Following the enormous response to their stunning debut EP ‘Out The Neighbourhood‘, which has since racked up millions of streams and was supported upon its release by the likes of BBC Introducing, Clash magazine and Dork, Nottingham’s indie rock troubadours BLONDES have returned for the new year to deliver their soaring new single ‘Love In The Afternoon‘.
Channelling more of the broad and euphoric aesthetic that they have been producing since their breakthrough single ‘Coming Of Age‘, which now sits at more than 35 million streams and 1.7 billion TikTok views, ‘Love In The Afternoon‘ sees the band in renewed spirits throughout. Capturing another heady mix of euphoric guitar riffs, blended with rousing hooks from start to finish, BLONDES are looking to cement themselves as one of the most exciting new entries for the year ahead.
Blondes guitarist Alex Davison gives Bad Tattoo an exclusive insight into the writing and recording of ‘Love In The Afternoon‘ for today’s Drop the Needle. Over to Alex…
Writing the song, I was originally inspired to make something that might fit into Catfish & The Bottlemen’s first album, something emotive and anthemic over a classic indie rock chord progression. I had the two lines “My girl in baby blue” and “Young love in the afternoon” written down separately, and it never occurred to me that they rhymed. Once I realised they were the first two lines of a chorus it all started happening. It became a song about being caught off guard by falling for someone, and almost missing your opportunity to be with them because of it.
The idea for the verses came from a really old demo I had made at university, and so writing the lyrics was just a matter of slotting new words into the same rhyming structure, which I always find to be a really satisfying way of writing. I think that method comes from listening to a lot of Oasis when I was younger. If you listen to Noel Gallagher’s lyrics, it’s lots of internal rhymes and repeating patterns – (“By now you should’ve somehow”/ “Backbeat the word is on the street”, “Standing at the station in need of education” / “Made no preparation for my reputation” etc) –
Noel writes like he’s writing a poem. If you listen to the lyrics in the verses of ‘Love In The Afternoon’, and several of our other songs actually, they follow similar sorts of patterns. When we took it into the studio, our producer Antony Genn really pushed us to kick this song into the next gear. We pulled in influences from loads of different bands from Arcade Fire to Stone Roses, and obviously his work with Inhaler rubbed off on us too. The main thing was we wanted it to sound massive. He encouraged us all to sit in a room and play through the song, with everyone being responsible for fine tuning their own part until it all added up to something greater than the sum of its parts. We’re really proud of what we’ve made.
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