MAE

As longtime music aficionados, the members of the modern rock troop Mae are always listening for a song that makes everything stand still. “For us, that’s what music is about,” says singer-guitarist Dave Elkins, who formed the band with drummer Jacob Marshall, and is now joined by guitarist Zach Gehring, bassist Mark Padgett and keyboardist Rob Sweitzer. “I remember listening to Matthew Sweet on my Walkman as a kid and feeling like I was on cloud nine. That’s what we want to do for other people. We want to write songs that people connect to.”
For their third album ‘Singularity’, Mae headed to Los Angeles, where they hooked up with producer Howard Benson. While Benson gave many of the songs on ‘Singularity’ a certain radiant sheen, he also helped the band center in on a much livelier sound. “In the past, we’ve never quite captured things the way we wanted to, so there was a very concerted effort to do that this time,” states Marshall. In a rare moment of unabashed pride Elkins says, “I really do think this is the best record that Mae has ever written. The five of us understand each other’s strengths and weaknesses now more than ever, and over the past couple years, that momentum has continued to change and grow our band in really positive ways.”
The title ‘Singularity’, in fact, came out of many heavy discussions that the members of the band had while writing. “There was a book that Rob and I were reading,” Marshall recalls, “and in it, the author used the term ‘singularity.’ That was the first time I ever heard it, but he described it very eloquently as ‘the ultimate unknowable in science... the interface between the natural and the supernatural.’ We realized through those conversations that there is so much more for us to learn and to understand and these ideas inspired us to question everything.”
Granted, throughout the disc, Elkins and his band mates still churn out soaring ballads, but ‘Singularity’ is a far more rocking affair. “We’ve always loved bands like Pearl Jam, U2 and the Smashing Pumpkins and on this record we wanted to tap into that,” Marshall says. “We weren’t trying to recreate a ’90s record, per se, but we definitely wanted it to have that same energy.” Elkins says in closing. “We’re just a rock band, and we’re happy to be given the chance to get our music out there to all of these different people.”