Let’s go! A New Year means a new round of festivals we plan to attend. First up is Slam Dunk; last week, they announced their last names to their already impressive line-up, but bad news was also shared. So, who are the last names that will be joining Pennywise, Snuff, The Interrupters, Waterparks, The Ghost […]
Let’s go! A New Year means a new round of festivals we plan to attend. First up is Slam Dunk; last week, they announced their last names to their already impressive line-up, but bad news was also shared.
Beauty School, Caskets, The Dangerous Summer, Arm’s Length, Everything Unfolds, and Guilt Trip. Also announced was You Me At Six, which will also be their last-ever appearance at Slam Dunk Festival. As they announced, they are going their separate ways after twenty years, after they conclude their last tour next year. Slam Dunk 2024 will occur in Hatfield on May 25th and Leeds on May 26th.
Peace out, 2023. Whether or not this was your year, we got some pretty sweet punk releases out of it. Here’s a list of some of my favorite singles/songs from albums that dropped this year. Bonus: There’s also my top 20 favorite concert photos I shot in 2023 for Dying Scene (I have way more […]
Peace out, 2023. Whether or not this was your year, we got some pretty sweet punk releases out of it. Here’s a list of some of my favorite singles/songs from albums that dropped this year. Bonus: There’s also my top 20 favorite concert photos I shot in 2023 for Dying Scene (I have way more that I love, so it was hard to narrow it down)! Cheers!
Is it already that time of year again!? Riot Fest is back and we have three days worth of photo galleries of some of your favorite bands and some up and coming bands you should put on your radar! Check out some of the bands from the first day of Riot Fest and give them […]
Is it already that time of year again!? Riot Fest is back and we have three days worth of photo galleries of some of your favorite bands and some up and coming bands you should put on your radar! Check out some of the bands from the first day of Riot Fest and give them some love.
FEA is a Chicana all-female band from San Antonio, TX. Produced by Laura Jane Grace, they debuted their self-titled LP in 2016. FEA set the bar early on for the first day of Riot Fest with their raw, fierce, and powerfully feminist punk rock energy.
New York-based garage punk band The Bobby Lees quickly become one of my favorite bands of the year after hearing “Guttermilk” for the first time. In true punk rock fashion their drummer, Macky Bowman, ran laps around the stage in nothing but his tighty whities (and that was just a warmup).
Code Orange is a sludgy, thrashy, metalcore punk rock band that obviously cannot be defined by only one single genre. Their intense set was one not to miss.
Yard Act is a fun post-punk British band. Their newest single “The Trench Coat Museum” was released in July and co-produced by Gorillaz member Remi Kabaka Jr.
Walter Schreifels had a particularly busy Riot Fest weekend not only performing with Quicksand on day one, but also Rival Schools and Gorilla Biscuits on the following days. For its 30th anniversary, Quicksand played their 1993 album Slipin its entirety.
Turnstile was of the headliners for the first day (along with the Foo Fighters). Check out the rest of the photos from the first day below, and look out for our coverage of day two and three of Riot Fest!
If you search back through the annals of Dying Scene history, there exists the very real possibility that Frank Turner and The Interrupters and Chuck Ragan would each individually rank pretty high on a retrospective “top ten most photographed artists” list. I’m pretty sure I’ve shot them a collective two-dozen times myself. And so obviously […]
If you search back through the annals of Dying Scene history, there exists the very real possibility that Frank Turner and The Interrupters and Chuck Ragan would each individually rank pretty high on a retrospective “top ten most photographed artists” list. I’m pretty sure I’ve shot them a collective two-dozen times myself. And so obviously when it was announced that the trio would not only be touring together but that that tour would find its way to Boston’s MGM Fenway Music Hall on a Sunday night, of course yours truly would be there! (Editor’s note: Laura Jane Grace was slated to appear on this bill as well but had to bail semi last-minute. Jesse Malin was a late add as a replacement and an even later cancellation due to an unexpected injury.) Unexpectedly chaotic traffic-related issues aside (seriously…not entirely sure who made the executive decision to sync up the ending time of Northeastern University’s graduation ceremony inside Fenway Park with the doors-open time at the MGM outside Fenway Park, but that person should be fired into the sun), the evening was about as enjoyable and high energy as you’d expect.
Accompanied on pedal steel by long-time wingman Todd Beene (of Glossary and Lucero and Tim Barry fame), Chuck Ragan got the evening’s festivities started off in fine fashion. When an event is co-headlined by not one but two high-energy, full-band acts, particularly when it’s a venue as cavernous as the shiny new 5500-capacity MGM Fenway, you never really know how well an acoustic-based opener is going to translate. Rest assured, Ragan’s trademark road-worn growl was more than enough to not only grab the attention of the decent-sized crowd that showed up so early but to shake the sparkly new building to the rafters.
The bulk of Ragan’s ten-song set was culled from his 2011 release Covering Ground and its 2014 follow-up, Till Midnight, both of which included Beene on pedal steel and backing vocals as a member of The Camaraderie. Coupled with a holler that could raise the dead, Ragan plays his trusty Martin acoustic with the ferocity of John Henry’s hammer, so the subtleties and soaring notes of the pedal steel make for a unique sonic balance. The one “cover” in the set was of the Ragan-penned Hot Water Music staple “State Of Grace,” a nod to the Hot Water fans in the crowd and to the band’s thirtieth anniversary, which will be coming next year!
The Interrupters stormed the stage next for their co-headlining slot on the bill. They kicked off their set with “Take Back The Power,” the biggest single from their self-titled 2014 debut full-length, and spent the course of the next seventy-five minutes in a constant barrage of frenetic energy and positive vibes. The band’s dynamic lead vocalist, Aimee Interrupter, rarely spent a full verse in the same place, instead dancing her way back and forth across the width of the stage, engaging with – and feeding off – the joyous crowd every step of the way.
Not to be outdone, guitarist Kevin Bivona and his bass-playing younger brother Justin frequently danced their respective ways back and forth across the stage and spent as much time airborne as they did with their feet planted to the ground. Jesse Bivona is about as rock-steady a drummer as you’ll find in the scene, serving as the band’s gas pedal and providing harmonies-on-harmonies-on-haronies with his brothers. Touring “fifth Interrupter” and pride of Dover, NH, Billy Kottage amps up the band’s live presence and coolness factor on keys and trumpet.
Spreading the love for the band’s four studio releases pretty evenly throughout their sixteen-song set, there’s the sense that the band could have easily played twice as long and still kept the audience in the palms of their collective hands. In spite of the high-energy nature of the band’s set, a particularly high note was their performance of “Alien,” from last year’s In The Wild album. The down-tempo song is a bit of a sonic outlier, and is also probably the most personal song on an immensely personal album, and so there are those among us who wondered aloud if it would make it into the band’s set. Yet Aimee’s voice not only never faltered but soared to new heights by the time the song reached its sonic crescendo.
And then it was time for the evening’s closing act, the inimitable Frank Turner and the Sleeping Souls. Obviously Boston is not a hometown show for the Wessex boy himself, but at the very least Boston has become a home-away-from-home over the course of the last decade-plus, as many a US tour have started or ended – or both – in the city proper or in other nearby New England cities. Wielding a Gibson SG as his main axe on this run, Turner and crew (longtime sidemen Tarrant Anderson on bass, Matt Nasir on keys and Ben Lloyd on guitar now joined by Callum Green on drums) immediately ripped into “Punches” from last year’s FTHC album, a clear sign that this was very much going to be a high octane rock-and-roll set.
Turner and crew have played their fair share of epic long shows or, on numerous occasions played two-a-days like a high school football team in the dog days of summer, so being able to play a 75-minute, 17-song headlining set allows them to condense all of that energy into a solid, blistering set. As a result of the countless miles together, the band has long been one of the most locked-in groups around, and that was on full display at MGM. It is probably tempting for some bands to play “just the hits” in such a situation, but The Sleeping Souls did a pretty solid job of featuring the more punk-rock-tinged FTHC (including a scorching rendition of “Non Serviam”) amidst a setlist that featured tracks from eight of his nine studio albums spanning back to 2007’s Sleep Is For The Week. Sorry No Man’s Land…maybe next time.
Check out more photo galleries from the three killer performances below!
We’ve made it to the end of 2022, comrades! In some ways, it feels like it was long year. It was certainly a year that was chock-full of great releases, almost overwhelmingly so. In part, that’s because we’ve started to hear the fruits of the labors that songwriters and bands and artists cooked up while […]
We’ve made it to the end of 2022, comrades! In some ways, it feels like it was long year. It was certainly a year that was chock-full of great releases, almost overwhelmingly so. In part, that’s because we’ve started to hear the fruits of the labors that songwriters and bands and artists cooked up while they were in Covid-related lockdown. A lot of really talented people had a lot of time on their collective hands and had to get creative about how they wrote and recorded and released their material, and it was to all of our benefit.
And so here we go. The top 25 of 2022. You know the drill (at least you know MY drill): studio full-lengths only; no EPs or singles or live albums. All “punk rock,” although the older I get, the more I identify with the concept of punk rock being less about three chords and Les Pauls and Marshall stacks and more about and more about people making music that’s true and authentic and that doesn’t care about fitting into sonic boxes but does care about speaking truth to power and holding mirrors up to society. If you want a broader listen to the full scope of stuff I dug this year, that playlist is here. Without any further ado…
I don’t remember when Thick first came on my radar, but I’m glad they did. The Brooklyn-based trio followed up their dynamite 2020 album Five Years Behind with the even more dynamite Happy Now. It’s smart and it’s fun and it kicks you right in the teeth and it’s exactly the kind of record that I’m glad Epitaph got back to putting out.
If you haven’t put Bay Area art-punks Rip Room on your radar yet…what the heck are you waiting for?! Alight and Resound is their debut full-length and it’s killer. It’s got a real heavy 90s post-punk sort of vibe; think Fugazi meets Sleater-Kinney.
Michael Kane and The Morning Afters have been a staple in the Boston-area scene for a decade or so at this point. The lineup has solidified itself and the result of years of gigging and writing coalesced into Kane’s finest and most focused work to date. There are whispers of Petty and the Replacements and some old Boston street punk snarl.
I think No Trigger‘s last album, Tycoon, came out when I had only been with Dying Scene for like a year or so, and I think it was on like half the staff’s year-end best-of lists, and so I thought this would become a perennial thing. An effing decade later, the Worcester natives are back…and dare we say better than ever? Or at least weirder and more frantic and more diverse than ever, and that’s like the same thing. No wonder they’ve found a new home on Red Scare. This album takes a few listens to fully appreciate because there’s so much going on in it.
Bartees Strange first popped up on my radar when he appeared on Dave Hause’s Patty Smith covers EP, Patty, a couple years back. Strange’s sophomore full-length, Farm To Table, was released on 4AD this year and it’s as fun to listen to as it is hard to nail down genre-wise. It’s emo but it’s hip-hop but it’s R&B but it’s rock and roll, and it’s personal and it’s powerful and it feels important.
#20 Sarah Shook & The Disarmers – Nightroamer
Sarah Shook and the Disarmers went into the studio to record a brand new album and then, as it turns out, the world closed down for a while. That, coupled with the demise of their former label home, meant that this album took a little longer than many of us had hoped for to finally make its way to our ears. The wait was well worth it. This is a grown-up record: focused and fun and personal and experimental. They might have cut their respective teeth in whiskey-and-beer-soaked barrooms but the future is much wider for Shook and company. Here’s our interview with Shook about the album!
The Venomous Pinks formed in 2012 and finally put out their debut full-length album in 2022 and holy smokes does it rip. It’s loud and fast and aggressive and cathartic and it finds the crew full of fire and brimstone. Let’s just hope they don’t wait another decade until their second album! Here’s our (*both laugh*) episode that featured all three of the Pinks!
There are a few things in life that we can be certain about: death, taxes, and Tim Barry putting out a killer album of high-quality, working-class anthems every couple of years. There are gut-punches and tear-jerkers and anthemic singalongs, and Barry appearing as comfortable in his skin as he ever has.
#17 The Vandoliers – The Vandoliers
The Vandoliers put it all together on their self-titled record, so perhaps it’s perfect that it’s a self-titled record. They’ve been called “country punk” for years, and they are at the core, but they’ve really morphed into their very own thing: a marauding batch of shirtless, whiskey-infused bandits singing songs of love and heartache and, occasionally, good times!
#16 Mightmare – Cruel Liars
Realistically, this should be a top-ten album for sure, but that just speaks to the strength of the music that was released this year. In case you missed it, Mightmare is the side project of Sarah Shook and the Disarmers centerpiece River Shook. It’s a project that was birthed out of quarantine isolation and it takes some of the stylistic differences they’d been hinting at on Nightroamer to new and different heights. Dark pop and fiercely independent. Here’s our recent chat about the album!
I’ve been doing year-end best-of lists for Dying Scene since like 2011, so I’ve got a couple of hundred albums that have been present and accounted for, and yet I’m about 99.9% sure this is the first album to hail from the great State of New Hampshire, where I was born and raised and first introduced to this thing we call punk rock. Donaher play a super catchy, super fun, wicked joyful brand of power-pop that sounds like the Smoking Popes if they hailed from the Chicken Tender Capital of the World!
Okay so holy shit this record is great. This record is great enough that it came out this month, after I’d already completed my year-end list, and forced me to completely reevaluate it. I can think of very few things as punk rock as growing up outwardly non-binary and pansexual in a Christian household in the working-class South. Adeem is unafraid to call out hatred and bigotry and at the same time to embrace love and compassion and has crafted a wonderful record that’s equal parts Against Me! and Homeless Gospel Choir but with, like, Will Hoge or American Aquarium’s pop-infused country melodies. If we re-rank this list a year from now, White Trash Revelry might end up quite a bit higher.
#13 American Aquarium – Chicamacomico
I remember first hearing American Aquarium a number of years ago and thinking “hey that’s kinda good but I think it’s a little too country for me.” The lineup has changed a few times and frontman BJ Barham has gotten sober and has himself a family and, with it, I think a newfound focus, and he’s become one of my favorite songwriters – and figures, really – in the scene. There’s a recurring theme here about people growing up in the South and yet not standing for the sort of traditional negative Southern stereotypes and railing against some of the bigotry and backwardness and I’m here for it. Also, the title track is one of my most-listened-to songs of the year.
#12 Frank Turner – FTHC
Hey, remember when Frank Turner put out the most “punk rock” record of his career and it also happened to be his first #1 album in his native UK, and then we spoke to him the morning after receiving that award for our quarantine-inspired podcast and coincidentally, the day before he announced his “50 States In 50 Days” tour which he told us about off the record after we stopped recording, so we knew about it first? That was just this year! (Also, yes, FTHC has the most nods to his hardcore past as any record in the Turner oeuvre, but his somber ode to the life of Frightened Rabbit’s Scott Hutchison is among the album’s standouts.)
Okay so I get a lot of press emails. Like…A LOT of them, spread out through the various different Dying Scene email accounts. I have to say that I don’t always read beyond the headlines or the opening paragraphs, but this one caught my eye. I don’t know why I’d never heard New Junk City before, but I chalk it up to my history of not reading all the way through emails…but I’m glad I got this one. Anytime a band is referred to as “Tom Petty as played by Green Day,” I’m going to stop and honestly probably roll my eyes because really…but then I’ll also listen because what if it’s actually as good as that portends to be. And I’ll tell you what…New Junk City is exactly as good as that portends to be. It’s like the best parts of 90s alternative and early 00s emo but with a classic Americana rock filter.
It’s a pretty remarkable thing when a person who has been in the game for as long as Lenny Lashley has continues to raise the bar for themselves musically and professionally, but that’s what we’ve got on Five Great Egrets. There’s nobody quite like Lenny, who can write a gut-wrenching song about relationship troubles and then a ballad dedicated to Boston-based 1930s comic Eddie “Parkyakarkus” Cantore, and have them both come across as genuine and sincere.
We’re starting to get into the territory where o the right day and in the right light, any of these albums could realistically be #1 on the list. Will Hoge might be alt-country or just Americana or Southern rock-and-roll or he might be all of those things together. What he definitely is is a guy who can write a down-and-dirty concise rock song and he can also write a lengthy narrative that’s both smart and thoughtful and razor-tongued and that will make you appreciate it more the more times you listen to it. Plus, the very first line on the album is “Meatloaf and mashed potatoes/Jesus Christ ain’t gonna save us” and that’s about the most John Prine intro to a song that wasn’t written by John Prine.
Holy shit this album melted my brain. Here’s the intro I wrote to (*both laugh*) Episode 56, which featured the three-headed monster that is Proper. –
Every now and then you come across an album that becomes a benchmark moment for you; like, life existed before that album and then the world shifted and things weren’t the same after that. My own personal list includes the likes of: Vs.Recipe For Hate. Question The Answers. Badmotorfinger. The ’59 Sound. The Low End Theory. Stay Positive. 36 Chambers. Caution. 1372 Overton Park. And now, realistically, The Great American Novel.
Leave it to the greater Philadelphia area to come out with another one of those “where have you been all my life” bands. Where The Heart Is came out in May and I was maybe a little slow on the uptake at first but I’ve since made up for lost time. This band rules. This album rules. It’s poppy (in a good way, not a cheesy overproduced way) but it’s also super intense melodic hardcore and it fills a lot of gaps in my catalog that I didn’t know existed.
Whether through The Scandals or his solo career or now Mercy Union, we’ve been big fans of Jared Hart’s musical output since the earliest days of Dying Scene. White Tiger raises the bar on that previous output in every possible way (in no small part due to the noted presence of fellow scene vets Rocky Catanese and Nick Jorgensen and, in his last appearance on a Mercy Union record, Benny Horowitz). Much like the Sweet Pill record above, it fills a gap in the record catalog that you didn’t necessarily know existed, blending a sort of Americana rock with hook-infused late-90s alternative rock. A wonderful amalgam of styles and big swirling guitars and vocal harmonies for days.
Okay so I know that the idea of scene vets putting out their best work this deep into their respective careers is a bit of a recurring theme twenty albums deep into this list, but this might be the best example of that yet. You’d think that writing and recording the album from the comforts of your own garage/practice space/studio might make you develop lazy habits, but on In The Wild, The Interrupters managed to pull off an album that remains true to the band’s stylistic roots but does everything better. It doesn’t hurt that Aimee wrote her most personal – and powerful – songs to date.
Yet another dynamite album that found a group of veterans having to switch up their normal processes during quarantine and having the results bear serious fruit. Hot Water Music reconnected with producer Brian McTernan (whose own band, Be Well, put out my favorite EP of the year, Hello Sun) for their first full-length since Chris Cresswell joined the ranks and turned the forever four-piece into a five-piece. Hot Water Music have expanded their sound in myriad ways over the years, and on Feel The Void, it sounds like they’re still having fun doing so.
If I weren’t using the base ten number system, this album might actually be #1a or 1b. If you’ve been a fan of the punk and punk-adjacent scenes at any point over the last, say, decade, you know doubt know Kayleigh Goldsworthy from her Revival Tour spots or for filling out the sound in Dave Hause and the Mermaid for a while or for Frank Iero and the Future Violents or with Bayside or with Kevin Devine, and she’s a wonderfully talented addition to each and every project she joins. But all of that glosses over the fact that she’s also been a powerhouse songwriter in her own right for a long time, and that shines as bright and as focused as ever on Learning To Be Happy. It’s honest and it’s melancholy but it doesn’t wallow in the dark parts, but it instead cherishes the bright parts and life’s harmonies. Opening track “Losing My Mind” is probably my favorite song of the year, and “Little Ghost” and “You’re Good” aren’t far behind. Probably should have actually reviewed this album when it came out so I didn’t have to spend 500 words extolling its virtues at the end of the year.
It’s been just about 20 years since Lucero’s “Tears Don’t Matter Much” was released; in it, Ben Nichols states emphatically that “Cory Branan‘s got an evil streak / and a way with words that’ll bring you to your knees.” I’m not sure that’s ever been more true than it is on When I Go I Ghost. The haunting parts are more haunting; the evil parts are more sinister (see “The Pocket Of God,”) and the rare occasions where he’s writing about his on life (see “That Look I Lost”) are gut-punches, albeit with Memphis horns to lighten up the mood. Read our recent interview with Cory here.
Okay, so we’ve reached the pinnacle. Numero uno. The Album Of The Year (AOTY if you’re nasty). It of course belongs to none other than The Flatliners. The Flats’ career arc has been really impressive to behold. From starting out as upstroke-infused punk rock whippersnappers to signing to Fat Wreck and sharpening their teeth in the process for a series of increasingly caustic, anthem-driven albums, to the stylistic left-hand turn that was Inviting Light to the absolute kick-in-the-teeth that is New Ruin right from the time you drop the needle on track one. More than two decades into their career, Canada’s finest are as sharp and focused and targeted as ever, and have another benchmark album to show for it.
Greetings, fellow degenerates! Welcome to the latest installment of the Dying Scene Record Radar. If it’s your first time here, thank you for joining us! This is a weekly column where we cover all things punk rock vinyl; new releases, reissues… you name it, we got it. So kick off your shoes, pull up a […]
Greetings, fellow degenerates! Welcome to the latest installment of the Dying Scene Record Radar. If it’s your first time here, thank you for joining us! This is a weekly column where we cover all things punk rock vinyl; new releases, reissues… you name it, we got it. So kick off your shoes, pull up a chair, crack open a cold one, and break out those wallets, because it’s go time. Let’s get into it!
Let’s start this week of with a banger ? Propagandhi‘s Supporting Caste is being reissued on pink colored vinyl thanks to an extremely successful crowdfunding campaign. Back in print for the first time in seven years! Head over to their Bandcamp page to get in on the action.
Another huge drop we let you know about earlier this week is Fat Wreck reissuing four 2000’s era Strung Out records on colored vinyl. The Element of Sonic Defiance, An American Paradox, and Exile in Oblivion are back in print for the first time in a long time. Blackhawks Over Los Angeles finds itself on wax for the first time ever. These are very limited, and most of the colored LPs have already sold out. Head over to the label’s webstore for the leftover scraps and black vinyl.
Those who read last week’s Record Radar know that NOFX has finally launched colored vinyl pre-orders for their upcoming LP Double Album. Well, much to the dismay of you collector nerds, a new “golden green” variant (it just looks green to me ?) has popped up on some European retailers’ sites. This is the EU indie exclusive color variant – here is one of the many places you can get it.
Newbury Comics has some new exclusive color variants of the self-titled debut albums from both The Interrupters and PUP (coincidence? most likely, yes). Each of these pressings are limited to 500 copies. Visit their store to get your hands on them.
Florida pop-punk veterans New Found Glory have a new acoustic record on the way. The 14-track LP titled Make the Most of It features seven new songs, and stripped-down versions of seven NFG classics. Check out the first single “Dream Born Again” below and get the wax here (green vinyl) or here (yellow vinyl). Or get both! I don’t give a shit, to be perfectly honest with you.
Bad Brains live album The Youth Are Getting Restless is back in print for the first time since its original release in 1990. This LP was recorded in the Netherlands in ’87. Zia Records and Brooklyn Vegan each have their own exclusive variant of this one. If you get it from Brooklyn Vegan, don’t forget to use their 10% off code – don’t be a sucker who pays 30 fuckin’ dollars for a record.
The Flatliners‘ latest album New Ruin makes its third(?) Record Radar appearance! The band has announced test pressings of the LP (limited to 15 copies! and it has some cool alternate cover art) will be on sale at Dine Alone Records‘ storefront in Toronto on Record Store Day Black Friday. More info here on how you can acquire one of these in exchange for Canadian dollars.
Speaking of Record Store Day Black Friday… have you heard Red Scare is reissuing Masked Intruder‘s debut album? Well, they are! And the only place you (maybe) can get a copy is your local record store on Black Friday (November 25th). The label usually throws a handful of copies of their RSD releases up on their webstore, too, but you didn’t hear that from me ?
As I’m writing this, the Old Wives just announced a new record! Mega Low Maniac, the Edmonton punk band’s first album in five years, is due out in early December on Rad Girlfriend Records. Check out the first single “Me & Jack” below and go here to grab the LP.
Bringing up the rear on this week’s Record Radar is Neck Deep, with a reissue of 2014’s Wishful Thinking. Brooklyn Vegan, Newbury Comics, and Zia Records all have their own exclusive color variants of this one and they’re all ultra-limited and pretty and yada yada yada blah blah blah.
RECORD OF THE WEEK!
We here at Dying Scene are all about trying new things, so this week I’m challenging you, loyal reader, to listen to something new! This week’s Record of the Week comes from our friends at Punk Rock Radar (no affiliation with the Record Radar ?) and Cat’s Claw Records. It’s a fucking awesome Split LP from Lookit, Martians! and The Cheap Pops. If you enjoy 90’s pop-punk even half as much as I do, this shit’s right up your alley. Check it out below, and pre-order the LP here (US) or here (EU).
And that’s all, folks! Another Record Radar in the books. As always, thank you for tuning in. If there’s anything we missed (highly likely), or if you want to let everyone know about a new/upcoming vinyl release you’re excited about, send us a message on Facebook or Instagram, and we’ll look into it. Enjoy your weekend, and don’t blow too much money on spinny discs. See ya next week!
*Wanna catch up on all of our Record Radar posts? Type “Record Radar” in the search bar at the top of the page!
Hello, and welcome to the latest installment of the Dying Scene Record Radar! If it’s your first time joining us, thank you! This is a weekly column where we cover all things punk rock vinyl. So kick off your shoes, pull up a chair, grab a few beers, and break out those wallets, because it’s […]
Hello, and welcome to the latest installment of the Dying Scene Record Radar! If it’s your first time joining us, thank you! This is a weekly column where we cover all things punk rock vinyl. So kick off your shoes, pull up a chair, grab a few beers, and break out those wallets, because it’s time to run through this week’s new releases and reissues. Let’s get into it!
Pulley‘s 1999 self-titled record got reissued a few years ago by Spanish indie label La Agonía de Vivir. It was limited to 500 copies, and it sold out pretty fuckin’ quick. Good news! If you missed out on the first run, they’ve repressed the record once again, with 200 copies on grey colored vinyl, and 300 on black vinyl. Go here to grab it, or don’t and regret it forever (or until they repress it again).
Up next is yet another classic skate punk reissue from La Agonía de Vivir: Adhesive‘s 1996 ripper Sideburner. Like the Pulley record, this is the second run of these, and it’s also on 500 copies (200 “milky clear”, and 300 on black vinyl). Get your copy here.
The Clash‘s iconic self-titled debut album is getting repressed on some purdy hot pink wax in honor of “National Album Day”. This is the first time I’ve been alerted to this holiday’s existence, I guess it’s some Bri’ish thing, innit? Amazon seems to be the cheapest place to get this one, and even then it’ll cost you 40 god damn freedom dollars!
Sorry if I sound like a broken record complaining about prices, but holy fuck! The thousand dollar tickets to Blink-182‘s upcoming “reunion tour” aren’t the only thing that’s pricey. Their new record – their first with Tom DeLonge since 2011’s Neighborhoods – is $37 fucking dollars!!! Holy Christ my brothers. Check out the first single below (it blows ass in my humble opinion, but you’re free to form your own opinion), and buy the record here if you want.
In case you didn’t know, Green Day‘s Nimrod is another record that turns 25 years old this year! They’re going all out for the album’s birthday, with a 5xLP box set featuring previously unreleased demos (check one out below!) and a live album recorded on their 1997 tour in support of Nimrod (there’s a poster and some other shit, too). Save some money by grabbing this one from our friends at 1-2-3-4 Go! Records – they have free shipping on orders over $75 and this box set clears that hurdle by a fair margin. Get it here.
Masked Intruder‘s sophomore album M.I. is back in print on colored vinyl thanks to the good people at Fat Wreck Chords. What color? I have no clue! The people at Fat are a secretive bunch. But hey, if you want this, or your a collector nerd and want the new variant regardless, you can acquire it here.
Also from Fat: Cobra Skulls‘ last 7″ Eagle Eyes is 10 years old, and the band is kinda back in action, so they reissued it as a 12″ EP with some bonus tracks. They did reveal the color for this one, and boy is it a sight for sore eyes. Buy it here (US), here (EU), or here (Down Under).
Lavasocks Records is releasing Canadian party punk folk heroes The Smugglers‘ 1993 album In the Hall of Fame on vinyl for the very first time! Grab your copy of the 2xLP on gold colored vinyl here.
Millencolin‘s Life on a Plate is back in print for the first time in a few years, with two brand new colors of wax. Newbury Comics has a cool “orange and cloudy clear” variant that you can get here, while Brooklyn Vegan has it on red vinyl which you can buy here.
While you’re visiting Newbury Comics to grab that Millencolin record, perhaps you’d like to get this new pressing of Bad Religion‘s latest record? This exclusive blue variant of Age of Unreason is available here. It’s limited to 500 copies.
Speaking of retailer exclusive variants (who came up with that idea anyway?), my fellow Central Floridians at Smartpunk have some super exclusive, limited pressings of two Interrupters records: Say it Out Loud and Fight the Good Fight. Very nice! You can get these here.
Here’s an upcoming release I’m personally very excited about. It’s an LP from Wrong Life featuring their first two EPs and some new bonus tracks. If you’re unfamiliar, this is former Murderburgers frontman Fraser’s current project (they were included in our Ten Underrated Bands feature a few months ago!). I highly recommend giving this a listen below, and grabbing the LP here (US), or here (EU).
Remember last week when we brought you the breaking news(!!!) that NOFX‘s So Long and Thanks for All the Shoes had a 25th Anniversary reissue on the way? Of course you do! Anyway, Epitaphstill hasn’t officially announced this thing, but it seems a few retailers have jumped the gun and launched their pre-orders early. Loud Pizza Records has the US indie exclusive “Neapolitan Striped” variant listed on their webstore, and Danish retailer imusic.co has a brown color variant on their online store. Stay tuned for more!
RECORD OF THE WEEK!
We here at Dying Scene are all about trying new things, so this week I’m challenging you, loyal reader, to listen to something new! Or, in this case, something kinda old that is likely new to you! This week’s Record of the Week comes from my favorite hometown ska band Victims of Circumstance. These guys have released many albums – five to be exact – but 2011’s Acupunkture is the only one to receive a vinyl release. Coincidentally, this is also one of my all-time favorite ska-punk albums (it’s right up there with Less Than Jake‘s Losing Streak), and for the asking price of just $12 it’s a fucking steal. Buy this record!!!
And that’s all, folks! Another Record Radar in the books. As always, thank you for tuning in. If there’s anything we missed (highly likely), or if you want to let everyone know about a new/upcoming vinyl release you’re excited about, send us a message on Facebook or Instagram, and we’ll look into it. Enjoy your weekend, and don’t blow too much money on spinny discs. See ya next week!
Wanna catch up on all of our Record Radar posts? Type “Record Radar” in the search bar at the top of the page!
The fourth album can be a bit of a curious point on a band’s timeline. The dreaded “sophomore slump” has long been in the rearview, and generally by the time the fourth album roles around, a band is at or around the decade mark in their career. It can be a time of transition; a […]
The fourth album can be a bit of a curious point on a band’s timeline. The dreaded “sophomore slump” has long been in the rearview, and generally by the time the fourth album roles around, a band is at or around the decade mark in their career. It can be a time of transition; a time to build off some old influences and also to incorporate new feelings and directions out of a desire to keep from getting stale or repetitive. Sometimes, the results can be ground-breaking, at least sonically if not always commercially or critically. Ignorance Is Bliss by Face To Face, for example. Darkness On The Edge Of Town. No Code. Sandinista!. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Life Won’t Wait. Question The Answers. ZOSO, or however that translate without the ability to add runes to the text here. So on and so forth.
And so here we find The Interrupters. The widely beloved LA-based ska punk band are back with In The Wild, due out August 5th on Hellcat Records. Recorded during the forced doldrums that were the shutdown of the last couple of years, the album finds the band (which surpassed the decade mark during said shutdown) building on the high-energy, rock-steady core that they’ve built over the course of three records and hundreds of shows, revealing a work that is their most varied, most introspective, and, subsequently, their best effort to date.
We caught up with the band’s air-tight rhythm section, sensational twin brothers Jesse (drums) and Justin (bass) Bivona to talk about the album’s recording and its personal nature. While much of the process for In The Wild was similar to the band’s previous output, there were a few marked differences that shaped the direction of what was to come. As Jesse explains the fourth album cycle, “one of our little press points about this record and relating it to the previous records is that the first album is kind of like a first date, where you just talk about surface-level things, nothing too crazy. Second album, you start to let them know a little more about you. Third album, you’re kinda getting into the nitty-gritty. Fourth album, all the baggage is out, the drama is revealed, all the secrets are out.”
The secrets are indeed out in more ways than one on In The Wild. It is by far the band’s most personal album to date, and it’s their most sonically diverse album to date, and both of those things are by design. Thinking back to the early days of the band, specifically around the recording of the band’s self-titled 2014 debut record, Jesse describes that the band was “just trying to keep it simple. We weren’t trying to reinvent anything, we were just trying to be a straight-ahead ska-punk band.” The more cohesive the band god, the more layered and textured the sound became, and the more outside influences began to creep in. While still very much an Interrupters record, In The Wild showcases sounds that include traditional reggae and rock steady and 2-tone and 80s punk rock and ‘50s doo-wop. The album closes with “Alien,” which centers around Aimee’s soaring, heartfelt vocals and is, as Jesse points out, “the first Interrupters song with no guitar on it!”
The seeds of In The Wild were initially sown in the early days of the pandemic shut down two years ago. The very early days. In fact, quite literally, the first day. The band had taken a few weeks off after wrapping a lengthy touring cycle for their 2017 album Fight The Good Fight – an album that continued the band’s launch into a higher stratosphere based in part on the crossover success of the single “She’s Kerosene” – in February, and was planning to return to Tim Armstrong’s studio in early March to begin work on album four. That plan was foiled just as it was beginning. “Day one of us going into the studio,” explains bass player Justin Bivona, “was that day where the NBA was canceling, and Tom Hanks had Covid…” After a few ‘wait and see’ days, recording plans – and, frankly, most of real life – got put on pause indefinitely, and the band retreated to what they affectionately refer to as The Compound; Justin and Jesse live in one house while the twins’ bandmates and, more importantly, older brother and sister-in-law Kevin and Aimee, live in the house next door. The two houses share a driveway and, more importantly, a garage, the latter of which would come in handy in a pandemic shutdown.
After some time spent doing what the rest of us did – binge-watching TV shows and movies, going for walks, and reflecting on their lives-to-date. As Justin tells it, that process “Aimee got to do a lot of looking back on her past and realized there was a lot of stuff she hadn’t written songs about.” And so even though the band had plenty of material they were going to work on in the studio at the beginning of 2020, writing eventually continued.
So, too, did recording, though the band didn’t have to go far. “At some point during (quarantine),” explains Justin, “Kevin was like “we need to do this record at our house, in our garage.” It’s a tiny 10×20 room that we would practice in, but it wasn’t treated, there wasn’t any studio equipment. So we spent maybe a month building things. Me and Jesse with power tools building racks to put gear in and tabletops and stuff. Pretty much “tiny housing” the studio to make every part of it work.”
This created the freedom to work together at their own pace. There’s no need to reserve studio time or book an engineer when you can do it all, effectively, in your collective backyard. That moved Kevin, the elder statesman of the Bivona brothers, officially into the producer’s seat. Tim Armstrong, who both oversees Hellcat Records and executive produced the first three Interrupters records, “told (Kevin) to just grab the reins and take off” says Justin, with Jesse quick to point out that their big brother has “always kinda been the shadow producer of everything in a sense.”
And while it may seem daunting to have your bandmate – and older brother, steering the ship, the timeline and the setting and their relationship made for a smooth, collaborative effort. “If we’re working on something and it’s not working,” explains Jesse, “all four of us can be like ‘well, what if we try this, or what if we try this,’…there are no bad ideas until you try (something and realize it’s bad.” “It was just us as a cohesive band, the four of us, working out songs and writing songs, and it really informed the process,” adds Justin. “It was the best thing we’ve ever done.”
The more that writing and recording continued, the more that the direction of the album revealed itself. “Aimee realized that the record was pretty much her life story,” says Jesse, adding “so the songs that didn’t fit with that theme we pushed aside and focused on the ones that told her story the way she wanted to tell it.” Because the lyrics bare so much of Aimee’s past, the task of recording vocals involved being in the right headspace to tackle some of the memories that were evoked. “Doing on the property,” reveals Justin, “it allowed Aimee the freedom to record vocals whenever she felt emotionally connected enough to a song” to power through it, a freedom that proved vital as it is apparent on first listen that Aimee dug deep lyrically, reflecting on some of the messier parts other upbringing and past relationships and grief and loss and trauma and mental health struggles that she has worked on over the years.
The added time and convenience of the recording process allowed the band to work through multiple versions of songs, in order to make sure that the emotion of the music matched the emotion of the lyrics. “There are a couple songs on this record where they were recorded one way and pretty much done,” explains Justin, “but then it wasn’t just fitting in with the rest of it when we would get back there. I think specifically “Love Never Dies” had a totally different feel, it was more of a rock/reggae Clash-y song. And it was dope, but it wasn’t fitting in with everything.” Jesse elaborates: “(Kevin) said “Jesse, play a one drop” so I played this one drop, and then he said “Justin, play this bass line” (*mimics bassline*). And then he said “okay, watch” and he just started skanking, and then he started singing this melody the way that it is now, and we played that for like four bars and just stopped. We were like “yeah, that’s it! Now we’re on to something!”
The result is one of the more straight-forward reggae songs in the Interrupters’ catalog to date. It also features a guest appearance from The Skints, the UK reggae punk band who recently wrapped a successful run opening a bunch of US shows for The Interrupters and Flogging Molly. The Skints are just one of an impressive handful of guest starts that found their collective way onto In The Wild; Tim Armstrong lends his vocal talents to a track, as per usual, but so too do Rhoda from The Bodysnatchers and Alex and Greg from third-wave ska legends Hepcat. The latter recording session occurred at Armstrong’s studio once the initial Covid waves had subsided and society started to open up again. As Jesse tells it, “it was a magical session to be a part of.” Justin explains “Greg and Alex came in and…we wanted them on the song (“Burdens”), but we didn’t really have the part. We went in with them and showed them the song and within a minute the two of them are sitting there writing the parts and figuring it out together. It was so cool to see because they’re literally our favorite ska band.”
It was yet another moment in a decade-long journey that has found the foursome feeling eternally grateful for the opportunities they’ve been presented; playing with longtime idols like Rancid and the Mighty Mighty Bosstones and Joan Jett and Green Day, playing legendary venues, getting introduced by RuPaul on the Jimmy Kimmel show (as was the case the night before we spoke). Case-in-point: the three Bivona brothers served as the backing band for The Specials during a fundraiser event in Los Angeles back in February, a mind-blowing moment that got overshadowed by the fact that a mini Operation Ivy reunion brokeout pre-set as Jesse Michaels and Tim Armstrong joined for a cover of the Op Ivy classic “Sound System,” an event that damn near broke the punk rock internet. The gravity of those situations is not lost on the band, by any stretch. “The moment that starts getting old is the moment that you’ve gotta start packing it in and figuring out what 9-to-5 (job) you want,” says Jesse.
Keep scrolling to read our full Q&A with the Bivona twins, Jesse and Justin. Pre-orders for In The Wild are still available here. And check out the full list of upcoming Interrupters tour dates, including their European run and leg 2 of the US dates with Flogging Molly, right here.
(*Editor’s note: The text below has been slightly edited and condensed for content and clarity.*)
JS: First and foremost, congratulations on another successful appearance on Kimmel!
Justin: Thank you!
JS: So this is probably then the second coolest thing you’ve done this week…
(*all laugh*)
Justin: For real though, it is good to see your face!
JS: Is that the third time now on Kimmel?
Jesse: Nope, two! Four years ago we did “She’s Kerosene.”
Justin: Almost four years ago to the day. It was like July 26th.
JS: Man, how time has flown. The Kimmel show seems like it’s a cool one to do because the audience is right there, versus some of the other late-night shows where they’re sitting back and you’re kinda playing to the cameras as much as anything. That seems like a cool one.
Jesse: Yeah, they make it seem like it’s an indoor club show,
Justin: Which is really cool.
Jesse: It’s really cool. And the whole staff and crew there is excellent. They’re very nice. We had a GOOD time yesterday.
JS: And you got to hang with RuPaul, that’s pretty cool!
Justin: He’s super nice too!
Jesse: So nice!
Justin: An old punk rocker and a big ska fan too!
JS: I had no idea!
Jesse: Yeah, he played in a punk band in like the early 80s.
Justin: He loved The Selecter and The Specials.
JS: So then he’s totally going to dig your music, especially the new album!
Justin: He gave us the best soundbite! He just said “It’s time for some ska music, bitches!”
(*all laugh*)
Jesse: We were on stage and just looked at each other like “WHOA!” (*all laugh*)
JS: Does that stuff ever get old? And I know I probably know the answer to that question, and actually I think I’ve asked Kevin and Aimee that sort of stuff before, but playing in massive crowds, playing in places like Fenway Park, playing for RuPaul on the Kimmel show…does that stuff ever get old?
Jesse: Never.
Justin: No.
JS: I feel like I knew that was the answer…
Jesse: The moment that starts getting old is the moment that you’ve gotta start packing it in and figuring out what 9-to-5 you want.
JS: When I started doing this Zoom interview thing during the early days of Covid, it was really to sort of check in with people. I was used to doing more phone interviews and then I’d type them up and write a story, but A) the website crashed so there was no publish things anymore for a while, but I liked the idea of actually chatting with people when they were in quarantine and we were in quarantine and you could see each other and stay connected. We’ve been in this weird situation for so long now that music that came out of quarantine is coming out commercially. That’s sort of the long way of getting into In The Wild, which is a really, really, really great album and I know I say that about each one that you guys put out, but the bar just keeps getting raised. So let’s talk about that process. When during lockdown did you realize “well, we’re not going to be out on the road for a while, and we’re not going to be able to go into a studio for a while, so fuck it, let’s do it ourselves”?
Jesse: Well…
Justin: Here’s the thing. We finished the Fight The Good Fight album cycle tour in February of 2020. We ended in the UK with two amazing shows in London. The plan was to finish that and go home. Kev and Aimee were going to start writing for a couple weeks, and then we were going to go into the studio in March. Day, like, one of us going into the studio to record, was that day where like the NBA is canceling and Tom Hanks has Covid.
JS: Right! That’s when we really knew the world was ending!
Justin: Yeah! So we were going to go back in the next day, but everything started getting canceled, so we put the weekend on hold and then the next week on hold, and then the month, and everything just got shelved. So we were sitting at home, and couldn’t really do what our plan was. But it was nice at the same time, because we had just kept rolling for ⅞ years. There was no break. So we finally got to sit back and wait a little bit. We did the live record to give something to the fans during the break, and with that we did the documentary, This Is My Family, and put it all together as like a cohesive concert film. Kinda while we were doing that, we got to reflect on our past and Aimee got to do a lot of looking back on her past and realized there was a lot of stuff she hadn’t written songs about. At some point in the middle of that, Kevin was like “we need to do this record at our house, in our garage.” It’s a tiny 10×20 room that we would practice in, but it wasn’t treated, there wasn’t any studio equipment. So we spent maybe a month building things. Me and Jesse with power tools building racks to put gear in and tabletops and stuff. Pretty much “tiny housing” the studio to make every part of it work. And then they had some songs and we would just get in there the four of us with Kevin producing and work out these songs. It was a fun process because there were no outside distractions, there was no one else we had to worry about, it was just us as a cohesive band, the four of us, working out songs, writing songs, and it kind of really informed the process. It was the best thing we’ve ever done.
JS: So there was stuff written to be recorded back in March of 2020 when you first got off the road?
Jesse: Actually the one day that we did spend at the studio, we were working on the instrumental for “As We Live.” That was the only thing we recorded at Tim’s studio before everything got shut down.
Justin: I think they had “Alien” kind of on the docket, and “The Hard Way” was in there also.
Jesse: Yeah, they had done a few weeks of writing so there was a batch of songs. A lot of those songs got shelved because they didn’t fit the whole record idea. Once Kevin and Aimee started writing a lot, Aimee realized that the record was pretty much her life story. So the songs that didn’t fit with that theme we pushed aside and focused on the ones that told her story the way she wanted to tell it. We’re stoked on how the whole thing came out.
JS: How far into that writing process did the real direction of the album start to take shape, or at least when did she tell you that that was the direction that the album was going to go? And did that involve sit-down conversations…like, I know you’ve been family for a long time but that maybe there’s some shit she was going to sing about that’s a little…
Jesse: No, I think it happened kind of naturally, and it wasn’t until we had like
Both: Eighteen songs
Jesse: …that we were working on that it was like, okay, this batch is all very cohesive. I feel like we’re saying that word a lot? (*all laugh*)
Justin: It was a theme, you know?
Jesse: Yeah, and these other ones, they’re good, but they distract from the message we’re trying to send here and the themes we’re trying to talk about.
Justin: Yeah, once it was like, there’s all these songs (*gestures*) it was easy to look at the board and say, “well, these fourteen (go together).”
Jesse: And there was even a time where we weren’t completely…where we didn’t have like the last three figured out, and we dug up an old one, and once Aimee looked at it, it was like “actually, if I just rewrite these verses, this could fit.” That was “Worst For Me,” which was a sleeper favorite of mine. That song rips.
JS: That song is great, yeah!
Jesse: But it was on the back burner for months! It was just like, we recorded it and then we just forgot about it.
Justin: That was the other great thing about the process. We had so much time just sitting at home that they would finish a song and live with it for six months, then come back to it and say “oh, this song needs a bridge.” Then they would just write a bridge and it would bring the whole thing together. We’ve never really had the opportunity to sit and live with something and then come back to it and fix it. Usually in the studio, it’s like record it, it’s done…
Jesse: Go on tour, it’ll come out when you’re on tour. The most time we’ve ever had off in this band was maybe two months, right before Fight The Good Fight came out. And that wasn’t really time off, that was us preparing for the album cycle and the release and all that. So to be forced to sit on our hands during the pandemic, it helped a lot.
JS: What did you do otherwise to keep creative, musically or otherwise, to keep from getting into those doldrums when it seemed like the world was never going to open up and that sort of thing?
Jesse: You know, that’s a good question. We did what everybody did…binge-watched a lot of TV…
Justin: We did get to a point after the first few months where it was like, “okay, we’ve gotta go outside.”
JS: Touch grass.
Both: Yeah!
Justin: Going to the beach, or going on hikes.
Jesse: Going on bike rides.
Justin: And we had a small quarantine bubble of friends that we trusted to come over, or we’d go over there. But other than that, it was a lot of TV…
Jesse: A lot of movies.
JS: Were you still playing music, even if it wasn’t Interrupters stuff, or did you just like put it away?
Jesse: It was always there. Our back room is always set up so we could always go back there and jam, but there was definitely a time…
Justin: There was definitely a three-month period where I didn’t touch a bass. (*all laugh*)
Jesse: Yeah, I was the same with drums.
JS: Is that the longest you’ve ever gone, since you started playing?
Both: Yeah!
Justin: For sure.
Jesse: Definitely.
JS: Was it interesting working with…I know you’ve worked with Tim (Armstrong) executive producing before but this is the first one where it was listed that Kevin was the producer of (the album). Does that change the dynamic when not only one of the four of you is producing it, but he’s also your brother and your band member? Does that impact the dynamic in the studio or have you been doing it with each other for so long now that you just know how it works?
Justin: Yeah, exactly. We’ve been doing this our whole life. We’ve always looked to Kevin for answers when we have questions about what we’re doing.
Jesse: He’s always kinda been the kind of shadow producer of everything, in a sense.
Justin: Yeah, so Tim gave him full rein…told him to just grab the reins and take off with it.
Jesse: The other thing about the way we work is we try everyone’s ideas, so we could be in the studio and it wouldn’t be like him saying “no, this is how it’s going to be, we have to do it this way.” If we’re working on something and it’s not working, all four of us can be like “well, what if we try this, or what if we try this.” And he’ll say “okay, let’s try it.” There’s no bad ideas until you try it and realize it’s bad, you know? It was very good. And we have such a great relationship and we’re very good at communicating, so there wasn’t any headbutting. It was very fun and very easy.
Justin: And again, doing it on the property, it allowed Aimee the freedom to record vocals whenever she felt emotionally connected enough to a song to sing the vocals.
JS: Especially on an album like this, that’s crucial.
Justin: Yeah! When you have studio time, you know you’ve got to be in there at 5pm and be there til 11pm.
Jesse: We’ve gotta bang out all these songs
Justin: And you’ve got to record these (specific things). That’s almost like a 9 to 5. This way, it was like, if we went back there and she was like “ah I don’t want to sing that right now, let me sing this one.” And also, if she got her second wind at 2am, she could just hop back there and record.
JS: Do you guys live close enough where it’s like “hey, it’s 2am but we’ve got an idea…”
Both: Yeah!
Justin: We call it The Compound. In California technical terms, it’s a multi-family housing property, there’s one driveway, there’s two houses and a garage that we share, and a backyard. They live in the front house and we live here, so we’re right next to each other.
JS: It’s like being on tour while you’re at home!
Justin: I know, but with that being said, when we come home from tour sometimes, we don’t see each other for a whole week. (*all laugh*)
JS: Obviously it’s still early because this album’s not even out yet, but does that inspire you to kinda work that way going forward, now that you know that you can make an album like that in your little garage studio?
Jesse: Yeah I think so.
Justin: I think so, I mean…
Jesse: We haven’t really started thinking about the next one yet, but it is easy to just naturally fall into that. If we have to do a song for something, we can just hop back there and do it. So when we have something (to work on), it’s like “when do you want to work on that?” “I don’t know, tomorrow?” So we just hop back there and do it.
JS: How did the writing process work? Were there times when all four of you were writing together, or do Kevin and Aimee come up with the stem of the song and then you guys work on your rhythm parts? And does that ever change the direction of a song? Like if they start writing and a song has a certain feel, do they give you the freedom to say “hey, we think there’s a different feel that might go better with this song?” Because there are a lot of different feels on this album, and we’ll talk about that in a few minutes, but…
Justin: They would definitely have…it could be anything from the core idea of the song to an entirely fledged out song already, knowing how it should feel and what it should sound like. But, there are a couple songs on this record where they were recorded one way and pretty much done, but then it wasn’t just fitting in with the rest of it when we would get back there. I think specifically “Love Never Dies” had a totally different feel, it was more of a rock/reggae Clash-y song. And it was dope, but it wasn’t fitting in with everything.
Jesse: It didn’t age well.
Justin: It didn’t age well. So when we got back there with the four of us, we said “What do we do with this?” And Kevin said “what if did it more like a roots thing?”
Jesse: Yeah, he said “Jesse, play a one drop” so I played this one drop, and then he said “Justin, play this bass line” (*mimics bassline*). And then he said “okay, watch” and he just started skanking, and then he started singing this melody the way that it is now, and we played that for like four bars and just stopped. We were like “yeah, that’s it! Now we’re on to something!”
Justin: And then we finished it and we were like “dude, we gotta get The Skints on this one.”
Jesse: We built up this track, sent it to The Skints, and they sent us back a whole bunch of stuff that we kept. They’re fantastic.
JS: I was going to ask if all the guests got recorded in studio with you too. Obviously they didn’t if The Skints recorded their own stuff. People haven’t heard the album yet but obviously, Tim’s on a song because Tim’s gonna be on a song. Rhoda from Bodysnatchers, Alex and Greg from Hepcat, obviously Billy Kottage, the fifth Interrupter. Shoutout to Billy Kottage, the pride of Dover, New Hampshire.
(*Justin adjusts camera, revealing Billy Kottage sitting on the couch in the corner!)
Both: He’s right there!
JS: That’s awesome! I don’t think we’ve ever met in person, but Billy and I are both from the State of New Hampshire, so I always think that’s awesome.
Justin: When he comes out here, he pretty much lives with us.
JS: That’s great. There aren’t many of us in New Hampshire, the scene wasn’t very big, so when someone from the Granite State is cool and does cool things, I love it. So shoutout to Billy Kottage. So yeah, did they all record with you?
Jesse: It was all different. The Skints did it on their own in England, Rhoda recorded her vocals on her own at her place back in England.
Justin: (For) Hepcat, we actually went into Tim’s studio for a day.
Jesse: Which was great!
Justin: Greg and Alex came in and it was just one of the most fun days. That’s the thing, we went in to have them record on the song not knowing…Kevin didn’t really know what to have them do. We wanted them on the song, but he didn’t really have the part or anything. But we went in with them and showed them the song, and within like a minute, the two of them are sitting there going…
Both: “ooooh oooh” (*harmonizing*)
Justin: Like writing the parts, figuring it out together, it was so cool to see because they’re literally our favorite ska band.
Jesse: It was a magical session to be a part of. They were sitting there laughing…
Justin: ..having a good time…
Jesse: …singing all the right notes. It was awesome. We did that at Tim’s studio. Tim also did his vocals at his studio. That was later in the process, where things were a little more comfortable, where we could actually travel to a studio and not worry about everything. And then also, we had a guest vocalist on “Alien.” It’s this guy named Arnold, who is a friend of Tim’s and a friend of Brett Gurewitz’s. When we were working on that song, I think it was Tim’s idea, he was like “Arnold’s voice would sound great on this,” and we were like “let’s give it a shot!” So we had Arnold come in and he sang all those background vocals, and he’s got this emotionally delicate approach to his vocals that just lifted that song to another level.
JS: That song is something else…
Both: Yeah!
Jesse: First Interrupters song with no guitar.
JS: Right! That’s actually a thing I wanted to ask about. There’s so many different directions! Obviously you’ve always played on a lot of different influences, but I feel like with this album, you go deeper into the reggae thing, into the 2-Tone thing, and then “Alien” which is unlike anything else in the Interrupters catalog. What made you take the freedom to just kinda go with that. Is that stuff that’s always kinda been in the arsenal but maybe you didn’t want to go too deep on the first few records, but now that everyone’s along for the ride it’s like, “well, let’s push that.”
Jesse: Maybe a little bit of that, but also, it is more that the songs were telling us how we should play them, so to speak. So the way that that song was written, there was never really another way to approach it. That song went through a lot of different versions – not crazy different versions but it was layered up with heavy guitars at one point…
Justin: It was kind of like The Beatles’ “Oh Darling” at one point, where it was like rocking…
Jesse: There were heavier drums on it at one point. It went through a bunch of stages.
Justin: But the emotion wasn’t there. Aimee fought really hard to bring it back to what it should be.
Jesse: What served the song better.
Justin: And that involved one day just pulling it up and being like “take the guitar off, take that off, take that off”…it got down to literally just the drum beat and the string arrangement.
Jesse: Even cutting a whole outro and just being like “no, the song should end right there.”
Justin: And then also with “My Heart,” which is also kind of a different…
Jesse: That “doo-woppy” 50s feel.
Justin: She had already had the melody and was singing it and I was like “well, it’s gonna be in 3, and it’s gonna have this rock feel.” Even if we tried to make it in 4 as a ska song or a reggae song, it just wasn’t working. So the way those songs were written informed the styles. And at this point, we’ve kind of realized that no matter what style it is, if it’s me and Jesse and Kevin playing and Aimee singing, it’s going to sound like The Interrupters. Us just believing in ourselves and pushing it forward that way really helped the process.
JS: When there’s an album I’m really excited about, I try to ignore a lot of the singles and just listen to the album all the way through because, I don’t know, I’m in my 40s and that’s the way we did it when we were kids, right? So I listened to it all the way through and I took notes and next to “My Heart” I wrote “whoa, an Interrupters doo-wop song.” It’s very much an Interrupters song still, but it’s got that sort of 50s diner, doo-wop vibe to it. Which I think is awesome, and it’s cool to see elements like feature in the mix but still be an Interrupters track.
Justin: Thank you!
Jesse: Yeah, initially that was one where we were like “let’s just play like The Ramones would play in 3.” So it was real heavy, but it didn’t serve the song well.
Justin: So dial back a little bit.
JS: I think people are going to dig that song.
Jesse: I think that’s my favorite song on the album.
Justin: Specifically behind the scenes with that song, Aimee had a service dog named Daisy for 13 years, who passed away in 2018. It was like her little girl, and it was devastating when she passed away. She wrote that song about her, and not even just the first time but the first few times I heard it, I couldn’t keep it together. I’d cry every time.
Jesse: Yeah, because when we worked it out in the studio, we just had the choruses, singing “my heart keeps beating, my heart keeps beating…” so that pretty much informed the drum beat just being a heartbeat. And then a couple weeks later when they updated the Dropbox with the verses and said “listen to this,” me and Justin were both sitting right here in our living room with our earbuds on and we’re both just like crying. Like, oh my god this is so emotional, because we all lived with Daisy, she was fantastic. She was a German shepherd/wolf, and we all still miss her a lot. That was a heavy one.
JS: Have you been able to play a lot of this stuff live yet, or are you waiting until the album is out?
Jesse: On the Flogging Molly tour we just did, we were only doing “Anything Was Better” and “In The Mirror,” and then when we dropped “Jailbird” we started doing that. The plan is to play as much of it as possible.
Justin: We tried a few of them at soundcheck on occasion.
Jesse: Yeah, we’d always screw around at soundcheck and be like “do you guys know ‘Kiss The Ground,’ let’s try that”
Justin: Or “Raised By Wolves”
Jesse: But we’re in rehearsals next week for a few days to work on stuff for the European tour, because that’s when we’ve gotta do longer sets, but the plan is to try to learn the whole record.
JS: I think people are going to dig a lot of it. I was just curious about if you’d throw a curveball song like that at people before they’ve heard the album to see what the response is. Because I feel like “In The Mirror” is one of those songs that the first time you hear it, you go “yup, that one’s a classic. That’s going to get the crowd whipped up.” Do you know when you’re writing a song like that that it’s going to be “the one.” Like “She’s Kerosene” was like that. The very first verse when I first heard it, I remember going “well, that’s gonna be a big hit.”
Jesse: When we’re working on it in the studio, I think we’re so lost in the process that we don’t give songs that sort of focus, like “that’s going to be the single, this is going to be the hit.” But there was a point when we were doing “She’s Kerosene” that we had Mr. Brett come in and he was listening to stuff and he when he heard “Kerosene,” he had his little notepad and he was just like “hit.” And we all just looked at each other like “Whoa! Really?”
Justin: We thought there was so much more work to be done with that song and when he gave it that check of approval, we were like “alright, we don’t have to do much more to it.” That was cool. But then also for this record, when there was like 18 or 20 songs, “In The Mirror” was a standout, at least for me. I was like “I think that one is really good.” Then as it dwindled down, it was like “In The Mirror” and “Raised By Wolves” as the top two. They’re different enough, one’s ska, one’s sort of heavy rock, and you’re just like these two are the shining examples of the record and what we’re trying to sound like.
Jesse: And “In The Mirror,” Kevin and Aimee wrote that song ten years ago. That was one that wasn’t written specifically for this record. But when they were doing the inventory for the record, Aimee was like “we should dig this one up, this is a great one.” I remember when we were trying to work that one out in the room as a four-piece, I feel like it was a more difficult one to get away from the demo version, because I’ve been listening to that song for ten years. There is a demo recording of it – it’s not even a demo, it’s a full fledged-out different version of it. And having that ingrained in your brain and trying to get away from it and being like “alright, how would The Interrupters do this,” that was an interesting process. There was definitely a day where I was like “that song’s not going to make the record, we have so many other songs.” (*all laugh*) Obviously, I was wrong, that song rips.
Justin: But it’s wild too, because they wrote it ten years ago. From that time, that’s when they wrote “Easy On You,” “Gave You Everything,” and then “In The Mirror” was in that batch.
Jesse: “Love Never Dies” was in that batch.
Justin: Yup, “Love Never Dies.” I think now if we’re recording, it’s like “hey what else wasfrom that time period? What else did you write then? Anything else we can dig up?” There was some gold.
JS: It’s interesting to hear that it’s from that time period. As I was driving around this morning for work, I listened to the first album and this one back-to-back, because they come out on the same day; the new one comes out on the 8th anniversary of the first one, so I thought it would be cool to listen to them back-to-back. And, I loved the first album when it came out, but it is startling how far you guys have progressed as a band in eight years.
Both: Yeah!
JS: And so to listen to them back-to-back, obviously you can kinda see how ended up here, but at the same time, you’ve progressed so far. So it’s really interesting that that song, in particular, is from that batch.
Jesse: So, one of our little press points about this record and relating it to the previous records is that the first album is kind of like a first date, where you just talk about surface-level things, nothing too crazy. Second album, you start to let them know a little more about you. Third album, you’re kinda getting into the nitty-gritty. Fourth album, all the baggage is out, the drama is revealed, all the secrets are out. That is kind of where we are with this. And talking about the recording of the first record, we were just trying to keep it simple. We weren’t trying to reinvent anything, we were just trying to be a straight-ahead ska-punk band.
Justin: We did like twenty-four instrumentals in three days. Some of them didn’t have any lyrics or anything, we just got the music done. The ones that didn’t have any lyrics done, they just wrote to the instrumentals. There was no going back to redo parts, it was just like “this is it, we’re done.”
Jesse: And keep it simple. Like, for me on drums, it was like “don’t do any crazy fills, just keep it straight, keep it steady.”
Justin: Which is wild, because some of my basslines, I play so many notes! Why did they let me do that?!? (*all laugh*)
JS: Yeah, but they work, and as somebody who wanted to be a bass player when he grew up, I like that they let you play all the notes! …. Thanks for doing this. This was fun. I talked to Kevin and Aimee for I think the first three records, so it’s nice to talk to you guys. It’s been a while!
Jesse: Yeah we’re being let off the leash a little bit. (*all laugh*)
JS: Well and that’s good, you should be. It’s fun that you guys have your own language with each other, and I know that that’s talked about in other places, like the documentary. So it’s perfect that you guys ended up as a rhythm section, and you end up doing this. Is that why you ended up as a rhythm section?
Jesse: Yeah, kinda. It kinda happened naturally. I don’t remember if we talked about it in the movie, but Kevin started out as a drummer. We had a drum set in the house because our dad was a producer and worked with his friends. So there was a drum set always in the house and Kevin gravitated toward that at an early age. But then, one day our dad came home with a guitar and a bass. So Kevin grabbed the guitar, and I was already dicking around on the drums, so then the only thing left over was the bass. So then naturally it was like “well, this is your instrument, this is your instrument…” And then we would just jam as little kids. There’s some video in that documentary but there’s a LOT more video when we were like 7 years old and Kevin is like 9 of us just trying to play like Green Day songs and Blink 182 songs
Justin: Sublime songs.
Jesse: Yeah, Sublime songs! Whatever we were hearing on the radio is what we were trying to play. The crazy thing is that we’ve come full circle and we know a lot of the people we were trying to emulate and we’re lucky enough to call them friends.
Justin: Some are like family.
Jesse: Yeah, some are like family now. It’s been a crazy, crazy life that we don’t take for granted.
Justin: They always say don’t meet your idols but...
Jesse: …we’ve never had a bad experience when we’ve met our idols.
Justin: I couldn’t tell you one person that I had looked up to that I met and they ruined it for me. Everyone’s been amazing.
JS: You know what, I’ve got to say almost the same thing. The amount of people that I’ve gotten to know through doing this for…well, The Interrupters started in 2011 and I started with Dying Scene in 2011. You’re one of the bands that came out right when I was getting started with this whole thing so it’s been a fun sort of parallel, but there’s only a small, small handful of people where you go “wow, that guy’s kind of a dick.” Everybody else has been super cool and super rad and supportive of each other. Especially those people that we grew up listening to in the late 80s and the 90s. It’s a pretty good, supportive group.
Justin: It is, it is. Even when we just started out, to tour with Rancid was amazing, but then to go on and get Rhoda from The Bodysnatchers, we get Horace and Lynval and Terry from The Specials love us. It’s just insane. To have that mutual respect and to get it back is just…yeah…it’s mind-blowing.
Jesse: We did a charity show back in February where we were backing The Specials. I was the drummer of The Specials for a night. We did the whole set, like twelve songs. Justin played piano, Kev played guitar.
Justin: You saw that thing where we played with Tim and Jesse Michaels and did the Op Ivy song?
JS: Yeah, yeah. That was amazing.
Justin: That was the same event. That one song with Jesse was amazing but it overshadowed the fact that we played in The Specials! (*all laugh*)
Jesse: It was just mind-blowing.
JS: Yes! Everyone kinda lost it with the Jesse thing but yeah, that’s awesome. Just awesome.
Jesse: And just being able to sit in a room for a week with Terry and Horace; Lynval got sick so he couldn’t come out, but just to sit there and run the songs with them was mind-blowing.
JS: I’m glad this stuff keeps happening to you, because you certainly deserve it.
