Blues Pills had just begun recording their fourth album when singer Elin Larsson discovered she was pregnant. “We’d just come back from tour with [Australian rockers] Airbourne,” Larsson recalls with a laugh, speaking to Classic Rock alongside Blues Pills’ guitarist Zach Anderson. “I thought that was hilarious: we come back from that tour, and I’m pregnant. Thankfully my son looks like my husband – he didn’t come out with an Australian accent!”
It was a turning point for the Swedish rockers. Larsson, determined to finish the album, continued to record vocals for what would become Birthday right up until her ninth month of pregnancy. “It was harder to sing,” she says. “Your lungs are sort of pushed away from your stomach. But it turned out great. I think it added more flavour to it. I’m super proud that I could finish it.”
The band also decided to put the pregnancy front and centre of the new release: the front photo cover of Birthday has the rest of the band (Anderson, drummer André Kvarnström and bassist Kristoffer Schander) all in black, while Larsson sits in the middle, heavily pregnant, wearing a beautiful 70s-style blue dress.
“For me it symbolises strength,” Larsson says of that image. “I kept working when I was pregnant, like lots of women do. It feels like it’s a big part of this record.”
“Rock music is so dominated by all-male bands,” Anderson adds, “so it feels like a cool thing to have a super-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, breaking into charts across Europe and captivating listeners across the rock and metal scenes, with Larsson’s rich, soulful vocals setting the band apart.
This writer first interviewed them back then and remembers fresh-faced, shy kids who seemed overwhelmed by their success. It’s clear talking to them today that they’ve grown in confidence – both as a band, now in their midthirties, 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,” Anderson says of Birthday. “We spent maybe a month, a month and a half writing, and then we were in the studio for a few weeks. With our first album we were in and out of the studio for over a year.”
“This time around, we knew we could scrap something if it wasn’t working,” adds Larsson. “Kill your darlings, that’s the saying.”
Musically, Birthday feels as powerful as the cover art. Blowing open with a dynamic double whammy of the snappy title-track single and the grooving Don’t You Love It, all 11 tracks, from the heavy rock to the heartfelt soul, crackle with a confidence that might just make it the strongest Blues Pills album yet. These days the band aren’t afraid to cast their net wide for inspiration: Larsson says Piggyback Ride was inspired in part by the ‘virtual’ electronic rock band Gorillaz.
“You wouldn’t expect that from us!” she says. “But we have influences from all over the place.”
“This album is a bit schizophrenic,” adds Anderson. “I think earlier on in our career we would work on a song, and block ourselves by saying: ‘This doesn’t sound like Blues Pills.’ But then we realised: “How can it not sound like Blues Pills? We are Blues Pills, so anything we write is Blues Pills.
Lyrically the topics range from personal tales, like the title track, which isn’t related to the pregnancy as you might expect, but was inspired by a waiter in Mexico who ruined Larsson’s birthday (“I don’t want to go into the specifics,” she says carefully, “but I wanted to take a bad experience and to twist it, to own that story”), to the universal, such as Top Of The Sky, which is about the dangers of social media, referring specifically to the tragic death of a Chinese influencer, Wu Yongning, who died during a livestream while climbing a skyscraper.
“Society is so superficial,” Larsson says. “We seek likes, and can’t feel we’re enough and just appreciate life for what it is.”
For a new mother, this issue feels particularly pressing. “My son can have a phone when he’s eighteen!” Larsson says, laughing. “I mean, every parent can do what they want. But for me, I don’t want to start early with screens [for him].”
“[Social media] feels like cigarettes,” adds Anderson. “When they were new, people said they weren’t unhealthy, and everyone smoked. It feels like we don’t really know the effect of being on smartphones and social media constantly yet.”
Working on the album while pregnant also got Larsson thinking about which music she’d like to introduce to her child, and about the bands that got her into music in the first place. That led to the band including a cover on the album, I Don’t Wanna Get Back On That Horse Again, by the littleknown (internationally) Swedish rock band Grande Roses.
“They’re a band from my home town that I went to see as a kid and a teen,” Larsson explains. “So for me, this song is very important and makes the album complete, because they inspired me as a kid to play in a band.”
If you thought Blues Pills might be slowing down following the birth of Larsson’s son, you’re wrong. Although the members are currently scattered across Sweden, they’re close enough to meet in Anderson’s home studio to practise. And when they go on their headlining tour in the autumn, Larsson will be taking her son on the road with them.
“I think it’s gonna be fun to go on tour and bring him to see the world,” she says. “He probably won’t remember any of it though.”
She adds that she’s even written new music while on maternity leave: “I’m not sure if it will be for Blues Pills or something else. But being at home has been feeding my creativity.”
For Larsson, it’s important to keep up her passions while being a new mother, and the wider world could do more to enable this.
“Society should be more open about helping female artists when they become mothers,” she says firmly. “Unless you’re a big established artist with tons of money, it’s difficult. The rock and metal scenes should be more inclusive for women overall, but definitely for mothers too. We have the right to become mothers, and to have a working life.”
Birthday is out now via Throwdown Entertainment/BMG.
