5 MINUTES WITH... MIKE HERD FROM GIRLS LIKE MYSTERY

Girls Like Mystery are giving you every reason to head up to Yangpu for their show with Bigong Bijing, Death to Giants, and Hello Money this Saturday. They are organizing a beer bus to take you all up to Live Bar for a night of rock, and then back to the French Concession to send you on your merry way. What's not to love? We caught up with Girls Like Mystery's Michael Herd and chatted about the band and the show this Friday, hoping to get the low down on some other bands to check out.

Death to Giants - Sick and Elastic

Can you tell us a little about Girls Like Mystery?

GLM are a local foreign group made up of four Brits and an American. We have been together now for about a year and half and just recently acquired a second guitarist to our line up.  By chance, we mostly represent all parts of the UK with Kevin and Adam coming from England, myself from Scotland and Luke from Wales (and we speculate Mike Arone must have Northern Irish heritage as a result). We naturally have a sound that leans more towards British acts such as The Beatles and Oasis, but in other parts we have a more emo sound - I listen to bands such as Biffy Clyro and Hundred Reasons and sometimes those influences can be found, as well as acts like Arcade Fire, who Mike Arone is a big fan of.

Is there any particular meaning to the name of the band?

We are named after a song by another UK act, The Cribs

So what have you got planned for Live Bar this weekend?

We are pretty excited to be playing live again after a sort of ad-hoc hiatus over the last half year or so.  We have a bunch of new material as well to play, along with our existing songs, and the bill for this show is pretty mixed. We have good relations with Death to Giants and Hello Money and I recently saw Bigong Bijing at D Club and was that impressed with them I invited to them to play and headline the show.  The bill has a good mix of lighter rock along with heavier sounds from DTG and BGBJ, so there's really something to offer everyone. Also, Hello Money have recently expanded and their new material as a full band sounds really promising, so it's definitely a show worth making the trip for.

Why did you decide to sort out a beer bus for the show?

We know a lot of people are put off from going to shows way out in Yangpu because of the distance and cost to get back from there-we want to make it easier for people by at least having a guaranteed round trip (less than the cost of a taxi one way) and to incentivise it further, give the punters some beer for the ride.  It will depart from The Camel bar and return there after the show is finished. I personally really like Live Bar as a venue to play in because they have a quality sound system, cheap drinks and the owner (Lao Sun) is a really decent guy, so there are elements of wanting to help them out too a bit.  Plus, it's a great venue to attract a student audience to as well.

What are some other bands to keep our eyes out for? Who are you psyched about right now?

As I mentioned already, I really like Bigong Bijing and they are a pretty tight act to see.  I tend to listen to heavier stuff normally and their sound is more in line with the types of bands I really like (such as Nine Black Alps for instance).  I also have high hopes for Daydreamer and have invited them to play with us again at Yuyintang on May 26th.  But in general, the music scene is growing a lot here and there is a lot of good potential emerging.

Bigong Bijing - 一下 (Demo)

What else does Girls Like Mystery have in the pipeline? Recording? Tour dates?

We definitely hope to start making our first full length recording over the next few weeks and after the summer holidays have passed, we'll focus on mixing and mastering the recording and then doing more follow up shows!

Anything else you want to mention?

For bus information, just drop me an email at  michaelherd@hotmail.co.uk  - and we encourage people to check our douban page out to get a feel for our sound as well as finding us on Facebook!