Blood Brothers - London, UK - Winter 2007
By: Chris Pratt
Although not normally a band that could be described as predictable, The Blood Brothers' choice of opener for tonight's much-anticipated return to London is a no-brainer. Latest single 'Set Fire To The Face On Fire,' with its infectiously barked refrain and grinding, mid-tempo thump is the perfect combination of old and new Blood Brothers: the love-it-or-hate-it vocal tag-team action and pitch-black lyrical surrealism remain intact, but the instrumentation is stripped back, more focused and texturally more diverse.
As always, Jordan Billie and Johnny Whitney trade screams, squeals and croons as they expertly work the crowd from centre stage (though the latter is now just as likely to be found behind the Fender Rhodes); on the left stands the impressively lofty frame of bass and synth player Morgan Henderson (whose mushroom cloud of a barnet is tonight restrained 'neath a military cap) whilst toward the back of the stage perches Mark Gajadhar, whose boundless energy behind the drumkit stokes the spitfire urgency which has becomes the Seattle quintet's calling card.
The right hand side of the stage is Cody Votolato's domain, and he takes full advantage of his designated floorspace, stumbling, swaggering, and striking a range of Townsend poses, without once compromising the precision of his guitar work. It's arguably Votolato who has most influenced the band's progress of late - his playing has matured from technical hardcore showmanship to the sparser, more rhythmic lines that the band's recent material has been constructed around. I catch up with him pre-gig, discovering - thankfully - that the furious intensity of his live performances doesn't spill over into his off-stage persona. He's charismatic, enthusiastic and affable, even though recent events mean he'd be excused for not being so laid back.
It's been a tense and uncertain couple of days in the Blood Brothers camp, with Johnny Whitney's sore throat forcing the band to pull out of last night's Nottingham show: "He's at the specialist now, he hasn't spoken for two days," reveals Votolato. To everyone's relief, Whitney soldiers on tonight, and although a painful-sounding croak sometimes surfaces amongst the high-pitched screams and squeals, his dedication is a thing to be admired. This powerhouse set, and likewise the previous night's reluctant cancellation, confirms a fact that Blood Brothers devotees will already be well aware of: when this band steps out onto a stage they don't intend to hold anything back, otherwise they wouldn't be there at all.
'Young Machetes,' The Blood Brothers' fifth full-length has recently had its official UK release (though it's been available on import for a few months now), prompting extended web-based discussion on the band's musical trajectory since their breakthrough album, 2003's Ross Robinson-produced 'Burn, Piano Island, Burn.' However, the expectations and concerns of their listeners following 2004's 'Crimes' seem to have had little negative impact on the recording of the follow-up, probably because that record won them just as many new listeners as it did alienate older fans.
"Recording 'Young Machetes' was great," recalls Votolato, "I think it was definitely everyone's favourite experience of making a record - the atmosphere within the studio was super-positive. With each record we do I think we all continue to have more open minds toward trying new things. Both Guy (Picciotto, Fugazi / Rites Of Spring legend) and John (Goodmanson, producer of 'Young Machetes' and 'Crimes') played a little bit more of a role in pre-production than we've ever had someone do before. They came two weeks before we started recording, we played them everything and they helped us reconstruct a few of the loose ends that we were unsure of."
As with 'Crimes', the new album sees the band incorporating a whole host of new elements into their songs which, according to Votolato, were mainly prompted by an increasing breadth and variety in the musical influences they brought to the sessions: "The Beatles and their approach to recording and writing was always really influential, so was Miles Davis, Captain Beefheart, tons of stuff...Also we continue to - hopefully - get better at our instruments, and through that also writing songs, but it also becomes more challenging when you have more options to work with."
Those name-checks might well prompt a quizzically-raised eyebrow from anyone who's only familiar with the band's work pre-'Crimes,' but the jaunty, Rhodes-powered numbers that punctuated the band's trademark splatter-punk on that LP were ample evidence that the standard set of 'hardcore' influences that they had once drawn upon had become a little tired. Even earlier in their career, as Votolato explains, Blood Brothers were never ones to stick to a strict musical template: "I think earlier on our influences were a little more concise. They were well-rounded within the band but they didn't really look beyond a certain spectrum. However I don't think our influences came out in our music in a very obvious way, at least I would never think, "I wanna do something like this," when we were writing. We would record it and then months or years later I'd listen to it and think "Oh, that's just like a Drive Like Jehu guitar line or a Jesus Lizard riff. I think we were always able to take these things and make them become Blood Brothers as opposed to other bands where you could say, "They sound just like such-and-such.""
Indeed, part of the fuel behind The Blood Brothers' restless evolution seems to be this desire to distance themselves as much as possible from the hordes of cookie-cutter bands, both hardcore and otherwise. Votolato admits that his views on the current climate of popular musical are often negative: "Most of the time I get really down about it - I feel like nothing important is happening and sometimes I don't feel like we're doing anything very important. But then I start to think about bands like Liars and Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Cursive, Bright Eyes - there are people around right now doing really, really amazing things which I feel are very progressive and that make a mark. But the fact that there's so much saturation of what you see on the TV - marketable punk rock bands, screamo, hardcore. There's just so much over-stimulation in the world now. It's comforting to know that there are really cool things out there, I just hope that they're not swept under the rug for too long."
Votolato's distaste for the contrived sounds of the mainstream majority are more than matched by his rampant enthusiasm for genuinely exciting music, be it vintage or contemporary. Amongst today's recommendations are recent tourmates Celebration ("They're from Baltimore and I think they're one of the best bands around right now - I just hope that they become huge!"), The Band ("One of the greatest, most inspiring bands ever - they were so good!"), Two Gallants, The Clash, Final Fantasy and The Zombies. It seems that this thirst for discovering and savouring great music is another element of The Blood Brothers' unflinching eagerness to broaden and diversify their own output.
That the negative reaction of many fans to the musical shifts showcased on 'Crimes,' and now 'Young Machetes' goes directly against the progressive nature of The Blood Brothers is inevitably a source of frustration for Votolato and his bandmates: "I think there's a clichéd approach to being a fan of a band sometimes and it's to be let down by whatever comes out next, whatever's not the first thing you got really into. Or for a band you really liked, the amount of people that like them now versus the amount of people that liked them then helps judge how much you like what they're doing. In that respect I feel like those sort of listeners come and go. They're like, "'Burn, Piano Island, Burn' is the best record" - I would hope that people would not be so narrow-minded as to want us to keep making the same record over and over! Maybe it's just that people really like technical music, whereas we've just gotten out of playing technical music...I don't really care if someone listened once but doesn't now, we just make the record we wanna make and hope that they like it!"
Dealing with the less-than-enthusiastic responses of certain audience factions is certainly nothing new to the band - their full-on aural assault and confrontational - though quirky and downright fun - live shows have split opinion since the band's inception. Like all great punk-rock bands though, they thrive on this controversy and - sometimes - hatred.
"One of my worst-slash-favourite shows that we played was with A.F.I," remembers Votolato, "it was shortly after they had got popular on MTV. There were two shows, one in L.A. and one in San Diego and there were like 6,000 people a night. It was the first time we really experienced 3,000 people hating our band and throwing stuff at us and calling us 'fag.' We kinda get a kick out of that, we're always the underdog whenever we open up for bands because there are a lot of people who haven't heard us, and maybe we're hard to take in the first time! But it really is interesting how we can bring that sort of anger out of people just by playing, so I got kind of a kick out of that show but it's also a bummer too."
Partly due to that kind of treatment, and presumably also because of their ever-broadening sonic palette, The Blood Brothers have been more and more inclined to tour with bands far removed from the hardcore pigeon-hole they were previously assigned to. Support slots with Liars, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead suggest that the band feel a tighter connection with these 'indie' - though admittedly noisy - bands rather than those in heavier sub-genres: "We don't really feel any affinity with hardcore or metalcore or screamo music," claims Votolato. "It's difficult for us to find bands that we 'fit' with musically; it has to be more politically minded. Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Liars, even a band like Against Me! or Cursive - those are the kinds of bands I feel closest to in the music world, because they're all bands that are doing something different."
Along with these recent tours have come a fresh audience of potential converts, although they're perhaps not overly accustomed to having two skinny Americans screaming non-stop in their faces for half an hour. Even so, something about The Blood Brothers has struck a chord with the indie kids where other 'noise' bands haven't. "I think it's just because the 'hard' parts in our songs are not coming from a level of testosterone that we have," explains Votolato, "it's not really about aggression, though it is aggressive. Our approach to writing is so well-rounded that it's not just subjective to those who like noisy music - if people listen and give it a chance, or hear it at the right moment at the right point of the record they hear that we aren't just a noisy band, we're writing songs that we put a lot of time and effort into."
Artists in this article: Blood Brothers