A band that doesn’t take themselves too seriously is always far more endearing than one that does and for the members of The Bloodpoets, the photo shoot offered them a chance to enjoy themselves and have some fun.”So that picture where I look really fucking bad ass; I’m actually freezing my ass off,” Tom laughs. “That’s probably why I look so; you know it just adds some character in the face. I’m trying to stop shivering actually. It was a bit of an interesting shoot that one but it was really cool fun.”
The blood splattered flyer is for The Bloodpoets upcoming tour in support of their new EP Wings. After having released their debut record Polarity, the band found that they had another bunch of songs ready to go in no time and decided to release them as soon as was possible. When it came to the song writing for Wings, Tom is admits that the process remained relatively the same as the Polarity sessions which subsequently led them to a healthy dose of national airplay as well as a string of enviable supports. “You know, I don’t sway to trends or sway to what I’m listening to at the time,” explains Tom. “I’ve always been sort of the type of, I just write what I feel like, like if I feel a beat I’ll start writing it. So I don’t start a song thinking that I want to write a specific genre which is kind of bad for us in the sense that we don’t really stick to our genre. For the first album, that was really diverse, there was, I guess like 60s pop songs then mixed with rock tracks, then ballads and kind of landscape-y kind of music and now this EP, it does follow the trends as it does have a pop song, it does have a rock song but it’s all widely coincidental because it just came from the option of, you know just writing whatever I feel like.”
Accompanying the release of Wings is the music video for the single Sunny Day. The making of the video was another chance for the band to get creative with another format. “Well when we were having a discussion with the director (about the video) I’d explained that Sunny Day is actually a quite sinister song,” Tom explains. “It’s all about things like I’m feeling crap, I really wish I could go out, none of my friends are around you know, oh well it’s just another sunny day. It basically means that every day, it’s just another day. So I pushed that kind of to the director and they sort of went yeah ok let’s just go with that and make it sort of lighter so that the characters are sort of paranoid about going out and yeah I said I like that. So we just made it fantastical.”
The Sunny Day tour kicks off in Melbourne on October 20 and then makes its way into Launceston and then Sydney until the band finally end up back in their hometown of Brisbane for the last show. For The Bloodpoets, touring is an essential part of what being in a band is all about and despite the sometimes fickle nature of the live music scene here in this country, they are just thrilled to be able to play their music in a wide variety of places and to an even wider variety of people. “You know going on tour to different places is great fun,” he adds. “The mystery of it all and you know we don’t get bummed out if we don’t have a good night, we’re just happy to get out of Brisbane and play. So yeah, it’s always really positive. We’re trying to go three or four times a year; do an Australian tour, so we’re trying to keep it more regular.”
