On the eve of their full-length debut, Philadelphia’s Blood are primed to share their catharsis with audiences. Many relationships were tested during the intensified cohabitation of the lockdowns of 2020. Still, the members of the Philadelphia-based band Blood seized the opportunity to create their excellent full-length debut, Loving You Backwards. After moving from Austin to Philadelphia at the beginning of 2020, the group decided to live and work together in a house.
“Before the pandemic, we were gaining momentum in Austin, and things felt like they were about to take off, but then that was crushed by the pandemic,” starts lead singer Tim O’Brien. “All of us wanted to move to Philly anyway, so we did, and we decided to create a bit of a Sun-Ra house vibe. We had weekly meetings and mental health check-ins, ate our meals together, and wrote and rehearsed every day. It was a great time, but the irony is that this beautiful time of creation also drove some people out. Fortunately, we are all at peace about it and happy that we have this document of dedication to the music and each other.”
Loving You Backwards is a melodic swirl of indie rock, punk, and soul that simultaneously feels as comfortable as it does singularly. Yet Blood didn’t start out as a collective; they began as a solo project for O’Brien.
“I was playing in Austin with friends in a number of projects, but [for Blood] I wanted to buckle down and do it all on my own so I could see what I had to say,” he said. O’Brien recorded demos, then set out to find the group of people who would help him bring it all to life in a live setting.
“I wanted to find bandmates who were together strictly because of music. I was looking for the dream members, the perfect group. I described it as a soul-punk ensemble. At the time, I was obsessed with King Krule’s The Ooz, but I also wanted to sound feral like Violent Femmes. The seven-piece band that is on the record… we felt unstoppable at the time”.
Blood are currently a five-piece with the same rhythm section that recorded Loving You Backwards. “We have been figuring out how this new version of the band will play the record live and figuring out our next evolution as well. I have made my peace with band members coming and going, and the lack of hard feelings helps. Most of my friends in bands have people cycle in and out all the time.”
With a name like Blood, it’s easy to imagine an unsuspecting metalhead being taken aback after stumbling into a show. Their name has been a source of ire for a few labels they talked to, but O’Brien is adamant about sticking with it. “The name has been around for a while now,” he tells us. “Back in 2013, I started using it as my pen name for writing projects. It has a vitality and passion that I like. It was always in me to love that name, and I like that now I can use it across mediums. Labels were like, ‘Fuck this name. No one will ever find you.’ But I won’t change the name for the sake of search engines.”
“I describe it as a life force. This project has always been about coming out front with the visceral and the immediate but also cutting with something that’s also more vulnerable, not hypermasculine. Punk has always been a trojan horse to confuse misogyny, a way for men to explore vulnerability and a place where they can take emotional experiences more seriously,” O’Brien said.
One key difference between Blood’s earlier EPs and Loving You Backwards is the shift from more political lyrics to more personal ones. O’Brien credits the shift in his lyrics to a number of factors, but the weekly mental health check-ins as a band were one key factor.
“We were the band that used to go crazy on stage, but that was about letting out emotion, seeking catharsis. With Loving You Backwards, we still wanted the music to be immediate, but thematically, it became more about expressing sadness, trauma, family issues–the things that are underneath the anger,” O’Brien explains. Much of that openness came from having the check-in sessions.
“We all had to adapt to the situation of living in a house of seven people, so [the check-ins] became a necessity. We benefited immeasurably. I was already to access a certain amount of vulnerability as a writer, but it allowed us to get to the kernel of what we wanted to do creatively,” O’Brien says.
Making Loving You Backwards also marked a dramatic shift in O’Brien’s creative processes. “The other band members coming in evolved the sound,” he continued. “As we started writing more democratically and building songs from musical ideas, it took me to different places lyrically. My biggest influences are doo-wop and soul. I love the Supremes, with those bubblegum lyrics and devastating singers or bubblegum arrangements that conceal a darkness.” The change in sound has not diminished interest in the band, though. “People seem to really like [new single] ‘TV for a Reason’. You can tell when your friends are being nice or being genuinely excited,” he notes.
The title track has been left off the final sequence, but it does serve as a thesis for the record. For O’Brien, it represents hard-won growth. “Moving to Philly coincided with me getting into a serious relationship. A lot of what I was writing about is how impossible it felt to be in a relationship because I was paralyzed by the shit that has kept me from being serious about someone. A lot of grief and fear. Things from my past and my family. I needed to revisit and understand it to heal. So the title is about loving someone in reverse–going back to the root of the reason for the trauma to heal it.”
Another key inspiration for Loving You Backwards is O’Brien’s passion for gay history. “There is a gay library here, and they were overwhelmed with donations during the pandemic. I volunteered to help them clean the donations and to get ready for reopening. This allowed me to have access to memoirs, pamphlets, and more. It was the perfect time to be consumed with all of these stories. I’m interested in how erotic energy can fuel things other than sex.
“It was fascinating, going through these memoirs and seeing how the writers got that sexual energy out through sublimation,” he continues. “Getting to see people’s archives and histories was almost erotic to me. Reading all the gay memoirs really helped me learn to connect all periods of my life together, the storytelling of the past and present.”
Release week can be nerve-wracking, but O’Brien is keeping his mind right and focused on the things that matter most as he prepares for Loving You Backwards to meet the public.
“Above all, I want all the band members who contributed to the creation of the record to feel proud of the work they put into it,” he beams. As for how the world receives it, I hope it is a record that people play with the windows rolled down but also fall asleep to at night. I think it has that potential. I want listening to not be a 30-second experience but something that inspires people to turn off their phones and sit with it.”