Erik Blood is wearing his My Bloody Valentine Glider pin on
his hoodie as we meet for our interview, which is the day after MBV
altered the lives of thousands of Seattle music fans at WaMu Theater.
The show blew both of our minds, among many others.
About 17 years earlier, My Bloody Valentine—and Cocteau
Twins—had exerted a powerful effect on Blood. It was 1992, and
the local guitarist/
vocalist/producer had become disillusioned
with hiphop, in which he’d been immersed since the late ’80s. But
hiphop’s increasingly negative vibes toward homosexuals were beginning
to disturb Blood, who’d come out of the closet that year.
MBV and Cocteau Twins offered a much more welcoming sonic
environment, without the toxic lyrical content. Blood fell head over
heels for those groups’ gorgeous, uniquely enveloping guitar tones.
“That’s all I wanted after that, that kind of guitar sound,” he says.
As a child, Blood had been exposed to girl groups, Motown, and ’70s
disco and R&B by his mother and the Cure, INXS, and Echo & the
Bunnymen by his older sister. But MBV and Cocteau Twins were the acts
that really set him on the path of music-making.
Moving from hiphop to the cream of shoegaze rock seems like a
strange transition, but Blood disagrees. “[Public Enemy’s] Fear of a
Black Planet is like a hiphop-shoegazer record,” he observes. “It’s
so dense. And every sample in it, every noise, even just the speaking
parts, have these tones to them that sound beautiful mixed together.
It’s really amazing. It still blows my mind.”
Such enthusiasm for the intricacies of sound led Blood to attend the
Art Institute of Seattle for audio production. He wasn’t completely
happy with the program, but Blood did learn some techniques there that
he still uses today when producing other artists’ or his own
material—and he also met the members of his first band, Mountain
Con, at the school.
“Originally I just came in and produced their first record, and that
led to them asking me to join the band as their onstage DJ,” Blood
recalls. “Which was fun. Those guys are great. I’m still friends with
all of them, but their music just wasn’t what I wanted to do. Every
time I tried to push for doing something new, it got shot down.”
Encouraged by Mountain Con’s frontman to pursue his own muse, Blood
ended up joining the Turn-ons, whose 2000 self-titled debut album he’d
produced. With the Turn-ons, he played guitar, mellotron, Rhodes,
cello, and arranged strings. The group released four albums and an EP,
arguably peaking with 2004’s East.
Despite a clutch of great, hooky songs ranging from debauched
glam-rock homages to a deft Northwest take on shoegaze, the Turn-ons
could never catch a break and are currently in limbo. Lead
singer/guitarist Travis DeVries moved to New York and continues to work
on his own music—an album titled Death to God is available
digitally—while Blood has become a sought-after producer, working
out of Ben Kersten’s MRX studios.
While Blood derives much satisfaction working the controls for other
artists’ music (his production credits include releases by the
Moondoggies, the Lights, Tea Cozies, and Voltage Periscope, the musical
side of the comedy troupe Black Daisy), he is just as enamored of his
own creative processes. The fruits of his efforts materialize May 12
with the digital
release of his first solo album, The Way We
Live, which he’s releasing himself. Through a service called
TuneCore, Blood’s full-length will be available in several online
outlets, including iTunes, Amazon, and eMusic.
The 10-track album reflects Blood’s love of MBV and the Jesus and
Mary Chain’s clangorous melodic efflorescence, but it’s enriched by a
patina of romanticism that evokes John Hughes’s ’80s films. The
album—mastered by Shockabilly/Bongwater legend Mark
Kramer—exudes a grandiloquent cinematic aura. Nearly every cut
aches to be set to crucial scenes in quality Hollywood fare, especially
the climactic “Better Days,” a rapturous, string-laden ballad that
practically glows. “Birch Effect,” which actually may appear in a small
indie flick, possesses an understated buoyancy that recalls Modern
English’s “I Melt with You,” before blooming into an epiphany of a
chorus. “Broken Glass” rampages and blisses out with
Loveless-like (b)luster.
Blood’s songs bear elegant contours, and their hooks stick in your
mind like a nutritious goo while avoiding cloying obviousness. Crafted
with care and expertly produced, The Way We Live seems destined
to attain pop-classic status.
“[This solo album is] something I’ve always wanted to do,” Blood
says. “I’ve tried to do it a few other times and ended up just giving
the songs to the Turn-ons instead. It got to the point where I had a
bunch of shit to say, and I had songs I wanted to do my own way and not
think about what other people would think about it. So I took a week
off work and just sat at the computer and Pro Tools, made as many demos
as I could, and later on booked some studio time and finished it
off.”
Oddly, everyone from the Turn-ons plays on The Way We Live.
“Yeah,” Blood says with a laugh. “I can’t play the drums, so Will
[Hallauer], who’s my favorite drummer, is on the drums. He can read my
mind. And Corey [Gutch], the guitarist, writes the coolest shit. For
‘She’s Your Everything’ [which Blood wrote for a friend’s wedding], I
called him and said, ‘I need you to come over here and come up with a
lead line that’s as catchy as the La’s “There She Goes.” But it has to
be somewhat more original than that.'” He laughs. “He came up with this
amazing arpeggiated guitar line. It’s so beautiful. He made that
song my favorite one on the album.”
The obvious hit single to my mind is “Broken Glass.” “That’s the
first time I really feel like I got that Kevin Shields guitar sound
down that I’ve been trying for years,” Blood enthuses.
For Blood, innovation is nice, but he’s a pop animal at core. His
aim with The Way We Live was to “write catchy pop songs. Pop
music is my life. Everything I listened to as a kid was pop music:
[Bands like Echo & the Bunnymen and My Bloody Valentine] happened
to be crazy innovative, but it was pop music. It charted in the UK. It
wasn’t just some crazy underground shit that stoners listen to. So
that’s what I hear when I listen to the solo album: pop music.
“The stuff I’m working on now,” he continues, “I’m consciously
trying to make different sounds and trying to do something new for me.
And it’s harder. I’m challenging myself to write music a different way.
It’s not always working out, but it’s a good exercise.”
Blood’s new material initially was targeted for a porn-concept
album. But after penning four songs on the topic, he’s run out of
inspiration. “I hate EPs, so I can’t do an EP. I have to be happy with
the music part of it. I can’t just force myself to write shitty songs
about fucking or about people who fuck for money.”
Lyrics remain the most difficult aspect for Blood. However, “Odds
for Sods,” “To Leave America,” and “Home & Walk” allowed him to
address what it’s “about being gay and being fucked with constantly
your whole life. It’s not fun, even in a city like Seattle where
everything is [supposedly] cool. People still get their ass
kicked.”
Warming to the subject, Blood elaborates, “I’m trying to make myself
less complacent with the way shit is just because I live in a place
where I can walk around and hold hands with my boyfriend. We never
worry about that when we’re on Capitol Hill, where we live. That’s why
we live here. But that’s not changing anyone’s way of thought. We can’t
get married. We’re not equals in the eyes of the government. We’re
somewhat subpar. Even though you’re not allowed to beat us up or
kill us because we’re gay, we’re still not really equal. We’re not
human beings; we’re homo beings.” He laughs.
Ending on a happier note, we return to My Bloody Valentine. “[With]
MBV, we talk about innovative guitar sounds and tones, but we rarely
talk about how amazingly written those songs are. Those melodies are
fucking magic. They live in a totally different place. It
doesn’t matter if you can match those sounds and those tones, because a
bunch of crappy shoegazer bands from the mid ’90s did just that. And I
don’t give a fuck about them. Melody, man. You can sing those
[MBV] songs.”
So Blood’s idols didn’t make him want to call it a career?
Uh-uh.
“I totally drew inspiration from that show [at WaMu]. I don’t think
that there’s only room for the top. The top is the top because of all
the people underneath it. I’m down for being a support beam for the
awesome top.” 
Erik Blood should be a superstar. he’s absolutely fantastic!