barrier between punk and indie-pop a little bit."

Do you think record labels – particularly indies such as Fortuna POP! – still have a part to play in the development of new bands in 2017?

"I think they certainly have a curatorial function, and as a stamp of approval. But also money-wise – it's expensive to release records, and we couldn't have afforded to do Courting Strong ourselves; Discount Horse [the short-lived DIY label run by Martha guitarist Jimmy Cleveland] had recently gone on hiatus due partly to financial strain at the time we were recording.

"Whether or not labels can sustain themselves financially is another matter, because the belt is tightening absolutely everywhere. The role and scope of labels is changing, but they still have their place, absolutely. Inexperienced people will always need kind, experienced people to advise and help them."

'Twee' indiepop and notionally more aggressive punk scenes seem to have increasingly crossed over in recent years, largely under the DIY banner rather than anything genre-specific. Are they two sides of the same coin, or is this part of a wider trend of post-downloading music fans demonstrating more eclectic tastes?

"That's an interesting question, because we could get into a whole discussion about the death of subculture more generally and the fluidity of music enthusiasts identity today, but I guess the simple answer is that the divide is often there in theory but not in practice.

"Things are real insofar as they have consequences, and when we let DIY punk be monopolised by laddish, macho, boozy stuff in our heads, that can become a reality in the world. In truth punk has always been incredibly malleable and I imagine the same can be said about indie-pop to an extent. The idea that macho equals punk is something that needs to be unpicked internally and externally."

You toured the UK with Radiator Hospital for the second time this year – any highlights?

"It was a short but very sweet tour, and all of the shows were really busy! We had a lot of fun. I think the highlight musically was the last night in Brighton – Sam [Cook-Parrot, RH frontman] got on stage with us, and Onsind band members Jay and Claire, and we played a cover of I Believe in a Thing Called Love by The Darkness. You can never really tell how something like that will go down, but people were really into it; it was lots of fun!"

Do you think of yourselves and Radiator Hospital as part of a wider like-minded scene? 

"Absolutely. We are kindred spirits in many ways, and we love an excuse to hang out and play together. Hopefully we can do it at their end sometime soon! I think there's a growing scene united by inclusive politics as much as sound."

Who else should we be listening to along those lines?

"There are a tonne of amazing newer bands around at the mo: Bad Moves from Washington, DC, and in the UK, bands like Crushing, MOLAR, Neurotic Fiction, Nachthexen, Fight Rosa Fight and of course our bezzies, Pale Kids from Durham.

You're playing Manchester Punk Festival in April, and you're certainly at the more melodic end of the scale in terms of what's on offer. How useful are these sorts of gatherings in bringing together seemingly-disparate elements of underground or DIY music communities?

"I think they are important for bringing people together, and they perform a really valuable function. I'm so excited for MPF, and so honoured to have been asked to play.

"We're also very much into pushing the envelope further, and encouraging more diversity, which often means getting rid of narrow genre distinctions. I think words like 'melodic' and 'heavy' can sometimes be used as weasel words for 'feminine' and 'masculine' or 'queer' and 'straight', and used to justify booking less diverse line-ups on the erroneous basis that bands aren't 'punk' enough. There's an awful lot of male-centred US style pop-punk which is extremely sugary, melodic and polished but it's 'punkness' rarely gets called into question.

"There's room for all kinds of different versions of punk. If the term is to mean anything 40+ years on from the birth of the genre, it needs to be something more than a sound, and it needs to move beyond ideas of what counts as heavy that are tied to white hetero-patriarchal values more broadly.

"Bands like PWR BTTM and Downtown Boys are really showing that the best punk has always smashed down boundaries and barriers. I'm so excited by the growing number of queer fests like Bent Fest, and especially for the first Decolonise Fest in London that's being planned, centring and celebrating punx of colour."

Is there anyone you're looking forward to seeing at MPF?

"Loads of bands! I'm especially excited to see Doe, Shit Present, Muncie Girls, Honey Joy and Nervus. It'll be extremely cool to see Paint It Black! I've probably forgotten some too. Also, I should probably do a plug for Onsind, who are also playing."

Are there any plans afoot for album number three?

"It's percolating, but give us a chance! We've half written a new song which sounds like Pat Benatar, so we'll keep you posted. Fuck knows who's gonna release it!"

What's next for Martha?

"Booking some shows in mainland Europe for this summer, before Britain capsizes and sinks down the Tory Brexit sewer plughole, then an exciting UK tour to announce soon. And other festival shows – Indietracks and Deadpunk festival in Bristol. Should be a fun summer!"

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Martha play Manchester Punk Festival, 20-22 Apr