Evolution, Escapism, Entertainment: The Blinders Reveal Their 'Electric Kool-Aid' Cocktail
Monday, 14 March 2022
Written by Simon Ramsay
Thanks to a dramatic combination of in-your-face power and visceral socio-political statements, ‘Columbia’ and ‘Fantasies Of A Stay At Home Psychopath’ marked The Blinders out as one of Britain’s most exciting, literate and thought-provoking young groups. Well, you ain’t seen—or heard—nothing yet.
The Blinders’ monolithic songs can sometimes conjure the sound of Nick Cave living rent free in Alex Turner’s head, fusing primal punk with swaggering indie, horror film goth, bare-bones blues, and murder ballad folk.
Having cruelly had their initial momentum halted by the pandemic, just as they were playing bigger gigs and had recorded a second album that deserved much more exposure than it was subsequently given, the new look five piece recently bounced back with their proudly eclectic and expansive ‘Electric Kool-Aid Part I’ EP.
With the band having recently wrapped a run supporting The Cribs around the UK, before headlining their own show in London and releasing ‘Electric Kool-Aid Part II’ on May 13, we reached out for a good old chinwag with bassist and Leeds United fan Charlie McGough. After a lengthy chat about football, he told us all about the creative process that fuelled their new EPs, why they refuse to rest on their laurels, and what the group’s impressive new members have brought to the table.
The last couple of years must have been very testing. How have you managed to stay patient during such an unpredictable period without losing heart?
It’s been incredibly difficult and you do lose heart at times. I’ve seen quite a lot of bands who have packed it in. Someone made the point ‘what the pandemic did was basically mean that what we do, as a profession, was a dangerous thing.’ It’s a strange way of thinking, that what you do is now dangerous to other people and their health. To have that stopped, you’re trying to stay busy and relevant, and the stuff you give your fans to get through the pandemic, short acoustic videos and that kind of thing, also served a purpose in keeping us busy.
The second lockdown, for me personally, became way more difficult to get through because, after that bit of hope, it felt like you were never getting anywhere. For the band, playing live is a massive part of it and that gives you a release and validation. So to keep writing songs for the sake of it, and no one hearing them, just felt like a waste of time. Even though things have been open for a while it’s still difficult to get into that creative mindset. It’s an ongoing battle but there is some light at the end of the tunnel. We’ve done a couple of tours now. Festival season looks like it should be a proper festival season, which is obviously exciting. Fingers crossed.
On the flip side, have the last two years given you the chance to take on board all you’ve learnt and put that into developing your craft?
Yeah, I suppose so. Tom’s done a lot of writing during this period, but I ended up pursuing a lot of different projects, writing fictional poetry, which I’d not had time to do because of the band. But as soon as we got back into a room, everyone’s been so eager to play and we sort of re-shaped our sound. The EP, sonically, is a lot lighter than anything we’ve done before and I wonder if that was influenced by a will to write something that makes you smile after quite a bleak time. Try and write the opposite to how you’re feeling.
Why did you choose the EP route instead of making a third album?
Part of it was logistical and financial and what kind of deal we could get on the table. But it also made sense during the pandemic, doing songs which were a little bit more radio focused. A bit shorter. Not looking at anything too big, like an album. Just getting back in the studio and laying down a few singles. The EPs do include older tracks. We’ve got The Writer, which we’ve sat on for a while. But it’s been about getting back in people’s ears and we thought it was the perfect opportunity to include a couple of tracks which never quite worked on the albums, but there was a home for them on the EPs.
Hate To See You Tortured is a new song, and also one of the most personal you’ve written.
That’s Tom’s lyrics. I always like songs that have pretty dark lyrics but are pretty light in tone. Political dance music is always fabulous. Some of that LCD Soundsystem stuff is really on the nose sometimes, politically, but you can go to a rave and listen to it. Hate To See You Tortured has that, in a lesser sense. If you’ve not listened to the lyrics, it’s a three minute pop song. But there is a darker lyric there, which is an interesting way of doing things.
In a fascinating YouTube conversation between yourself, Tom and producer Rob Ellis, you said you’ve always struggled to express yourself musically as well as you do lyrically. Has becoming a five piece helped you to overcome that?
Yeah, and it’s changed the way we write. On these EPs a lot of the songs started with jams and were just played in the room together before writing lyrics to that. The first single off the next EP is a song called Fight For It. That started from a 20-25 minute jam which was all instrumental. I was playing with a synth and it was kind of a fuck around. We labelled it the ‘Electric Kool-Aid’ jam and from that everything spiralled and it became, not so much the sound of the EPs, but a working title. Then it got trimmed down into what is quite a short little pop song. But the whole band’s clicked really quickly. We’ve moved on and it’s all flowing nicely at the moment.
Listening to your releases chronologically, there’s a strong sense of progression that’s very much evolution rather than revolution.
I think it’s been quite an instinctive thing. We’ve never been in the position to be Radiohead, for example. That comes with success, where you can basically do what you want. So what comes next always nods to what’s gone before, but tries to evolve and push boundaries. This new music we’ve released has obviously been influenced by how those new members have come in and given everyone a fresh look at things, which has been pivotal. That’s great, collaborating with new people. It’s always been a closed shop, The Blinders, since we started, and that’s changed now, which all the best bands do. All the best artists do. Nick Cave’s a massive influence but The Bad Seeds change more or less every album. There are always new collaborators there.
Obviously there are some bands who are a closed shop, but then it comes down to producers and those kind of things, keeping them fresh and having people push them in new directions. That can only be healthy. Of course some people won’t like the new direction. The problem is if you’re not authentic and, when you’re not, people will see through it very quickly. If you’re authentic about these things, if you’re natural, that breeds satisfaction and success.
You’ve joked about employing synths on the EP, but has there been any backlash from fans who just want you to remake ‘Columbia’ over and over for your whole career?
Absolutely and, obviously, they want us to write...everything has to be political. Everything in your life naturally is political, but politics isn’t always on your mind. There’s other things happening in life that naturally influence your writing. It’s restrictive if you don’t try and explore those things.
Socio-political crises have always been prevalent in your past work so they may have expected more of that in light of the pandemic.
The EP has definitely lacked that. Not that it’s gone forever, but I think it’s more escapist. That’s maybe been the thing for me during the pandemic. The news got turned off after a while, which is not a situation I’ve ever been in. I’ve always tried to follow social, economic and political trends and news stories. Eventually it became too much and you do look for escapism in art. You bury your head in other things.
Sport became more and more important because it’s an hour and a half of not thinking about the news. So these EPs and the songs on them are a lot more escapist. A little bit hedonistic, that kind of stuff. You start taking more enjoyment from those things. It’s coming of age I suppose. The more you write, if you exhaust some avenues you have to explore other ones. It’s all part of the trick. But the world today is so bleak. I can’t imagine that won’t start influencing our art again.
I’m sure you want to expose as many people as possible to your music. How do you intend to do that while writing bleak, politically-charged lyrics? Are there any bands you look to who’ve pulled that off?
Idles and Fontaines D.C. are the first two that spring to mind, but there’s only so much you can do with writing a song. You need a team and a machine around you sometimes, which is not very fashionable to talk about, but it helps massively. From a band point of view, you can only keep writing stuff that means something to you and obviously ticks a few boxes in terms of radio. So from our point of view it’s just the same old. Keep writing, keep trying to produce great music that you believe in and hopefully the rest follows.
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