TEENAGE WRIST // On Switching It Up, Honouring Their Inner Child And More

Teenage Wrist pushed their sonic boundaries like never before on their latest record, Still Love.

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Released back in August, it saw the duo embrace the sounds that soundtracked their high school years. We caught up with vocalist Marshall Gallagher, for a chat about the change, collaboration and more.

Hysteria: You’ve called Still Love your most far-reaching record. Tell us more about that and why it was so important to push those limits.

Marshall: It was mostly out of boredom. We started off as a shoegaze band, back when that wave of nu-gaze was coming around, and everyone was doing it. All of us, individually, got sick of the same tones and the same formulas of songs and the same whispery vocals. It felt like the right time to dig deeper into some of our other influences. Digging a little further back to what we were into in high school and even before that. Back to the roots, I guess.

Who were some of the influences you drew from?

We can all agree on The Smashing Pumpkins. Their influence has been there since the very start. For this record, we had just toured with 311, and that was super inspiring for us. They were the first band I really latched on to as a super fan when I was like 11. They’ve been in my ears forever. Maybe that was what spearheaded the whole deep dive into things stimulating to our inner child.

Anthony (Salazar, drums) and I really love (half-ironically, but mostly unironically) Dave Matthews Band. So, we decided to throw in some double kick pedal and some saxophone and cello and see what weird stuff we could pull out.

A few of the songs were a bit Radiohead inspired. Not so much the sound of them. But Radiohead go left-field with a lot of their arrangements, and it just felt like the right time for us to throw away any sound or formula that we once had.

It just felt like the right time for us to throw away any sound or formula that we once had.
[Marshall Gallagher]

You’ve talked a lot about your progression, but on the flip side, what from your first two records did you bring to this one?

So much. Including the EPs too. We have worked with a handful of incredible producers from Chrome Neon Jesus onwards. Somewhere around Counting Flies, Anthony and I started paying attention to their workflow, what they were doing, how they were able to create environments for us to be creative and the more engineering/tech side of things. The guy who really allowed us to sit in on the whole process, including the mixing, was Colin Brittain. He’s somebody we both look up to and see as one of our peers.

He taught us a lot. From general vibe checking to laying out how he mixes everything to stuff outside your typical studio experience. It was so much learning from the first two records and the EP, and so many techniques we picked up on. Whether it was splitting amp signals or other things. We pulled a lot from the people we had worked with before.

You produced the record yourselves; what was that experience like?

It was a little scary. And a little daunting at first, trying to compile all the things we needed to get the sound we were looking for. We relied on a lot of friends for a lot of gear. Including our co-producer Kevin McCombs, the engineer on our last record. He was the engineer on this record too, but he sat in the producer seat for a bit as well.

We were able to use his network as well as some of his gear. Overall, it turned out to be super easy. We didn’t have too lofty of a goal. We knew what the record was going to sound like – with our input, we knew what the output would be. The process after we had compiled everything and got the plan together was really laid back. At one point, we put a tiki bar in the guitar tracking room. We were having rum drinks while getting guitar sounds (laughs).

It must’ve been exciting bringing in so many other artists to collab on the album. What do you think they brought to the table?

They completely tied the record together. How a lot of those features came about was there was a bit of blank space. We had fleshed out the songs for the most part, but there were these gaping holes, and we didn’t know what to do. What ended up being the S.A. Martinez feature was a hardcore breakdown dance section where we had no clue what to do vocally. Organically, through the friend we wrote the song with, S.A. ended up filling in the space. The same thing happened with Softcult. We toured with them last year and became friends. I think I actually sent them the song while we were on tour and asked if they could help.

It all just came about organically. It’s crazy; we didn’t really have to go back and forth with these artists. We didn’t even have most of them in the studio with us. We had Dave (Marion, Fear Before) with us since I was doing some work in Denver at the time. We had Kamtin (Mohager, Heavenward) because he’s in L.A., and he was a co-writer on the song. With the other features, we sent them a track, and they sent their version back. These artists are just so good at what they do. We didn’t have to give them any direction or question what they were doing. It all just came together.

Do you have a favourite song on the record?

This is tough! All of them have something that I love.

I have to break this down, as each of them scratch a bit of a different itch for me. Dark Sky just makes me so fucking happy whenever I get to the S.A. feature. I’ve been hearing his voice through my car speakers and home stereos since I was a kid. My favourite riff and song to play is Sunshine. I don’t know if we’ll ever beat that riff.

Sound-wise, and the one that makes me think I can’t believe we did that, it’s Sprawled. The saxophone at the end takes it to a whole new level and makes me feel like I’m listening to a Bruce Springsteen record. It’s something I never thought I’d experience while in this project.