www.themares.com.au
www.myspace.com/themares

The Mares are about beauty. When we create music we aim for moments of beauty that draw us outside of our bodies and towards the sublime, etc. And what is the end sound? Enigmatic and eclectic music based around the sounds of a boy singer, an electric guitar, an electric bass, and a drum kit. We are the sound of Hank Williams laughing as he is run over by the Birthday Party. We work in the wake of Bob Dylan and Nirvana. We were bred on Sonic Youth, and John Coltrane. We’ve listened to Robert Johnson, Madonna, The Beatles, and far too much Crowded House, Paul Simon, Madness, and stupid abrasive shit. We lounge on the beaches and inhabit the bars; we’re over-educated and under-employed, reflections of the place that we come from, steeped in the tradition of the modern folk form that is popular music…

The Mares live in Sydney. Sydney is a large city in Australia. One Mare (J Mare) read that it is around the 80th biggest city in the world. In Europe the only bigger cities are London, Moscow, Paris and Istanbul. Madrid and Berlin are smaller, as are Lyon, Warsaw and Rome. On the other hand, there are many, many Chinese cities that have higher populations than Sydney. Interesting!

Sydney is warm (hot in summer) and some of the people are pleasantish, so on the whole The Mares are reasonably happy here. On the negative side, the traffic can get a bit much and the rents are too high, as are the Summer daytime temperatures.

There are three Mares. Their names are J, Mils and Coops. J plays guitar and sings. Mils plays bass, while Coops primarily drums, although he is also a sexy person on the side. Together these three Mares form the best band in Sydney, and thus the world. If you want to contact any Mare at any time, or join the Mares’ mailing list, try coolness@themares.net for size.

The Mares pulled together in September 2004. They played their first show a couple of weeks after that. No one remembers who else was on the bill, except that the chick in the headlining band was pretty hot. Clearer memories from the night involve J breaking his guitar. However, he was not self-destructive after the show, and did no self harm, to every one’s satisfaction.

Since then they’ve played about a bit, doing supports and occasional headliners at venues such as Spectrum, The Hopetoun, The Frequency Lab, The Gaelic Club, The Wedding Circle, and The Hollywood Hotel. They’ve also been receiving serious airtime on FBi and 2SER radio, and have been interviewed by all the coolest cats on radio and in magazines in the land!

J, who plays most of the guitars that you hear on Mares recordings, and who does most of the singing too, was born in the early ’80s in Tasmania. He’s lived in various parts of the world, though mostly in a small coastal town in the North Western part of Tasmania called Penguin. When he was little he was obsessed by cricket, Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley, and golf. Mils is unique in that he is both a member of Sydney’s best band, and from Sydney. He’s never lived further from the harbour bridge than Leichardt (about 10kms for those non-Sydney types out there), and has centred on the Annandale to Glebe region for most of that time. He liked rugby as a kid, and other sports too, such as cricket. Later he graduated to liking taking drugs and having sex. He still enjoys these recreational activities, though he also plays music sometimes and works in a clothes shop. Coops is the sexy, enigmatic Mare. Where Mils and J operate on a sometimes embarrassingly open plane, telling everyone exactly what is on their minds (sometimes to the vicarious embarrassment of their audiences) Coops is a man of few words, preferring to adopt ridiculously hot poses and pash groupies in front of jealous publicans. Coops comes from Kiama, a coastal hamlet in Southern NSW, where he was universally considered a stud. Coops is filled with an overflowing lust for life, and is the party Mare.

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