With their eighth studio album The Moon (The Light Side) debuting at No. 1 on the ARIA Charts in April, and companion album The Moon (The Dark Side) dropping today, Bliss n Eso could join a select group of Australian artists who have achieved two No. 1 albums within a year.
Speaking from the road, where they’re on an extensive 32-date, national tour that began in late May, MCs Jonathan “Bliss” Notley and Max “Eso” MacKinnon sound cautiously optimistic at the prospect of setting a new chart record.
“Yeah man, you never know!” says Notley. “We’re blessed to have a pretty strong fanbase that has stuck with us for many years now. At the moment the vibe is great — to have the new songs out there, to be touring them, to be getting such a strong reaction, it’s been overwhelming. The love is in the air, it’s great.”
Releasing two albums in the same year, he adds, is the result of an extended burst of creativity from the group that yielded a surplus of new music.
“We basically got into the studio and just went crazy — the creativity was flowing so much and we recorded so many songs. We got to the point where we showed the label what we were working on, and they were like, ‘This is too dope to just put out one.’ So we decided to split it up, and since the last album was The Sun, we went with a moon concept for these ones.
“For us it’s cool because it keeps the campaign running longer in the sense that you put the record out, then you tour it, but you still have the anticipation of another record dropping, and you’re dropping singles all throughout that tour. So it’s a great momentum builder and a great way to keep us and the fans excited.”
Credit: Tyler Hanley
The first single from the new project is “Chemical Heart – GEED UP”, a reworking of Grinspoon’s classic platinum-selling 2002 rock single “Chemical Heart”.
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“Our DJ does a little set halfway through our live show, and he used to drop [‘Chemical Heart’] and the whole crowd would go crazy and sing along,” says Notley. “So we always had it in the back of our minds like, ‘Yo, we should do this properly, like do it as a song.’
“Years later, our drummer was friends with their drummer, and that’s how we made the connection. We floated the idea, and they were into it. It was crazy — we had Grinspoon’s manager crawling under his house between a metre of dirt and the floorboards looking for the CD-ROMs with the multi-track of the original recordings so we could sample them.”
MacKinnon says it took a number of years to get the track right, with it going through a number of iterations before taking its final form.
“We had some drum and bass going on in it, but it just took it too far away from what we loved about [‘Chemical Heart’],” he says. “When we finally made this version and we sent it through to Grinspoon, they automatically were just like, ‘Yeah, this is the version. Well bloody done, boys.”
The Moon (The Dark Side) also contains plenty of the group’s signature humour, including the tongue-in-cheek “Your Mother Loves It”, a song that sprung to life from a spontaneous moment of MacKinnon goofing around.
“A lot of people ask us how we’ve managed to stay together as a band for so long, because it is rare to be around for 25 years. I always tell people one of the key things is we just keep it fun in the studio, like it’s jokes all day,” says Notley. “Having that fun that brought us together when we were teenagers, just rapping and comedy and hip-hop all intermingled. That’s what keeps it fresh, and laughter is medicine, you know what I mean?”
“It made me remember a quote that Mos Def had said back in the day that helped me so much on stage,” adds MacKinnon. “It was something about how the crowd is almost like a mirror. So if you’re on stage and you’re giving off [makes sound of someone being agitated], then that’s what you’re gonna get from the crowd. But if you get on stage and you smile and you’re having fun, then the crowd automatically has fun. It’s the same process when you’re making an album.”
Despite its comedic tone, Notley says “Your Mother Loves It” is also a sincere love letter to Bliss n Eso fans — and their mums.
“[‘Your Mother Loves It’] is cheeky, but it also gives props and love to the mothers as well,” he says. “We’ve been doing these meet and greets on tour and there are families coming now where the dad and the mum are bringing the kids, and the kids are bigger fans than they are. To see the next generation of BnE fans coming in, it’s just so cool. So it’s a little shout out to all the BnE mums out there who are fans that are still rocking it.”
Over the decades, Bliss n Eso have recorded several times at the Mount Macedon mansion of the late Mushroom Group boss Michael Gudinski. Although Gudinski passed away in 2021, that tradition continued for The Moon (The Dark Side).
“It’s got magic there. We actually recorded [2010 album] Running on Air there as well,” says MacKinnon. “The house has just got memories and vibes to it, man. You walk through the corridors, there’s just platinum and gold records on the wall, there’s a picture of Madonna in the same kitchen, there’s a picture of Billy Joel on the front lawn. There’s just magic in that house.”
“After Michael passed, it was beautiful [to be there] because he was always so good to us and treated us like family and was always so supportive and loved the fact that we would record at his house,” adds Notley. “So for Matt [Gudinski], his son who’s our manager, to be able to go back there and do it [with us] was pretty special. It’s just got that magic in the air up there.”
Bliss n Eso’s The Moon (The Dark Side) is out now.
