Ricky Sans Production And Pianos
How Melee Are Happy To Lead From The Front With Keyboards
Currently promoting new CD "Devil's & Angels", Ricky Sans spoke to Suite101 in a series of interviews. Here, in part three, he explains why piano is key to Melee's sound.
- Genre: indie / pop / rock
- Chris Cron (vocals / keyboards / guitar), Ricky Sans (guitar / vocals), Ryan Nalloy (bass / vocals), Mike Nader (drums)
- Sounds like: Keane, Ben Folds Five, Coldplay
- Home: Orange County, California
- Melee
Sunshine In Dark Places
Coming from the sunshine state of Orange County, California and with music giant Warner Bros currently promoting their new album Devil's & Angels (which will be reviewed on Suite101 soon), it's easy to understand why the music of Melee is so upbeat and undeniably happy. Yet this isn't just another run-of-the-mill Californian band singing about sun, sea and all other connotations; songs about mental problems and suicidal thoughts stand Melee out from many of their contemporaries.
Currently on a massive North American tour that runs until the end of May before hopefully hitting the UK in June, Melee recently played in Toronto where Suite101 caught up with guitarist and co-songwriter Ricky Sans to discuss the darker side of pop rock. In part three of our special interview with Ricky, he tells us why the piano is a key instrument in the Melee sound, and why music today is suffering.
Ricky Sans Interview Part 3: Production and Pianos
Suite: Now for this album, you've worked with producer Howard Benson, and you mentioned My Chemical Romance earlier (Benson has worked with MCR). How did that work, with you guys being more a piano-led band and MCR a bit harder edged?
Ricky: We were definitely curious, when our label suggested him. I mean, like you say, he's worked with heavier bands like MCR and All-American Rejects, so we were thinking maybe the label were just putting him toward us. But then when we met with him, he told us he was actually the one pushing the label to let him produce us! It turns out that he's a massive piano player himself, and is into all these big pop artists from the 'seventies. We were just stunned; we were thinking this is crazy, how does this even add up? Then the more and more we met with him, we thought that, yeah, it was going to be a bit of a challenge, but it was going to be worth it. It definitely worked out really cool; the demos and stuff on our last album were really soft, and although we're still soft now, it's with that harder edge, and Howie definitely brought that out.
Suite: You're obviously a very piano-led band, which led Howard Benson to you. Do you feel that this is sometimes an overlooked instrument by a lot of bands today?
Ricky: Yeah, I think so. I mean, I feel that a lot of musicianship has gone downhill now, and piano is such a hard instrument to capture, you know? I see a lot of guitar bands where you don't see any difference in styles, and if you don't use the instrument right, whether it's guitar or otherwise, it's hard to have different styles. I see more synthesizers in music now, so I don't know, but definitely with a piano, it's a rare instrument these days.
Suite: I understand. I mean, you have bands like Keane coming though at the minute, but they're few and far between.
Ricky: Definitely, and it only seems to be the British bands that are willing to experiment with music in this way, and go against the norm. I can't really seem to think of any American bands that really make use of the piano; you have people like Ben Folds, but he's not really been around recently. But yeah, Keane is awesome, but they show how hard it is to break through, as there haven't really been that many frontman-led piano bands lately since maybe Elton John or Billy Joel. It's definitely hard.
