G’day Bloods! Introduce yourselves – who’s in the band, and what does everybody do?
Hello! I’m MC and I play guitar and sing, Mike Morgan is on the bass and Dirk Jonker is on the drums.
You recently released ‘I Hate It’, the second single from your upcoming Seattle EP, which is actually inspired by 10 Things I Hate About You. How’d this one come about?
Our friend and label head Cayle Sharratt knows how much we love 10 Things I Hate About You and, being from Seattle and knowing our EP was an homage to his city, he reminded us that not only was that movie shot there, but that it was also about to turn 20. We all loved the idea of doing something to honour the occasion and thought it would be a great challenge for us to write something that was deliberately the most ‘teen movie’ songs of our career, since people have always told us that our songs sound like they belong on a teen movie soundtrack.
When we came to write it, Dirk and I sat down and it basically came together in about five minutes. I am a huge Josie and the Pussycats movie fan and I wanted to also pay tribute to my favourite song from that movie, ‘Pretend To Be Nice’, so that really inspired the staccato guitar rhythm in the verse. So the song ended up being kind of an homage to both those movies.
What’s really sad now is that Adam Schlesinger from Fountains of Wayne, who wrote the song ‘Pretend to be Nice’, just passed away because of complications due to COVID-19, so it holds so much more potency when I listen to it now.
‘I Hate It’ is also backed with a music video that sees you lampoon all the online content we’re probably going to be submerged in for the next few months – there’s TikToks, cooking classes, makeup tutorials and even an unboxing clip. If Bloods were a famous YouTube channel and not a band, what content would you guys be specialising in?
At the moment, probably somewhere between a wardrobe clean out video and a ‘leave Britney alone’ style diary entry.
You guys actually recorded Seattle at Soundhouse in Seattle, which has a pretty steeped history in grunge – you even used the same amp Kurt Cobain recorded Bleach with. Tell us a bit about that experience – did it almost feel like a pilgrimage of sorts?
It really did feel like a pilgrimage. The city has always fuelled our imaginations with a sense of awe, having grown up in the grunge era. Being in the studio and seeing all the desk makers lined up on the door from bands like Soundgarden, Mudhoney and Nivana was pretty insane. Jack Endino is also the studio manager and he was the first person we met when we arrived, which was pretty surreal. He’s the godfather of grunge and for any fans of the genre who has ever watched any kind of grunge doco, you will know how influential he was to the movement.
Working with Steve was unreal. He was so funny and had the best stories. The whole experience was something we’ll never forget, not to mention the studio was across the road from one of the best Cuban sandwich places in the US. Man, we ate a lot of Cuban sandwiches!
In no particular order, name the five most influential acts to come from Seattle and how they helped to shape your own sound.
Our sound was probably shaped out of the Pacific Northwest, so from Seattle, Olympia, Portland and the surrounding area. When you talk about Seattle, the obvious ones are always bands like Mudhoney, Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, Mother Love Bone, Tad. I think the thing we’ve drawn most from those bands is probably their self-deprecating attitude, the raw approach to recording and the guitar and drum sounds we go for.
The Seattle grunge scene was pretty masculine though, so I was personally more influenced by Olympia bands like Bikini Kill, Sleater Kinney, Bratmobile and The Gossip. Bands from the Greater Pacific Northwest that influenced Bloods would have to be Nirvana and The Sonics.
What else can we expect to see or hear from Bloods in 2020? Are you guys hoping to hit the road once we’re in the all clear?
We have the EP coming out in May, so we are obviously very excited about that!! We are playing with one of our all time fave bands again, Wavves, in October at their Sydney ‘King Of The Beach’ celebration shows and we are absolutely hoping that we get to play more shows in 2020. If not, expect to see us back in real life and in full force in 2021.
Bloods’ new Seattle EP is out on Friday May 15 – preorder it here.