Little May

Chatting with Annie Hamilton – a bright, charming speaker quick to laugh at the winding path to their self-titled debut EP – what is most apparent is the hard work and savvy determination that fuels the trio. That, and a healthy dose of Toto’s ‘Africa’.

The band – completed by Liz Drummond and Hannah Field – is already being heralded as a sudden success story. But that is such a hollow phrase, suggesting it’s something of a surprise that critics and fans have begun to take notice, or that the trio simply stumbled upon musical talent the same way one would find a five-dollar note lying in the street.

“It’s funny, because even though it seems relatively quick, it still feels like we’ve been doing it for a long time,” Hamilton says. “We’ve been working together for about three years now, and before that Liz and Hannah had been writing together. Then I became involved, and we did a lot of covers for a while. I remember Liz and I did a cover of ‘Moth’s Wings’ by Passion Pit, which might have been our first cover. But the first song that we worked on as Little May was ‘Boardwalks’. Liz had written that song a few months previously before taking it to Han and I. We all worked on it, I added my guitar part and some harmonies, Han worked on the structure. But that was the start, and from there we really started seeing people connecting and having fun.”

They have since been gaining fans at a rapid rate, and like all popular acts, the greatest measure of their success is the strength of their misheard lyrics. Fans taking to social media with favourite (if inaccurate) lines is one thing, but Little May take things up a notch with their own bass player truly hearing lyrics out of left field.

“It’s funny,” says Hamilton. “On the one hand it’s, ‘Arrgh, they’ve got the words wrong!’ But then you start thinking if that’s just how they interpreted it, maybe it means something different, something better for them. And that’s great! There’s one line in ‘Hide’: ‘I feel so haunted in your bed’. And for some reason, all over the internet people are writing it as ‘I feel so wise in your bed,’ and I really can’t tell why, they sound nothing alike. Our bass player, Mark, is always playing along with the songs and you can’t always hear what everyone is singing. So Mark always comes up with the most ridiculous lines. There was one in ‘Fire’ – ‘Better light a match now baby’ – that he thought was ‘Better lie to Ashton’s baby’. I liked that one.”

Little May’s eponymous EP has taken a while to arrive, if only because throughout the course of recording the trio was still finding its feet musically and uncovering just what kind of sound it really wanted to embrace.

“It always takes so much longer than you expect,” Hamilton admits. “We were originally going to release the EP a year and a half ago, and it’s lucky that we didn’t because it’s changed so much for the better since then. We dropped two songs and added more. But it’s definitely getting to the point where it’s like, ‘Alright, let’s just release this thing so we can move on!’” She laughs. “It’s been such a long time coming that we’re already planning on releasing an album early next year. “Most of the songs that we play live now will go on the album, and I’m really excited to start recording again. Our sound has changed so much since the beginning, so after two years of pulling something together it’s going to be really fun to start laying down something new.”

Little May’s work ethic is impressive, and goes a long way to ensuring not only the quality of their recordings, but the enjoyment the trio feels when playing live. They are not an act to take the stage and hope for the best; rather, they put long hours into fashioning the best performance they can. Plus, a healthy pre-gig sing-along doesn’t hurt.

“Our very first gig was at a pizza restaurant in Bathurst in the middle of winter. My hands were frozen because it was so cold. I was so nervous, I was shaking, but it was so much fun being up there. Now, I think I still get nervous, but as long as I know that I’m prepared, that we’ve been rehearsing … Before Splendour, we locked ourselves in a studio for three months and just rehearsed almost every day until we felt confident. Right before we played, we were all standing backstage singing and dancing to Toto’s ‘Africa’,” Hamilton laughs. “And so it wasn’t a nerve-wracking moment. Instead there was this weird sense of calm and excitement. If I feel underprepared, I get nervous. But as long as we keep working hard, you know, I think we’ll keep that sense of excitement.”