D ISRUP T THE NOISE
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M AY 2018
P A R K W AY D R I V E
WAT E R PA R K S CODE ORANGE A PERFECT CIRCLE NOTHING, NOWHERE.
UPSETMAGAZINE .COM
T H E FA I M
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30 VENUES PLUS A BR AND NEW FESTIVAL SITE ON BRIGHTON BE ACH
BAKAR
TELEMAN
DYL AN CARTLIDGE
KAMA AL WILLIAMS
HIMAL AYA S
BØRNS TEN FÉ
HOCKEY DAD K TR AP
FREAK
RINA SAWAYAMA
GUS DAPPERTON
LET’S EAT GR ANDMA SONS OF KEMET
GAIKA
K YARY PAMY U PAMY U FRE YA RIDINGS IGUANA DE ATH CULT
MAHALIA
POPPY AJUDHA
LO MOON
NILÜFER YANYA
JOYCUT
LOUIS BAKER
GOAT GIRL
O CTAVIAN
MILK TEETH
GAFFA TAPE SANDY
GIANT PART Y LOT TO BOYZZ
NA AZ
JACK RIVER
EROL ALKAN
KOJEY R ADICAL
HUSKY LOOPS
DERMOT KENNEDY
EASY LIFE
BAD SOUNDS
S H I N E R S
EVES K ARYDA S
PALE WAVE S
DIDIRRI
MIK AEL A DAVIS
HER’S
PIP BLOM
HUNTER & THE BEAR
TICKETS ON SALE
DREAM STATE SAMM HENSHAW
SLOWTHAI
MANU CROOKS
TOM GRENNAN
ALMA
BILLY LO CKET T
NINA NESBIT T ROSS FROM FRIENDS (LIVE)
BRUNO MAJOR
SASSY 009
STELL A D ONNELLY
SAM FENDER
PEACH PIT
ROLLING BL ACKOUTS COASTAL FEVER
BLOXX
AMA LOU
AK /DK
PROMISEL AND
THE GO! TEAM
BENNY MAILS
MANSIONAIR
SUPERORGANISM
JIMOTHY L ACOSTE JAPANE SE BRE AKFA ST THE ORIELLES PHOEBE BRIDGERS
AND MANY MORE
“WE WERE NEVER GOING TO
ISSUE 32
RECREATE SOMETHING THAT WE
MAY 2018
MADE TEN YEARS AGO” UNDEROATH, P.26
UPSETMAGAZINE.COM EDITOR: Stephen Ackroyd
(stephen@upsetmagazine.com) DEPUTY EDITOR: Victoria Sinden
(viki@upsetmagazine.com)
ASSOCIATE EDITOR: Ali Shutler
(ali@upsetmagazine.com)
CONTRIBUTORS: Alex Bradley,
DEAR READER,
Brad Thorne, Chris Cope, Dan Harrison, Dillon Eastoe, Jack Press, Jasleen Dhindsa, Jessica Goodman, Josh Williams, Linsey Teggert, Sam Taylor, Steven Loftin
THIS MONTH
PHOTOGRAPHERS: Patrick
RIOT!
Gunning, Sarah Louise Bennett 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 The Bunker Publishing Ltd. 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. PUBLISHED FROM
THE BUNKER W E LCO M E TOT H E B U N K E R.CO M
4 WATERPARKS 8 GENDER ROLES 9 NERVUS 10 2000TREES 12 CODE ORANGE 16 ARCANE ROOTS & JAMIE LENMAN 17 MALLORY KNOX 18 THE XCERTS 19 ITOLDYOUIWOULDEATYOU 20 PLAYLIST
ABOUT TO BREAK
22 THE FAIM 24 SELFISH THINGS 25 THE YADA YADA YADAS
FEATURES
26 UNDEROATH
34 SPEEDY ORTIZ 38 PARKWAY DRIVE 40 A PERFECT CIRCLE 42 NOTHING, NOWHERE.
RATED
44 THIRTY SECONDS TO MARS 46 PARKWAY DRIVE 47 TEEN CREEPS
LIVE
48 TONIGHT ALIVE 51 FALL OUT BOY 52 MILK TEETH 54 ALL TIME LOW 54 MUNCIE GIRLS 56 COMING UP
TEENAGE KICKS
You ready yet? What do you mean “what for?” Festivals, obviously. May is coming around, which means that our first forays into fields and dashes between inner city venues are fast approaching. You’re gonna regret all those biscuits you’ve been eating through the winter. Just think of the bands. It’ll all be fine. This month, we’re kicking off our summer of fun by heading down to Brighton’s The Great Escape. You’ll find details of our stage later on in this issue. Head down. It’ll be a riot. STEPHEN ACKROYD, EDITOR
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EVERYTHING HAPPENING IN ROCK
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WATERPARKS! IN THE UK! UPSET TACKLES AWSTEN KNIGHT AHEAD OF HIS EPIC SHOW AT LONDON’S KOKO.
O
WORDS: STEVEN LOFTIN. PHOTOS: SARAH LOUISE BENNETT.
N A DREARY SUNDAY this changing again? “The thing is, yeah I AFTERNOON OUTSIDE stopped listening to them and everything,” he OF LONDON’S KOKO, considers. “But I knew that they were good THERE’S ALREADY A songs still. I don’t know; I’m at the point now QUEUE OF THIRTYwhere, for the most part, they’re cool with me.” STRONG PEOPLE EAGER Awsten talks with such hyperactivity that FOR THE VENUE TO OPEN. The band it’s hard not to get consumed by it. With each everyone’s waiting for is Waterparks - a few thought dancing like electricity, he speaks months earlier they released their second from a heart filled with fire and conviction. album ‘Entertainment’, and are now back on “They’ve gone over live really well. I think our shores to celebrate. seeing how into it everybody was - especially Somewhere in yesterday, Leeds was the depths of KOKO, so sick - was adding frontman Awsten an extra layer of Knight is beginning energy, and like, ‘OK, his day in awe at we gotta fucking do this new reality. this hard. Right now’. “It’s so cool! I got It makes it, I guess, off the bus, looked easier to perform?” to my left and I He says, trailing off was like ‘OH SHIT!’” in a higher pitch. Getting to this “You know what I point, however, did mean? Because I hang in the balance feel like if I were up before the album there acoustic the had even dropped. whole time, I’d hate In January, myself a little bit Awsten released an more.” open letter stating This next chapter that ‘Entertainment’ for Waterparks is had become one that’s seen unlistenable to them taking strides him. It took some in cementing time, but eventually, themselves as he found a new nothing but honest. level of depth to They’re unashamedly AWSTEN KNIGHT this particular set their inspirations; of songs, and, he they don’t hide the announced, was fact that pop is just as much an influence as excited to actually release them. punk - and no, that doesn’t make them popWell, now that he’s on a tour solely punk. It makes them the next step in a natural dedicated to them, is he worried at all about evolution.
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THE BEST NEW BANDS. THE HOTTEST NEW MUSIC.
WANT A NEW BAND CRUSH? CHECK OUT THIS LOT! >>>
THE REGRETTES
We’re going to be hearing a lot more from scuzzy sweet pop-rock gang The Regrettes over the next few months, as they make raids into the UK live scene. For now, check out latest EP ‘Attention Seeker’.
F HOW HAVE FOUR BOYS FROM THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE ENDED UP CO-WRITING THEIR DEBUT SINGLE WITH PETE WENTZ? HARD WORK, OBVIOUSLY. WORDS: STEVEN LOFTIN.
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OR EIGHTEEN MONTHS OR SO, OVER IN PERTH, AUSTRALIA, FOUR MATES HAVE BEEN TOILING AWAY PULLING FIFTEEN-HOUR DAYS IN STUDIOS. Josh Raven, Stephen Beerkens, Michael Bono and Sean Tighe, who together make up The Faim, have been trying to ensure that whatever they bring into the world is the best it can be. And it’s working out for them. While they only have one song out currently, ‘Saints & Sinners’, with the massive spotlight that’s been thrown on them, you could be forgiven for thinking they’re old hat at this. This one track isn’t just any song, either. It’s co-written with Pete Wentz after the band got in contact with pop-punk super-producer John Feldmann. Speaking to singer Josh, who’s currently prepping for their Lower Than Atlantis support tour, he attributes all of this success to the band’s bloody good work ethic.
LUCIA
Glasgow’s Lucia isn’t content to stick to one lane. From the scuzzy ‘Melted Ice Cream’, to the cavernous ‘When I Think Of You’, via the grooves of ‘Saturday Is Dead’, variety truly is the spice of life.
“[It was] about a year and a half of solid grinding, just in the studio before we had any contact really with John - and we were taking things 100% seriously,” he explains. “Just locking ourselves in the studio, doing as much writing as we can, doing as much social media as we can - just constantly finding the next step forward.” A perfect balance between new and old, The Faim are unashamed of their influences while looking toward the future. The fact that they’ve been a “studio band”, as Josh describes it, shows their focus is on the craft far more than just showing off. “Everything’s always been pretty thought out,” he begins. “We’ve always had a pretty big game plan, but with our luck, things go wrong most of the time! But we’re the type of people who love pressure.” It’s a good job they do because coming out of nowhere and having their first officially released song co-written by a childhood hero is certainly a pressure-
cooker. On this new extreme level of attention, Josh is, as always, mighty cool and calm about it. “We were mainly surprised, I guess. The magnifying glass we have on us right now... But we’ve come to terms with the fact that things are going to grow and things are going to develop. “The way we see it is, we will always keep true to who we are. We love what we do so much, so no matter the amount of pressure, or who’s watching, it’s always going to be the same sort of story for us. We’re going to keep authentic.” With only ‘Saints & Sinners’ out in the world and no future releases on the horizon, the only downside to working so meticulously is that once the ball is rolling, it’s kind of hard to keep up. “It’s still open to discussion really about what’s going on,” Josh reveals. “We’re stuck between, do we want to put everything out because our music is sonically so diverse, or do we want to put all that out at once through an album, or use an EP and kind of ease people
INTECHNICOLOUR
Brighton upstarts InTechnicolour are about to hit the road with mates Black Peaks. It’s a move that, on the back of new banger ‘Shaker’, could see them catch fire.
into it? “We want to have diversity amongst our albums [and] our songs, but the biggest thing we want to do is keep fresh. Genres are becoming less and less confining, and being able to stay relevant is a really important part of us.” One thing that’s definitely on the horizon is their UK dates with Lower Than Atlantis - their first ever tour. “It’s completely mental at the moment….” Josh marvels. “This is like the teenage band kid’s dream; we’ve finally hit that moment. This is that pivotal point of becoming a touring band. It’s going to be a huge moment for us.” All the hard work, and taking every opportunity, is born from the voice in the back of Josh’s head, which says to him, “‘Fuck it, I’m going to take what I want. I’m not going to let anyone else get in the way of that’.” He continues: “We dropped everything. We dropped our jobs; we dropped uni - all of our prior commitments.” And it’s about to pay off. P THE FAIM ARE ON TOUR WITH LOWER THAN ATLANTIS RIGHT NOW.
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RELEASING THEIR FIRST ALBUM IN A DECADE, UNDEROATH HAVE RETURNED FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE. AND THEY’VE COME BACK… DIFFERENT. WORDS: ALI SHUTLER.
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N 26TH JANUARY 2013, UNDEROATH PLAYED THE FINAL SHOW OF A NINEDATE FAREWELL TOUR IN FLORIDA. And that was supposed to be it, the end of all things. Three years later though, they were back at the same venue for the first proper show of their reunion tour. A lot more followed. And now, they’ve just released ‘Erase Me’. This is where it gets serious. “Here we are,” starts Aaron Gillespie “It’s our first record in ten years, and there’s this real, palpable excitement. It’s not just like, ‘Here’s an old band putting out some songs for fun’. Being on this end of it, it feels like this is our most important release. The way that people are responding to the songs and everything, it’s a cool time.” Aaron formed the band in 1997 while still in high school, but it wasn’t until their fourth record, 2004’s ‘They’re Only Chasing Safety’ that things began to fall into place for Underoath. It was the first record to feature Spencer Chamberlain, Tim McTague, James Smith, Grant Brandell, Chris Dudley and Aaron working together. After a turbulent history, that line-up that would see them through the next six years. It was also better than
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anything Underoath had put their name to so far. All conflict and chemistry, it was one of those instant classics. Its follow-up, 2006’s ‘Define The Great Line’ was another step forward, redefining the band and adjusting their course. Then it began to fall apart. Tours were cancelled, tensions mounted. Aaron walked away in 2010, and the rest of the band followed a few years later. Underoath’s reunion was never really about picking up where they left off. At that point, they were too far gone. By the end, they’d worn down
AARON GILLESPIE
their friendships and their love for the band. Rather than stepping back for a moment when the cracks first appeared, they tried to hold it together by doing more, pushing harder and soldiering on. “We should have said no a shitload more than we did,” admits Aaron. “We got ourselves in trouble because we never stopped. We should have rested more. It messed us up. Now we just want to do the right stuff. We don’t want to play for the sake of playing; we want to make sure it makes sense.” “When you’re a kid in a band, you play together because you all like the same stuff,” explains Spencer. “It’s tough when you leave your teens because you start becoming individuals and different people. That’s weird, and you don’t know how to handle it. As time goes on, you go in different directions. You miss how it used to be. It’s a hard place to grow up.” But grow up they did. It wasn’t until someone revived their group chat with the reminder that ‘Define The Great Line’ was about to turn ten and maybe they should play a show, that Underoath returned.
“We started talking about more than a show, and we ended up booking a tour,” continues Spencer. “Grant suggested playing ‘Chasing Safety’ in full as well because we were too busy being mad at each other when that record turned ten.” And after some hesitation (“that’s so many songs”), they decided to do it. The Rebirth tour, with the band playing both albums in full each night, was born. “I didn’t want the band to break up in the first place,” says Spencer. “As much as I was probably the last one standing before the breakup, I was one of the last to agree to Rebirth. I thought it would be weird for me if they didn’t want to keep playing after that. What if everyone else just wanted to have normal lives and normal jobs? I didn’t want to take time out of my life to just feel robbed of what could be.” During the first practice, the band were asking why they’d waited so long. After the first show, they decided to take the tour around the world. “We had no idea what it would be like. It could be really good or really bad,” explains Aaron. “In the smallest
way, we just wanted to have a good time, hang out together, be buddies again and play the songs that gave us the life we have now. It ended up being the biggest and best tour we’d ever done. “I had this whole idea that every show would be full of these old guys, just out for a beer and listening to a band they liked in high school. I mean, those two records are at least ten years old. But every night Spencer would ask the question, ‘How many of you have never seen Underoath before?’ At least 70% of the crowd would raise their hand. I thought that was fucking impossible. “I started realising a majority of these fans were younger. Their older brother was 18 and had given them the record when they were only ten and weren’t allowed to go see a concert, or they had to go to bed early ‘cos they had school or whatever. There was this influx of young folks, which was super interesting. I did not expect that. It’s been cool to see this younger generation of kids still really interested in our band. It’s given us this shot of life, which is flattering.” That rejuvenation can be felt across ‘Erase Me’, but it’s not just because there’s a whole new generation listening. “For a very long time, there was uncertainty around our friendship,” adds Aaron. “When you all grow up together, and you do the same things, you think that you have to believe the same things and have the same set of ideals. The reality is, you don’t. You can be your own person. For us, we really just needed to be honest with one another. With Rebirth, we’ve been able to do that. It’s a small adjective, but it does feel really good. We’re confident and in a good place.” That feeling is mirrored by Spencer. “We’re in a place where we’re finally healthy as a band, and we work together, which never really happened before. Even at the very beginning, it was always a little weird. We were never really on the same page. “After burning the thing on both ends until we had to walk away from it, we’ve come back to it as healthy human beings who have their lives more on track. So many things can go wrong when you’re in a bad place; there was so much pressure. After we broke up, it let us talk which helped us fix our relationships with each other and the things within ourselves that needed fixing. “When we started to play, we didn’t know what would happen, but we took all that pressure away. Now that we are playing and writing together, I’ve seen the future of this band. It’s healthy and can go for as long as we feel we want to go for. We can do this for another fifteen
SPENCER CHAMBERLAIN years if we want because we know how to communicate, work together and we know how to actually get along, which is crazy.” Despite the instant connection when they started playing together again, talk of new material wasn’t so quick. Two weeks into the tour, Aaron was sure he wanted to keep doing Underoath; Spencer never wanted to stop. So the pair started writing music together, away from the rest of the band. “It wasn’t in a deceitful way,” promises Spencer, “but those guys weren’t sure yet, and we weren’t going to sit around and wait for them to decide if they were going to give us the time to make a record. Aaron and I, we wanted to make music together. We’ve been best friends since we were teenagers and we were sick of making music away from each other.” So committed was their bond, there was talk of just starting a new band if the rest of Underoath wanted to quit after Rebirth. “If no one else wants to make a record, we should just do our own thing,” echoes Aaron. Everyone wanted to keep it rolling, though. “We realised it needed to be all of us.” Tim and Chris started working on music as well, and things fell into place. ‘Erase Me’ is the first Underoath record where all six band members love every song. Every album before was littered with compromise. “We fought our way through every record,” reflects Spencer. “It’s always been a full-on battle every time we recorded, until we made this album. We made this album as friends, adults and we worked together.” There were no rules about a song ‘sounding Underoath enough’, either. “We needed to make a record that we love and feel, so that’s what we did,” explains Aaron. “If we’re all stoked on a song, if we feel really good about it, we’re excited about it, want to listen to it and want to play, let’s record it. We distanced ourselves from the pressure. “It would be easy to look at ‘Chasing
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BACK WITH SPEEDY ORTIZ, SADIE DUPUIS IS READY TO TAKE ON THE BIGOTS. Words: Linsey Teggert
“W
HEN I STARTED THIS PROJECT I WAS 22, I’D HAD A ROUGH YEAR AND WAS WRITING MY WAY THROUGH A LOT OF MENTAL ANGUISH. NOW I TRY TO WRITE LESS INTERNALLY AND MORE ABOUT THE THINGS MY FRIENDS ARE WORRYING ABOUT EVERY DAY, WHICH IS TO SAY, THE WIDER WORLD. I STILL WRITE SONGS FOR THE SAME REASON, WHICH IS I HAVE AN EXTREME FEELING I NEED TO WORK THROUGH, JUST NOW IT’S NOT ABOUT BREAK-UPS, IT’S ABOUT BIGOTRY.” Self-proclaimed Speedy Ortiz ‘frontdemon’ Sadie Dupuis is discussing her shift in attitude towards songwriting. It’s the main reason the band’s third record, ‘Twerp Verse’ was scrapped and rewritten after their original recording sessions. The ‘Twerp Verse’ the public is about to hear is not the original album Speedy Ortiz had intended to release. “In the Autumn of 2016 we spent around a week recording, but it wasn’t the album we wanted to release. We kept a couple of songs that still felt meaningful to me, but I spent the next few months writing a bunch of new songs. It wasn’t for lack of love that we scrapped the other songs, we really like them all, but we were thinking about what we wanted to do with this record and what was meaningful to talk about right now, and some of those songs didn’t feel right for the album. “I’ve mentioned that those songs were ‘too lovey-dovey’, but I meant that they were too wrapped up in my interpersonal life. Some of them were quite old, too. We were recording one that I’d written in 2006, there was one that was very
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SADIE DUPUIS much an ‘angry break-up song’, and I just don’t really care about that kind of music anymore. So while I think the songs are fine, they weren’t what I wanted on this record, and that’s what a B-side is for.” While the resulting ‘Twerp Verse’ is certainly shaped by social politics, don’t expect to hear songs overtly ranting about political injustices. The issues are there in the lyrics, but as with the rest of Speedy Ortiz’s back catalogue, you have to dig a little deeper to find them. A former teacher with a Masters in poetry from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Sadie’s lyrics are often riddle-like, surreal and metaphorical with a good dose of twisted humour. “Social politics have always had some part in shaping the lyrics in Speedy Ortiz because they shape my worldview, but I’ve always approached writing for this project in an oblique way. There are some moments on this record that are a bit more direct, but the lyrics are still very much about quotidian relationships, the people I see and think about every day. I’m not writing a song that’s directly about Trump, more about the ways in which I want the people in my community to do better and take better care of each other, things like that.”
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. THE ONLY VERD ICT YOU NEED
A PERFECT CIRCLE EAT THE ELEPHANT eeeee
JARED LETO’S THIRTY SECONDS TO MARS ARE BACK - BUT WHAT EXACTLY ARE THEY?
M
ost bands are pretty easy to understand. They’re in it for ‘the right’ reasons, drawn by their music, embracing a style and aesthetic that means something to them on a base level. They’re living a truth that inhibits their first thoughts in the morning, their last when they call it a night. Or at least, that’s the way we - as fans - would like to think it goes. But when it comes to Thirty Seconds To Mars, that ideal just doesn’t feel to fit. On the surface, ‘America’ is twelve perfectly functional tracks of highly stylised modern pop. This isn’t rock music - it hasn’t even seen rock music since that time they spent an awkward Christmas together forcing polite conversation back in the late ‘00s. And that’s fine - from Fall Out Boy to PVRIS to Paramore, we’ve seen time and again that lazy loud music pales to insignificance in the presence of inventive, forward thinking sounds that draw from a range of influences. But that’s not what’s going on here. Instead, it’s vanilla, generic, watered down egotism. AMERICA A monolith to INTERSCOPE narcissism through ee a prism of ‘stuff that IF YOU LIKE THIS, YOU’LL sounds vaguely now’. LIKE... YOURSELF. LOTS. It’s a collection of failed soundtrack submissions to a series of knock off superhero films nobody wants to see. It’s words presented as deeper meaning, printed on a paper thin facade of faux sincerity. It’s a load of old bollocks, mate. DAN HARRISON
THIRTY SECONDS TO MARS
‘Eat The Elephant’ is a dramatic albeit grandiose departure from the aggressive post-metal of A Perfect Circle’s past, replacing the friction of ‘Judith’ with a progressive evolution of their gentler moments, hinted at previously on the likes of ‘3 Libras’ and ‘The Noose’. Over a decade since their last display of studio wizardry, you’d be forgiven for approaching the album with some hesitation, however, if you do, you’ll be proven undeniably wrong. A Perfect Circle cement their status as masters of the emotive, the experimental, and the avant-garde. JACK PRESS
DMA’S FOR NOW eeee Opener ‘For Now’ rips and roars like a Madchester night out, and yet from there the warm midnineties Britpop charm comes and goes, glimmering away in jangling guitar riffs soaked in summer days. DMA’s songwriting has matured in leaps and bounds, their sound truly becoming their own, as psychedelic twangs and electronic synths roll on by as vocalist Tommy O’Dell delivers a vocal performance that’d be as fitting in 1995 as it is in 2018. Ripping up the rulebook and throwing away the Oasis-patched jacket in exchange for an identity all of their own, on ‘For Now’, the band have crafted their definitive sound, and by god is it beautiful. JACK PRESS
FRANK TURNER BE MORE KIND eeee
The last few years of turmoil have prompted Frank Turner to return to the barricade, but he mainly seems to want everyone to calm down a bit. The title-track asks us to ‘Be More Kind’, and Frank wants us to #MAGA by “making racists ashamed again”, which is all fair enough when it isn’t being let down by ‘1933’’s poorly thought out “Be suspicious of simple answers, that shit’s for fascists and maybe teenagers” - slagging youngsters is a weird take in 2018. Sadly there’s still some way to go before he eclipses his turn of the decade zenith. DILLON EASTOE DISRUPT THE NOISE 45
ON STAG E. IN HERE .
’ TO NG ‘UN DER WO RLD JEN NA AN D CO. BRI SE BENN ETT. PHO TOS: SARA H LOUI
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LON DO N.
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ONIGHT ALIVE HAVE BEEN HERE BEFORE. THEY PLAYED KOKO BACK IN 2014 TO CELEBRATE ‘THE OTHER SIDE’ BUT A LOT HAS CHANGED SINCE. ‘Limitless’ saw them dive headfirst into calm blues, serene open spaces and a sense of peace while running from the aggression that came before. Whakaio, the band’s lead guitarist and the onstage Yin to Jenna’s bounding Yang, walked away from the group and five became four. ‘Underworld’ set out to readdress the balance. Embracing the past, returning to the child, hopeful for a future, it sees the band defiant and more true than ever. Kneejerk, heartfelt and gut-led, it twirls with a relentless urgency and live, that gets to play. From the moment they open the ‘Book of Love’, Tonight Alive are full of bold movement. Carefree and instinctual, Jenna, Jake and Cam fill the space. Sharing and showing off in equal measure, there’s a confidence that doesn’t need the spotlight to shine. That fuck you, I won’t do what you tell attitude is still there though, middle fingers up for ‘Lonely Girl’ while the back and forth scramble of ‘Listening’ causes enough trouble by itself. For all their conscious-rock swagger and speeches of warped beauty standards, higher mind thinking and everyday insecurities, there’s more to Tonight Alive. There’s a power to be found in using your voice, something they encourage at every opportunity, and a strength in having fun. Jenna gets in Jake’s face for ‘The Other’, beaming, distracting and emboldening, she hands the mic to the crowd for ‘Hell & Back’ but can’t help but sing along. Doused in yellow, the band are sunny side up but never naïve to what’s on the other side. They crackle, share and roar their way through a catalogue ten years in the making, from the dream-weary swipes of ‘Disappear’ to the raining glory of ‘The Edge’, still the best thing about The Amazing Spider-Man 2. An onstage proposal follows ‘For You’ and throughout, there’s this sense of care. Apart from their actual home of Australia, “the UK is the only other place that feels like home. You’ve created a culture on your own that we almost have nothing to do with, but I’m so glad we do.” Not that the band are content to sit back and watch. ‘Temple’ closes the night, all spindly limbs and cries of desperation. Raging against itself and others, it manages a resilient smile in the hopeless embrace. The room sees itself in the mirror. Tonight is about celebrating the fact that some things will never be the same again. There are affirmations in the music, comfort in the words. Tonight Alive have never been afraid of the truth. They might be back at KOKO, but they’re facing forward and more in control than ever. ALI SHUTLER
THEY’VE BEEN THROUGH A LOT, BUT TONIGHT ALIVE ARE STILL SPREADING POSITIVITY. WORDS: ALI SHUTLER
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ONIGHT ALICE FIND THEMSELVES IN THEIR AUDIENCE. FROM INTRODUCING THEIR NEW ALBUM FACE TO FACE TO FANS IN RECORD STORES ACROSS NORTH AMERICA TO THEIR HEART-FILLING BLITZ ACROSS THE UK, THE FIRST FEW WEEKS OF ‘UNDERWORLD’ EXISTING IN THE WORLD HAVE BEEN “A REALLY BEAUTIFUL CONNECTIVE EXPERIENCE WITH OUR FANS,” BEAMS JENNA. “I’ve had a lot of people come up and say, ‘I really needed something like this to come along at this time’,” adds Jake. “To know that we’re helping people by releasing music, which we love doing, is amazing.” “The byproduct of your selfexpression helps other people, and that’s really epic,” continues Jen. “It’s not even been a year since ‘Temple’ was written. That knocks my hair off. ‘Temple’ was written in May. So was ‘Just For Now’, and ‘Disappear’, ‘In My Dreams’, ‘The Other’. All those songs were written in May last year in Nashville, they’re not even a year old, and people are in love with them and so am I. I’m still living the thread of the story that you hear on the album. It’s not finished,” she promises. “The cord has not been cut.” Since letting people into ‘Underworld’, perspective of the songs has changed. “I was hoping but didn’t really expect people to say that ‘The Other’
has that Tonight Alive cult fanbase feeling,” explains Jen. “I did want to represent outcasts in that song. I always imagined filling out a form and it says male, female or other but you don’t feel like you can tick the boxes that are there, ‘cos you are an alternative. You are the other. I relate to that as well. It brings people together just being able to relate to the fact that you feel like an outcast. That’s what the punk scene is. It’s nice that we can contribute to that story.” Elsewhere, ‘For You’ is “an interesting one,” she says. “We’re asked is ‘For You’ dedicated to your fans, but it’s a love song.” “That’s so cool,” grins Jake, as Jen agrees, reciting lyrics: “I’m not afraid to make mistakes. You never asked me to change. Whenever I’m in doubt, you put the fire out. That’s so true. Our fans are always looking out for us. It’s a song about unconditional love for a partner and the way that whatever they do can make you feel like anything is possible. It’s pretty cool that people interpreted that as a tribute to our fans. I might just introduce it as that now.” The band have been non-stop since the release of ‘Underworld’ and there’s no sign of them slowing down. There’s an Australian headline tour, another trip around America with Warped and then hopefully they’ll be back in the UK for festival season. “We’re not slowing down,” promises Jen. “We’ve talked about it as well, do we need a break? Last year was hectic, DISRUPT THE NOISE 49