Any Young Mechanic

Having taken their name from a line in Hooray For Hollywood – inspired by the song’s jarring use in Robert Altman’s Philip Marlowe detective movie The Long Goodbye – there is an aptly cinematic quality to Any Young Mechanic’s music.

With intricate scenes, enthralling narratives and unique characters cropping up across the lyrics, and a kaleidoscopic yet coherently interwoven spectrum of moods and emotions stretching through the music, the Adelaide five-piece bring a fresh language to folk music’s natural propensity to spin a good yarn.

So rather than offering borrowed references illuminated by the cosy flickers of campfire flames, on their debut album The Modern Shoe Is Ruining The Foot, the Australian band’s urgent songs conjure up vivid, widescreen vistas that blend the genre’s enduring charms with a musical dexterity and sharp vision reaching beyond folk’s usual corners.

“We are trying to make folk music for now,” suggests frontman Sam Wilson. “Turning it on its head in a new, sometimes uncanny way, because we don't want to just do the old thing again. I don't think it’s interesting to make things again, so we’re searching for a contemporary edge.” The roots of this original yet inclusive approach, in part, go back to the Adelaide music scene that helped to forge Any Young Mechanic.

Though all five studied aspects of music, from classical to contemporary, at Adelaide’s Elder Conservatorium, it was the intimate, interconnected nature of the DIY music scene in Australia’s fifth city that helped to shape the band. At the same time, an organic influence from South London also proved as useful as instruction on crotchets and minims, song structures and production.

“Adelaide is a small city so it’s a small scene, but a very tight knit musical community, everyone plays in everyone’s else’s bands,” explains violinist and multi-instrumentalist Thea Martin, recalling how half a world away Adelaide’s musicians were galvanised in 2019 by the emergence of Black Midi and Black Country, New Country New Road around Brixton.