THE BLINDERS AT THE ISLINGTON
Walking into a boiling hot room of bodies, The Blinders smash into their latest single, 'Ramona Flowers' and it's just as heated as the perspiring crowd. It's clear from the band's brandishing of the NME, the Tories and the state of the country, that these boys have balls. That's why lyrics like 'show me the door and fuck on my bedroom floor' are delivered with such lurid fervour. Frontman Thomas screeches out at the crowd, baring his milky white teeth that contrast demonically with the black war paint he slapped in a frenzy on his face before the gig.
After having supported the likes of The View and now playing with The Charlatans tonight, these boys have already began to establish themselves as one of the most exciting live bands in the country. Thomas' performance is vitriolic -instead of his usual Iggy Pop Exorcist-era acrobatics, he stands erect before the crowd, sporting a sweat-doused mop of hair that clings to his forehead, and his crazed eyes glare out from beneath. The rhythm section send the rumbles through the room subtly but surely. Charlie's bass lines are a low dirge that undercut the sound, punching it up a notch, while Matt's pounding drums generate the menacing energy from which The Blinder's feed.
Tunes like 'Swine' and 'ICB Blues' exemplify The Blinder's aptness for combining meaningful, timely lyrics with ferocious instrumentals. The only thing that would have made the gig better would have been if the crowd hadn't been as tame. The Blinders are known for their live shows because everyone goes into absolute mayhem, but tonight they just weren't responding as kinetically as I had hoped. Maybe it was the lack of air conditioning or maybe tonight London lived up to the rumours that have unfairly circulated in the past that our crowds are shit.
Despite the audience's sun stroke, The Blinders delivered a raging set. Although these boys place politics at the forefront lyrically, what grips any listener is their unforgiving passion. With incendiary sounds, The Blinders are a sonic dream waking us up from a bleak reality.
Photo courtesy of The Blinders Facebook page.
Be sure to catch them at the Camden Assembly for Camden Rocks festival this Saturday.
We managed to catch up with the boys after the gig, as always.
Introduce yourselves!
Thomas: I play guitar and sing in The Blinders.
Matt: I'm Thomas and I play guitar and sing in The Blinders.
[Laughter] Come on that's going to confuse us!
Matt: No, I'm Matt, I play drums and do backing vocals.
Charlie: I play bass.
Thomas: Strictly no backing vocals for Charlie!
What's the best show you boys have played so far?
Charlie: The Islington!
Thomas: Tonight was pretty good.
Matt: Great Escape in Brighton was good!
Thomas: That was like the first festival of the year for us. It was just so good to see everyone buzzing over our music and as artists and as musicians, it's great that people sort of get what we're saying! People are on the same wave length. Brighton really did get it.
Have you got any funny festival stories?
Charlie: I fell asleep stood up! I was at Glasto, and I was really looking forward to seeing Richard Hawley all weekend, then I had a couple of boxes of wine...
What, like a goon bag?
Charlie: Yeah!
Wasn't expecting you to know what that was!
Thomas: Yeah, one of my mates went to Australia.
Charlie: Next thing I know, the encore's on and I'm asleep!
Thomas: There was one time when we strapped like two bottles of Frosty Jacks to each hand of our friend so he couldn't get away without drinking it. We took t'caps off and the lot! He was asleep by about 5 o'clock in the afternoon! This is when we had just gotten into drinking as well.
How old were you then?
Thomas: We were 17. We're all 19/20 now.
Have you got any more festival dates planned?
Thomas: Yeah, we're working with This Feeling at the moment for Jack Rocks 7. We're also doing Reading, Transmit festival in Scotland, Kendall Calling, Y Not, any I've missed?
Charlie: Isle of Wight!
Might be getting a press pass for Isle of Wight!
Thomas: Yeah man, do it! Come and see us and we'll have a drink and that.
We want to know about your face paint, what's going on with that?
Thomas: Oh, so that started out as a one-off improv kind of thing... how did it even fucking start man? It was at Deaf Institute, and we wanted to make it really special, so I gelled all of my hair back and then put this wild blue face paint on and everyone was fucking terrified! I've just got into the routine of it, and now the fur coat's come along. It's kind of like Lizard King style.
That's what I thought when I saw you tonight, some sort of peyote shit!
Thomas: Yeah yeah, 'peyote shit', I like that!
Did you have braces because you've got nice teeth?
Thomas: No, no, I never had braces but I wanted them!
Matt: That's because he doesn't brush them!
Thomas: Yeah, I get told off for only brushing my teeth once a day!
Do you have any funny rituals before the show?
Thomas: Not really, just like 10 minutes before we sort of click into this sort of psyche, we all get very quiet, and Matt does lunges before the show.
[Now Matt gets up and starts showing us his 'confident lunge']
Thomas: That's about it! Then we turn on this like psych-mode, Johnny Dream and the Codeine Scene! That's where we all turn into these fucking monsters!
So, you guys live in Manchester, what's your thoughts on the attack?
Thomas: That was such a tragedy that no one can really comment on it.
What do you think about the fact that it was at a kids concert?
Thomas: That is really damaging because a lot of kids now are not going to want to go to shows. A lot of kids who went to see that show are going to be traumatised, they're never going to want to see a live show again, it's so so sad. But, I don't think it will become a norm though.
Charlie: It doesn't seem like a city to me, living there the past few days, it doesn't feel like a city that's going to be affected by it, it's the sort of city that comes together. Every time that something happens there, it's just the nature of the people there that when something bad happens, they come together.
Thomas: I think it's even more important to put on shows and put on gigs, not just to say a sort of 'we won't be scared', but it's just getting rid of hate and bringing back the love. There's nothing better than going to a gig and everyone being buzzing - that's what it's about - so we're not going to cancel any shows. We're doing one with The Charlatans tomorrow at the Northern Quarter, and they didn't cancel it for that reason.
Which musician makes you feel proud about being from Doncaster? Where is that again?
Thomas: Doncaster's near Sheffield. The Monkeys! We grew up on the Arctic Monkeys, you can't avoid that shit you know, people in Scotland say it's either The View and The Beatles, or if you go a bit further down south it's the Arctic Monkeys and The Beatles. The lyrics and that first album are amazing.
Charlie: How good is that first album? After I turned 18, I hadn't listened to it for like 6 or 7 months, I remember listening to the lyrics and going to Thomas, "have you heard these lyrics?!" Once you start going out and sort of start understanding them...
[Matt breaks into song, and The Blinders start singing the first verse to 'From the Ritz to the Rubble'...]
Thomas: Then Humbug from the Arctics is great.
What do you think about the evolution from then to AM?
Thomas: It's beautiful, it's The Beatles! The Beatles did it, The Rolling Stones did it, look at fucking Bowie, man! Everyone says about the Arctics, 'ooh, they've changed so much', but no, they're fucking artists!
Matt: Yeah, they haven't made the same album like five times!
Matt: Yeah, fuck that man. It's evolution of a musician, and we're hoping to do the exact same. We don't want to be playing the same shit that we played on that stage tonight in a year.
They're all loving it right now though so don't be changing too quickly!
Thomas: Yeah, so we'll do an EP or we'll do an album, and when that's done...
Have you got any plans for an EP or an album yet?
Thomas: July 4th we have a single coming out! You can imagine what that's going to be like!
Where do you rehearse?
Thomas: We don't rehearse man.
Really?!
Thomas: We haven't got time, man.
Do you have anywhere you rehearse when you come to London?
Thomas: No! We hate London, it's such a bore to travel, but we love Camden though.
Yes! Have you ever been to The Elephant's Head?
Thomas: I can't say we have. You'll have to take us down there next week when we play Camden Rocks! And then we've got an EP coming out in Autumn, hopefully.
Why do you think there's so much hype surrounding The Blinders at the moment?
Thomas: There's not a lot of interesting, frightening music.
Charlie: There's too much everyday stuff.
Thomas: Yeah man! We don't go out of our way to be so different or so unique, we literally just pick and choose from our favourite bands and put it into a sound, and bam! Add some political lyrics...
What are your major influences?
Thomas: Not really musical, man. Kerouac, Ginsberg, Orwell's just amazing.
Daniel from Sisteray wanted us to ask you about Brave New World.
Thomas: Brave New World, we don't take inspiration necessarily from Huxley, we've read the book but it was more of an oversight of all the dystopian literature, but the title of Brave New World is just so fitting. It's gotta be like1984, Stranger in a Strange Land. I think that's our most proud work.
Donald Trump or Theresa May... in bed?
Thomas: I'd shag Trump! I bet he's a right little weasel!
Arctic Monkeys - fuck marry kill?
Thomas: We're basically married to the Arctic Monkeys anyway.
Matt: Fuck Turner, marry Nick.
Charlie: Oh, so individual members. I'd snuggle up to Nick at night, I'd kill Helders because he's a Sheffield United fan!
Thomas: I bet Turner would give a right fuck!
I'd probably kill him.
Thomas: Fuck him and then kill him!
Favourite lyric?
Thomas: 'I don't believe in an interventionist god'.
Nick Cave, what a guy!
Thomas: My favourite lyric personally is not actually a song, it's in a piece of poetry by Bob Dylan called 'Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie'. He goes "And it ain't in the rumours people are telling ya, And it ain't in the pimple-lotion people are sellin' ya", and that just sums up life.
Favourite lyric you've written?
Charlie: It's probably not in a song, it's probably in a piece of poetry.
Thomas: I like the Hoodwink Society stuff. If we ever release some vinyl, we'll probably release some with some sheets of poetry, random pieces of poetry and every single press has got a different piece of poetry.
We should talk about mental health because it's such an important topic at the moment.
Thomas: It's the most important thing that's plaguing young people at this time. Everyone knows someone who is crippled by it. I think as a society, we are progressing.
Matt: It's one of the most overlooked things. If you treated mental health as you did physical health: like if you broke your arm it would be like saying, "ah don't think about it, don't worry about it! Just pretend to be okay."
Charlie: It's still a difficult thing for people to speak about.
Thomas: Yeah, if you feel bad you go to the pub.
What's your writing process?
Matt: Charlie normally comes with lyrics.
Thomas: It's poetry first isn't it. We collectively write, but that's normally from bare bone poetry, and then Charlie comes into my room and he says, "I've got this", and then we go through it and we see what works and what doesn't, scrosh it all out, and then from there we take it to Matt -
Matt: And I make it sound good!
Thomas: Yeah! He does all the music.
Matt: It's a communist society man, a bunch of commies!
Thomas: Hoodwink Society! It starts as a jam, and if it fits the theme of the words, I think that we hear music in words rather than hearing words through music.
That sort of reminds me of Richard Ashcroft because he loves William Blake.
Thomas: You know what, I always overlook Richard Ashcroft but I've been told by so many people that he's an absolute genius.
Charlie: Yeah, have you listened to Urban Hymns?
Thomas: I've listened to that, it's fucking brilliant. It's such a cliche, but 'Bittersweet Symphony', what a beautiful piece of writing. We fucking murdered it at in assembly.
Charlie: Yeah, we did an acoustic of it! When we were about 15.
What's the maddest night out you've ever had?
Thomas: Probably when we were on The View tour, Matt ended up in the casino at 6 in the morning, and we had to move over from Aberdeen to Manchester, so we had to get off at about 8! We'd be lying if we could tell you one because we don't remember them, so...
Matt: Yeah, they all blur into one!
Thomas: And it's very illegal, you know!
What's the best thing about The Blinders?
WE FUCKING HATE THE TORIES!
Review by Alicia Carpenter
Interview by Alicia Carpenter and Lilly Greenwood.
Photo Credit: Jeff Moh and Sandy K. Moz.