Bloodloss

BIO:Originally founded in the early '80s by singer/saxophonist/guitarist Renestair EJ and singer/drummer Martin Bland in Sydney, Australia, Bloodloss' loud blues/Vegas/punk craziness went through two brief periods of existence in that decade. By all accounts the first was the more notorious, concluding with the group trying to torch the studio they were recording in. The late '80s brought reformation and an album release or two, but when former member Stu Spasm invited both core members to join his current band, Lubricated Goat, they concentrated on that for a few years. The group began its third, highest profile life in the '90s when Bland hooked up with Mudhoney's Mark Arm for the latter's Monkeywrench project. Renestair ended up in the States as well, leading to a fully reactivated Bloodloss with Arm as the other key member. Three albums followed in fairly quick succession -- 1993's In-a-Gadda-da-Change, 1995's Live My Way, and 1996's Misty. The group then took a long hiatus; in late 1999, Arm had mentioned that a new album's worth of material had been in the can for a few years, but that everyone needed to get their act together -- and get some more money -- before it could be finished for release. ~ Ned Raggett, All Music GuideDoing it right with all the wrong thingsSamantha Appleton Daily Staff, The Online Daily of the University of Washington(February 8, 1996)If you say the name Bloodloss right, you can imagine a warm bubble of blood, fresh from a left hook, rise in your mouth. Listening to Bloodloss, a band composed of three wayward Australians and one Mark Arm, evokes the same awkward satisfaction. Their newest release, Live This Way, is just as awkward and just as satisfying.The best thing to do while listening to Bloodloss is to pretend you're in a movie. Put on a walkman, get a plastic gun and a fake mustache and just jaywalk through the city. Bloodloss lyrics are funny and pathetic ("You got baked beans, American cheese, machine guns - everything you need"), the guitars are cold and sleazy, the tenor sax is piercing. The rock/jazz/blues combination creates an eerie atmosphere, but it's not atmospheric - if you kick back, you'll lose the stray groove. But it's there.Before their show at the OK Hotel last Friday, Bloodloss members sat down and attempted to come up with adjectives for their music. "Odd," "I have no idea," and a contemplative silence reigned. The band was quicker to list their influences - from the complexity of Pere Ubu, John Lurie soundtracks, The Residents, John Coltrane and punksters like The Fall to the simplicity of silence."For me [Bloodloss' main influence] was the weirdo side of punk - the bands nobody liked," Arm said. "And you hear other stuff and you're like, 'Fuck, I wouldn't be caught dead playing something like that,' so that's an influence too. A lot of it is reactionary. I'm pretty reactionary when it comes to music."Arm's Mudhoney sound is undoubtedly at play in much of the music, but that element is more an exception than a rule for these rockers."I see it as how I play when I play with these people, as opposed to how I play when I play with those people. And I think there's some similar bluesy, jazz things that are happening in Mudhoney, at least on my end, that don't come out as much in Bloodloss," Arm said.The more recent Bloodloss listening crowd may have been born from the Mudhoney audience, but failed expectations abound. At the OK Hotel show, the crowd had dwindled from about 50 to 30 people after the fourth song and a broken bass string. Don't expect Mudhoney."We've always appealed to freaks. The same type of people we appeal to today," said Martin Bland (vocals/drums)."Except they're older now," Arm added.Although Arm (and the band's recent string of headlining shows around town) is a new addition to the group, Bloodloss has been rocking people you don't know since the early 1980s.EJ formed the original Bloodloss in Sidney in 1983 with Bland but didn't produce an album until 1987 with the release of Human Skin Suit and, the next year, The Truth is Marching In. Like a lot of good music, the original motivation was boredom. "Just living in Australia, you have to make your own entertainment. It's like living in a big Wyoming," Bland said. Although EJ and Martin dropped Bloodloss for a fragmentation band, Lubricated Goat, on an American tour in 1989, the move indirectly led to a new-and-improved Bloodloss via the Mudhoney-offshoot Monkeywrench.EJ joined Bland and Arm for the recording of the single "Hair of the Future"/"Broke" after his silver 1972 Cadillac broke down outside Arm's house. Guy Maddison (bass) joined the trio in 1993 and the contemporary Bloodloss formation had congealed. The group recorded the CD In-a-gadda-da-change later that year and Sympathy For The Record Industry released Bloodloss' musical interpretation of the stage production Ten Solid Rockin' Inches of Rock Solid Rock last May.Bloodloss' most recent release is a vision from a back-alley grate looking up Frank Sinatra's pantleg as he saunters past. The album lingers in the dark but is intent on smirking at both the light and dark.Songs such as "Vanishing Point," "She's Gone" and "Hated in my House" are heavy with male angst ("she's gone/ when I don't have to pick the hair off the soap no more"), but the songs' protagonists manage to reproach themselves along with the women. "Frank's Wig," and "Cue Balls of Idaho" are snappy little critiques of the respective American phenomena, Frank Sinatra and skinheads.Bloodloss may be getting attention but the closest they get to a spotlight is a flickering street light - which is fine as far as they're concerned. "We've always sort of felt like we didn't belong anywhere, and we've pretty much just kept that going - moving to cities where we don't belong. Here we are in Seattle, where the big thing is American bands resurrecting punk bands and singing with English accents, and we're Australians singing with American accents," Bland said. "We've always sort of done the wrong thing."Wrong may be drumming on an ashtray or using a tenor sax or the occasional banjo, or it may be an absolute lack of funk. But whatever Bloodloss is, it's unapologetic, and it demands a frame of reference that most people aren't comfortable with.Reviews: Live My Way Unexpectedly finding themselves on a major label thanks to Arm's day-job band, the members of Bloodloss carried on as before, still working with Jim Collier as producer and still dedicated to amped-up, brutally trashy fun. Renestair sounds like a showman in hell, able to work the crowd with Vegas charm even while sounding like Wolfman Jack after having gargled steel wool. When it comes to his sax playing, Coltrane's ghost might not be troubled, but he gives everything a good load of funky grease that fits the general mood. Everyone else follows suit musically, especially Bland with his smooth then rough drumming, giving a sense of a broken-down nightclub at midnight where looking at the shady characters in the corner for too long can be rather hazardous. While most might come to this album looking for Arm, he steps back from the spotlight except on the hilarious "The Truth Is Marching In"; otherwise, it's Renestair and Bland's show first and foremost, and they put on a good one. The first number in certainly pulls no punches -- "Frank's Wig" tackles the subject of Frank Sinatra's hair with little kowtowing to the man and an energetic overall feel neo-swing bands could probably never approach. Other subjects given the black humor Bloodloss treatment are Woodstock 1994 and its attendant cultural idiocies ("Face Down in Mud," with some great tremolo guitar psychedelics from Arm), backwoods skinheads ("Cue Balls of Idaho"), and negative critics ("Happy Birthday You Dork," which ranks on up there with the Sex Pistols' "Did You No Wrong" when it comes trashing such types). "(All I Get Is Your) Dissatisfaction" concludes things with what is allegedly a response song to the Stones' classic by quoting Bob Marley and projecting bad attitude to the max. ~ Ned Raggett, All Music Guide