Like most art—good or bad—music is a reflection of the world around it. Whether on a personal level or with a more universal vision, those surroundings shape its creation. The form that creativity takes can be subtle or overt, subliminal or intentional, direct or obtuse—but that influence of the world, its current affairs and its history, is always present. That’s why AI bands are bullshit: There’s no heart, no soul, no connection, no truth.
Those are qualities that Maruja have in spades. In fact, the music made by the Manchester-based quartet of vocalist/guitarist Harry Wilkinson, bassist Matt Buonaccorsi, saxophonist/vocalist Joe Carroll, and drummer Jacob Hayes overflows with them. So much so that their music isn’t just a reflection of the world, it’s a physical manifestation of humanity and its response to all of the wonder and horrors of the world. Formed in 2014, the band released three EPs before settling (if this is a band that can ever settle) into a groove, both sonically and thematically. That started in earnest with 2023’s EP Knocknarea, and continued with two more EPs before they released their stunning debut album Pain to Power back in September.
Musically, it’s a wild mix of free jazz, punk, and noise rock, poetry and spirituality that not only transcends genre, but also time and place. Theirs are songs that exist within history and carry its weight—though heavily emotional and personal, Maruja have become increasingly political since Knocknarea, and Pain to Power is no exception. A scathing takedown of the systems currently fucking the world, it’s a real-time response and unforgiving rebuttal to what’s been happening in the world, especially in Gaza.
Before playing New York for only the second time recently, the band sat down with us for a wide-ranging chat. Though ultimately a serious conversation that spanned trauma and atrocities, there was also a sincere light and levity to the four members, a reflection of the deep humanity and passion that drives and inspires them.
Pain to Power has a number of songs that are direct responses to what’s been happening in Gaza, and you’ve been making it a point to include a “Free Palestine” chant during your live shows. Do you worry about being so outspoken?
Jacob Hayes: We’ve been pretty appalled about the British government for a long time, and especially their actions toward the atrocities that are happening in Palestine. We’ve been to protests ourselves the last few years, and, as many people are, we’re aware of the hypocrisies within the government allowing weapons and manufacturing companies that are complicit and directly involved in the murder and death of innocent civilians. Also, a few weeks ago, Keir Starmer said they were going to start recognizing Palestine as a state. It’s the typical meandering of both sides, which is Starmer’s big problem. It’s the reason everyone hates him: He doesn’t stand for anything.
Harry Wilkinson: The amount certain governments have profited in arms sales—that alone shows that they want this to be happening. Otherwise they wouldn’t be making billions from it. It’s so blatant, and it’s time to do something about it.
How has the current global situation changed your purpose as a band? The message has seemed to grow in importance in recent years, and the music seems to have become more of a vehicle for it than before.
Matt Buonaccorsi: I’d say we’ve been getting more and more outraged, we’ve been getting more outspoken, and we’ve been having more conversations together about the state of the world. We do feel like we’ve got responsibility with our platform to use it for good and that it’s an extension of the music. We’re built off community, being in a band, and playing the way we do is all based off mutual love and respect for each other. So extending that to other people—the people that attend our shows or random people in the street from whatever walks of life—it just makes sense to us.
“Because times are so drastic, it’s pushed us into being more led by the message, and if we can platform that more than platforming the music, then that’s what we’re going to do.” — Matt Buonaccorsi
So when we see stuff like what’s going on in Palestine, it seems ridiculous not to talk about it. And because times are so drastic, it’s pushed us into being more led by the message—and it’s such an important message that needs to be heard—and if we can platform that more than platforming the music, then that’s what we’re going to do. They definitely go hand-in-hand, and the passion that we show instrumentally translates to non-English-speaking countries or people who can’t understand Harry’s Stockport accent or whatever.
Wilkenson: You what? [Laughs.]
Buonaccorsi: We tend to be led by the art, so it’s not as conscious as you might think—it’s more just what’s coming naturally right now, so that’s the direction we’ve gone in.
Hayes: Knocknarea was the sort of inception of our approach to writing music that’s more emotionally led. The writing of the instrumentals is based off of improvising, which is emotionally led, so it’s very natural to have everything based on our emotions. And from that EP on, Harry’s been talking about—as we have been as a band—things that affect us emotionally, whether that’s personal issues, mental health crises, or stuff in the wider world.
There’s this incredible juxtaposition of violence and aggression with beauty and poetry in your music that exists both on record and live. Where does that come from? Is that just the yin and the yang of life that lives within you?
Hayes: You’re kind of answering the questions for us! [Laughs.]
Sorry! What’s your favorite color?
Joe Carroll: Pink! Our music’s pink! [Everyone laughs.]
Hayes: I think you’re bang-on with recognizing that yin and yang of that really cathartically violent side of our music, but also the equally cathartically beautiful side of our music. I think a lot of it is also due to just how much we give ourselves to the performance. Over the years, we’ve not only crafted our live sets musically speaking, but in a performance way, as well. We love really wild acting, like Florence Pugh in Midsommar. A personal favorite [performer] of mine is Fever Ray, who headlined the Park Stage at Glastonbury [in 2023]. They express themselves really well onstage. I’ve never seen anything quite like it. I think the way that we treat our performances, it’s so in-your-face. It’s not even asking the crowd to get involved in our world, it’s taking them by the throat and throwing them into our world.
So much of what you do is based on improvisation anyway, which kind of lends itself to that. How much more difficult does that make things for you when you’re in the studio?
Carroll: We fixed our position of writing to be based on emotion as a result of being heavily into improvising. We spent two or three years doing, like, 20 to 30 hours a week each week improv-ing and it’s just a really natural thing for us.
Hayes: We had a really short amount of time to write this album, sandwiched between one 50-date tour and then the US North American tour that you saw us on. We only had a few weeks to not only write it, but record it, mix it, and master it, and we did it the only way that we know how to write and to be collectively unanimous in our decision-making—and that’s improv-ing. You don’t have any ego, or you don’t have any one direction ruling decision-making of how a piece is made if it’s coming all together all at once. It’s beautiful.
“The way that we treat our performances, it’s so in-your-face. It’s not even asking the crowd to get involved in our world, it’s taking them by the throat and throwing them into our world.” — Jacob Hayes
It’s interesting that you talk so much about the emotions of creation, because it really is hard to ignore the politics of your music. If you’re emotionally led, how does that feed into the politics—or how does the politics feed into that?
Hayes: They inform themselves. So we talk and are conscious of how we’re doing emotionally as much as we can be. We talk in-depth before we jams sometimes. “Zaytoun” is an example of this, where Trump had been inaugurated a week or so before we had a weekend off for the first time in seven months—so we could go to a Palestine protest, we could go and observe what’s going on in the world around us, talk about things like this. Then, going into writing it, it was quite a somber and reflective track, and that’s simply because that’s exactly what was happening emotionally and conversationally before those sessions began.
Wilkinson: We’re reflections of our environment and what influences us, but we’re touching on spirituality here. We’re playing with sounds that influence emotions, and music is a spiritual process—it can help heal people, that’s the beauty of it. But it’s kind of ineffable in that regard, as well as to where it comes from and what it’s doing. People say “I’ll believe it when I see it,” but it’s actually “I’ll see it when I believe it.” The idea of spirituality is like smoke: You can’t grasp it, it goes through your fingertips, but it’s there. So it’s basically just recognizing that there are other layers of consciousness that exist in this realm that we sometimes need to tap into in different ways.
The use of saxophone is such a bold move, and it’s also so defining of your sound. It’s definitely not anything like Kenny G, which is always a worry with that instrument.
Carroll: I’m way more lit than Kenny G! It sounds a bit obvious, but it’s a very soulful instrument, and the more I’m growing up and experiencing life, the more I’m realizing that the stuff you do outside of playing the saxophone affects the way that you play the saxophone so much. If you’re able to confront your emotions properly, then you’re able to confront a song with real pain or real anguish or real love—and it comes through, because it becomes an extension of you. It’s using the inside of your body—near all your organs—to produce this air. It’s just a reflection: I’ve got that anger and the love inside me that kind of fits all the spectrums. FL
