‘It’s Not Beginner’s Luck’: Blush Response On The Strengths Of Adelaide Music

Having just dropped their debut album and toured the country, Adelaide indie rock outfit Blush Response have learnt a lot about their local scene. We chat with frontman Alister Douglas ahead of the band’s performance at Scouted 2018 later this month.

Tell us a little bit about the band…

Blush Response started as a bedroom recording project to try and write some songs in the style of bands that I loved like My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive, and The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart. It was a sort of single-minded catharsis to contrast the bands I was in at the time.

I quietly released two EPs, Telltale and Dead Air, online with no expectation that they’d go anywhere but the response was really positive so I decided to pull together a band to play the songs live.

Fast forward three years and the band is currently myself, with Joseph Caporaso on drums, Walter Marsh on bass and Zach Caporale on guitar, and I’m fortunate that we all share a love of playing melancholy pop at loud volumes. We released our debut album, Hearts Grow Dull, in April of this year and completed a national tour for the release. It’s going pretty great.

Tell us a little bit about your new album, Hearts Grow Dull…

The album name comes from the lyric “distance makes the heart grow dull”, a seemed-clever-at-the-time twist on the phrase “distance makes the heart grow fond”. While writing, I found I kept coming back to the difficulties of long distance relationships, having just gone through a breakup in this situation.

Some people seem to be able to make them work, but that’s not an experience I share. As the album progressed, it expanded to explore other types of distance in relationships that can come from things like depression, a lack of empathy, or a betrayal of trust.

Explaining it like this sounds a bit overwrought now, but that was the theme that tied it together. Musically my aim was to double down on the quiet-loud dynamic that I was working towards on the EPs. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from seeing Mogwai play live, it’s that loud sounds louder when there’s quiet to contrast.

Having recently toured the country with your new album, how does the SA scene compare to other states?

I found the concept of genre scenes to be more strongly embedded in the other capital cities. These scenes appeared very self-nurturing and, while there’s a lot that appeals to me about this, I do have a fondness for the way the Adelaide scene exists. That is, we don’t have the volume of bands to sustain individual genre niches within the ‘alternative’ scene to the same degree, and so support from audiences and between bands doesn’t follow these strict genre lines. Our line-ups are often very varied out of necessity, but the bands are very close-knit and supportive, regardless of whether or not they fit in the same neat genre label.

What makes the Adelaide music scene so great?

What some might perceive as Adelaide’s weakness – our being somewhat removed from the national spotlight – I reckon is equally one of our strengths. It affords us the ability to work away on our music and performances without being under scrutiny from the outset, so that when we are ready to share what we’ve been working on with a national audience, we have developed something worth sharing.

I frequently hear people being impressed about the calibre of new bands coming out of Adelaide, but the secret is our bands have been putting in the hard yards; it’s not beginners luck.

How have you seen the local music scene develop in recent years?

I feel like there’s been an increase in the number of Adelaide bands receiving national attention than I remember seeing in the past. It’s an encouraging thing to see genuinely hardworking and talented artists like West Thebarton, Bec Stevens, Lonelyspeck, and Tom West beginning to receive the attention they deserve.

I think this is facilitated in part by some really supportive initiatives that have been put in place in recent years by bodies like Music SA and Arts South Australia that are providing these artists mentorship, financial support and professional opportunities that help them reach a national or international stage.

Why are events like Music SA’s artist showcase Scouted so important?

Bands are often good at the music side of things but bad at the business side of things. I think a lot of that comes down to not knowing how to engage with or even approach that side of the industry. Events like Scouted give artists an avenue to reach the right ears.

Favourite acts on the Scouted line-up?

Fair Maiden, Naomi Keyte and Siamese.

What do you have planned for the rest of the year and beyond?

In the short term, we’ve got a ridiculous narrative music video for Cruel that I can’t wait to share, and I’ve just started writing some new material for a release that I’m very excited about but I can’t give details on just yet.

Beyond that, we hope to make it across the state line again real soon to play with some bands that we’ve wanted to share the stage with for a while now.

Catch Blush Response at The Music Stage at Scouted 2018 on July 27; head over to the Scouted 2018 website for all the details.