Fronted by musician Ethan Proctor, the locally-revered Bristol indie band Bridges changed their name to Bottlemoth at the beginning of this year to mark a metamorphosis after a recent line-up change and when their social media accounts got hacked at the end of last year.

Thankfully, Bridges’ near-decade’s worth of music has been preserved in this transition, but the band’s debut album, Even Us Ghosts, which was released today, marks a new sound for them going forward.

Ethan spoke with Post-Burnout about the album, the change, why they put their old music under the new moniker, how the album explores the transition of people in their twenties and much more.

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Hey, Ethan, how’s it going? I’ll try not to take up too much of your time, as I know, obviously, you’re kind of busy at the moment, with the album coming out. [Laughs] […] I need to talk about this record, because, obviously, this is the first full-length release under the new moniker of Bottlemoth, and I do want to apologize in advance if I say “Bottlemouth,” because my brain keeps autocorrecting it, for some reason. [Laughs]

[Laughs] Oh, that’s okay, man!

But, Bottlemoth. So, yeah, I mean, how long has this record been in the process, and, generally, what was it about this record that you felt like there needed to be kind of, like, a re-shift in the band, because, obviously, this is coming from Bridges?

Yeah, so when we were coming to the end of last year, we’d probably spent a good six months, maybe longer, last year…like, I think we did the initial drum…like, the first drum takes, at the beginning of last year, right? So, it’s been quite a long process of getting everything together, if I’m getting that timeline right; I might be slightly getting that timeline wrong, even. But I think it was last year that we kind of went for a bit of a reshuffle, with a member leaving Bridges and then all our socials got hacked. We lost everything in a really weird kind of like, “All at the same time” kind of moment, and, so, it just felt like a good moment to…We were taking on a new guitar player, anyway, and we just had this new album that was finished – it was mixed, it was ready – and it felt like a good time to just finally make a change, as well, because we’d been under that name for a moment, and it’s quite difficult when you start a band, as well, to…You don’t often think about everything that comes later, in the sense of, like, when we came up with that name, we weren’t necessarily thinking about how easy that would be to Google, even, do you know what I mean? [Laughs] So, we got tagged in pictures of bridges, all the time. [Laughs] It was fun, and it was fine, but, like…and, you know, I don’t think it was ever something that would have held us back, but I think, because there was just so much change happening with us, anyway, and we lost our main social accounts, it just felt like a good moment to start again, and the album is a slight move in a different direction, sound-wise; it’s, like, a little bit more polished, a little bit cleaner than some of the other stuff that we’ve done in the past. So, it felt like a new sound as well, so it felt like a good time to just take that leap and become a different name.

One thing I found very interesting about this transition is that, if you go to, say, Spotify, the songs you were releasing under “Bridges” are being absorbed by this new name. So, was that kind of a conscious thing, to make it clear that this is actually a continuation of that project and not a separate thing?

Yeah, so that’s right, at the moment. So, I think when we were moving everything across, as well, when we were making the change, we wanted to make it clear that it wasn’t a complete, new beginning, you know? It is a new project and it is a new beginning, but it’s not a complete departure from all of those old songs. So, in our live set, we still include a chunk of those older songs, as well. There’s a lot of songs there that we don’t want to lose and give up to time, you know? But, when we were changing the name, there was a conscious decision that we would try and move everything across, as a collaborative thing, on Spotify at least, as well. Whether that stays there forever is another question. Now that the album is going to be coming out, we might decide that, you know, it’s time to take those things down, so that we can use those songs again, later, in a different format, different variations, different arrangements, because something else that we’ve been quite conscious about is that we don’t want to age the project before the project’s even begun. So, I worry that…like, that was kind of the balance of, like, we didn’t want to lose those particular fans that have been with us for a while and that really know what Bridges was about. I didn’t want them to think that this was just, like, a completely new thing and we were gonna be leaving those songs behind. But, yeah, maybe they won’t stay there forever. Maybe they’ll just move over to our Bandcamp or something like that, or maybe we’ll do some different variations and different versions of those songs. But it was a conscious decision, initially, to make sure that the fans knew that it was not losing those works.

Yeah, I think that’s, like, a very smooth transition. I find it very interesting how independent artists now, who are self-releasing stuff, can have that kind of self-determination to be able to switch up a band name in the middle of a band’s career, or to choose to preserve their old songs as part of this new project or to disband them, altogether. Do you kind of enjoy that sense of freedom, in terms of not having a label and decision-makers kind of breathing down your neck and kind of telling you the best outcome for your project?

Um…I think there’s pros and cons to all of these things, right? Like, the biggest pro is that, you know, we own everything that we’ve done, we hold complete autonomy of what we release, when we release it. Fortunately, we’ve got a really lovely team that has helped, being involved to be part of the record, and help distribute that, and help release that, and bring that to press, bring that to radio, et cetera, you know? But there’s a lot of learning to do there, as independents who haven’t been on a record label before. So, essentially, we’ve made a record label [by] doing all of these things, right? So, I think, as we get to album two, I would be interested more in finding a partner to help us, and that is mostly because, you know, we’re already busy people, as well, and I don’t want to naively think that I can do it the best, as well. But I think, with this record, like, we were just quite keen to keep it under our own rein and take our time with it, as well. So, whilst it’s been ready a while… I mean, we’re in October now, right? And we’ve started to release tracks back in April. So, it’s been really a steady release of things and giving us a moment to make sure we can get the live set together properly, making sure we can, like, get our first few shows under our belt and really, like, take a really methodical approach.

Speaking of the record itself, I was wondering, like, what was kind of, thematically, the kind of connection between [the songs]? Because one of the influences that I noticed you cited was Frightened Rabbit, and I noticed that, like, a lot of artists I’m speaking to now have really been citing Frightened Rabbit and Scott Hutchinson as an influence, and, you know, a big part of that is due to, obviously, the lyrical content. If I’m correct, I believe I read somewhere else that you said that part of this record is kind of reflecting on decisions you make in your twenties. Yeah, I was wondering, thematically, what this record kind of means to you.

Yeah, I mean, so I guess, like, in answer to the Frightened Rabbit question, Frightened Rabbit have been a big influence on my music for a really long time, and that’s led into, like, a lot of other projects and other bands as well; whether that’s somebody even like Manchester Orchestra or The Wonder Years, or, like…there’s a lot of different artists that are very lyrically driven, that I think are important for our writing, and I guess, like, there is a lot of reflection and that it wasn’t an intention to write anything like a concept album or anything like that, but I just feel like these songs, when they all came together, they very much felt like an ending of, you know, of coming to…you know, the middle-to-end of [your] twenties and deciding on how things have been and what you want your life to become, right? And I think, like looking around at a lot of our friends and even just our families of, you know, younger brothers, younger sisters, and what they’re going through, it’s kind of a weird time to be growing up, particularly with things like COVID, but also just the state of our country and economy and everything else, right, and, like, decisions you have to make to move home after university, rather than going to live in a nice city or whatever, and, I don’t know, it’s something that we really wanted to, like, dig into or I tried to dig into with some of these lyrical themes, and, yeah, people are always going through different things, right? So, you don’t know what everybody’s going through. So, hopefully, it’s, like, broad enough that it shares some of our experience, and people can relate to that, but not too specific that it’s alienating.

Yeah, no, I think the twenties is a very interesting kind of period of time in people’s lives to write about, because I think people talk about the transition of being a teenager, but I think there’s actually some consistency between teenagers, in the sense that, you know, they’re still in school, they’re still mainly living at home, there’s all these kind of, like, similar things, I think, between teenagers. But, when you get into your twenties, I think people develop at such different rates; like, some people mature and get married and have kids quite young, and then others kind of spend their twenties sort of meandering, doing odd jobs, and, you know, not really progressing much beyond their adolescence. And it’s just a very interesting period because I think it’s the first kind of decade in people’s lives where people go in such varying, different paths in such drastic ways. I don’t know if you feel that way, too.

I absolutely feel that way. I feel like there’s some friends that went very quickly into, like, a career, or, like you said, into a family, and then some that, you know, are now in their early thirties and they’re still kind of figuring it out, and I think, maybe, people don’t talk about how that’s okay, you know? So, I think that’s really interesting.

Yeah, and is that a challenge, then, to try and write about being in your twenties in a way that’s relatable? Or do you kind of feel like, well, no matter how you live at that period of your life, there’s going to be somebody who relates to it?
Eh, I hope it’s probably the second. Like I said, I feel like the album is definitely a lot of self-reflection on things that we went through, like, whether that’s the case of…like I said, I lived in London for a while, and I felt it was a really strange place to live, right? Like, you felt like you had to be out all the time, but you also didn’t have the money to be out all the time, and then you could be in crowds of people and feel like you couldn’t talk to anyone. It’s a really weird place to live. But then, moving home, and seeing all your friends there and lots of people moving home and living with their parents when they’re in their late twenties, and it’s very strange, the way things are now, you know? [Laughs] I think, like, you can worry about that and you maybe don’t need to, right? I think things will work out when they’re supposed to.

I think that’s a really interesting juxtaposition that I really relate to, the idea of being in a very densely populated place and taking packed public transport and being in busy streets all the time, and yet feeling a million miles away from people. It is such a weird kind of headspace to be in. I don’t know how we kind of perceive that, you know what I mean?

Yeah, I feel like…yeah, I don’t know. I naively thought before I moved to London, I was like, “I’m gonna talk to people on the tube. I’m gonna make loads of pals like that, and meet tons of people and go to loads of stuff.” But I mean, there’s something quite special about just having…and some people in London get this; I just didn’t reach that point of like having like a local [pub], or having a local gig scene, or a local whatever, as well, to go to, and I just found that I had that so much more even when I lived in Bristol, or when I lived in my hometown of Bridgwater, growing up, right? It was much more like I knew where my people are. I didn’t have to, necessarily, even text people; I could just go there and they would be there, right? As you get older, it seems like you just have to be so much further and arrange things in advance, even of, like, we’ll hang out in three weeks for two hours. [Both laugh] It’s, like, really strange! Especially in London. I know we’re talking lots about London, but even, like, one of the main singles of…the release single that will come out with the album, “Where Oceans Swallow Your Skies,” there’s a sample at the beginning of that which is taken from the Underground and is reversed back through, to sound like waves, and I feel like…Yeah, I learned a lot about myself, living there.

I want to actually ask about the album title, Even Us Ghosts. I was wondering if, maybe, you could just talk about that, unless you want to have it somewhat ambiguous.

No, no. Yeah, I feel like…so, when we were coming up with the album title, as well, we had, like, a list of it, and some of those were just like other lyrics from the album. So, this particular lyric is in “Tattoo;” it’s the line, “Even us ghosts.” It’s relating to, you know, how you can feel in your twenties, when you’re finding yourself, and quite a lot of people feel lost. The line was a bit inspired by…a long friend had a song called…When I was at university, we were writing songs together, and he had a song called “Me and Half of My Friends,” and that featured a line in it, as well, about how he didn’t know if he felt like he was more than a ghost, you know? And I’ve always had a bit of an obsession about how that supernatural kind of imagery can really relate to how we’re going through different things. But another one of the suggested album titles was Where Oceans Swallow Your Skies, which is really about what I think a lot of people go through in their twenties, right, where, like, oceans are really dragging you down, like that imagery of skies being all the things that could be, and the ghostral imagery [sic] kind of just linked those two things together. So, yeah.

I like the idea of an eternal being, like a ghost living for, you know, all this time, and still struggling with identity [Laughs] and uncertainty of who they are.

Yeah, and I think that people do as well, right? People can go their whole life without finding what they need. And that’s, again, part of this record, is it’s alright. [Laughs] Don’t worry. It’s gonna be fine.

Do you think that’s an expectation that…you know, obviously, people have to have their shit together at a certain point in life, and you know, for some people that’s fine, but, for others, it’s just kind of unrealistic? It’s…I don’t know…it’s just kind of an interesting anthropological thing, where we’re expected, like, okay, once you hit, let’s say thirty-five at the latest, it’s like, you know…your life has to be on the track that it’s going to be for the rest of it. It’s quite anxiety-inducing.

Yeah, I think that, maybe, like, those norms and cultural norms are changing, even things of like, you know, go back a generation or two, and it’s like you would have had a kid by the time you were nineteen or twenty, and that was an expectation, being married or being whatever, you know? And I think, maybe, cultural norms change generationally. But I think, just lots of people are taking a bit longer to find themselves, and I think there is a big worry about that. I guess, even, like, if I think back to, like, school or then going to university, like, I was already at university before I thought about why I was there, and I think there was just like an expectation of like, “Oh, you should do that,” you know? “Then you do that, and then you do this, and then you get to this.” I think it was only when I got older, I was thinking, “What do I actually want to do?” [Laughs] Like, “Why am I doing all these things?” So, it’s a lot less linear than it gets made out to be.

Perfect. Thanks very much for your time; I’ve really enjoyed talking with you. I just want to ask, is there anything you’d like to plug? Obviously, the album’s out now. Is there anything you’d like to plug, to mention, anything at all?

Yeah, the main thing is the record. The record comes out this week, on the 17th of October. It’s available on vinyl from our store, online. You can find us on all things, just by searching “Bottlemoth.” The website is bottlemoth.com, and then on any streaming platforms and things like that, you’ll be able to find our record. We’re gonna be doing a few shows later this year, but probably mostly from next year. So, keep an eye out on our socials and things for when we’re going to be touring.

Bottlemoth’s debut album, Even Us Ghosts, is available on all streaming platforms and vinyl from today. You can find the band’s music, live dates, and social media accounts on their website.

Aaron Kavanagh

Aaron Kavanagh is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Post-Burnout. His writing can also be found in the Irish Daily Star, Buzz.ie, Totally Dublin, The GOO, Headstuff, New Noise Magazine, XS Noize, DSCVRD and more.