American rock band and friends of the page Cold Shoulder caught up with Edward Burnett this week to talk about their upcoming change in musical style, the importance of music videos and what films they’ve been watching to cure the lockdown blues! RNRR: Hi Cold Shoulder! Nice to see you guys again! What a crazy year since we all last got together huh! How have you all been in the meantime? CS: We've been well! We recorded our debut EP and did all of the planning to ensure we come out swinging in 2021. It was definitely an adjustment period to say the least. How have you all been? RNRR: We’ve been great thanks, the whole team managed to get several interviews and articles out last year that raised our standards and the bar! So what changed for you guys in particular? What were the pros and cons of your new scenario? CS: Mostly what changed for us is our writing and creative process. We have been doing a lot of our writing remotely, which has come with some challenges, but it has also forced us to take on new ways of being creative and working together while apart. It has been interesting, but ultimately has led to us improving as songwriters and we think it has resulted in our best material to date. RNRR: So how does this new material compare with your old stuff, thematically? Have you gone with your usual style, or do you find yourself trying out little tweaks in your upcoming music, genre and lyric wise? CS: We are really pushing ourselves to evolve creatively. Staying in the same spot musically can result in staying in the same spot with your fans and reach you know? We never want to get comfortable or stale. Our current stuff we are working out is taking lots of risks from what we already have established and we really think people will like what they hear. We are still Cold Shoulder, but be on the look out for material that is really playing with different influences, is more meaningful than most importantly, more fun. RNRR: So talking about new influences, what have you guys been listening to while in lockdown? Has anything new and interesting caught your ears that has inspired your own music to move forward? Or perhaps just some tracks that you vibed to and got you through the worst of the pandemic? CS: Oh absolutely, we really liked the newest from bring me the horizon. So daring, so much going on. The newest machine gun kelly album was fantastic. And in fact the violent put out a new song today that was great. We've been trying to diversify our listening to draw new inspiration. Despite to shut downs there has been great music over the past year! RNRR: Now, crossing media mediums somewhat to film but staying on the topic of this year, what movies have got your attention this year? Oscar season is among us and with film and music being so closely linked, I think it’s always interesting to ask musicians their opinions on the film world too! Cold Shoulder, what have you enjoyed at the “home cinema” in 2020/2021? CS: We've been light on movies in the past year. Mostly watching 80s classics. The soundtracka of those movies were all so amazing. Obviously anything John Williams related had incredible original pieces. ‘ET’, ‘Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Arc’, ‘Star Wars’, etc. As far as original music movies like ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’, ‘The Breakfast Club’, and more had original music that was used so effectively. For things post 2000? Gotta go ‘School of Rock’ and ‘Tenacious D’! Obviously 'School of Rock' had such amazing music that for everything so perfectly. What a great movie with a great concept. ‘Tenacious D’ was such a fun concept as the band's music was used to create the structure of the music as well. Such a great idea and great execution RNRR: Some really great, classic picks in there guys! Continuing with the theme of film related to music, have you been filming any music videos during the pandemic for the new songs? Has it been a lot harder to get such videos filmed thanks to the current situation? CS: We do have some stuff that was done right at the start that will be coming out soon here. We are going to be doing some things that have forced us to be creative. We've done some of these playthroughs remotely which has been very cool. Technology is so powerful and let's us still produce content, even when apart. RNRR: How important are music videos to Cold Shoulder as a band and a brand? Do you feel like they are a necessity for every single released? What’s the thought process with the direction/story of what’s in the video? CS: We definitely try to do a video for as many songs as possible. Might not be able to do every single one, but we like to have content surrounding each song. We want to make sure that we can give our audience several things to latch onto with our music. Different songs have different needs for videos. Sometimes it's based around themes, sometimes we just want to have something fun visually to keep people engaged. We are really proud of our most recent one for ‘Be Patient’ with the whole video in one take. Ironically you have to ‘Be Patient’ [laughs] in order to see everywhere it goes. RNRR: Similar to the inclusion of a music video, a good song is nothing without some good artwork to accompany it, would you agree? What’s the creative process for you guys on deciding what the path is for album covers and what makes the cut and of course, what does not? CS: Agreed. More now than ever the visual content is just as or more important than the song itself. The visuals have to convince someone to stop scrolling and that's not easy [laughs]. We usually come up with rough ideas for our artwork and get something we all like. From there we have a few artists we frequently use to turn our rough ideas into something more presentable! RNRR: Do you feel that colour in an album cover can reflect the mood of the music? I ask this as your latest single ‘Be Patient’ predominantly featured red. Similarly each of your previous singles all featured a solid colour throughout including orange and blue in ‘Them Bones’ and ‘Faithless’ respectively. What can we expect from your upcoming releases in that matter? CS: I don't know if we've put too much thought into the color of the album colors, but it's definitely something that reflects mood. We gravitate toward blues, orange and red, so there will probably be more of that! Our upcoming singles are songs from the upcoming EP, so you can expect a very familiar album cover. RNRR: Familiarity is always a winner. So let’s briefly talk about the upcoming EP then guys. What can you reveal at this early date about it? Do you have a title or any details about the length of it as of yet? What’s the gossip? CS: Ahh, yes that thing [laughs]. It's a self titles EP, so nothing too interesting going on there. The release date is June 11th. You're actually the first people to know that date! We have a new single coming out on April 23rd and another single will coincide with the release of our EP. The lengths about 30 minutes and we're excited to share it with you! RNRR: Finally, as you know from being long term friends of the page, it’s customary of me to ask what your desert island album would be? Can you find one that you all agree on? CS: HMMM, that's always a good question. Maybe Metallica’s self-titled black album. That's always a good listen! RNRR: An undisputed classic that one! Well it’s been a pleasure to see you guys again and on behalf of everyone at RNRR, we wish you the very best for the rest of the musical year! If you would like to learn more about Cold Shoulder or keep up to date with their latest EP release then the links to all their socials can be found via the icons below:
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