Bedroom / Boredom have built up a cult following with their single ‘Pill’, which has received over 600,000 streams on Spotify alone. I sat down with them in The Garage to try and get some serious answers from the far less serious five-piece.
The London-based band love straying towards mockery, both of each other and sometimes almost of the interview process itself. I ask if the name Bedroom / Boredom is as self-explanatory as it sounds and Max immediately answers, “nah, it’s a secret. No one will ever know the meaning of the name.” They make an inappropriate joke before trying to recollect how it actually came about. They start explaining “we were actually having a really big argument about what to call it …” before the five boys simultaneously say “Dead Volcanoes” and start laughing. The current name seems to be completely without meaning; “why are we called bedroom boredom?”, one of the members eventually asks the rest of the group, after they get all of their jokes out. “We were just f****** arguing about what to call it and then someone just said it and we just agreed,” is the simple final answer. “It just came out of our mouths. It’s haunted us ever since.” They considered Bedroom Blues before settling on the current name, “and then we just decided to put a slash in it. Ever since then we’ve hated the slash.” They laugh at themselves, saying “oh, let’s put a slash in it – make us unique, everyone will be able to find us”.
Bedroom / Boredom seem humorously unwilling to talk about their band, constantly drifting towards random topics and inclining towards sarcasm in order to avoid really answering a question. They describe themselves as “a weird combination of different influences”, before adding that they’re “all really horrible people as well”. “Only to each other, we’re really nice to outsiders,” the vocalist interjects, joking that “we’ve already lost two members. They left because they hated us so much.” They truly aren’t afraid to be horrible to each other; at one point they turn to their drummer and reminisce, “you were super enthusiastic when we first started – you were terrible at drums though.” “ I had a conversation with someone about kicking you out in the first EP,” Dan adds. Bedroom / Boredom seem to only really get along on stage when they can see how much their audiences love their music.
Their story is not an uncommon one; most of the boys met in school, and Max, the bassist, joined them in college. “And it’s gone uphill since then!” he exclaims, but the rest of the band are quick to say, “I think it’s gone downhill,” and state he was the only bassist there. “We actually don’t know any other bassists. We’ve been trying, we’ve been looking,” they laugh.
The band took a long break from making and releasing music, and there are noticeable differences in their new sound. Most noticeably, the saxophone is now absent. The band mentioned that they’ve lost two sax players, the bassist joking that they still haven’t found them. “Which is fine, no sax, don’t need it anyway …” they muse, before saying straight out, “it was our USP. It was the only thing making us unique.” The band first started writing ‘Chilly’ from the new EP two years ago after a period of musical stagnation and wrote ‘Youthless’ as a result of the frustration of trying to finish it. Though their lyrics consider drugs and teenage boredom, the band seem to place almost no value in the lyrics of their songs. They unanimously agree they prioritise the sound of the song more, “’cause Dan mumbles all the lyrics anyway”. Max recollects that he once had to record some backing vocals, so he asked Dan for the lyrics and “he said to just listen to the song and work it out.”
Their live performances are often full of unfailing energy, with the band praising Northern crowds in particular. Performing Ghost is a personal favourite for a few of the members, “because it’s the easiest to play the guitar and sing at the same time, and I feel like I can get into the crowd most,” the lead vocalist explains. “I like Chilly as well, it drives,” the guitarist adds. “People hit each other over it, I’ve seen it happen.” “Yeah, you stopped us in Bristol,” another member remembers, “and you went ‘Dan. We’re not playing Pill; they’re moshing and our equipment might get ruined’”, he laughs. “They were really kicking off, there were like 7 people in the room and they were fighting.”
Bedroom / Boredom are not an easy band to interview. The boys were constantly interrupting each other, making jokes, and taking frequent breaks from answering questions to bully Mark. “I only want to play in Colosseums,” one member states, with another adding “I want to play Antarctica. I want to be the second band ever to play Antarctica. Who was the first? Metallica? They can support us in Antarctica.” They sum the band up perfectly at the end of our interview when one member asks, “Were you hoping for serious answers?”. The group are perhaps doing so well because what they care about most is having fun, and making sure their audience do as well; the only thing they seem to agree on is that they adore performing, and seeing fans sing along to the songs they write.
Header Image from the band