Last Friday (July 14), Blusher introduced themselves with one question: ‘Should We Go Dance?’
True to its name, the Melbourne trio’s debut EP invites listeners to enter Blusher’s shimmering world and let loose on the dancefloor. Over five tracks, the band – Lauren Coutts, Jade Ingvarson-Favretto and Miranda Ward, who were all solo artists before forming the band in 2021 – deliver high-energy electro-pop that charts the experiences of being a young woman in the modern world.
Friendship is at the core of these songs: take the propulsive ‘Backbone’, for instance, about that rage you feel towards your friends’ exes (“you said you’d punch him in the chest if you ever met, but I miss him still,” goes the earworm chorus) and the way that dancing it off with the gals takes the pain away. Or ‘Dead End’, about hitting the club on a Tuesday night – because what else is youth for?
Disparate influences creep into Blusher’s sound: as well as pop, the EP takes cues from harder-hitting club-inflected music, as heard in ‘Limelight’ and closer ‘Hurricane Chaser’. It’s an assured and infectious collection of songs that reflects the trio’s love of pop music – and determination to make their own version of it on their own terms.
The three members all share vocal duties and swap instruments, and production is handled by Coutts – it’s all very DIY. Blusher has a carefully curated visual as well as musical aesthetic – check out the video for ‘Backbone’ and its Charlie’s Angels vibe, all dreamed up by the trio. Most of all, there’s a real sense of fun on the EP – a moment where Ward stifles a laugh while singing among its most endearing.
Blusher talk to NME via Zoom from Melbourne, discussing their tight-knit bond, love of pop music and what to expect from their live show.
“We’re all the lead of the band – we all have really equal share in the songwriting, and we all swap instruments” – Miranda Ward
How does going from making music alone to with others change the process?
Lauren Coutts: “We were all super interested in electro-pop and we have a lot of the same references. When we formed the band that was kind of the premise.”
Miranda Ward: “We wanted to make it super collaborative. It’s pretty rare to find people who have very similar tastes and who you click with so much personally, which makes a really big difference. You have to basically have therapy sessions in the studio. Friendship is just as important as creative compatibility – we just have our own language.”
The EP’s songs are quite personal – how did you go about writing that together?
MW: “It’s based around the conversations that you have with your female friends, and the girls that you meet in the club bathroom and you start giving each other life advice and become immediate best friends. We wanted to convey that camaraderie.”
Jade Ingvarson-Favretto: “We were sharing our journal entries.”
MW: “It’s very surprising now when one of us tells a new story – like, ‘we haven’t heard that one before’!”
Growing up, I tried really hard to be ‘one of the boys’ so it’s nice to see such a shift towards female solidarity these days.
MW: “It’s definitely a culture shift. Even as a female artist in the industry, there is this air of needing to compete for your space and because we were all making the same kind of music, it would have been quite easy to have some sort of rivalry. There’s not that many people doing the pop that we all really love in Australia, so it’s really nice that we combined forces.”
LC: “We know how it feels to be the only woman in the room, on the tour, in the studio – it is even still a kind of new and different thing to be surrounded by women in music.”
When you say the pop you love isn’t happening in Australia, what are you referring to?
MW: “We just have a lot of very niche references. I hadn’t found anyone that likes that really, really high-energy, down-the-line pop. We listen to a lot of Kesha, Robyn…”
“We know how it feels to be the only woman in the room, on the tour, in the studio” – Lauren Coutts
LC: “In our circle in Melbourne, we found each other because we were the only people talking about that. There’s a really specific Kesha song that I’m not gonna say the title of because it’s offensive, but in one of our first sessions, Jade and I were just like, ‘oh my god, you know that song?’”
In Blusher, all instruments and vocal duties are shared – how does that work?
JIF: “Miranda will come up with a sick bass riff, or Lauren will make these beautiful dreamy synth lines, and I do stuff sometimes. We create instruments out of our voices. It’s really nice to have that background in learning instruments when we were little, and breaking those rules a bit in the studio is really fun.”
MW: “It’s fun to try something on an instrument that you’re really bad at and get out of your comfort zone. We’re all the lead of the band – we all have really equal share in the songwriting, and we all swap instruments. We’re just a bit of a hive mind.”
How does the music translate to the live space?
JIF: “It’s so fun to combine our energies on stage. We just feed off each other’s energy. We do some choreographed moves and we have wireless mics so we can really move around on stage.”
MW: “The title and theme of the EP is taking the audience on the best night out, and we want to bring that out in our show as well, and hopefully just make people dance.”
LC: “I used to play shows completely on my own. I didn’t have any band at all, so there’s no one to look at when you’re on stage. But one of the most fun things about our show is that I just am in awe of the other two girls. We’re gonna have so much fun.”
Blusher’s ‘Should We Go Dance?’ is out now via Atlantic Records/Warner Music Australia. The band will support Tove Lo at shows in Melbourne and Sydney this month