Nina May: ‘It’s Easy To Be Worst’

photo by Melinda Comerford

Nina May - ‘It’s Easy To Be Worst’

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So this blog’s been in existence for over a year now and surprisingly, one of our most popular posts has been my inaugural post on Brisbane outfit Nina May over 10 months ago. A lot of things have changed since that post – namely, they’ve released their debut EP Make Love To Your Stereo; gone are the poor quality demos on their MySpace and in their place are rocking tunes from the EP; and I’ve hung out with their lovely vocalist Erinn Swan a couple of times and found out what she’s actually singing about in ‘Monsters In The Dark’… is it too late to renege my comments about said song’s lyrics?

What else has changed is that this four-piece has become somewhat of a musical juggernaut, thanks in part to a fantastic 6-track EP recorded at Modern Music Studios in Brisbane. When I originally heard ‘Monsters In The Dark’ I was enamoured by that song but the other tracks that were up on their MySpace page didn’t really do much for me. But since its release, the EP has been one of my favourite local releases for 2007. I’ve said many, many times that I’m a sucker for a rock group with a sassy female vocalist, and there’s not many that do it better in Australia than Nina May. A lazy comparison might be to recent visitors to our shores Paramore, but Nina May mix progressive and alt. rock elements with their love of a good pop hook.

Case in point: ‘It’s Easy To Be Worst’, the dark finale to Make Love To Your Stereo. It features backing vocals courtesy of The Veronicas Jessica Origliasso and what sets this song apart from the rest of the EP is that it sees the band branching out with their sounds and song structures – there’s great use of acoustic guitar and bass swells, and it crescendos into a thundering ending before abruptly being ripped back to a minimal harmonised guitar line. There’s hooks as well as some killer riffs.

Kudos goes to either Erinn or Jess who have some excellent screams in this song, and to Simon who’s the king of pinch/artificial harmonics. The band are also going to be playing live on MTV’s The Lair this Thursday night so anyone in Australia with Foxtel or Austar should keep an eye out for this band on their TV sets.

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