Bloods – MC
by Alex Teitz
Bloods is an Australian 4 piece. They are Dirk, MC, Mike Morgan Sweetie. They met in Sydney and are coming out with their sophomore album, Feelings. They’ve been around since 2011 and released their first full length, Work It Out.
Now they are working with a new nonprofit label, Share It Music, to release Feelings. Bloods has a strong melodic lead to their songs that is reminiscent of 80’s group as characterized by the lead single.
Feelings was released in Australia early this year and comes to the US August 17.
FEMMUSIC: What was the biggest challenge making the Feelings album?
MC: Getting it finished! We started recording it in about early 2016 with our friend Liam, but shortly after I went through a pretty devastating break up, which meant I was unfocused for the better part of a year. We had to fight writer’s block, emotional breakdowns and being too broke to record to see the album finally finished.
FEMMUSIC: How was making Feelings different from Work It Out?
MC: With Work It Out, we essentially set out to make an album that was completely live and sounded like us at our rawest. With Feelings, we wanted to make something a little bit more sophisticated, I guess. We had to learn how to play our instruments and write on them when we started Bloods and now, five years on, we have become better players and songwriters. We wanted to push ourselves further with every song on Feelings.
FEMMUSIC: Tell me about working with Shane Stoneback. How did you meet? How was he to work with in the studio?
MC: We were introduced to Shane through our friend Andrea, who lives in Seattle. When we were thinking about producers, I had said how much I loved Sleigh Bells and she put him forward as a potential collaborator. We actually never met in person! We would record the tracks here in Australia with Liam and then send Shane the files and then he and I would talk through what we wanted to achieve with it. Email is amazing for music in 2018, that’s for sure. He was really fun to work with. Always had great ideas and made me laugh a lot.
FEMMUSIC: You’re signed to Share It Music. What made you sign with them? What did they bring to the project?
MC: We know Cayle who runs Share It Music, through Sub Pop Publishing, our music publisher. He’s always been the most encouraging supporter of ours and when he told us about his label we couldn’t think of anyone we’d rather work with. The set up as a non-profit is also just perfect. Cayle will bring his unrelenting passion and enthusiasm to the project and in a world where music can often be transactional, it warms our hearts to have a company like Share it Music on our team.
FEMMUSIC: Can you describe your songwriting technique?
MC: Generally it starts with me sitting on my bed, in my pajamas, with headphones on, playing an acoustic guitar into my computer over some programmed beats on Garage Band. I usually come up with the tune in a crude form and take it into Dirk and Sweetie and we jam and flesh it out. On this record, there are a couple of songs that Dirk wrote, which involved him sending me demos and me coming up with lyrics to go over them. However we write them initially, the result is always us in a room together, fleshing out the ideas, focusing on what works and ditching what doesn’t.
FEMMUSIC: What song (not your own) has had the biggest influence on you and why?
MC: I have no idea how to answer this! I was recently asked to list my top 10 albums and I think I ended up listing about eighteen. I love songs that people might not regard as ‘masterpieces’, but that I think are the perfect storm of emotion and attitude. I think a few of the most perfect songs I can think of right now are: Wreckless Erick ‘Whole Wide World’, Sleater Kinney ‘Milkshake and Honey’ and Gossip “Firesign’.
FEMMUSIC: As a woman in the music industry have you been discriminated against?
MC: Yep. So many times, but in general we like to ignore those idiots and just do our thing.
FEMMUSIC: Whom would you most like to collaborate with, or tour with? Why?
MC: We’ve been pretty lucky to have played with heroes of ours like Sleater-Kinney and Veruca Salt already. Maybe Beck or Weezer? Yeah, that seems about right.
FEMMUSIC: What one thing would you like to change about the music industry?
MC: I can only really comment on the Australian industry, so I’d say for there to be greater diversity across all forms of music media. The general public is smarter than they’re given credit for and can handle hearing an array of different voices and perspectives.