Mentals: Hot Crain After All These Years

Rip It Up, Issue 222, 1 February 1996, Page 8

Mentals: Hot Crain After All These Years

“We never broke up," says Mental As Anything drummer David Twohill. A "hiatus” is how he describes the Mentals' absence from the recording world. The rockers with art school / Mambo credentials galore, have jumped headlong into the interactive era with the interactive CD Liar Liar Pants on Fire. David jokes that, “We were made an offer we couldn’t understand so we went with it.” In fact the Mentals don’t run their company in a loose fashion, they own their own recordings, they pay themselves wages, and they don’t leave home for more than two weeks. "You don’t want to tell your wife you're going away for three months. What was that Neil Finn song — ‘Darling Be Home Soon’?’’ When faced-with record company indifference the Mentals recorded the Bicycle EP and “gave it away to the first 300 people at selected gigs. Triple J played something that couldn’t be purchased in a shop. By the time we got back from tour, record companies were phoning us.” The CD-Rom interactive component on any CD copy of Liar Liar is two video clips, and tram painting footage. The Mentals are into this CD-Rom thing, so expect The Mental As Anything Art Gallery sometime, and a New Zealand tour in the near future.

MURRAY CAMMICK