An interview with Flush

An interview with Flush

YOUNGER DAYS

What inspired the name of the band? What are your influences?

It’s hard to remember the full story behind the name. It was in our younger days when everything was fun, partying and rock’n roll, all day and every day. ‘Flush’ was short, concise and could mean a few different things. We obviously enjoy the toilet humour aspect of the name too, as is clear from our logo.

Bad Religion was a key influence in the early days. Fast and melodic, no unnecessary tricks or gimmicks. The 90s was an important time with punk rock, grunge, alternative and noise taking over the rock scene, instead of posers and those who were in it for shallow causes. Sonic Youth is an important influence, as are Helmet, Pavement, Mudhoney, Radiohead, Hüsker Dü and many, many others. But there are tons of influential music done today as well. Biffy Clyro has consistently been the best rock band of the last decade, Against Me! and Idles are the best punk bands of the last 10 years or so, and bands like Menzingers, Spanish Love Songs, Gang of Youths, Metz and many others make amazing, creative music. There is some really cool black metal and hardcore out there too, with Converge, Primitive Man, Full of Hell and others pushing the genre boundaries and creating very cool sounds.

How do you approach songwriting? Are there any themes that you are keen to explore when you start off?

For the record, this is Lasse, primary songwriter, responding on behalf of the band. Some of our songs are about stuff going on in my life, sort of inside-out, and other songs are more observational stories about what I see going on in the world today. Up until very recently, everything I wrote about was very real and concrete. Real feelings, real events, real emotions, real experiences. With a few newer songs I have started practicing more of a storyteller approach, where I can use a fictional story to illustrate or represent something going on either in my life or in society as a whole.

Writing songs is therapy for me. It helps dealing with anxieties, whether they originate from my own emotions or from the messed-up state of the world we live in. My hope is that listeners will be able to relate to the stories, and the songs will help them accept their own feelings and be at ease with feeling anxious, sad, angry, etc. We all feel down, we all get mad, we all get jealous… what matters is how we respond and react to this. Many of the songs have helped me accept my own flaws and be at ease with bad stuff happening in my life.

LIFE

How do you approach songwriting? Are there any themes that you are keen to explore when you start off?

For the record, this is Lasse, primary songwriter, responding on behalf of the band. Some of our songs are about stuff going on in my life, sort of inside-out, and other songs are more observational stories about what I see going on in the world today. Up until very recently, everything I wrote about was very real and concrete. Real feelings, real events, real emotions, real experiences. With a few newer songs I have started practicing more of a storyteller approach, where I can use a fictional story to illustrate or represent something going on either in my life or in society as a whole.

Writing songs is therapy for me. It helps dealing with anxieties, whether they originate from my own emotions or from the messed-up state of the world we live in. My hope is that listeners will be able to relate to the stories, and the songs will help them accept their own feelings and be at ease with feeling anxious, sad, angry, etc. We all feel down, we all get mad, we all get jealous… what matters is how we respond and react to this. Many of the songs have helped me accept my own flaws and be at ease with bad stuff happening in my life.

SELFISH

Why do you write the sort of music that you do?

I always write music for myself. I don’t write it as a commercial product for someone to consume, but simply as something I would like to listen to myself. I want there to be enough creativity so that it does not directly sound like something else, but still some familiar elements for listeners to be able to relate to. If the lyrics are my therapy, then the music is me practicing my creative skills in putting together melodic, harmonic, rhythmic and dynamic elements. Our music is a blend of fast punk rock, hard rock guitar riffs, and elements from alternative music that make it all interesting and surprising. It’s the kind of music we like listening to, so it makes all the sense that we also play that kind of music.

How do you decide what songs to perform live and how do you transpose them into that live setting?

We arrange our songs as a band and mostly at that point already constrain ourselves by what we can do live. After all, we are a rock band, nothing more and nothing less. When recording our new album we had some conversations about how much we can add things to the album that we cannot then do live. We concluded that we want to keep the songs authentic to how they were originally arranged and how they are to be performed. That said, there are multiple guitar tracks on some songs, there are added percussive elements here and there, and most of the vocals are doubled. But you won’t hear the difference live and on stage we make the songs sound like on the album. We’re not excluding using the studio more as an instrument in the future, but for now we wanted to keep it raw and real. There are no songs that we would not be able to perform live because of how they were arranged or recorded.

CONSTRAIN

How do you decide what songs to perform live and how do you transpose them into that live setting?

We arrange our songs as a band and mostly at that point already constrain ourselves by what we can do live. After all, we are a rock band, nothing more and nothing less. When recording our new album we had some conversations about how much we can add things to the album that we cannot then do live. We concluded that we want to keep the songs authentic to how they were originally arranged and how they are to be performed. That said, there are multiple guitar tracks on some songs, there are added percussive elements here and there, and most of the vocals are doubled. But you won’t hear the difference live and on stage we make the songs sound like on the album. We’re not excluding using the studio more as an instrument in the future, but for now we wanted to keep it raw and real. There are no songs that we would not be able to perform live because of how they were arranged or recorded.

DEBUT

What plans do you have for the future?

Oh, man, if we only knew what future brings for the live music scene, venues and events. Our debut album, ‘It Began as a Mistake’, comes out on October 23^rd so that is very much our immediate plan as this interview is being recorded. Unfortunately, it is looking like the covid restrictions will cancel most of our gig calendar for this year, so we have started looking into arranging and rehearsing new materials. Our hope is that by summer 2021 we would be able to do some festivals and other live shows, hopefully in new places to us. Time will tell. The best way to stay updated with our plans is by following our website at https://flush.rocks or our Facebook site https://facebook.com/flushmusic.