Q&A: Harrison Gordon’s ‘Bliss’ Creates Bliss
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
☆ BY AMANDA LIU ☆
HARRISON GORDON CAN TELL YOU WHAT BLISS IS NOT—What is happiness? After being asked by the ancient Romans and mused by modern philosophers, this timeless question is finally tackled by the Milwaukee punk rock band, Harrison Gordon, with their new sophomore album Bliss.
With Harrison Gordon (not to be confused with the lead singer), the band’s impressive instrumental displays and flavorful guitar solo passages to heartbeat-like kick drums and droning tones, Bliss is purposefully crafted and authentically executed. Not only does Bliss add more personality to the band's discography, but it’s also a testament to their evolution—in experimental songwriting as well as musical chemistry between its members.
This fall, Harrison Gordon will not only release their new album Bliss, but also embark on a tour across America. Luna caught up with Harrison Gordon to discuss their new album, as well as what happiness isn’t.
LUNA: Congrats on releasing your new album with the Hopeless Records label. How are you feeling about this current era in your career?
GORDON: I'm feeling pretty good. It's been a cool start. It's been a little bit since we've released a record—our last record came out in 2023. So we're really excited in general to be doing a new thing. We definitely spent a lot of time in that kind of era. So it feels nice to be moving on into the next thing and to start playing a bunch of new songs for people. We're just really excited to be like, “Yes, there's new shit happening.”
LUNA: “Not Working! Not Working!” is about anxiety of not feeling productive enough in a world that constantly demands output. As a band that's released three albums within six years, do you feel this pressure to constantly produce music in order to avoid irrelevancy?
GORDON: Yeah, definitely. I think that's the battle right now that everyone's facing. We luck out in the fact that we really, really like putting stuff out. I love that “go, go, go” kind of pressure. I tend to be a lazy person, so I like having a little bit of that.
There's felt like so much pressure on this record that we're putting out now, just because we had taken so long between albums. And I remember, when I started writing it, I was like, “Holy fuck, I need to have a record done in six months or else I'm useless.” I felt that I'm useless if I don't have this done in this amount of time. That's what that song is about—that feeling of “If I can't do this specific task, what is the point?’ That's how it felt when I was writing this whole record.
LUNA: Compared to Spring Break! and The Yuppies Are Winning, I noticed that there was a rawness that creates a more mature style in Bliss. How did you maintain this display of raw emotions while you were editing the tracks of Bliss?
GORDON: Yeah, it was definitely a very pointed effort. We knew going in that we wanted the album to sound very, very raw and authentic. So a lot of it was making decisions to keep in and not edit certain stuff that took away from that authenticity, even though it probably would have gained us back some technical perfection. We would even play wrong notes on the guitar, or there would be some background noise or stuff that, usually, it's the job of the studio engineer and the producer to make sure is all edited out, because it takes away from the song. But we were trying to make this conscious decision of like, “Let's leave that stuff and, maybe if the guitar take gets a little crazy and isn't quite playing to the right rhythm, we're just going to keep it in any way, because we like to perform it.”
It became this tightrope balancing act of like, “How much of that stuff can we get away with before it does feel sloppy?” Because it's really easy to make something that sounds terrible. It's not impossible to make something that sounds absolutely perfect. But it's really hard to make something that's right in the middle between those two. And we really wanted to capture it truly feel[ing] like the songs are about to completely collapse into disaster at any point. That's the most interesting thing to me. And How do we convey that on a record? It was way more effort, I think, than it would have taken to make the song sound completely perfect.
LUNA: What does bliss look like to you? Do you have any self-care regimens that help you connect with blissfulness?
GORDON: The album is about my relationship with happiness and bliss as a concept. Because, for a while, to me that look[ed] like DoorDash-ing food and drinking seven to eight beers while I play video games at my desk and watch a YouTube video on my laptop, like full volume at the same time. And that was sort of my self-care ritual for a few months. Eventually, I was like, “I need to change my life. This is fucking bad.” It was really, really fun. And then, all of a sudden, I was like, “This is terrible for me.” So I was writing a record about how good it can feel to put your mind at ease just by engaging in so much stimuli that you don't really think about anything. Eventually, you do have to pull back the curtain and take stock of your life and how that doesn't always feel very good.
LUNA: You mentioned a difference between pleasure and fulfillment. How have those concepts diverged away from each other for you? And how did you reflect that in Bliss?
GORDON: It just seemed like there was so much that you can do to make yourself feel good. I was wrestling with the fact that I didn't really understand what long-term happiness was, because I don't think I ever had a healthy relationship with the concept of living a happy, healthy life. I didn't really think about it too much. I was moving through life chasing any short-term fulfillment and validation.
Then, the band gets popular and we have people commenting nice things on our Instagram and we're getting all these clicks. So that's so much short-term fucking dopamine release and validation that I wasn't really thinking about “How am I going to stop being so depressed?” There was so much going on in my life that felt fulfilling. Some of it was truly enriching. But it was like, “Why am I still so fucking depressed?” I realized that it was because of this deep attachment I had to short-term fulfillment in order to dull that depressive feeling.
LUNA: One of your band’s strengths is the musical chemistry between its members. What did a typical songwriting/recording session look like?
GORDON: We wrote and demoed this album in a little windowless studio room in Milwaukee that we practiced out of [which] had no AC. I think it might have had heating, but it was rough in there. We would practice in there once a week for seven or eight hours. I would come with a song that I was writing and I would send the demo over that everyone can listen to. Then we would try to turn it into a real song and we would just play it really, really loud.
We didn't have any microphones or anything. We were turning up so loud and playing so hard. We realized, “This is what the album needs to sound like.” That really informed the fact that, whatever we just played right fucking here in this disgusting stinky room is what the song needs to sound like. That really informed the sound as a whole—that looseness of allowing every part to have a little bit of play so that we can bounce off each other.
I think if we were in a different environment, I think we were, if we were practicing in a real studio and, you know, had maybe had a click track or something, it would have come out completely different. I think that garage band kind of like the way that we were living and practicing just really informed how the record sounds.
LUNA: Bliss is being released this September. What song are you most excited for the fans to hear?
GORDON: I'm really excited for the last song I wrote for the record, “Scab.” I think it's the second longest song on the album. I'm really excited for people to hear that one because it's different from anything we've ever put on a record. It's like a song you can slow dance to. It has a waltz beat, which is not anything like any tracks that we had before. So I'm really excited for people to hear that one. I also think it's one of the most emotional and sentimental songs on the album—the most angry, even though it's so love-y sounding and slow. It has a Motown feel to it. I was just really proud with how we managed to make it fit right in the middle of this record. That wall of sound punk disaster [meets] this very sweet, but angry song. I'm really excited for people to hear it. I hope people like it.
LUNA: Do you have anything else you want to say?
GORDON: I just hope that people check out the record, come see us on tour if they like the record or like any of our other stuff. I hope if people check it out, that there's at least one little piece in there that makes them feel just like a little bit less alone.
