The Bravery Get Dark on 'Stir the Blood'

Posted on Dec 3rd 2009 3:30PM by Jolie Lash
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New York City's the Bravery dropped their third album, 'Stir the Blood,' on Tuesday, and as fans can attest, it's their darkest record to date. While the sounds are heavier, frontman Sam Endicott doesn't think he is a bleaker person these days.

"I think that I am more comfortable expressing that side of myself, whereas in the past I would pretend that it didn't exist," he tells Spinner. "I would see it there on paper [in my journal]; I would read these thoughts and I'd think I wish I hadn't written that, I wish that that wasn't in my head so I'm going to pretend that it's not there. With this album, I began to think, 'F--- it. I have nothing to hide and this is very much from the heart so I should put this into the music.'"

At least one of the inspirations behind at least one of the new songs – 'Hatef---' -- was Endicott's relationship with a then-girlfriend who attempted suicide while he was working on the record, something he unknowingly admitted for inclusion in the press materials.

"I didn't know they were sending that out with the CD," he says of the uncomfortable revelation. "They asked me to describe the Bravery from my experience, our career, things that have happened and I didn't realize that that was happening, that they were gonna send that out."

Although he is many months removed from the actual experience, Endicott says it was crushing.

"It affected me in a way that I never would have expected which is that it made me really angry. You think that you can trust someone, you know them implicitly, you think that you can trust a situation and then something happens and everything you thought you could depend on is just gone," he says.

The other songs on 'Blood' came from the writings Endicott did while on tours or when he was home in New York City.

"I get that a lot from reading the journals, the diaries," he says. "A month later I'll read it and there are these things there. I wasn't aware of all these connections and a year later and I read it and there's even more. I realize what it means in the great context of what was going on in my life or in my mind at that time."

But one track didn't come from Endicott at all -- Bassist Mike Hindert, aka Dirt, the youngest Bravery member and one who could barely play his instrument when he joined the band, has a songwriting credit for 'She's So Bendable.'

"He's always been a clever guy, but I was very surprised with how creative he's become," Endicott says. "He's really come out of his shell in the last couple of years and is now an extremely creative and prolific person."