The beauty of Must lies in their understanding that life's treasures can be found in the journey and not necessarily in the results. A mélange of nationalities and influences, the members of Must joined forces to create a unique rock band whose final touches were added by the London music scene that brought them together. These musicians join the rich lineage of rock bands that are essentially dysfunctional families who are unfathomably, yet brilliantly held together by the mathematician's "x."
Musts' songs are an ode to grow beyond your immediate impressions of the way things are. The end result being a better grasp of one's state of self-awareness and understanding. Singer Dave Ireland mentioned, "Any true pursuit is difficult at times and will entail struggle and sacrifice, whatever your goal in life may be. With this record, the goal was simplicity. We aimed to present the music and emotions intertwined in a manner unencumbered by too much complexity. Simply, to shed the covers and find the pure essence."
Ireland's passion for his music is powerfully presented in the live setting, driven by a dynamic rhythm section. While possessing the ability to assault the audience with raw energy and physicality, it is also Must's intention to move the listener from the inside out - to provoke them emotionally and cerebrally. As the leader of Must, when performing with the band at full throttle, Ireland is akin to a congress of emotions and impulses, acting and reacting to one another in search of some ultimate resolution.
Singer Dave Ireland and drummer Reuben Alexander met at the notorious London club The Forum about five years ago, where Ireland overheard Alexander talking drum shop and approached him about working together. Laughing, Ireland described the meeting, "We had a conversation that led to a three day party which in turn ended up with us jamming in the studio. I literally walked into him and we've been at it ever since. I mean I do wear a skirt on occasion!" The two began playing around London with revolving line-ups. Three years ago, bassist Kai Lemke joined the band.
For Ireland and Alexander, the road to London started at opposite ends of the Earth. Ireland, an Australian, grew up singing in a church choir and playing the piano and guitar from the age of six. Following a somewhat normal childhood and schooling that Reuben still believes never really happened, Dave relocated to England. The placid lifestyle that Australia provided wasn't enough to keep Ireland motivated. He mentioned, "Australia is a wonderfully relaxed place, but I got so relaxed I was in danger of falling off the edge of the Earth. Going to London inevitably broadened my perspective on things. There is an intensity about the British culture that I found to be positively challenging and confronting. I definitely made some mistakes, but there is no question that living in London worked wonders on me."
For Alexander, the serene surroundings of the English and Scottish countryside offered a similarly bucolic environment. Alexander has lived "everywhere, but always in the middle of nowhere." His early years found him sitting on stone walls simply getting stoned. At sixteen his brother introduced him to the drums, which proved to be the point of no return. He left school and went straight to London. And there, deadpans Alexander, "I tried everything."
It was within the frenetic London nightclub scene that Ireland and Alexander found their German bassist Kai Lemke, effectively adding another continent to their already international roster. Lemke grew up tossing stones at the wall in Berlin, which eventually fell down if you did not know. With nothing left to achieve, he moved to London and three years into his stay he joined Must.
In London, the decidedly rock sounding Must was at constant odds with the thriving dance music scene. However, being ostracized from the music community only led to harder work. While clearly a rock band, Must did not entirely escape the ubiquity of the British dance culture, which gave birth to their occasional use of dance rhythms and electronics.
Now the travels of Must have brought them to the more rock-receptive shores of the US, and they certainly show no trace of being unhappy about the situation. Dave explains, "The United States is the Rome of our times, and there is so much in that. We are genuinely excited by the possibility of traveling this country, playing our music, and gaining a greater insight into this society."
It would seem fair to say, by virtue of their individual and collective histories, that an almost nomadic quality resides at the heart of Must. In a sense you could call them perennial outsiders that live life like 21st Century hobos. Perhaps this goes some ways to explaining the album's underlying themes of self-confrontation, transformation, evolution and acceptance.
