There’s a double meaning to the title of New Zealand band Mild Orange’s latest album Looking for Space.
While the beachy, laid-back atmosphere many of the songs create is largely inspired by our beautiful landscapes, remaining in this country throughout the pandemic has meant they couldn’t share their sound abroad.
That’s difficult for a group of musicians on the rise, with millions of Spotify streams and YouTube views and a large and loyal overseas fan base.
So, Josh Mehrtens (frontman, vocals), Josh Reid (lead guitar), Tom Kelk (bass guitar) and Jack Ferguson (drums) are upping sticks.
“We've released two albums and we haven't been able to tour them,” Mehrtens told 1News from his Arrowtown home.
“Things are beginning to open more overseas and we're beginning to get all these opportunities arise so we were just like, ‘Yeah let's go do it, let's go tour’”.
The four of them and their partners are putting down roots in Europe to make the most of their music careers.
The band mates made the decision before the announcement Aotearoa would eventually open its international borders, showing what they were willing to sacrifice – not knowing when they’d next see friends and family – to ‘give it a crack’.
“To go see the world is just going to be surreal, to play for our fans who we haven't been able to see for a couple of years and share all the new music with them is going to be pretty epic,” Mehrtens said.
They’ve started with a sold-out show in London, then it’s onto five dates in the United States and one in Mexico before diving into more gigs across Europe in September.
It’s difficult to not mention the perils of the pandemic when speaking about basically anything these days, but it’s the very absence of much meaning at all in tracks like Oh Yeah (written about nothing on purpose) that have undoubtedly been Covid-influenced.
“Even the decision not to have meaning has a meaning. I love this irony and found it comical that you can't escape meaning, so I wanted to write lyrics about nothing, which meant little to me at the time except just to purely feel good,” Mehrtens said.
The song’s music video is synonymous with the band’s far-flung pockets of supporters – it was directed and shot by a fan in the French surf town of Biarritz after the band put up an Instagram story looking for someone to help out.
“Most days I'm talking to people – from Mongolia to Peru – and with chatting to people you get a sense of the mood for the world and I think that's influenced a lot of how we make music.”
Looking for Space is Mild Orange’s third album, following from the success of 2018’s Foreplay and self-titled in 2020.
While the surf-inspired, soft-rock sound has remained a constant throughout their oeuvre, the band has matured somewhat this time round – graduating from recording in baches and holiday homes around the country to a proper studio.
“We'd converted these beach houses and living rooms into recording studios as we do, but we started finding the music was getting too big for those spaces and I normally engineer and mix it on my laptop, and it started getting a bit too big for the bedroom DIY thing.”
Mehrtens described the album as “like a life journey” and hoped it could be “this little companion people can take with them through their lives and they grow with it”.
The band hunkered down in New Zealand for two years is now taking its sound to the world; Mild Orange might soon find themselves in the space they’re looking for.
Looking for Space is out now on streaming services worldwide.
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