Blues Pills had just started recording their fourth album when singer Elin Larsson discovered that she was pregnant. “We had just come back from a tour with (the Australian rockers) Airbourne,” Larsson recalls laughingly in an interview with Classic Rock next to Blues Pills guitarist Zach Anderson. “I thought it was hilarious: we come back from tour and I’m pregnant. Luckily my son looks like my husband – he doesn’t have an Australian accent when he’s born!”
It was a turning point for the Swedish rockers. Larsson, determined to finish the album, continued to record vocals for what would later become Birthday until she was ninth month pregnant. “It was harder to sing,” she says. “Your lungs are kind of pushed away from your stomach. But it turned out great. I think it added more spice to the whole thing. I’m super proud that I was able to finish it.”
The band has also decided to make the topic of pregnancy the focus of the new release: On the photo cover of “Birthday”, the rest of the band (Anderson, drummer André Kvarnström and bassist Kristoffer Schander) are dressed all in black, while Larsson sits in the middle, heavily pregnant and wearing a beautiful blue 70s-style dress.
“For me, it symbolizes strength,” Larsson says of the image. “I continued working while pregnant, like many other women. It feels like that’s a big part of this album.”
“Rock music is so dominated by all-male bands,” Anderson adds, “so it’s cool to have a heavily pregnant lead singer on the cover.”
This year marks a milestone for Blues Pills: 10 years since the release of their first album. That self-titled record was an instant hit when it was released on Nuclear Blast in 2014, topping the charts across Europe and captivating listeners across the rock and metal scene, with Larsson’s rich, soulful vocals setting the band apart.
This writer interviewed them for the first time then and remembers them as young, shy kids who seemed overwhelmed by their success. Talking to them today, it’s clear they’ve grown in confidence – both as a band, now in their mid-thirties, and as songwriters. It no doubt helps that Larsson and Anderson have been the main songwriting duo since day one.
“This album was the fastest we’ve ever made,” says Anderson about Birthday“We spent maybe a month, a month and a half writing and then a couple of weeks in the studio. With our first album, we were in the studio on and off for over a year.”
“This time we knew that if something didn’t work, we could throw it away,” Larsson adds. “Kill your darlings, that’s what they say here.”
Musical, Birthday feels as powerful as the cover. It begins with a dynamic double punch of the brisk title single and the grooving Don’t you love it?all 11 tracks, from hard rock to heartfelt soul, crackle with a confidence that makes it perhaps Blues Pills’ strongest album yet. These days, the band isn’t afraid to cast their net wide for inspiration: Larsson says Piggyback ride was partly inspired by the “virtual” electro-rock band Gorillaz.
“You wouldn’t expect that from us!” she says. “But we have influences from everywhere.”
“This album is a little schizophrenic,” Anderson adds. “I think earlier in our career we were working on a song and we blocked ourselves by saying, ‘This doesn’t sound like Blues Pills.’ But then we realized, ‘How can it not sound like Blues Pills? We’re Blues Pills, so everything we write is Blues Pills.’
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The themes of the lyrics range from personal stories like in the title song, which is not related to pregnancy as expected, but was inspired by a waiter in Mexico who ruined Larsson’s birthday (“I don’t want to go into details,” she says carefully, “but I wanted to take a bad experience and twist it, make that story my own”), to universal themes like Up in the skywhich deals with the dangers of social media and specifically refers to the tragic death of Chinese influencer Wu Yongning, who died while climbing a skyscraper during a livestream.
“Society is so superficial,” says Larsson. “We look for likes and don’t feel like we’re good enough and can just appreciate life as it is.”
For a young mother, this issue is particularly important. “My son can have a phone when he’s 18!” says Larsson, laughing. “I mean, all parents can do what they want. But I don’t want to expose him to screens at an early age.”
“(Social media) feels like cigarettes,” Anderson adds. “When they were new, people said they weren’t unhealthy and everyone smoked. It feels like we don’t really know the impact of constant smartphone and social media use yet.”
Working on the album while pregnant also made Larsson think about what music she wanted to introduce her child to and the bands that got her into music in the first place, which led to the band including a cover on the album. I don’t want to get on that horse againby the (internationally) little-known Swedish rock band Grande Roses.
“They’re a band from my hometown that I always watched as a kid and teenager,” explains Larsson. “That’s why this song is very important to me and makes the album complete because they inspired me to play in a band as a kid.”
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If you thought Blues Pills would slow down after the birth of Larsson’s son, you’re wrong. Although the members are currently scattered across Sweden, they’re close enough to meet at Anderson’s home studio to practice. And when they head out on their headlining tour in the fall, Larsson will take her son on tour with her.
“I think it will be fun to go on tour and show him the world,” she says. “But he probably won’t remember any of it.”
She adds that she even wrote new music during her maternity leave: “I’m not sure if it will be for Blues Pills or something else. But being home has fed my creativity.”
For Larsson, it is important to pursue her passions as a young mother and the world could do more to enable her to do so.
“Society should be more open when it comes to supporting female artists when they become mothers,” she says firmly. “Unless you’re a big, established artist with a lot of money, then it’s difficult. The rock and metal scene should be more open to women in general, but definitely to mothers too. We have the right to become mothers and have a professional life.”
“Birthday” is available now via Throwdown Entertainment/BMG.
