HEARTS OF ANIMALS MAKE ‘HUMAN SIZE’ POP
MLEE MARIE MAINS GREW UP WITH TWO PARENTS WHO WERE MUSICIANS. SO SHE SAYS THEY DIDN’T HAVE ANY MONEY FOR COLLEGE.
But when Mains was very young she accompanied her parents to all the concerts they’d attend.
She was at Jean-Michel Jarre’s Rendez-Vous Houston show in 1986 when she was 4. It’s a show she says she recalls more for its visuals, which have been returning recently in vague flashbacks. She wasn’t yet a teen when they took her to Nirvana at AstroArena in the early ’90s. And she has specific memories of a Cyndi Lauper gig in Houston when she was 4or5.
“I remember being star struck by the colors,” she says. “The lights behind the stage were so vivid.
“I think it’s the biggest thing they did for me. They gave me this rich appreciation of music, and specifically live music. It’s really been priceless.”
So not surprisingly Mains gravitated toward music. For a decade, she’s made recordings as Hearts of Animals, an indie rock band that puts a brisk spin on the sort of contrasts that make for the best pop music: Mains’ voice winging its way — both sweetly and sadly — above sturdy garage-pop backing.
Four years have passed since the last Hearts of Animals record, but Mains this week brings the band back with “Human Size.”
She developed a few songs that had been in the works for several years and paired them with some more recent tunes. “Cat Karma” has been in the band’s sets for a few years.
Mains says the song kind of came about by accident. She had, for a time, been working in a songwriting clubthat would involve little assignments. One was to intentionally write a bad song. Mains came up with “Cat Karma,” “because I was trying to write something banal, almost Nickelback-like. But when I played it for the group, everybody liked it.”
“MARSHA” shows the influence of the Vaselines, with Mains and her brother, drummer Joey, creating a beautifully ajar her/him vocal dynamic. The song is an appreciation for the mother who took her to all those shows years ago.
And “Deathwish” is quintessentially Hearts of Animals-ish: a sugary-sounding song she wrote on a cheap Casio keyboard that barely hides the dark, melancholic undertones implied in the title.
“That’s just a thing I love in songs, those types of juxtapositions,” Mains says. “Elvis Costello does that a lot. The Clash; ‘Somebody Got Murdered’ is that way. That’s one of my favorite songs, ever. It’s really a sad song … but so upbeat.”