In the early 2000s, the guitarist and vocalist Anthony Mackey found some traction in the Dublin music scene with his band Large Mound, and later with the band Hot Colossus. After those bands split, Anthony began releasing solo material. Despite tours of the UK and slots at Electric Picnic, Anthony feels he never really “made it.”

Speaking with Post-Burnout, Anthony says, “I’ve been in bands and done things over the years and I’ve got a lot of experience, but I’m no great shake. All the years I’ve been in music, I think the most people I ever played to was about 600. So, I was never popular.”

Despite feeling that way, Anthony continued in the field. “It’s purely an internal feeling,” Anthony says of his tenacity. “The feeling that I get after writing a song, that’s kind of the basis of it. Like, we’re tipping our way through songs at the moment. There’s loads. I have loads of songs still to be recorded. And I’ll finish one, and it’s such pleasure to write and finish a song and then listen back to it and go, ‘I’m really happy with that!’, and nothing else matters.”

In the mid-2010s, Anthony found his latest project, the punky rock outfit The Middle Ages. When we asked how Anthony felt that The Middle Ages’ music differed from his other projects, he responded, “For me, I would say not at all. It’s not like I worked on a new band and thought about an approach or a style of music. I wrote songs throughout Large Mound and I wrote songs for my own projects, and now I’m just writing new songs.

“So, my thought process hasn’t changed at all. So, these are just the new songs that I’ve written. […] I’m sure people who would have been aware of Large Mound could have heard our next single and just gone, ‘Ah, yeah! It’s the same!’ I don’t mind that. […] I don’t think it’s broken.”

Thankfully, the band’s four members live in relative proximity to each other (about an hour outside of Dublin, each), which has allowed the band to persist for around a decade. “We’ll get together and we’ll jam, and we’ll think about what song we want to record next,” Anthony says of the band’s creative process.

“Like, the way we’ve done the past few songs, the past few releases, is one song at a time. That’s been really fun to do. We do them in different ways, with different people. Every time, it’s an education. [Laughs]”

Part of the reason for the band’s longevity can also be chalked up to their relative lack of expectation, which allows them to enjoy art for art’s sake. In their EPK, the band write, “But the days of caring what anyone thinks are well over for songwriter Anthony Mackey. […] Not caring goes two ways. It is obvious from the band’s monthly listeners and media profile that nobody cares about The Middle Ages. But when you’re left alone you can do anything.”

Expanding on this quote when asked, Anthony adds, “I think the way I work and we work is right for us, now. Like, certainly when I was younger and we were making music, we definitely had aspirations. We tried as best we could. But, at the moment, you just have to really enjoy writing music and writing songs.

“And, as for expectations, there are none. I suppose I can’t really talk without the lads here, but I exist within this band with zero expectations [Laughs], because I know every time we put something out – and we’ve put out quite a bit, because that’s what you do; you write songs and you want people to hear them – but it’s so hard.

“I can only speak for myself, with people I know putting out music, and it’s hard to give it the time to listen to, and I don’t expect anyone to drop anything and listen to what I’ve done. So, all the activity of this band kind of goes…well, the creative part of it, is writing songs and recording them, and then there’s no expectations beyond that. Can I make this song that I’ve really loved writing and loved listening to sound as good as it can?”

Anthony jokingly likens the band to “the latter-day Beatles,” as they are currently working as a recording band with few live dates. “I would love for that to change,” Anthony says, “but I’m dealing with a few things at the minute, so I have to take care of that.

“I was diagnosed with MS, there, about two years ago, so doing gigs is not as easy. And it’s not that I have any real physical barriers; it’s just kind of mental barriers, I suppose. ‘Am I going to be able for this?’ Even going to gigs is the same, so playing gigs is, obviously, even ten times more stressful. [Laughs]”

Despite these factors, The Middle Ages show no signs of slowing down. Today, the band released two new songs. The first track is “Oh,” which features guest vocalist Aoife Carbin. This was Anthony’s first time to let someone else sing lyrics that he wrote.

“It was brilliant, it was really good fun,” Anthony says of this experience. “When we went into record this thing, we really only wanted to record the other song, ‘Something Wrong,’ and we spent 90% of the day on that, and then, because we had everything set up, we said, ‘OK, let’s just bang out “Oh,” live,’ and we did and it turned out really well.

“I had recorded all of my vocals and everything, and I said to the lads, ‘I have this idea of getting somebody else to sing this song.’ So, we asked around to a few people, and I remembered Aoife, so I asked her and she said, ‘Yeah, sure. I’ll do that.’

“So, I sent her the song, and I met her one day – in the same studio, actually – and we just recorded it and I said to her, ‘This is just an idea that I had and it’s an experiment, so if I don’t like it, I’m just going to leave my vocals on it because I’m quite happy with those,’ and she said, ‘Yeah, that’s alright. I’m happy with that!’ […]

“It was a real pleasure to mix because I’m listening to these vocals, and I know that there’s nothing out of tune and it was really unusual to be mixing stuff that sounds that good because I sing our songs, and I’m OK, but I don’t use autotune. If something’s not right, I’ll do it again. But it’s hard. [Laughs] It’s hard work.”

The other track, as mentioned, was “Something Wrong,” a track about being direct with someone acting passively in a situation. “We were working, thinking about what was the next song to record, and both of these songs have been around for a while; they were due to be on the album that we did, but we never got around to finishing them,” Anthony says.

“But there is a thematic thing going on between these two songs, and I only realised that afterwards – it was not deliberate – in that they are both […] a bit more internal. Like, they’re not necessarily written from a personal experience or anything, but they’re a bit more internal, about how someone’s dealing with a situation. So they are, thematically, quite similar.”

The Middle Ages’ latest single, “Oh (feat. Aoife Carbin)”/“Something Wrong,” is out now. You can keep up with The Middle Ages on their website.

Tune into tonight’s episode of POSTBURNOUT.COM Interviews…at 19:00 (IST) to hear this interview in full where we go into further depth about everything discussed, as well as Anthony’s other projects, what he learnt from those projects and how he utilised that experience when starting this one, his changing relationship to music as a result of being a dad, the band’s recording process, his guitar tone, and much more. Available on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Amazon Music Podcasts.

Aaron Kavanagh

Aaron Kavanagh is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Post-Burnout. His writing can also be found in the Irish Daily Star, Buzz.ie, Totally Dublin, The GOO, Headstuff, New Noise Magazine, XS Noize, DSCVRD and more.