Interview: Royal Blush Hit Restart
The Jersey City rockers discuss embracing fate and moving forward with a new lineup, two new EPs, and fresh perspective.
Royal Blush don’t do things half-assed. It’s simply not in their nature. Since 2021, the Jersey City outfit has consistently churned out numerous singles that harken back to the glory days of alt-rock and grunge, but with a melodic twist. Their music doesn’t just crash into you, it carries you to someplace grander, much like The Cranberries used to do.
Early songs like “Roll the Dice” and “Witness” exude a confidence and poise most bands spend years trying to obtain. Singer Allison Heckart commands your attention, while guitarist Andrew Merclean provides the space and texture that allows her melodies and voice to soar.
On stage, this musical partnership is quite something to behold. When I last saw them in 2023 at The Grape Room in Philadelphia, it felt as if we were being treated to an arena-ready band playing a small venue. Their set was both tastefully bombastic and gripping. Where most young bands might wither in the spotlight, the Blush seemed to embrace it. Both Heckart and Merclean delivered physical performances, with Heckart in particular belting out her words effortlessly while contorting her body in positions that gave me second-hand back pain.
Little did I know that show could’ve been among their last, as that lineup eventually splintered due to creative differences, despite having recorded a full album’s worth of music together. As luck and fate would have it, they enlisted a few close friends - guitarist Patryk Sikorski and drummer John Carbone - to join the band the full time. The show would go on.
After Sikorski and Carbone officially joined the band, Royal Blush revisted those songs they recorded with the old lineup. They used the opportunity as a sort of second chance to dig in and finetune them, resulting in last year’s A Ways Away EP, and now the upcoming EP From Where We’re From due in August.
In March, they released the first single off the upcoming EP, “Ur Cure,” in which Heckart delivers a scathing post-mortem of a relationship gone south. “It’s fucking weird / That I can see at twenty four / You were sick / And I was just your cure.” Musically, the song is patient and understated, hinting at a bit of a new direction in sound for the band.
Today, Royal Blush share the emotionally charged second single off the EP, “Gimme (One Thing).” It’s a showstopper of a song that showcases Heckart’s best vocals on record to date.
When I meet with the band over Zoom earlier this week, they’re in the midst of loading their van after a night of tryouts for a new bass player. After lugging their equipment, they settle into the van, with Heckart and Merclean at the helm, and Sikorski and Carbone in the back, separated by a guitar amp. In our conversation below, the band talks to me about their upcoming EP, their powerful live show, and how they came together as band with everything on the brink of collapse.
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[edited for length and clarity]
So you guys rehearsing new music? What's going on?
Allison Heckart A little bit of both. We have like the same foundation, you know, that we kind of kicked off from, but it's been really fun. We have this second EP that's been kind of rolling out. But in the process of that, we've already been writing new stuff, which is really cool and it sounds so different and the growth is really there and it's been really cool to explore the new realm for sure.
Andrew Merclean: I think like our next single my is kind of like a hint of what the new stuff is sounding.
Oh yeah, how so?
Merclean: [turns to the band] I don't know about y'all, but like, I feel like it’s aggressive and driving, but at the same time, there's a waviness to it.
Heckart: That's fair. Yeah.
Merclean: I don't know, guitar wise, like, for me personally, like, gypsy jazz kind of stuff.
Heckart: There is a really cool, there’s almost like a haze that sits on top of a heavier direction that makes, I think, a little bit of the heavier direction more digestible. It's definitely easy to digest while still having the heaviness of the emotion from the lyrical perspective. But yeah, that's a good point. I think it is a good little hint towards our newer direction after this EP.
Oh I can definitely hear that in both “Gimme” and “Ur Cure”. There’s definitely a growth even from the EP last year. Have you had these songs around for a while?
Heckart: Yeah, I mean, I think everything on the second EP has been around for a while, but we haven't explored the stage aspect of the songs. It's just kind of existed internally. So with “Gimme,” for example, it was kind of an interesting studio process because we hadn't played this version of the song live ever. And so it was a lot of experimentation of like, okay, this works, but this doesn't work. We didn't know what didn't work because we haven't played it to an audience before, which definitely stems some growth for sure. You learn a lot of lessons that way. We definitely took our time with “Gimme” and tried a lot of different things to figure out what works. It's really cool experimenting with this different studio strategy. Most of the time you play a song a million times live and you're like, yeah, we should release this one, it's pretty good. Half of the second EP has just kind of been in our back pocket that we've just been wanting to get out, so that we can move on to newer material.
Patrik Sikorski: To me all the songs are old.
Heckart: [laughs] You have an interesting perspective, yeah, yeah.
Sikorski: I joined in as we started writing our new batch songs for the like the next album after this one. I feel like when I joined the band, a lot of the stuff that were currently working on, like the second half of the EP it's almost that I've already working on, like prior, before the band broke up and like be revamped are lineup direction I was kind of in a place where a lot of the songs were already fleshed out. I’m just adding a flavor of new blush to the songs that have been around for a while already. I'm kind of just like, itching to get this new stuff out [laughs].
So wait, you guys changed your lineup since I last saw you?
Heckart: Yeah. Andrew and I are the only ones that continued from that lineup. There were some creative differences that popped up and it was just healthier to move in a different direction. Pat actually kind of came out of the woodwork from the production standpoint, and showed interest in wanting to play guitar. He already knew the songs because he’d been working on them with us on the production side of things. Then John fell into the mix. It worked out in this really beautiful way. It's been a really cool door to open that I think at one point was kind of a mystery. We didn't really know how things were going to look moving forward, but we knew that like something else had to exist and it's been really fun finding that.
Merclean: It was kind of like a homecoming, reclaiming these songs, rediscovering them and building them the way we always intended to. It’s funny the way what life works sometimes, like oh, we need a guitarist and Pat's right there. And oh, we need a drummer and John just moved back to Jersey and was down to play.
Heckart: Sometime you kind of question like, did fate have a way, you know?
Sounds like it.
Merclean: Yeah. So it was kind of a really nice homecoming with friends that have been there the long haul all of a sudden got closer and became part of it. It made this band that much more special for us.
That's fantastic. So you guys released A Ways Away early on in 2025, and then you huddled up in a cabin to revisit those songs and rerecord them for A Ways Away (in a cabin). Can you tell me a little bit about that project and why you wanted to revisit those songs so soon?
Heckart: It was December, and it was so snowy, which was crazy. We went to Cherry Springs, Pennsylvania, which is some of the best star viewing skies on the East Coast. And that specific weekend we were there, there was a big meteor shower, so we spent a lot of time on the star field. We went out there intending to record our Tiny Desk submission, and while we were there, we just thought, you know, we're coming up on a year since we announced EP1. We should just record a strip back live version of it and put it out exclusively on Bandcamp. There's been a lot of things that have surfaced about Spotify. Being a smaller artist, you kind of have to keep your stuff up there. So it's cool to incentivize another platform like Bandcamp that respects artists a little bit better. We had a really great time. It was really cool and just, you know, cracked open some beers, had a bonfire out back and put on some comfy clothes.
Did you guys write up there, too?
Merclean: Strangely, we didn’t.
Heckart: I think we were a little busy having fun. We were a little tight on time. It was really honestly more of a bonding experience.
John Carbone: We also worked our asses off. We got so much done and we just had a blast doing it. And for me, I was already feeling comfortable and welcomed, but it really did seal the deal like, goddamn, this is a nice little union.
There's nothing that brings a band closer together like music and alcohol.
Heckart: Amen [laughs]
So you have this new EP coming up. I noticed the covers are slightly similar. Is there a common thread between these two EPs? Like were you in the same headspace when writing?
Heckart: Initially, we had a 12-song album that we were working on and all of these songs were included on that album. And so when we kind of separated and found that redirection, Andrew kept his lead guitar, I kept my vocals, and we just kind of rebuilt from the bones that we had left. The long term goal is to release it as a double EP. We have a couple of like interludes that we would like to include to kind of round out that whole project, because it was always meant to be an album. So that's definitely the in goal here is once this EP2 finishes, it's single by single release, they'll come together and we'll get to kind of have that full project that it was always supposed to be.
This is going to be a stupid question, but is there any reason why you didn't want to just wait to release it as a full album?
Heckart: That's actually a really good question. We wanted to get new music out there and we wanted it to be approachable. And the quickest and most financially responsible decision was to like cut in half, start with the five, move on to the other five. And I think it also gave us an opportunity to breathe in life into songs and find what our new direction is without overwhelming ourselves into like a whole project, if that makes sense.
Merclean: A good example would be like 13 Songs by Fugazi. It's their first album, but it's just 2 EPs smacked together. I feel like in my mind that's kind of how I wanted it. Yeah. Yeah. And if you pay attention to the titles of our EPs - A Ways Away and From Where We're From - it was intentional. Eventually it will come together as one full phrase.
Heckart: And I think it stands true that the songs were born way back when, but they exist now after years and years and years worth of changing of perspectives and redesigning songs and changing lyrics and writing new riffs and going back and being like, “I know ever recorded that two years ago but I want to rerecord the whole thing.” I think that's been my favorite part of these projects is like, as an artist, you release this music and then you listen to it like a year or two later and you can't help but have those moments where you're like, damn, I wish I did that differently. Uniquely enough, this product has kind of allowed us to have that moment to go back and change things privately before people hear it.
So you’re releasing “Gimme (One Thing)” this Friday, tell me about that song.
Heckart: Lyrically, it’s about the final straw in a relationship, walking out the door. Well, I guess it's more so the begging of the last thing before walking out the door, like give me this one thing of peace of mind then get out of my life. I guess you could kind of go both ways with it. It's just this explosive ending to something. I also think it's about the free resolve of like, if you can't give me what I need and you can't give me what I want, then I'll do it myself, you know? Instrumentally, it's got a really cool, heavy side to it, which I think maybe birthed an emotion that I didn't originally intend lyrically. But it just kind of happened and it really works
Merclean: I love the chords of that song so much. That might be like my favorite chords I've put together. I was singing to a lot of Prince at the time.
Heckart: Oh my God. Andrew went through a massive Prince phase. I don't think he ever really left,
You never really leave your Prince phase.
Merclean: Objectively, he’s the greatest. I mean, he could dance, he could sing, he could play the best guitar. He had taste. My favorite thing about Prince is his ballads. And he had a song called “Sometimes It Snows in April” and I would just like listen to it over and over again. I would like sit like in a doorframe of my old apartment, on the ground between like two rooms and kind of play. There was one chord in “Sometimes It Snows in April” and I kind of like started messing with it. I changed a couple things and it ended up sounding totally different, and that led to the “Gimme” chord sequence.
What you said, Allison, about how your vocal approach changed based on the heavier stuff that Andrew was writing. Is that kind of how it works between you guys?
Heckart: All the time. So the first single off of our last EP, “Ballads in the Sky,” was written about my grandma who had passed away a couple of years ago. I had originally imagined it as this ballad. Never in my in a million years did I think it was going to be a Blush song. I kind of kept it as a poem of sorts kinda thought, like, maybe a solo project will arise and I'll use it years down the line. Andrew came in with this idea of a riff. I actually had this vocal recording of what I had originally thought the ballad would sound like, and it is the complete opposite of what the song turned out to be, because of that riff. Once he played that riff and I tried it, there was no going back. The song was exactly what it had to be. It’s a testament to never getting too attached to an original idea because then you could close yourself off to something that has ten times more meaning. You can't stop something that's meant to be.
I think it happened with “Gimme” too. I don't think I necessarily had as strong of a initial direction with “Gimme” necessarily, but, you know, you write something in a state of mind, and sure, there might be some anger there that's a little heavier of an emotion, but you don't necessarily imagine these dark moody chords and layers and layers and layers of tremolo on top of everything. That does change things, and I came to the realization that sometimes things are meant to change and that’s okay. It also goes to show it's better than okay.
You guys have a killer a live show, and I wanted to ask what you guys think is the key to a great live performance?
John: You gotta bring the ruckus [laughs]. I feel like, if you're going out to a bar or like an independent venue, I would so much rather see the person get up there and sweat than hit all the right notes I want to see something that blows my wig off, you know?
Oh yeah.
Heckart: I think breaking down the fourth wall and not being afraid to be the party starter. That's been something that I was uncomfortable feeling for a while. John is a great inspiration for that, actually. He’s a front man of another band, and his energy is insane.
Patrik: I always call it being like being a dance floor Spartacus. You’re gonna be the weirdest one in the room, and then that way everybody cuts loose. The best shows are the ones you walk out of there being like, oh, the shit that I was stressed about walking in here, I'm not stressed about that right now. It’s a therapeutic moment for a room full of people to experience together.
Heckart: I think especially nowadays, you know, given the environment of the world, you're not just a musician, your job is to be the people that make you forget. When you come to a Blush show, we want you to forget everything else before you walked in. Music, especially live music and any type of performance art, it's all supposed to be the silver lining. We are the good that's left. When you just want to get away from everything, music is where you go. Art is where you go. And so when you are an artist, when the world feels like it's crumbling, it's kind of your job to pick up the pieces and give people the pleasure of forgetting, and the pleasure of coming together with a community so that you don't feel alone. This world is really good at is making you feel alone and isolated in this fear. But when you go to a live show and you have that energy and that passion from this band, you might realize we're all still here. This is the hope, and the hope is in the room with us.
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New single “Gimme (One Thing)” is available now on all streaming platforms. From Where We’re From EP arrives this August. You can catch Royal Blush live at Maplewoodstock Music Fest on July 11th, as well as various shows in and around Jersey City & Philly. And maybe if we’re really nice, they’ll come play a show in Charlotte sometime.