Interview / The Blizzards

The Blizzards arrived in a whirlwind onto the Irish music scene in 2005 and have been making a name for themselves ever since. After talking with front man Niall Breslin, aka Bresy, you can see why they are where they are in terms of their career. Breslin seems very focused, if a little highly strung, but the motivation and willingness to give every part of himself to his career is hugely apparent and something to be respected. He knows what he wants from his career and is more than willing to work hard to achieve it. It’s clear he takes his role as front man seriously, which pays off in their highly acclaimed live performance.

“What we do is very natural, it’s not forced, it’s not contrived, it’s just energy. Confidence is a big thing for a band, if you don’t have confidence live you’re not gonna pull it off. If you don’t have that there’s no point in being in a band.
We tried with the second record to get the sonic kinda sound, to sound a bit more live and although it’s definitely better than the first record in the way it sounds, it definitely wasn’t live sounding. I think back in the day when you heard these great live sound recordings like Pet Sounds, they had the twenty best musicians in the world playing on that, they could play that live but for a band like ourselves to record live it would have taken f*ckin months. I think we’d like to record a live album, but at the end of the day we cannot be got until you come into a room, a sweaty room, and listen to us live, that’s the best way to get us”.

MEG: This time last year, you spoke in an interview about how the band takes the music very seriously and that you hoped you weren’t taking it too seriously, where you might look back and regret not living it up a bit more. Over the past year do you think that your attitude has changed since then?
BRESY: I think what I really meant is that if you don’t take what you’re doing seriously, if you don’t approach it with a professional outlook, you’re gonna go nowhere. That’s kinda what I meant and I just hope that at some stage in our career that we can get to enjoy it a bit more. At the moment, I do love it but we’ve got goals and until we’ve achieved them we’re still going to go for them. We need to break out of Ireland, we can’t keep touring Ireland 5 times a year, the band will give up if we have to do that, that’s the simple fact. I just sincerely hope that we don’t look back on it all and think, f*ck that you know, not that we should have gone out and taken drugs and gotten sh*t faced and stuff, just rather than be under pressure about whether your album’s gonna sell or if the radios are gonna play you. You should just say f*ck it you know, if you’re good enough, you’re good enough.

MEG: There is huge promotion surrounding your album and the video for your single ‘Trust me I’m a doctor” is quite witty, is that what we can expect from the album?
BRESY: We were asked to write a very strong pop song and that’s exactly what we did with “Trust me I’m a Doctor”. You know, we’re not trying to get 5 stars out of any critic. We love pop music, that’s what we like. We don’t like indie music, we don’t like left of centre music, it doesn’t float our boat. So we went and wrote a really catchy pop song. We see ourselves as a pop band. That’s the kind of music I like. I love a good pop song, I love Britney Spears, I love The Script, I love all that. I don’t like left of centre self-indulgent music. But that’s just my opinion, I’m not saying it’s bad music, I just don’t enjoy listening to it.

MEG: Trouble and Fantasy were both huge hits in the Irish charts, do you think the new album has any poppy Summer anthems on it?
BRESY: “Well, ‘Trust Me’ would have been a great Summer anthem if we had released it at the time. With Summer anthems it’s hard to justify, unless you want to start singing about beaches and surfing. The other side is that Fantasy, wasn’t even picked to go on the first record, but that was why we picked it because everybody said ‘oh that’d be a great Summer song’. We’re releasing the album in the UK in the next couple of months and we have written some new songs that we want to put on The Domino Effect and take a few off for the UK. So there is one or two there that are Summer anthems if you wana call it that. But at the end of the day, you read some people saying that we’re selling out. We’re not selling out, we want to sell records and if that’s selling out, then we’re selling out. Because if we don’t sell records we’ll be dropped and we won’t have a record label and we’ll be back to having sh*t jobs, so if that’s the case yeah, then we’re selling out.
I just have an incredible dislike for these lazy f*ckers who sit in forums giving out about scenes and music and you know, I just have an incredible dislike and disrespect for them. If they had any idea the amount of effort and sacrifice that goes into trying to achieve something. It’s very easy to sit behind a computer screen and bitch. I was reading a thing this morning about The Script and it was absolutely abusing them. These guys were the first Irish act to break international in a long time, would you not back them and get behind them?”

MEG: Absolutely. You played in New York recently yourselves, how did that go for you?
BRESY: We did the CMJ Music Festival. The one thing we got from going over there is, unless you’re signed with a major record label then going over there and playing a few gigs really is a waste of your time. Unless you’re doing it just for a bit of fun, which is fair enough. But if you want to go over and market American you have to have big backing behind you.

MEG: Sure, it really does take a lot of hard work to get yourself out there. What do you see as important to you, being in a band like The Blizzards?
BRESY: I think the one thing I suppose really, if somebody asked me what do I want out of the band, I duno, personally I want to become a better song writer with each album. One thing about The Blizzards, we know we’re not finished, we know we’ve a long way to go in song writing, we’ve a way to go in getting our live show to where we want it. I think every band should strive to want to write a ‘Pet Sounds’ or a classic pop album. You know it may never happen, but I have to think like that, I’d love to write a timeless classic pop album. But at the end of the day, the only way that can happen is if I take advice because I know I have a lot of learn as a song writer. But I think the fact that I’m willing to accept any advice I get is going to help me.

MEG: You said before that your songs are “simple stories about what happen to you”. Is that still true?
BRESY: Yeah, we’re not poets, I think it’s pretty obvious what we’re singing about in our songs. I think 99.9% of people just want to hear that, they want to hear something they can relate to. I can’t relate to Bob Dylan for example, I don’t know what he’s talking about half the time. I know he’s a genius! But I’d rather eat my own flesh than listen to him. I’d rather put on ‘Pet Sounds’ where it’s fairly obvious what they’re singing about but it’s beautiful. That’s kinda just my take on it all. On the first record, a lot of the songs we wrote were songs when I was in college. On The Domino Effect, I think the songs became a bit more honest, I suppose some of them became a bit more sentimental.

MEG: Songs like Postcards? Can you tell me about that song?
BRESY: Basically the band went through a period of time when we lost people close to us and everybody was in a bad place and we just found out the hardest thing, we felt, was the fact that we didn’t get to say goodbye to the people that we lost. I think that’s the hardest part about losing someone. Postcards was kinda written in a matter of fact of a kid sending postcards from heaven, because he didn’t get to say goodbye to his family. It was our way of dealing with it a bit, it’s an incredible honest track. It happened very naturally, it wasn’t forced. We didn’t write it to get on the radio, we didn’t write it for any other reason but to make ourselves feel a bit better about it.

MEG: So what has the feedback been like to the song since it was released?
BRESY: We weren’t going for a big chart position with it, but it’s taken off on the radio, it’s been top ten air play this week, which is huge, it’s gone nearly as high as ‘Trust Me’ went. We never thought it would. What happened, I think, was that people started getting the sentiment behind it and people started texting in the radio saying you know “I just lost my brother and that song meant a lot to me” and that’s all we want from it. We don’t want to sell records off it or go to number one in the singles, we just hope that it might comfort people the way it comforted us, you know.

MEG: That’s a really great achievement. What have been the defining moments for you so far?
BRESY: I think the first time we were asked to play the main stage in Oxegen. For two reasons, because the promoter actually had faith in us to go on the main stage they I wouldn’t have put us there is they didn’t think we were able for it. The second, the proudest moment in my life in the band was when I stood on stage and there was 20,000 – 30,000 people watching us and I just looked at the band and they just looked so comfortable, they didn’t look like this was intimidating them and I just looked at them and felt so proud of them. For five boggers from Mullingar, we’ve achieved something here, we should be proud of it.

I think the thing about the Irish music scene is that there are brilliant live bands. The first band we saw, we said right lads we’re gona have to up our game here, or we’re gona be left behind, it was Republic of Loose. Mik Pyro as a front man, has kinda influenced me a lot. I realised, being a front man, I used to just go out and play but there is so much more to it. They have influenced us a lot and they are definitely our favorite Irish band.

Interview by: Trish Keenan