These days, it’s back to basics for Miki Berenyi. Best known for her work with ’90s shoegaze/dream-pop pioneers Lush, the London native has assumed the lead role in the Miki Berenyi Trio and hit the road to win over fans. But while MB3 may bear the name of its effortlessly charismatic founder and lead singer, the music is a three-way affair, with KJ “Moose” McKillop (Moose) and Oliver Cherer (Gilroy Mere) casting their lot as creative equals. Out now on Bella Union, their concisely atmospheric debut LP, Tripla, tethers its layered guitar motifs to a lively, persistent electronic pulse.
Berenyi spoke with MAGNET’s Hobart Rowland.
How did the trio come together?
Moose and I have been a couple for 30 years, and we became friends with Oliver Cherer when he joined on bass for Piroshka’s Love Drips And Gathers tour, standing in for Mick Conroy, who’d moved to the U.S. After my memoir, Fingers Crossed: How Music Saved Me From Success, came out, I did a load of live book events where me, Moose and Ollie would bang out a handful of Lush covers to accompany the chat. The reception was surprisingly positive. (Bella Union’s) Simon Raymonde encouraged us to record the songs (released in December 2024 as the Covers EP), and plenty of others said we should keep going. So we thought, “Fuck it, why not?” and started writing songs and playing live. I wish I could claim some grand masterplan, but the evolution was largely accidental. I’d say some of the impetus is that we are all old. I turned 58 in March, so I’m on borrowed time and have to leap on any opportunities for “living my best life” before dementia sets in.
How has the trio format influenced the songwriting for MB3.
For practical reasons—primarily cost—we don’t have a drummer. We decided early on that, rather than use a backing track simply as a replacement for a live drummer, we may as well embrace the technology. In many respects, the sound is a lot more “studio” than any previous band I’ve been in, which is sort of funny because the whole genesis of the band was based around playing live shows and writing songs with that in mind. But probably the main influence is the fact that there are three songwriters in the band who, by happy and diplomatic chance, originated three songs each on Tripla.
In the past, any songs I wrote relied on being developed with a producer, but there’s no money for that now, so we depend on each other to come up with ideas and tweaks and flourishes—or to rethink the arrangement—to make a song work. We’ve managed to avoid any preciousness or ego, and everyone is an enthusiastic collaborator on each other’s songs. There’s been no frosty sulks or fistfights so far, so I think it’s working.
Talk a bit about the recording of Tripla.
All the songs were road-tested in the live set, so they had time to develop and embed. Because we use a backing track, half the studio work was already done when we got around to recording the songs fully. Moose and I recorded our parts at home on Logic, while Ollie has a proper little garden studio, which meant his tracks sounded more professional even at the first demo stage. Bits and pieces—keyboards, backing vocals, percussion and other instrumentation—got added when any of us felt the song might need it. Then we’d congregate at Ollie’s to add any final bits we thought might work to complete the tracks.
We dovetail well. Moose is hopeless at using a computer and programming, but he’ll spend hours—days—finessing guitar and keyboard parts and sounds to achieve his eureka moment. Ollie is a whiz with the tech, so you just have to say, “Can you make it sound a bit more big, dark, groovy, moving?” He instantly knows what you mean and makes it happen. I’m hopelessly impatient when it comes to precise sonics, and I’ll use the first Logic sample or effect that seems to work. But I think I’m good with dynamics—backing vocals and percussion, keyboard flourishes and arrangements. We make a good team.
Once we got everything recorded, we sent the tracks to (Lanterns On The Lake’s) Paul Gregory for mixing. It felt a little odd to do this remotely after all my years of being in the studio with Lush. But we’d worked with Paul before with Piroshka, and he has a great ear for the energy, beauty and dynamics of a song and the detail of the individual elements. We absolutely trusted him to bring out the best in the recordings.
You’ve described MB3 as a grassroots effort. How so?
A lot of our early shows came to us via the indie network. The Wedding Present offered us shows on two tours, and we didn’t have a booking agent for the first year, relying on friends who promote gigs and word-of-mouth contacts. We hire a car, cram everything in and set up everything ourselves. I’m on the merch stall for the night, before and after playing, and Ollie and Moose do the driving. Often, friends around the country let us stay over. It’s a full-on team effort, but we make a nimble and efficient unit. We met our video maker, Seb (Faits Divers), when he filmed us playing Paris Popfest in September 2023. He put us up in his parents’ house when we came through Dijon the following spring, and his footage then became the videos for “Vertigo,” “8th Deadly Sin” and “Big I Am.” Actually, a big part of our developing friendship was Seb coming to the rescue when Moose left his passport in the toilets of a service station and had to miss the Eurostar home—so we owe him, big time.
MB3 is very reliant on a network of friends and hands-on enthusiasts. There’s Chris Bigg, who does all our artwork and did all the Lush stuff with Vaughan Oliver at 4AD. And Simon and Abbey Raymonde, along with the whole team at Bella Union, who always go over and above when working with us. And our U.K. agent, Julia (Wasielewska), is someone we have a personal fondness for.
What’s the live MB3 experience like—and will U.S. audiences get to experience it?
Bar the earliest days of Lush, this is the first band I’ve been in where all the songs were played live before they were recorded for an album. I was worried, initially, that using a backing track might take away from the live experience, but actually the opposite is true. I love drums, but it was always a headache when playing small venues to be able to hear myself sing over a kit that was invariably positioned right behind me. Now, it’s not a problem, which has helped my confidence with the vocals. I’m less uptight about my performance, despite being older and less fit in every sense of that word.
We’re planning to tour the U.S. in October. Last time, Moose didn’t come. He loathes flying. We had Ollie switch to guitar with Mick Conroy (Modern English) back on bass, as he was with Piroshka. This time, we’ll all be playing, though we may have to slip something in Moose’s drink before we set off for the airport. He’s quite closed-eyes, blissed-out these days onstage—not much shoegazing in evidence. But all that said, the person to watch at MB3 gigs is Ollie. I guarantee he’ll put you in a great mood.
See MB3 live.
