Mini Mansions' Michael Shuman Got "Good Material" From A Failed Relationship

Dressed in full rockstar mode – black pants, boots, shirt with all-over white teardrop print and leather jacket (in the summer heat) plus slicked-back Brylcreemed 'do and dark shades – Michael Shuman turns heads as enters The Journal Cafe in Melbourne's CBD. He's carrying a guitar case, but you'd definitely have him pegged as a muso even before noticing his instrument. Earlier today, Shuman performed a few acoustic numbers – including a cover of Blondie's Heart Of Glass – in the office of a daily tabloid.

On incorporating covers into setlists, Shuman shares, "I think it's a smart thing to do. We did Heart Of Glass because we were going on tour really quickly after we started the band and we were, like, having a song that people recognise – even if you do it totally differently – it just subliminally will make them go, 'Oh, they're great! I like this song!'" After pouring himself a glass, Shuman offers, "Would you like some water?" 

The Queens Of The Stone Age bassist is in the country playing as part of Arctic Monkeys' touring band, with Mini Mansions also scoring support duty for most of the English band's North American Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino shows as well as these Australian dates.

At the tail-end of 2018, Mini Mansions released a four-track EP, Works Every Time, which features a cracking version of Edwyn Collins' A Girl Like You that soils the classy original with lascivious, rock'n'roll sleaze. It's so good! "Thank you. I always thought that song was, like, a massive hit," Shuman recounts, "but it wasn't really a hit in the States, you know what I mean? And in the UK I think it was massive, obviously, but, yeah! In the States it wasn't. So I was just like, 'That song should've been a fuckin' hit. Maybe we can make it a hit?' And then we didn't," he laughs.

GummyBear, the lead single from the band's forthcoming Guy Walks Into A Bar... album, was released just ahead of Mini Mansions' aforementioned Australian shows. Keys stabs usher in a trippy synth line before subtle hi-hats underscore Shuman's sultry delivery. 

Another of this scribe's favourite Mini Mansions songs, This Bullet, from their 2018 EP, features a demented-sounding synth solo and has us tipping Shuman rates The B-52's. "I love B-52's," he confirms. "I don't know if anyone knows this, but on that last record [The Great Pretenders] we had this song called Cheap Leather and it ended up being a B-side – it didn't make the record – but it's a real quirky song and it goes like, '[sings] Cheap leather!' And we kept hearing Fred [Schneider, of The B-52s]'s voice so we called 'im up – or emailed him – and said, 'Will you sing this song?' and he did! So we have a song featuring Fred Schneider."

The second single to be lifted from Mini Mansions' upcoming set, Hey Lover, is a duet with Alison Mosshart (The Kills). Shuman points out he prefers duetting with friends so that "they're not coming in there to just do their part and get the fuck out". "She cared about the song, she liked the song," he stresses.

"That song in particular... It's a conversation back and forth... And it's, yeah, a male and female talkin' to each other," Shuman explains. "We're singing, but it's a dialogue." 

Guy Walks Into A Bar... was "recorded and written basically in real time", Shuman says. Over what period of time? "It was about a year and a half. So I met this woman and we got engaged halfway through that time... It started awesome and then, you know, ended.

"I just happened to be starting to make the record so it worked out for me, I guess; I got a lotta good material out of it... It was real, so, like, 'Ok, let's do something real not just put out songs just to put out songs.'"

So has Shuman played these songs to the woman who inspired Guy Walks Into A Bar...? "She hasn't heard the final versions of some, because, ah, they were demoed in a certain way and then when it started to end, and we broke up, I changed the lyrics... She's heard a few, though. [EP track] Midnight In Tokyo's about her, too, and... What are you gonna do? It's real."