“Humour can really accentuate anger or frustration”: Why Liquid Mike are in full flow

“There’s nothing like sleep,” says Mike Maple, the frontman and founder of Liquid Mike. “It makes you write better, it makes you feel better, it’s easier to get your head clear. The older you get, the more you worry about shit, and then the more that keeps you up. It’s a game you have to play every night to make sure that you don’t let that make your head spin. It can be hard.”

He’s explaining this from his home in Marquette, Michigan at 8.30am, his hair slightly dishevelled. But despite what he knows and loves about sleep, and despite the fact that it looks like he’s just got out of bed, Mike suffers from terrible insomnia. Thankfully, it doesn’t seem to affect his songwriting skills, either in terms of quantity or quality. Since he formed Liquid Mike in 2020, the band have released six full-length albums. There were two in 2021, Stuntman and You Can Live Forever In Paradise On Earth, followed by 2022’s A Beer Can And A Bouquet, 2023’s self-titled record, 2024’s Paul Bunyan’s Slingshot, and now this year’s Hell Is An Airport.

Of the 14 songs that make up the new record, only one is longer than three minutes. Six of them are under two. It’s probably no surprise, then, that Mike is wearing a Joyce Manor T-shirt. Because just like the Cali trio, Liquid Mike excel at writing very short, captivating, emotionally-driven, kind of punky, kind of power-poppy songs. It also means they can be so prolific that much more easily.

“I'm kind of addicted to recording,” Mike admits. “It’s very fun for me and I don’t have that many toys to play with in the studio, so I have to get crafty a lot of the time, which is a challenge, but also makes me want to do it more. I feel like I get closer and closer to the way I want a record to sound with every album. So the more songs I write, the more I get to record, and that’s kind of the motivating factor.

“So the albums are short and the songs are short,” he continues, “but I feel like I’m stronger with a minute-and-a-half song than a five-minute one. I’m firing on all cylinders in a minute and a half – I don’t like stretching a good idea out. I like it being like a big fat nugget of a good idea.”

It’s a process that’s seen Liquid Mike – now completed by keyboard player/vocalist Monica Nelson, drummer Cody Maracek, bassist Zack Alworden and guitarist David Daignault – gain a steadily increasing and loyal fanbase, and also rack up some impressive touring partners. They’ve been on the road with The Wonder Years, The Menzingers, Descendents and Militarie Gun, to name a few. Yet as emotive as their songs are, humour and whimsy are also core components – in much in the same way that Weezer combined those elements to such devastating effect in their early years.

“It’s very important,” says Mike. “You can’t just be gloom and doom all the time. And humour can really accentuate an angry or a frustrated emotion, and drive it home. If you’re always too one-way, it starts to fade a bit because there are no surprises, so I try to mix it up emotionally with the humour and the angst.”

It’s working. Very well. In fact, it’s probably good Mike doesn’t sleep better, because if he did, Liquid Mike would be way too powerful…

Hell Is An Airport is out now

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