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Tiana Speter

EXCLUSIVE: Diving Into The Artists That Inspired Touchè Amorè's New Album

"The Venn diagram between Death Cab For Cutie and Converge" - Touchè Amorè's Jeremy Bolm takes us behind some of the listening habits that influenced the end result for their sprawling and stunning upcoming new album Spiral In A Straight Line.

Touchè Amorè | Photo Credit: Sean Stout
 

Releasing their first album in four years later this week, Touchè Amorè once again showcase their ability to fuse emotion with unbridled energy. Aptly summed up by Metal Injection as "too heavy for pop-punk, not heavy enough for hardcore", Touchè Amorè are that rare breed of band that can sonically wallop you in the solar plexus without leaving a devastating mark. Capturing pain and beauty in a consistently unique take on their own rock tropes, Touchè Amorè prove once more that their cult-like status is no mere fluke on their upcoming album Spiral In A Straight Line, due out this Friday 11 October via Rise Records. And ahead of the release of Spiral In A Straight Line, the band's outrageously talented frontman Jeremy Bolm spent some time with The Soundcheck's Tiana Speter to dive into his own listening habits that played a part in the creation of  Spiral In A Straight Line, as well as a peek into the broader listening habits of the band overall. What do Rancid and Carly Rae Jepsen have in common? Read on....



 

JEREMY'S LISTENING REPERTOIRE

  • They had re-released it, but the Stop Making Sense, the Talking Heads live album is definitely one for me! They put it back in theatres here, and I went and saw it - and I just became obsessed with that live record. 


  • Another one is Arab Strap from Scotland, they put out this album, and I encourage everyone to look at the album cover for it because it is incredible! The album is called I’m totally fine with it 👍 don’t give a fuck anymore 👍, with the emojis officially included in the title. It’s the most apathetic title I’ve ever seen. And what I’m assuming has happened, the art director sent them this cover, and the title was the response, that text. It’s literally printed on the album cover, and it’s the most apathetic thing I’ve seen done in music in a very long time. It’s incredible. And the icon, their picture in the text message on the cover, it’s the band cheersing these girly drinks. It’s so fucking good. And the record is incredible. They’re a very snarky, sinister, cynical sort of Glasgow band. Really, really good, and that’s one of my favourite records of the year, that’s for sure!


  • I was also listening to a lot of Galaxie 500, that shoegaze sort of band, that is definitely another one happening behind this record.


  • A little behind the scenes trivia, the song called Mezzanine on Spiral In A Straight Line is a reference to the Massive Attack record Mezzanine. In the lyrics I say I’m listening to Mezzanine and going over everything. And it’s funny because it’s the most hyper aggressive song on our record. But Massive Attack’s Mezzanine is a very chilled out, sexy sort of record. There’s a bit of a dichotomy there for sure.


  • I’ll also name drop a record that just came out that I really love, which is a singer-songwriter here in L.A. called Christian Lee Hutson, he just put out an album on Anti [Records], it’s his third record called Paradise Pop. 10. I think he’s such a good lyricist. He’s got a lot of Elliott Smith energy to him. So if you like Elliott Smith, there are things that you’ll certainly like about Christian. He works closely with Phoebe Bridgers, she produced his last record, and she sings on this one again. He is fantastic. And there's a funny wild backstory where I had interviewed him on my show and he all of a sudden was like, “wait a minute, are you in a band with Elliot Babin?,” who is our drummer in Touchè Amorè. And I said, “yes!”. Get this: Elliot Babin, my drummer, played drums on a talent show performance with Christian when they were both in high school. Elliot was in ninth grade, he was in senior year, and they did a Metallica cover together, which had my brain melting. I was like, “wait, what?!”. So I went to Elliot and I was like, “do you know Christian Lee Hutson?”. And he was like, “oh my god, I haven't thought about that guy since I was a kid. We played a Metallica cover together!”. Smallest world possible. I was a fan of him already, but then hearing that, it was crazy! We did the podcast together, but we still haven’t really met in person yet.





THE BROADER TOUCHÈ AMORÈ LISTENING REPERTOIRE

I've often said that Touchè has about five bands that we can all agree on. Maybe five, or at least four out of five. There's usually the one holdout, so it can never make the full five. But when I list off the five, I think it sonically makes a lot of sense for how we sound:


  • Converge is a band that we all like, all five of us.

  • Envy, a band from Japan, they're a band that we all like as well. 

  • Jimmy World is a band that we all like. 

  • Death Cab For Cutie is also a band that we all like.

  • And lastly: Rancid.


What’s interesting though is I feel like if you put all of those into a blender, it kind of sounds like us. The Venn diagram between Death Cab For Cutie and Converge.


Those are five bands that each one of us on our own enjoy. It's tough because Elliot, our drummer, he's not someone who's out looking for new music. He has listened to the same fucking five things, so much so that every time I ask him what he's been listening to, it's always Yo La Tengo - and they just continue to put out records,it just keeps him interested. But he likes Yo La Tengo, The Beach Boys, The Weakerthans, Rancid…I think that might be the only music he likes.


Whereas then our bass player, Tyler [Kirby], he likes The Beatles, Elliott Smith, those are pretty much the main two things he listens to and he spends his time just basically learning how to play every song from each one of them on guitar. That's his life. 


Clayton [Stevens] listens to a lot of different stuff. He is the one with his ear to the ground mostly, especially when it comes to newer punk and hardcore and stuff like that. He's super invested into that world. He plays in another band called Entry, so he's constantly playing shows with a lot of these newer bands and stuff like that. He very much keeps up with the current hardcore and punk bands. 


And Nick [Steinhardt] does not listen to anything aggressive at all. He just listens to Tom Petty and pop music. 


Oh! And Elliot really likes Carly Rae Jepsen





TOUCHÈ AMORÈ

New album Spiral In A Straight Line due out Friday 11 October via Rise Records.

More info here.

 

BY TIANA SPETER


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