As part of Music Is To Blame’s What’s to Blame? interview series, Tom from Eades tells us all about their collaborative process, switching up sounds from debut to sophomore album, and what exactly to expect from Eades this year, including the release of ‘Final Siren’s Call’.
Talk to us about your band name - who or what’s to blame for its inception?
Eades is Harry’s mum’s maiden name, which is the best band name I've ever had because it’s so easy to explain. I mean, there’s bands like Psychedelic Porn Crumpets, how do you explain that name? But, Most people think we’re called Eades because we’re from Leeds and it rhymes, which I think would be such a lazy way of naming a band, unless you come from a place that has a cool sound to it.
Who would you say is to blame for your music career?
It’s a different answer for me rather than the band as a concept, but for the band I know a big influence from day one has been Wilco, especially this album is very ‘Yankee Hotel Foxtrot’ inspired, not necessarily musically all the time, but in the way we approach the album with a freeness and a openness to truly try anything, and also not to be constrained with worrying about what could be singles and what will work well on radio. I think this is very much the Wilco kind of approach, I think they’d spit in someone’s face if they told them to write a single.
Who are the biggest musical inspirations for the sound you’ve curated?
I’ll have to go back to Wilco on this one. However, the sound we’ve created for this album, well, I’ll say this, we were considered a post-punk band, whether it be on posters or websites describing us. But, when you listen to this new album you’d realise that we’re not that at all anymore, and none of us really listen to that traditional post-punk stuff. But anyway, I think it’s clear on this album we’ve been listening to a lot of Wilco, Twin Peaks, MJ Lenderman. I think a part of it now is that we don’t want to jump around shouting our heads off on stage, we want to sit in a nice groove and sing some pretty melodies that we’re actually really proud of. In terms of Wilco, again ‘Yankee Hotel Foxtrot’ in particular, we admire the instrumentation of it and just not being afraid to use saxophones where before we may have put a guitar solo.
Could you tell me a little bit about your recent single ‘Did You Read The News?’, why did you pick this track as the first snippet into your upcoming album?
We did bicker about what single should be chosen. But, to be fair, this one is the one we all agreed on to be the first glimpse into it all. I would say this one has a fairly catchy chorus in that it’s very repetitive. I can always imagine people singing along at a gig to that chorus, so for that respect I felt that it deserved to be a single. But also, the laid back nature of it has a really cool groove and certainly isn’t something we would have done on the first album, so it kind of highlights us stepping away from all that. Also, it has a few big moments at the end that shows we’re not actually shying away from playing our instruments. In the past, the last album for example was very riff-driven and we didn’t want to look too much like we were shredding, but now we kind of just want to enjoy ourselves as much as possible and there’s certainly space to do that on this record.
What has been the best live show for you all so far? What venues, UK and beyond, do you wish to play?
I think we would all probably agree that when we supported Wunderhorse in Electric Ballroom, that was probably the biggest show we’ve done and it was one of those that was the last shows out of 7 for that tour and it just went really well and we really wanted it to go well because it’s such an iconic venue and we were performing to that many people. It was amazing to support a band that we really admire as well. A place we played recently was Supersonic in Paris, it’s an amazing place to play, and to watch bands I suppose. In terms of where we’d want to play, this one’s kind of random but we’ve never played Moth Club in London, and we’ve always seen that, and it’s not a big venue or anything but I always see the bands I like going through that venue, so maybe that would be a good one as a realistic one at the moment. For an unrealistic one however, Madison Square Garden.
Take me through your songwriting process, do you have a particular routine?
Me and Harry kind-of split the writing 50/50. He is really good at, because he lives in a recording studio, writing a demo and knocking it out really quickly. But, especially with this album there’s a lot of times where I'd written lyrics and then he’d send a video back singing them. I don’t want to speak for him of course, but I feel that he much prefers writing music and vocal melodies than lyrics, and that’s what I love to do and therefore why it works so well.
What does the rest of 2025 look like for you?
The rest of 2025 looks like the ‘Final Siren’s Call’ album campaign in its entirety, so I think we’re going to release four or five singles and then the album comes out in September. Then, we have a UK tour in October which we have just announced, and then hopefully a few more gigs here and there at the end of the year. We’ll be ending with the big hometown show at the Brudenell Social Club on the 27th November, where we’ll be playing the album in full.
Amy Porter
Images: Pupat Chenaksara
