Blood Red Shoes: Playing The Game
We thought it a great time to catch up with the duo, to find out how things are going.
It's not long now until Blood Red Shoes release their highly anticipated second album, 'Fire Like This' - it's due out a week on Monday, 1st March.
Their new single, 'Light It Up', is also out next week (22nd February - watch the video here), and they'll be heading out on a pretty massive tour just after.
With all this in mind, we thought it a great time to catch up with the duo, to find out how things are going.
How important to your group is the fact that there are only two members? Have you ever considered adding a third?
It's just a fluke of how we got together, it wasn't something we felt strongly about or really decided on. The band developed its own energy very fast and our songwriting process got established very fast, and since that point we've never wanted or needed to fuck with that. a third person would just ruin the dynamic that we've established.
The track ‘We Get Bored’ is included only on the Japanese edition of your new album, why do you put so much focus on your Japanese fanbase?
We don't, for some reason no bands release their album in Japan without a bonus track. It's just totally standard. I don't really know why that is, but on both our albums, and all our friends' bands, you add a bonus track for Japan! Personally I would prefer to release the same album everywhere because to me, this album is ten songs. But you have to play the game - we want our album to come out in Japan and we want shops to stock it, we want people to hear about it and come to shows, so if people tell us we need to add the bonus track for that reason, we'll go for it.
Are you looking forward to playing in Tokyo in a few days?
Hell yeah! Tokyo is a great place and we went their four times on our first album, we've missed playing and hanging out in Japan. It's a shame it always seems so short to be honest, one day we'll get to hang out properly for much longer I hope. We always get such a warm welcome, it's great.
The lyrics to your last album were very dark, can we expect the same from the new record?
Yes. I think the new album is better lyrically and I would say a bit darker yeah. It's not a happy record, it's a melancholy, angry, slightly psychotic record. I think the music fits with that better than the first album too.
What bands have you been listening to for inspiration with this new record?
I very much doubt any musicians directly listen to something for inspiration that would be pretty superficial. I think everything that you hear and experience whilst you're writing songs all goes into your head and comes out again somewhere - even just hearing things you hate can inspire you. Like, Hadouken, jesus that's awful music, let's make sure we do something that's the opposite end of the scale to that. I think our music is equal parts inspiration from great music and art we love, and reaction against a lot of modern life and modern music that we hate.
The festival season is coming up soon, are there any you’re particularly hoping to play this year?
Of course... we have a great time at festivals so we always look forward to that. I love it when crowds sing along and join in and go mental. The only sad thing about festivals is the huge barriers on the stage. But in particular I'm looking forward to Summersonic in Tokyo and Osaka, Lowlands in Holland and Pukkelpop in Belgium. I hope that Glastonbury is cool this year - we've only played it once and it was a bit weird filling in for another band, this time it will be more like our own show so should be way better.
It seems that you like to connect with your fans a lot through the forums as well as at live shows, do you feel this connection is an important part of being in a band?
Yeah I actually think we do this a bit less than we used to, just because we realized sometimes it's good to have a little bit of space. I come from a punk rock background and the whole ethos is that the divide between the "fan" and the band is basically manufactured bullshit. We're all just people as part of the same thing. I don't like musicians who position themselves as distanced untouchable gods, these weird aloof inhuman people. I like people to realize we're just like anyone else really, we are not special. Communicating with your audience is important, and it's important to me that people understand us properly - when you're constantly portrayed through media, photos, journalism you don't always see what you think is a true reflection of your band. using the internet you can directly change that.
All your tours are very extensive, how do you cope with spending so much time on the road?
Well sometimes we don't. Sometimes we totally lose our shit and kill each other and break up onstage and all the rest of it, which I'm sure you've heard about. but considering how long we tour and how there are no other people in the band to mediate if we fight, I think we do pretty well. We always resolve anything that goes wrong. I think generally we're pretty adjusted to the road - it's what we've done since day one - touring - so we just adapted to it. I prefer being on the road to being at home, that's for sure.
Did you hand pick the support bands for your upcoming UK tour?
Yes we always try to pick the supports. We picked them for every single show of this tour except a couple in Spain and Portugal. It's important to us to have bands we like, feel something in common with, bands that we think will give people a good night for their ticket money. Bands that the audience might find interesting but not necessarily exactly what they'd expect - like when we took Rolo Tomassi, that was great.
Blood Red Shoes will be touring their new record all throughout March, check here for tickets. Want to listen to some of their new album? You can below
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