Bloods – Queen City Sounds and Art

Laura Jane Grace Joins Bloods for a Song About an Enthusiastically Affectionate Love on “I Like You”

Laura Jane Grace and Bloods, photo by Chris Bauer

For “I Like You,” Bloods’ latest single from the forthcoming album Together, Baby!, the group tapped the talents of Laura Jane Grace of Against Me! Fame and an obvious influence on the Australian trio. The song has an upbeat momentum and exuberant melodicism of The Breeders. It’s lyrics could apply to a friendship or a romantic relationship in which the bond is especially strong and in which the feeling is not just love but like and there’s a difference but having both at once reinforces those feelings in a way that feels special. Grace comes in during the second stanza with fortifying vocals and in the last part of the song Grace and Bloods trade lines and come together in the end where the song makes perhaps more explicit the type of relationship described with the lins “Not sleeping alone anymore/Never sleeping alone anymore” and the words “You pull me in I pick you up/Now we can stop pretending” that close out the song hits with more poignancy. The song isn’t much over two minutes but it feels like it describes an important relationship with great economy. Listen to “I Like You” on YouTube, look out for Together, Baby! The group’s debut album out September 23 through Share it Music (proceeds from the album going to Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, Australia) and follow Bloods at the links provided.

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Bloods Let Everyone Know in No Uncertain Terms That the Time for Waiting to Seizing Your Dignity and Taking Charge of Your Life is Over on “BOSS”

Bloods, photo and illustration by Rosa Morgan

Australian punk band Bloods packs a lot of content into the one minute and forty-eight seconds of “BOSS.” And that content is a brash and bold statement of self-assertion of intent that reclaims the pejorative description of a certain type of female expression as “girl boss” by simply going with “BOSS,” a succinct, effective and direct dispensing with niceties the same way one must stop with being a “nice girl” in a “big bad world” because if you act in the narrow constraints of being nice as conceived by an ignorant and sexist society you get run over. Bloods are having none of that because doing so means you never get what you want and deferring to other people on everything forever is not just unsustainable but no sane society or one worth living in puts people under the thumb that way. And hey, just abstract the sentiment to your situation and it works. There is of course no contradiction between being a nice person and refusing to be a doormat but sometimes you have to spell it out to people (as this song cleverly does) and insist your dignity matters in the least conciliatory way possible. Watch the lively video for “BOSS” on YouTube and connect with Bloods on Spotify.

Bloods Turn Broken-Hearted Angst Into Irreverently Humorous Fuzz Pop Confection on “I Hate It”

Bloods really nailed the feeling of hurt, anger and disappointment of a recent break-up with someone you’re coming to terms with was probably not good for you on the group’s single “I Hate It.” But instead of centering that agony, Bloods cast it into an upbeat, incredibly catchy, fuzzy pop song whose lyrics are a laundry list of the main points of contention expressed with a charming frankness and humor that turns aggrievement into something fun and not something to sink your psyche into for the rest of your life. The music video is a collection of vignettes as good-natured send-ups of familiar internet video culture tropes: unboxing videos, beauty tip demos, the “Blape Nation” piece, cooking shorts, Tik Tok dance vids, hip-hop groups posing out and the standard, if simple and self-aware rock band video. Sure the words talk about hating how the person to whom those emotions are directed has an impact on your still and how their commitment to you was overestimated but the way Marihuzka Cornelius delivers the lines it feels like all those considerations are so whimsical now and ready to be written into the past by the very act of putting those feelings into words in a song as fun and appealing as “I Hate It.” The Australian group recently recorded its new Seattle EP (out now on Share It Music) with Steve Fisk at Jack Endino’s Sound House to give the recordings some of that cachet of honest and heartfelt angst and irreverent humor that was the hallmark of the best of the Emerald City’s music and certainly that spirit is present in this track. Watch the music video on YouTube and connect with Bloods at the links below.

bloods.bandcamp.com/album/seattle
open.spotify.com/album/6xc1uhgbkZBx7CnSzPDczX