TONIGHT ALIVE
upsetmagazine.com
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EDITOR’S NOTE Cynical is cool.
Being down on things is easier than daring to push towards the positive. That’s the world we live in - where social feeds and column inches casting scorn are the safe route, and actually aiming high and backing what you believe in feels like a risk. And Tonight Alive have no time for any of it. This month’s cover stars are all about posi vibes. Their new album ‘Limitless’ is the sort of record that knows it may be pulling against the crowd, but does it anyway full of strength in its own conviction. It’s the message, not just the music, that should ring loud here. Any band willing to stand their own ground and divide the field like that deserve praise. Plus, let’s be honest, more music videos need dance moves. And hats.
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IN THIS ISSUE RIOT 4. ALL TIME LOW 6. AGAINST THE CURRENT 8. ONCE UPON A DEAD MAN 9. THE USED 10. REAL FRIENDS ABOUT TO BREAK 12. THE GOSPEL YOUTH 14. SWERVE FEATURES 16. TONIGHT ALIVE 26. TACOCAT 30. MUNCIE GIRLS 34. BIG UPS 38. THE JOY FORMIDABLE RATED 42. TONIGHT ALIVE 44. SAY ANYTHING 45. HECK
46. BRIAN FALLON 47. IGGY POP 48. MUNCIE GIRLS 49. TRACKS OF THE MONTH LIVE 50. NECK DEEP 52. COHEED & CAMBRIA 53. TWIABP + MEWITHOUTYOU 54. THE FRONT BOTTOMS COMING UP 56. MILK TEETH 57. HANDS LIKE HOUSES 58. ON THE ROAD FESTIVALS 60. DOWNLOAD VS THE INTERNET 62. TONIGHT ALIVE
Editor: Stephen Ackroyd (stephen@upsetmagazine.com) Deputy Editor: Victoria Sinden (viki@upsetmagazine.com) Assistant Editor: Ali Shutler (ali@upsetmagazine.com) Contributors: Adam Elmakias, Amie Kingswell, Doug Elliott, Emily Pilbeam, Emma Matthews, Emma Swann, Giles Bidder, Heather McDaid, Jack Glasscock, Jade Curson, Jade Esson, James Fox, Jasleen Dhindsa, Jessica Goodman, Kane Hibberd, Kathryn Black, Kristy Diaz, Sarah Louise Bennett, Steven Loftin All material copyright (c). All rights reserved. This publication may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form, in whole or in part, without the express written permission of Upset. Disclaimer: While every effort is made to ensure the information in this magazine is correct, changes can occur which affect the accuracy of copy, for which Upset holds no responsibility. The opinions of the contributors do not necessarily bear a relation to those of Upset or its staff and we disclaim liability for those impressions. Distributed nationally. P U B L I S H E D F RO M
THE BUNKER W E LCO M E TOT H E B U N K E R.CO M
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ALL TIME HIGH A L L T I M E L O W, G O O D C H A R L O T T E A N D A G A I N S T T H E C U R R E N T J O I N FO RC ES TO STO RM T H E U K . W E CAU G H T U P W I T H O N E O F T H E A R E N A T O U R S O F T H E Y E A R AT L O N D O N ’ S O 2 . WORDS: ALI SHUTLER PH OTOS: SA R A H LOU I SE B E N N ET T &
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A DA M E L M A K I AS
onight is a big deal for All Time Low. A year after their run around arenas with You Me At Six, they’ve returned to London’s O2 Arena as headliners in their own right. Bringing fireworks, flames and their own runway with them, the band are aware that this tour could mark the start of a new chapter for All Time Low but none of that future promise gets in the way of the all-and-out delight the band find in the now. Even on the biggest stages, All Time Low are the same goofy kids they’ve always been and their wideeyed delight is infectious. It’s a feeling mirrored from the off. As Where The Wild Things Are is narrated across the room, Against The Current bound onto the stage and, despite the thankless task of opening the show, instantly look at home in the massive surroundings. Kicking into ‘Running With The Wild Things’, it doesn’t take long for Chrissy Costanza to march down the runway as Dan Gow switches from right to left and back again and Will Ferri finds time to toy with his drumsticks, making the whole affair look effortless. The band have no right to sound this good, considering the time, the alien 4 upsetmagazine.com
surroundings and the unfamiliar crowd - but the likes of ‘Talk’, ‘Dreaming Alone’ and the recent charge of ‘Outsiders’ are made for grander things. The band sound polished but their ramshackle enthusiasm shines through. New track ‘Forget Me Now’ is even bigger, capturing the swagger of Foo Fighters’ ‘Walk’ while the band’s message, “We’ve felt like outsiders our whole lives. Being an outsider and taking an unconventional path is why we’re up here tonight,” resonates with the ever-expanding crowd. It’d be crass to suggest that Against The Current will be one day headlining venues like this, but there’s something undeniably special about the three-piece and, given the space,
If Alex can’t do the synchronised jumping thing, we’re sure Charlie is looking for another band.
ABOU T TO
BREAK
THE BEST NEW BANDS TH E H OT TEST NEW MUSIC
THE
GOSPEL YOUTH
B RI G HTO N-BASE D BA N D TH E
G O S P E L Y O U T H H AV E A N I N T E R E S T I N G T W E LV E MONTHS AHEAD OF THEM.
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W O R D S : H E AT H E R M C D A I D .
hat happens when you’ve got a story to tell, and a dedication to doing so?
doing just that. The rise has been stark, their ambition clear, so as they stand at the edge of their latest project, it’s a fine time to chat to vocalist Sam Little about the road of the Gospel Youth.
Well, in the case of the Gospel Youth, after launching debut single ‘Kids’ in 2014, have shared stages with the likes of Mallory Knox, Deaf Havana and We Are The Ocean and are now embarking on a single-per-month challenge across 2016.
Let’s begin with the journey from ‘Kids’ to today. “It’s been a lot of fun,” Sam admits. “We’ve had a really good reaction to a lot of stuff. We had a bit of an issue with drummers but in terms of the members we’re in a good place now and we’re really happy to push forward to 2016.”
There’s almost a sense of inevitability when bands who lay it out there in songs connect with others and start to reach new people, and their self-dubbed “pop rock with a bit of soul” seems to be 12 upsetmagazine.com
As for the momentum, he adds, “I think we kind of just got lucky in a way. We’ve all been in bands before, The Auteur, Fleeing From Finales. We’ve all, I guess,
already earned our stripes from different places. So for us when we came together and started writing songs we already had, unbeknownst to us, a bunch of people who were already willing to listen and to share it. I guess we just got lucky.” That sense of support from the start has been part of the band’s self-imposed musical challenge, with support of crowdfunding from those who have helped them get here, and anyone who’d like to jump in for the ride. They’ve opted to write and release a single for each of the remaining months of the year, starting with a ‘Resolutions’ / ‘DST’ double single in February. “I personally think it’s the best thing we have ever
“ W E WA N T T O M A K E M U S I C B E C A U S E W E H AV E S T O R I E S T O T E L L . ” - SAM LITTLE
“A single every month. Yeah. Good one!”
done,” Sam notes. “We have kind of found ourselves and the sound that we want. We have found how we want to be doing things. “With the double release, the idea is that we are going to be releasing a song every month for the next twelve months as almost a singles club, but a bit more interesting. They will kind of work like chapters. Each one’s going to be how a chapter of my life is.” Crowdfunding isn’t new, but it remains an effective way of allowing bands like them to really take control of their music and work closely with their fans. It offers a freedom many other routes wouldn’t allow, and an experience they’re happy to remain flexible over. “There is the element of if ‘it goes up in flames, we will have to change something’!” says Sam. “But as far as it goes, we have got the opportunity to constantly change it and work with what people want. If we can offer more then we will offer more.”
The impact this approach has could dictate the route the band take from here on in - when your main goal is to make the music you want to make for people who want to hear it, the world of crowdfunding is your oyster. “It’s one of the reasons why we wanted to try it. As much as having a label is cool, for us we want it to be as skilful as we can. “We don’t want to make music because we want to make money, or want to be known in every house in the UK. It’s because we’ve got stories to tell and we have been through things that, if they help out other people, that’s awesome. At the same time, I guess it’s for my own sanity; it’s a way that we can give back to the people who actually share - we can really look after the people who really believe in this as much as we do.” For the next year, what they are all about is documenting a musical journey of experimentation, taking life as it comes and then slapping it on a track. “Last
FACT FILE Band members: Samuel Little, Julian Bowen, Kev Deverick, Tom Aylott and Kurt Reynolds Hometown: Brighton (UK) Formed: 2014 Signed To: Speaking Tongues
year, I had a really bad stint of mental health and this is like an anniversary of getting through this last year. That’s what the start of this is about, and the opportunities from it.” There are also a lot of plans to tour, many of which remain under wraps. “We are basically just going to do as much as we can, try and get to as many places as possible play as much music as we can - tell all the stories that we have got.” P
TO N I G H T A L I V E A RE RE AC H I N G FO R TH E S K Y. WO RDS : A L I S H U T L E R . P H OTOS : K A N E H I B B E RD.
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onight Alive are going to change the world,” starts Whakaio Taahi. “Everyone who leaves one of our shows is going to walk away and live a positive life.” After the longest break in Tonight Alive’s eight-year history, Jenna McDougall, Cam Adler, Matt Best, Jake Hardy and Whakaio are back with third album ‘Limitless’. Bold, daring and provocative, it sees the band put their positivity front and centre. In a few hours they’ll take to the stage of Barcelona’s Sala Apolo for the second date of a world tour (and somehow, their first show in the city). Halfway through the show Jenna McDougall asks the audience to put their phones away so she can speak to them directly. “You always have a say,” she tells the room. “Say it with me, ‘I always have a say’,” and the crowd follows her lead. It’s moving stuff. Leaning down to someone in the front row, Jenna asks for the Spanish translation to make sure everyone gets the message and before she’s had a chance to stand back up, the entire room is chanting “Siempre tengo algo quei decir.”
everything holding them back.
From their scrappy debut EP that offered ‘All Shapes & Disguises’, through the buoyant cry of ‘What Are You So Scared Of?’, and out ‘The Other Side’, Tonight Alive have always come loaded with reassuring messages of hope. However, it’s on ‘Limitless’ that they finally cut the ties of
“I just want people to fucking hear it,” explains Whakaio from their dressing room. “I want people to understand what we’re trying to do.” Lifted from the album, there’s a worry the singles don’t make sense yet because of how removed they are from people’s expectations. “That’s frustrating and I’m an impatient person anyway,” he ventures. “I think people will understand when they have the whole album. We were very finished with ‘The Other Side’. We were very finished with what the band was at the time so this has been a complete rebirth of us, of
what we want to do as people and as what we want Tonight Alive to stand for. It’s such a progression.” The band didn’t set out with a rebirth in mind though. Work began on their third album pretty much as soon as ‘The Other Side’ was recorded so within a month of that touring cycle winding down, Jenna and Whakaio went to a cabin just north of Sydney. They wrote fourteen songs they believed would be their new album and when they showed the rest of the band, everyone agreed “this is great.” They showed the “really punk rock” record to one of their team and the question was raised, “this is really good, but do you just want to do the same thing again?” “Jenna and I just looked at each other. Fuck.” This sent Jenna and Whakaio “on this two year journey” that saw the pair engaged in numerous writing sessions. “We started to broaden our horizons. Jenna and I write everything together and if we don’t get an outside view, we’re just going to keep doing the same thing. How else do you learn?” They went in with the approach that “maybe we won’t use this song but maybe we’ll learn something from this person. When we would write together after a trip, we’d always write an awesome song.” “We got angry, but we got angry in-between ‘The Other Side’ and ‘Limitless’. We got angry on those songs that never made it onto the record,” explains Jenna. “There’s a heap of lyrics that I had to write. I went through my own self-therapy with things I was pissed off about.” Listing the music industry, business fuck-ups and the world at large, Jenna was left with a choice. “Am I going to write about that and put that negative energy out into the world or not? I don’t want to live like that. I wanted to write a Rage Against The Machine album with Alanis Morissette vocals and that would have easily made me so happy, but that wasn’t the path for the band.” It’s not a new perspective that’s given Tonight Alive this new direction. It’s the five-piece giving in to themselves. “The reason it’s different is because we’re being true to ourselves. Let’s stop being afraid of everything we were writing, because we wrote heaps of stuff that didn’t make sense at the
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WORDS: JASLEEN DHINDSA.
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GIRL POWER M U N C I E G I RLS A RE D O I N G I T R I G H T.
WO RDS : A L I S H U T L E R . P H OTOS : E M M A SWA N N .
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LY DEFINITE M U B L A NEW BIG UPS’ H. F RUBBIS O E L I P ISN’T A WORDS: G ILES BIDDER.
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T H E J OY FO RM I DA B L E RET RE AT E D TO T H E I R T I N Y W E LS H H O M ETOW N TO C RE AT E N E W A L BU M ‘ H I TC H ’ A N D FO U N D I N S P I R AT I O N I N A N U N L I K E LY P L AC E .
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or a band who have had the “live side really at the core of things,” taking some time off is a hard thing to do, but sometimes it’s necessary. The Joy Formidable have just done such a thing and are returning with third album ‘Hitch’. It’s the culmination of a break after a break-up and the need to take some time away from the road and touring. There’s a definite change to the band: they have the same lustrously layered sound that hits you like a freight train, but it somehow feels more natural, more mature. “We wanted to make a record that felt alive and raw,” explains singer / guitarist Ritzy Bryan, “we wanted to try and capture what we are.”
WO RDS : ST EV E N LO F T I N .
Recreating this joyful sound is something not easily done. Their time off was mostly brought forth by the separation of Ritzy and bassist Rhydian Dafydd - though, truthfully, “break” is an overstatement. Sure, they were out of public consciousness for a while, but they were still focused on music. After returning back to their small hometown of Mold in North Wales, in order to get back to basics and find the romanticism in what they do, they set up their own small studio where they had none of their usual pressures or hassles. “There’s something about when you’ve got a live room set up and you can kind of use it any time day or night,” Ritzy states with a fondness. “I love that side of it, there’s none of the usual pressure of having to go in as a band and you
haven’t got studio fees, all that kind of stuff. We had a lot of freedom to record when we wanted to, but that makes it kind of impossible to switch off for twelve months. But I think that’s what we needed, to be those three people in a room again without the live side, without any of the bullshit that sometimes arises in the industry, without any of the bureaucracy. It’s literally just been the three of us, we’d have no engineer, no producer up until the point of mixing with Alan Moulder, and I think that’s given us a lot of clarity.” Despite the retreat, the band are quite good at being in the right place at the right time. The album artwork features what looks like a blood splatter logo forming the band’s name - the work of none other than critically lauded gonzo artist, Ralph ‘Fear and Loathing’ 39
RATED TONIGHT ALIVE LIMITLESS
Easy Life / Sony Red
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‘LIMITLESS’ BY NAME, LIMITLESS BY NATURE; TONIGHT ALIVE’S NEW ALBUM MAY SPLIT OPINION, BUT IT COULD TAKE THEM HIGHER THAN EVER BEFORE.
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egemite. That’s what the new album by Tonight Alive is. Sure to split opinion wherever it goes, our Antipodean chums are ploughing their own unique furrow now. Take it or leave it, with them or against them, you’re going to have Big Opinions regardless. ‘Limitless’ isn’t treading the safe path. Between 2013’s ‘The Other Side’ and now, Tonight Alive are transformed. Where the easy money was in sticking to a template, 90s pop, with its shimmering vistas and soaring posi-vibes are the order of the day. That’s where the split begins. Almost aggressively uplifting, much of ‘Limitless’ will fall either side of a very sharp barbed wire fence. Depending on how cynical
you are, much of the album could be an empowering statement, or one Minion short of a motivational image your Mum might share on Facebook. Just so we’re clear; the cynics have it all wrong. In breaking their mould - and that of everyone around them - Tonight Alive are being braver than their peers. While they could have moved with the pack and picked up the casual plaudits that come to any band growing their fanbase record by record, they’ve done what any artist should; been true to themselves. That’s exactly what tips ‘Limitless’ from being an interesting but divisive experiment to a Really Very Good album. Once onboard, it’s a record of big ambitions and vast horizons. Opener ‘To Be Free’, with its initial salvo of Auto-Tuned robot vocals, might be there to ease the listener into this brave new world, but
follow-up ‘Oxygen’ is like a cold ice bath. “Just let me breathe my oxygen,” sings Jenna McDougall over an sparkling ocean of mid-tempo pop rock. How you take lines like that will likely drive your whole outlook on ‘Limitless’, but once embraced they’re positively glorious. ‘Drive’ packs the sort of bangersand-mash brilliance of No Doubt at the height of their powers, while ‘How Does It Feel’ and ‘I Defy’ firmly kick into fifth gear, reminding everyone that Tonight Alive can still mix it if they need to. Lazily labelled MOR with hollow sentiment, or heartfelt rock that isn’t scared to go to places others won’t - it’s all a matter of positivity and perspective. In rejecting the opportunity to live in the shadows of others, one thing is for sure; Tonight Alive set their own limits now. Stephen Ackroyd
“Look into my eyes. Not around my eyes...”