One could say the formation of bloodsports was kismet: college classes, living in the same neighborhood, mutual friends, and other chance encounters brought Sam Murphy, Jeremy Mock, Liv Eriksen, and Scott Hale together. The band spoke to NYOTA about their debut album, “Anything Can Be a Hammer,” participating in the Brooklyn DIY scene, and signing with Good English Records.
Certain stars have to align for bandmates to find each other. Can you share a bit about how bloodsports came to be?
Liv: The band started with Sam and Jeremy when they were in college in Denver, after hanging out at a few shows. When they eventually moved to New York, they randomly ended up living just a couple of blocks from me. Jeremy and I went to school together growing up, but lost touch when college came around. In New York, we all clicked right away and hung out 24/7 that whole fall/winter. I probably slept on their shitty cardboard couch more than I slept in my own bed. Scott came into the picture when Sam put up a story on Instagram looking for a drummer. It turns out he had some mutuals with Jeremy (and Wesley, from Good English!) and had already been listening to the first bloodsports EP. He lived way up in Harlem, but these days we are lucky enough to all be neighbors. Huge win. I definitely feel like the stars aligned for us and couldn’t be more grateful for it all.
This summer, you announced your signing to Good English Records. Signing with a record label can be a difficult decision for a lot of artists. What specifically about the Good English Records mission resonated with you all and made you take the leap to sign with them?
Sam: I think the fact that it really feels like the start of a community was really appealing to us, being in on the ground floor of something so cool that our friends were starting is kind of the dream scenario, and we’re just happy to be a part of it.
Jeremy: They are very good friends of ours and get things done. No one I would rather be working with.
Liv: Any conversation you have with the Good English guys just makes it more and more apparent how passionate they are about music and the music community. There’s an insane amount of talent amongst them.
From “Sustain” to “Rot,” you’ve kept a signature sound, but you can hear the growth through each new release. How has your collaborative process as a band evolved from 2022 to now?
Jeremy: The band started out with Sam writing most of the material. Before I was in the band, I met Sam at a day drinking event (darty?) and offered to record some music for him. We recorded “Sustain,” and shortly after, I joined the band and we started playing shows. When we started writing for our EP, I began to contribute creatively. With this album, it became a pretty even creative split.
Sam: I think our tastes have really changed a lot since the EP as well, so much so that it almost feels like a completely different project in a way, although it’s still us at the end of the day. But yeah, nowadays it’s much more democratic in the writing process than it used to be, which is great because it allows everyone’s inspirations to really come through in a cool way.
Did you set out to make a debut album, or did Anything Can Be A Hammer come about naturally as you started working on new music?
Jeremy: It came about very naturally. In hindsight, this album was the first step of us finding a sound that feels like our own. We all see this album as a jumping-off point and have already begun writing for the next one. The more albums I have been a part of making, and the more music I have been exposed to, the more I feel as though I am starting to understand what makes a truly great album. I guess it is a function of vinyl, but most of my favorite albums are split in half, sometimes with two completely different moods or sounds for each half. I want to lean into this idea a bit more for the next one, really having two separate stories and bringing them together in a cohesive way. We are big believers in the album format.
It’s common for your songs to slowly build up to these big payoffs or go from calm to chaos. Did Hayden Ticehurst help you all refine some of these larger sonic moments?
Liv: The huge builds were something we had already demo’d. We knew that big and loud is what we wanted to do, but that being said, Hayden is a master of making things sound massive. He was the perfect addition to the process because he found ways for us to make what we wanted sound even more like what we wanted. Hayden is the best. We love Hayden.
Jeremy: By the time we got into the studio, there was very little room for change. We had spent the last year performing the songs live and demoing, so we knew pretty much exactly how it was going to sound. Although I don’t want to put him in a box, I saw Hayden’s style of engineering to be very maximalist. There were something like 20 mics on the drum kit, and countless doubling of guitars and overdubs. I think he pushed us to make a denser, bigger record.
What other media were you all consuming (books, movies, shows, etc) while working on the album that might have consciously or unconsciously inspired songs on Anything Can Be A Hammer?
Jeremy: I am a big fan of David Lynch, particularly Eraserhead. I saw it for the first time when I was 14 and hated it. I wanted to allude to the soundscape of Eraserhead in the title track. I like short stories, and have always really related to the work of Nikolai Gogol. There’s a sort of hilarious, surreal, but very deep depression that comes through in his stories. I don’t write the words to the songs, but I feel like I try to capture that with my playing and arrangements with the band.
Liv: I think Jeremy and I actually watched Eraserhead together for the first time because we had Audio Visual class with Mr. Rodgers, even though we probably never talked once in there. It was first thing in the morning and not very pleasant at all. When recording my vocals on the title track, we watched a ton of Eraserhead clips and mapped out some moments of inspo I could use for the vocal take. Separately, at the time of writing/recording, I was reading a lot about the menu at Blue Hill at Stone Barns. They will literally serve you a carrot. Just a plain raw carrot. And they can do that because they spent years and years and years perfecting how to grow the most honest possible carrot. If you took a million tracks away from our music, I feel confident that it would still stand. Sam’s lyrics, Scott’s rhythms, and Jeremy’s melodies are honest, like Dan Barber’s carrot. But thankfully, they are all nicer than Dan Barber.
Sam: I was on a big Coen Brothers kick last year while writing and recording this album. I think I’ve seen almost all of their movies now, some multiple times. People often say that they make movies about nothing, but I think there’s so much beauty in peering into a slice of these characters’ lives, and how they react to the insane situations they find themselves in. Smarter people can definitely explain this better than I can, but I love them, and I think their films definitely subconsciously inspired a lot of lyrical themes on the record.
New York has no shortage of creative inspiration, and you all have been very much a part of the creative scene there, specifically the Brooklyn DIY scene. Is that community a sounding board for you all as you test out new music and directions you want to take your work?
Jeremy: Definitely. New York has the best scene in the country right now, in my opinion. It has always been a scene that genuinely values experimentation, and a place where leftfield acts can do really well. I don’t think we are particularly experimental or left field to be honest, but I think that we are all very inspired by acts who are.
Sam: Yeah, there are so many amazing bands in New York, it definitely pushes you to keep things interesting. So often I’ll see a band on some random night and go home thinking ‘I want to do something like that,’ which is really amazing and overwhelming at the same time to be surrounded by all these talented people.
This story first ran in NYOTA’s Music issue. Read more from the issue here and purchase a print copy here.
