The Mercy Bell are a new band that have been around for a couple of years. Formerly know as Eat The Menu, they've recently renamed themselves, plus remastered, remixed, repackaged & re-released their excellent album Whoosh, whic has only recently been released under the band's new name.

I recently had the chance to speak to the vocalist for the band Becca Boucher, who has a realistic & down to earth attitude towards her chosen craft, as well as an amazingly wide ranging voice.

To start the conversation off, I was curious as to the reason the band had for renaming themselves, so I asked the reason.

"It's interesting you should ask that. It's not like we didn't like the name at all, but when you start out, your only this little band in Australia & when you start to get a bit of success, you start to look overseas & when we did look, we started to think about the name. The main reason for the change was largely because it would've been something of a culture clash in Europe."

With that strange little question out of the way, I moved onto the band's album & how the rematering came about.

"We'd been selling the album at our gigs, in fact I think we moved about a thousand or something like that, so it went well. It's interesting, it's a little like soundtracks I guess, people like to have something to remember & keep for a memory. I guess when people buy our albums or somebody elses at any gig, they just want to have it to remember."

Has being with Polydor helped with redoing the album, you know, making it sound better & so forth?

"I really don't think people could really tell any major difference with the sound all that much but there were just some very small things that were very important to me that I wanted to change. The big advantage that having some money behind us for the studion was just that, we were able to afford a great studio. When we were remixing & changing, the sound desk was quite automated, so you only had to do a lot of the things once, you do something once & just press a button & the desk basically does the rest for you."

Although the first single All We Can Do didn't gain quite the airplay the band had wanted, the second single Always seems to have picked up. I asked Becca about airplay.

"Well, Triple J have picked up this latest single a bit, but they didn't do a lot with the first, but it's somewhat surprising that V & MTV as well as Rage have given us some great support."

The mention of cable networks brought the question of public access to mind.

"Yeah, I know what you mean. The great thing about Rage is that it's free, anyoneone with a TV can check it out. The problem with cable TV is that only the more wealthy can afford it. I mean, we'll never see it, I don't think it'll ever be cheap enough for us to see. Besides, they need to sort a lot of things out first, content for one, half the stuff on it at the moment has already appeared on free to air - why would you pay for something you can see for free. Still, they'll get it right eventually."

The next logical question was how the band viewed the possibilities of the Internet for bands.

"The Internet used to be seen a little like cable, but people could immediately see the possibilities. One of the best things about it is that bands can do a lot of stuff for themselves now that they just couldn't do before the Internet came along."

Lastly, I asked Becca where the band would like to head from here.

"One of the things we'd love to do is do some different show settings, maybe something like a thatre show where a different crowd would turn up & it'd be smoke free & a bit more intimate, but just to keep ccreating & expressing our music is great for the moment."

Check out The Mercy Bell's album Whoosh through Polydor.