Russian Blue On Unearthing Their Best Music Yet
The band talks about how they’ve grown together, apart, and into their forthcoming album.
In a 2021 interview with WASH, Russian Blue shares how they’ve grown together, apart, and into their forthcoming album
Since the release of their last album, Hug The Wall (2019), Russian Blue has been in something of a transitory state. They’ve graduated high school, gained a band member, lost an old one. And in the meantime, they’ve ridden the high of an upcoming tour and potential record deal only to have both suddenly swept away. In February of 2020 Russian Blue had just announced “The Game of Tag” tour, featuring shows across Washington and Oregon, as well as an unannounced leg through Utah and up the coast of California. The whole thing came to a halt before it could even begin, and with the first shows scheduled in April 2020, I’m betting you can guess why.
When I met Colin earlier last week the band was just having their first practice since playing for Flickering, a concert movie shot at The Charleston last October. Like most performing artists navigating life in a pandemic, putting on shows in 2020 required them to live-stream in place of the real thing. But times are a-changin’ fast, and on July 30th they’ll be back and better than ever opening for College Radio at Tacoma’s Alma Mater.
The band, as it stands today, is a result of fateful high school productions. Colin Weaver, the driving force behind Russian Blue, first formed the band in 2015 with two high school friends. The group lasted all of two months. But Colin and former guitarist Ike Mow decided to give things another shot for their high school’s talent show. All they needed was a drummer.
“Ike said ‘I know this guy, Justino—he says he plays the drums, but I’m pretty sure he only plays rock band drums,’ which turned out to be true,” says Colin. Justino Arthaud-Baza, now 21, has been a key member of Russian Blue ever since, though he still doesn’t own a real drum kit. “To this day Justino does not have a drum set in his house. He only practices here with me when the band practices. And somehow he’s unbelievably good.”
On a massive high school auditorium stage, the trio played their first original song entitled “All About Me,” which it very much was. “I weighed like 93 pounds and I was 6’1,” says Colin, “so I was basically a stick figure playing the keyboard. And Ike had this tiny amp and his little guitar. The three of us were up there looking ridiculous.” Luckily for us, the event has been memorialized forevermore on video, though for their sake, I’ll leave the challenge of finding it up to you.
“I’ve always been a musical person. My dad has recordings of me when I was 4 or 5 just absolutely crushing some ’90s R&B slow jams. Ask anyone in my family how long I’ve randomly been breaking into song and they’ll look at you with fear in their eyes and say ‘FOREVER.'”
Zara Brann
From there on out, they were a band. And they’ve retained quite the following in their hometown. “Not to toot my own horn, but in Bremerton, a lot of people our age know who we are and will go to our shows. Generally, we pack it. Anywhere else, Seattle or otherwise, we’ll be completely irrelevant, but not in this little navy town,” says Colin.
Along with an album release, 2019 also saw the addition of the group’s most recent member, Zara Brann. A long-time friend and once-upon-a-time manager of the band, Zara was roped in after playing Katie in their high school’s production of School of Rock, which Russian Blue had been asked to participate in. The musical was her first taste of the bass—with Colin (in true Dewey Finn form) teaching her and most of the cast their character’s instruments.
Seeing how Zara could hold her own, Russian Blue made quick work of pulling her into the group. And she caught on in no time. “I crammed to learn 16 or so songs for their album release show that was in 3 months and did it somehow,” she tells me. “It was a big success and I felt like I joined a family.”
That family has shifted a bit since then. So has the music. Last year they parted ways with original guitarist Ike Mow. “It just wasn’t what he wanted to do anymore,” says Colin. But the issue has resolved itself rather seamlessly. As Russian Blue prepares for their fourth studio album, the air of change is palpable, the energy electric. “I swear there’s not a single skip on the album,” Zara tells me. “Colin has been sitting on these ideas and lyrics for a long time, and ever since our dynamic changed, I think he became more comfortable sharing and developing them with us.”
It shows; the band contends that the album to come, dubbed The Downpour, Perpetual is their best by a longshot. They hope to have the full album recorded and released as early as winter of 2021. The final project will likely clock in somewhere between 14 to 16 tracks. In the meantime, they’re toying with the idea of releasing an EP featuring B-sides and songs that didn’t make the cut. “It’s weird because I almost don’t want to show people our Spotify or share old music. It just completely misrepresents what we sound like now,” says Colin. “I love those albums,” Zara adds “but nothing that is out on streaming services reflects what we are now…we’ve gone from fun and youthful to more personal, serious, and emotional. As the lyricist, Colin has a lot of life experience for his age and he knows how to talk about those experiences in a very sophisticated and beautiful way.”
From what I can tell, Colin is sure-footed in the way he does most anything, and the artistic license the new three-piece offers suits him well. “Now I don’t have anyone telling me what I can and can’t do. Saying ‘you can’t write that,'” he says. Having packed 10 notebooks full of lyrics, Colin has taken care to frame their new material with more intention as well. “We have a lot of conversations on the album about abusive home situations, drugs, complications with religion.” On top of that, Russian Blue hopes to play a part in paving the way for queer artists in the genre. “There really aren’t a lot of people making this kind of music in the queer community. There are almost no guys singing right now in indie punk-rock who are openly bisexual and are writing about that honestly in their music…and I just think so many people would gravitate towards it—people who like The Cure, Joy Division, the Strokes.”
Previous Russian Blue albums beg comparisons to a teen Vundabar (a little less of the surf and a little more of the city rock) pulling inspiration from Panic! At The Disco and Twenty One Pilots. The unreleased album, with undercurrents of Joy Divison and Death Cab for Cutie, has pushed them into new territory. They have managed to salvage the best of the old and find themselves recentered in their current interests. “Think if NY garage rock and ’80s post-punk had a love child, and then imagine a very sad man singing very clever indie lyrics over that,” Zara offers. The result is a moodier, more emotional sound. “I think it’s better, in every way,” says Colin. “And it’s gonna be easier for people to connect to…This is the music I’ve always wanted to make.”
At the same time, Seattle’s contemporary music scene has a penchant for bedroom pop, fusion jazz, and residual grunge bands chasing the shadows of Nirvana, Alice in Chains, and the like. The trends leave Colin to wonder aloud whether bands like Russian Blue have any true potential or hope of belonging within that space. “I think we’d do much better in New York or the UK,” he says. “Our favorite bands, as far as what we draw from now—Interpol, The Strokes, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Walkmen—they were a part of the whole post-punk revival thing inspired by ’80s British music.” He notes a trend there. It was 20 years between the first two waves. Perhaps we’re due for another.
First the UK, then New York and Detriot, why not Seattle next? The way I see it, Russian Blue have the opportunity to create that demand and they certainly possess the drive to do so. Maybe all it will take is The Downpour, Perpetual to set things in motion.
FLICKERING
Check out Russian Blue’s concert movie, Flickering, featuring several of the band’s unreleased songs. Filmed in October of 2020, produced in partnership with Empty Lane Co.
You can find more of Russian Blue on Instagram @russianblueband and Facebook @russianblueofficial.
*All images by Turner Weins, provided courtesy of Empty Lane Co.