Blanketman: From The Kitchen
Making a mark since their first single was released in early 2020, Blanketman haven’t existed much longer than the coronavirus pandemic; like their infectious counterpart, they’ve firmly cemented themselves in folklore forever with their fresh brand of jilted punk. The four-piece all live in Manchester but hail from as far as France, that doesn’t mean they’ve not left their own imprint on the city they call home, last year playing sold-out shows at YES on more than one occasion, making their Manchester International Festival debut in the process, and playing onstage with members of The Fall; some might say they’ve conquered it already, “completed it mate.”
Becoming synonymous with lyrical genius, frontman Adam Hopper is humble about his writing, taking every chance to thank but-swat-away compliments about his brutishly poetic output as he spoke to us from his kitchen via Zoom…
Your new EP, ‘National Trust’, has been out for a while now – what has the reaction been like?
It’s been really good. We kind of weren’t expecting it! People seem to be really enjoying it. I don’t know. We’ve never really had people reaching out to us before and sending messages on social media and things like that, but it’s ramped up quite a bit since we put it out. I think people like to have something a bit meatier to listen to, before they get fully invested in a band. When you’ve got a couple of singles out people are like, more tentative, but when you’ve got a slightly larger body of work, people get to know you a bit more. So it’s been really good. People seem to like it. We’ve had a really good reaction to it and we kind of weren’t expecting it.
The song ‘Leave the South’ charts a mental battle with yourself and your surroundings – could you tell me a bit more about that, and why the North excites you?
The song is kind of looking in hindsight, at when I was based in Reading. It was kind of one of those classic situations, where you blame everything around you for the situation you find yourself in, and it’s not really that at all, it’s your own personal issues and battles, and wherever you’re gonna be at that point in time, you’d probably still feel the same. But it was just, being from the North, all of my close friends, my childhood and school friends who I’m really close to, they all stayed up North when they went to uni and that. I was always a five/six hour train from the closest one of them. You feel a bit isolated – they were all able to pop to each other’s unis, but I was a real slog away. It was just a longing to be back and to be closer to them, you know when you feel like you’re missing out a little bit? So that was that. In terms of the North, I think at the moment the North of England is just skyrocketing with bands and new music and that, and a lot of the focus has always been on being down South and in London and all that. London has created some amazing music, but it’s nice to see a little bit of focus shift upwards. Especially at the moment. You’ve got bands like Lounge Society, and a load from Manchester like Document and Julia Bardo. I’m not going to list them all, but you’ve got all these cool artists coming out and it’s great. It’s nice to see festival line-ups and stuff occupied by Northern bands. I just think because I’m from here as well, and you always have that romanticised view of where you’re from. Whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing! But it’s good, I like the North of England.
You’re often hailed a Manchester band, but none of you are actually from Manchester…
I actually tweeted recently, none of us are from Manchester! I said none of us are from Manchester, but we are of Manchester. We’ve all come here. I’d never been to Manchester before I moved here. I’d just finished uni, and I was living in a little village with my girlfriend’s parents in Norfolk, and I knew I wanted to move somewhere where I had a better chance of getting a band together and having a scene and that. I had a romantic view of Manchester purely because of the sort of musical history of the city. I was also thinking about moving to London, funnily enough. I’ve always liked London as a place to visit but I find it too big, I always come from small market towns. Manchester’s kind of a good balance. It feels metropolitan, but you could walk across the city centre in three-quarters of an hour or whatever. It’s perfect for me, and the cost of living as well – there’s no way I could have afforded to live in London. I live in a nice two bedroom house here, whereas I could probably get like a little flat in London, if that. So coming here was kind of a fresh start, and to get a band together. I’d been in bands at uni but nothing really serious, just little projects. I was at uni in Reading, and Reading doesn’t have a particularly strong music scene. Jeremy’s French, he moved from the South of France to Manchester to start a band, that was the only reason! He says in France the musical culture is a lot different, and it’s more difficult to find like-minded people into the same sort of music as he is, so it made sense to make the big jump for him. Then, Dan and Ellie came to Manchester for uni. All within the same year. We all turned up in 2017.
You often talk about millennial life – you speak about exasperation, national identity, personal fears, the plight of young people, the north/south divide… What inspires you to craft these songs with such a lyrical focus?
It’s funny because I’ve always had quite a lot of self-doubt with my lyrics, there’s always been an aspect of my writing where I’ve not felt particularly confident. I’ve always found it fairly standard to string some chords together, get a melody and a structure, that’s something that comes fairly natural to me. I think I’ve had to work a lot harder with my lyrics, and I think I always just put a lot of stress and emphasis on trying to write something meaningful. Too much pressure to write something profound and interesting, but then I started to be more: fuck it. Just write about myself, and the things that are around me, and the things I think, and what’s happening to me. Just what’s going on in my head really. Quite a few of them are quite inwardly facing, but also sort of tongue in cheek as well. It’s nice to have a joke about things. ‘Blue Funk’ is quite a serious song, but it’s done in a pretty bombastic way to kind of counteract it. I enjoy putting humour into songs, takes a bit of a tinge off, do you know what I mean? I think it’s just about just trying to be honest and sincere, I spend a lot of time writing about things that are happening to me, and that’s quite hard at the moment because nowt’s happening, so I find it hard to get inspired. There’s always something that interests me in terms of lyrics as well, finding something interesting or funny or inspirational, just in the mundane.
The North has got quite a burgeoning music scene, particularly Manchester, and you’re kind of blazing a trail – is it exciting to be a part of an ever-expanding creative community?
Definitely! I think it’s grown since I’ve been in Manchester really – I’ve been here since 2017, so getting on four years. And just since I’ve been here, and we’ve got the band together, I do feel like the camaraderie has grown. I’m not sure if it’s just we’ve become more a part of it, so notice it more. But definitely, you only have to go to a few specific pubs on any night of the week, and you bump into all the bands. Everyone knows each other and it’s got a really nice community vibe to it. Brunswick Mill is a funny one, because Goa Express rehearse there as well, so every now and again we’ll bump into each other, and catch up on how we’re doing and that. But you definitely feel it. It’s a really exciting thing to be a part of. It just seems to be going well! I feel like a lot of bands, especially us, when we went into lockdown we were kind of on a cusp of maybe stepping into the next realm of it becoming more of a job. It’s a very fine line of getting to a point where you can just do it, and very few people can just do it for a living. This sole thing that you can put all your energy into. When it was lockdown we’d just done like our whole big headline show at YES, and we’d just supported Temples with Goa Express at Manchester Academy. There were all these cool things that were happening and then it just… To be fair we’ve been quite lucky because we’ve had the EP to occupy us, and that’s kept us motivated and within the public’s minds. Which is odd. Especially when you’re crap at social media!
You’ve spent the last year prolifically releasing a string of singles and then the EP, are you looking forward to playing those songs live? What have you missed the most about playing live?
All of it! It’s mad. We’ve not been able to play any of the EP live yet. I think that was one of the scary things with the EP, putting it out because we didn’t know what to expect. Most of the time when you put out an EP you’ve played the songs for a few months live. You’ve had that audience reaction to gauge whether people are into it or not – it’s so easy to tell when you’re on stage how people are reacting to a certain song. Sometimes people go mad, sometimes it’s a bit more subdued. We missed out on that. ‘Beach Body’ was written a few years ago so that’s been in our live set for a couple of years, we know that people like that, but with the other six they’re all brand new songs that no one’s heard. It was especially nerve-wracking because they are a bit different to the kind of stuff that we’ve been playing live before that. Our main following really is in Manchester, we’ve not really branched out very much until the EP. The lead-up to the EP has spread us out a bit more now. But yeah, it was difficult. It’s kind of eliminated any kind of expectation of what people might think of the music. And I think you release a lot of pent-up stress and tension playing live. It gives you something to work towards as a band – you can be in the rehearsal room and think ‘I’ve got this gig in a month’.
Talking of playing live – Steve Hanley of The Fall and Brix has previously joined you on stage, are there any surprise plans like that for your return?
He’s joined us on stage a few times, and we’ve played Brix and the Extricated, which is Brix’s band, which features Steve Hanley and Pearl Hanley and Steve Trafford as well. They do their own original music, but also do some classic Fall as well in there. He’s played with us a few times, which has been great! We’re gonna get Steve back on! We’ve already spoken to him and he’s well up for it. I always get really nervous about it, because we also play Fall songs, but when Steve plays with us we do a cover. I think he wants to play one of ours with us as well. We always leave it to Steve to pick the Fall song we do, and because I’m the singer I’m always like, please be relatively not just rambling, off the wall…do you know what I mean? Some of Mark Smith’s lyrics don’t really follow the verse/chorus thing. We did ‘Fantastic Life’ and ‘Carry Bag Man’, which are both amazing songs, but the lyrics are just so mad, it’s so hard to learn them! But it’s great fun, I can’t wait to do that again. Something that I really enjoyed that we did was play a gig on the 13th of March before lockdown, at YES. Lounge Society were supporting us, and we got them up on stage with us at the end, and we played by ‘Roadrunner’ by The Modern Lovers, all of us together, and it was class. I’d really like to do more stuff like that again, I think it’s really fun, to just mess around with your mates. I think it’s great for people watching as well, I love stuff like that when I go to gigs. So hopefully here’s to more collaboration stuff with other bands.
What are your plans post-pandemic, taking it easy or complete domination?
Domination, that’s it! The record’s coming out on vinyl in July, so that’s something to look forward to, we’ve never had any physical releases before, so that’s exciting. Then we’ve just announced a tour in August, so fingers crossed that all goes to plan this time. A lot of the time we don’t go touring then because it’s sort of festival season. I think everyone’s just gonna be so happy to get back to live music, and a lot of festivals aren’t on, it’s opened up a new door to tour in Summer, which I’m really excited to do. I’ve just got a nice picture of nice warm evenings and people just being really up for some music. I’m excited to see some new places I’ve never been to before. Hopefully some more new music as well, at the end of the year – we’ve been busy and written lots more songs, so hopefully, we’ll just keep jogging along.
