Mayfly: Palais Of Dreams.

Mayfly play Ric’s tonight, The Red Room, UQ St Lucia at 1pm Wednesday, The Waterloo Hotel on Friday and The Alley on Sunday.

Melbourne acoustic quartet Mayfly make their first appearance in Brisbane tonight, and will spend the best part of a week hopping from venue to venue. They’ve shared stages in the past with acts as diverse as Antiskeptic, Rhubarb and Ross Wilson, and their second EP, The Palais, was released back in July. Not band for just a couple of years work.

“Mayfly started about two or three years ago, really. The drummer, Chris and I were in another band that did alright in Melbourne and then broke up because we were going in different directions. We were just noodling around, and another bass player joined us, and we did a little EP called This House. It wasn’t a really serious sort of band, but we were heading in a good directions, and we ended up jamming with my sister Sarah, who played bass, and her friend Amanthi -they were in another band that had just broken up. It was just good timing.”

This good timing lead to the recording of The Palais, which Mark explains is more representative of what the band is really about.

“More things have happened in the last year and a half for this band than in all the time we’d been in bands before. I think sometimes you just hit a formula that works. In the past we’d liked so may different styles of music so we’d do some funk stuff, then a more mellow acoustic thing, all kinds of crazy things going on, and they all had the flavour of the band, but as we moved on with Mayfly we were conscious that we wanted to focus a bit more.”

“When the girls joined the band we made a conscious decision to pull some of the older stuff out of the set and focus on really building our own sound. It’s very harmony based, melody based music, but it’s very much still acoustic pop.”

Do people pre judge what Mayfly are about because you are an acoustic act?

“Some people sort of think we’re just going to be a chilled out band for a coffee shop or something. I think Mayfly are a lot more dynamic. We just use acoustic instruments as the core root of the sound, that’s all. We rock out in our own kind of way. People will be surprised if they’re just expecting some gentle songs.”