With an origin story that would make Dave Grohl proud, Bloods are a three-piece from Sydney made up of MC (vocals, guitar), Dirk (drums, vocals), and Sweetie (bass). Together they play a fast and gritty style of garage-punk, os as MC describes it, “The Bloods sound is a result of us not knowing what the fuck we were doing in the beginning.”
Each band member ended up playing a different instrument to what they started with. While MC was originally a bassist and Dirk a guitarist, Sweetie, a classically trained violinist, took the biggest plunge by switching to bass.
“A while ago in an old band I used to play in, we needed a bass player,” starts MC, as she details the story of Sweetie’s switch in instrumentation. “I was like, ‘what about if you just buy a bass and learn to play, its like the violin, right? It’s got four strings you just have to turn it upside down.
“For some reason she bought that logic,” she laughs.
While Sweetie didn’t end up playing bass for that band, the fact that the violinist now owned a guitar was a pivotal factor in the birth of Bloods.
“We were like, ‘fuck it’s just logical’. I could kinda already play guitar. ‘Sweetie you own a bass, you just gotta learn how to play it,’” says MC enthusiastically.
“Dirk didn’t have a drum kit, but Dirk and I had played in bands before and every break he would just get on the drum kit and start hitting it. He’s just naturally one of those dudes who’s fucking good at everything to do with music.” “We just threw caution to the wind and were like, ‘fuck it lets just start this band even though we don’t know what we’re doing.” – MC
As MC concludes the anecdote, it’s clear that the inception of Bloods has a punk mindset written all over it. “We just threw caution to the wind and were like, ‘fuck it lets just start this band even though we don’t know what we’re doing.’”
Bloods have come a long way since their haphazard beginnings in 2011, and August will see the release of their debut EP Golden Fang.
“We’ve been wanting to put something out for a while because we’ve got so many songs,” says MC, revealing how eager Bloods are for their first release to drop. “We just wanted to document them and put them out there for people to listen to.”
The EP might have been a long time coming for the trio, but MC is by no means impatient or hungry for globetrotting success.
“I’ve always known that it’s a lot of work. I’ve never been one to dream, ‘oh one day I’m gonna be as big as the Red Hot Chili Peppers’. That was never something that crossed my mind,” she remarks.
“I’ve always thought as long as I get to do that [play music], I don’t care how long it takes to put something out. I don’t care how long it takes before I get bored of it. I just want to do it while I still love it.”
In the lead-up to the EP’s release, the trio have unleashed “Back To You” into the world. While the track displays a more mature and softer take on what the band have done before, MC assures that the rest of the EP’s sound, “Is still very much Bloods.”
“I think the good thing about the EP is that it’s gonna really showcase the different sides to us, like the different punk influences. The six songs on the EP cover a vast area of punk music,” says the singer.
MC describes their first offering as sounding, “Like us. It sounds like our personalities – because the three of us have always been so tight and such good friends, Bloods literally feels like almost a personification of that friendship and our energy together,” she explains, continuing with a laugh, “I sound like a hippy.”
The achievement of the upcoming release of Golden Fang is even more momentous when you consider that the young band are independent.
“We do absolutely everything ourselves. I do all the artwork, we do all of our videos ourselves … I’m not gonna lie, it’s so much hard work,” says the musician frankly. “It was so lovely to have somebody on the other side of the world say they like our music enough to want to put it out for us and promote it. That’s such a compliment and we’re stoked” – MC
“Any of the money we see from playing shows we never actually see. It goes straight into creating stuff, so we can get t-shirts made, we print posters and book time in the editing suite to edit videos and that kinda thing, and it’s super time consuming. You have to be so organised.”
“We even take the records to the record stores that are selling them, and we’re the ones sending out all the orders to any merch that people buy, and we’re setting up things for iTunes,” she says.
While it might sound like a grievance from the frontwoman, her exuberant tone reveals how she really feels about it: “But fuck we love doing it, it’s so much fun.”
The hard work is almost certainly paying off. The trio have played numerous support slots for local and international bands such as The Rubens, Jeff The Brotherhood, The Dum Dum Girls, Obits, and DZ Deathrays.
An American record deal has even come their way via Seattle’s Whooping Crane Records. A four-track digital EP of previously unreleased tracks will be released in the States in August.
“It was so lovely to have somebody on the other side of the world say they like our music enough to want to put it out for us and promote it. That’s such a compliment and we’re stoked, we’re really stoked,” says MC.
Even with the international support, it’s hard to imagine Bloods being anything but down to Earth as they continue to achieve success in the future.
“Hopefully people will hear it and like it and invest in what we do and just allow us to keep doing it,” declares MC. “That’s the ultimate goal for us, just to be able to keep doing it.”
Golden Fang is due for release soon, see Bloods Tour dates below.
Bloods 2013 Tour Dates
Fri 7th June – The Corner Hotel, Melbourne VIC
supporting Cloud Control
Tickets: CornerHotel.com.au
Sat 8th June – The Beach Road Hotel, Bondi NSW
Tickets: beachroadbondi.com.au
Fri 21st June – Oxford Art Factory, Sydney NSW
With Step-Panther, Palms
Tickets: moshtix.com.au
