Yours Truly Reflect On Forthcoming Album ‘Toxic’
‘It is a reflection of the past record, ‘Is This What I Look Like?’ and the song ‘Lights On’ and all the other stuff, that it’s kind of talking about, a lot of this record is of the things that happened in that touring cycle and the people that aren’t in our lives anymore. So I think little East eggs to be found like that, this is what this is about.’
Mikaila Delgado, vocalist and lyricist of Sydney’s Yours Truly explains the link in tracks such as Call My Name and Let Go from the stunning new album Toxic to the bands previous release Is This What I Look Like? Call them Easter eggs, call it progression, maybe even closure, one thing that is undeniable is the band have thrown their collective might into the new record and already it’s beginning to pay dividends as both Delgado and guitarist Teddie Winder-Heron share their thoughts with me.
Mikaila: ‘I think that after putting out our one album and then ‘Is What I Look Like?, with this record, it was a decision to be ‘are we going to do this now?’ We’ve gone through a lot of really tough shit. Do we continue? It’s been hard, and once we agreed that we were going to continue, it was like, ‘okay, let’s just write the best album ever that we possibly can create, that Yours Truly can create, at this moment in time.’ Taking all the things that we had learned, but then also putting ourselves in positions where we got to learn even more, opening ourselves up to working with other people and really out of our comfort zone. You’re going to go sit in this room with this really talented writer, you need to sing good and perform and hopefully make them feel like they made a good decision to spend the day with you. I think also as a vocalist, I just wanted to take all the things that I had learned on tour and put them in an album, showing that we’ve grown a lot as a band, as musicians.’
Teddie: ‘We did take a little bit from what we’ve learned from the last two albums and what our fans like as well. I think that was a good gauge of this is what we are doing best and obviously it meets and ties with what we thought, what we liked with what we did in those albums. Took it on to this and then just like, yep, let’s do this. Let’s go with this. And yeah, worked out really well.’
The album itself is still has the trademark catchiness, bounce and effervescence expected from Yours Truly, yet this album is named Toxic for a reason which underlines the musical and lyrical context throughout. A sound that is more passionate, emotional and maybe even a touch venomous at points. Bringing in Ocean Grove’s Sam Bassal as producer pushes the band to explore those depths and, as one track is called, Let Go.
Mikaila: ‘I loved working with Sam. He taught me how to stay true to what people know you as. He would say to me, ‘you need to still be Yours Truly, but you also need to try other things’. So finding a good mix between I really want to do something like this, but also I don’t really want people to listen to this and be like, who is this kind of thing? So he was really good at helping us find the middle place, he was great to work with in the way that it was comfortable. I guess a band like Ocean Grove, like you said, what they’ve done in the past is just so innovative, I think to have someone that was so innovative like that, to listen to our songs and be like, oh, we could do something like this too. We could do something like that. Just hearing the way that he works was really interesting as well.’
Innovation is there throughout from opening track Back 2 U, the emotional beautifully All That I’m Not and a drum and bass influenced Love Feels Like which the pair cheekily say is inspired from their time living in Manchester to which this Mancunian actually has to acknowledge. On a serious note, lyrically, the album’s title gives away what it’s about, toxic relationships. You sense throughout there is well of deep pain, perhaps betrayal even. What you also sense is an intense cathartic exorcism.
Mikaila: ‘I think that I have always wanted to write in a way that it’s a journal entry. In all of our past releases it’s always been like that. This time around, I didn’t really write during a lot of the hard stuff that I had gone through, we had gone through as a band, just because it was really hard. I think it was probably one of the most difficult times in my life personally. So I took a big break off writing, so that when I came back to write this record, instead of dealing with my emotions as I was writing them, I was like, oh, I’ve already kind of dealt with these emotions. I’m going to write about all the things, all the different versions of how I felt about these situations in multiple different songs. It definitely felt like when I finished tracking the record, I all of a sudden just kind of didn’t really feel sad about those things anymore. They didn’t bother me anymore. It was like it was a release. I’ve always been best just writing a song and being like, there they go. You can, what was that word? Interpret that as you wish.’
With new drummer Henry ‘The Golden Retriever’ Beard on board, it’s not just lyrically the band stretched themselves as musically, the years of touring the world as well as their own driven nature, inspires themselves to go deeper than from previous releases.
Teddie: ‘I think it’s changed in the way that we’ve learned a lot just from being in the studio as well as on tour and thinking about what sonically works for what we’re trying to achieve. When we’ve kind of got an idea of like, okay, this is the song we want to write, or this is the kind of album we want to write, it’s getting more of a clearer picture of how to make those things come to life as well as how they’re going to translate to a live show. The other half of it is making sure that as good as it sounds on a record, you want to make sure that when you’re promoting that record to thousands of people across the world live, you want to make sure that it’s sounding just as good, if not better, thinking about ways that you can serve the songs better in a live performance compared to in the studio as well.‘
One guest on the album is Bloom’s Jono Hawkey who lends his vocals on Sinking, and delivered under unique pressure a deliciously gruesome take. Also deliciously humorous is Mikaila’s word for word recollection of how it came about.
Mikaila: ‘We’ve known him for a couple of years now, and when I asked him to be on the song, he was like, ‘Yeah, sick. Let’s do it’. Sent me a little demo of what he wanted to do and I was like, ‘Yeah, cool. When can you track it?’ And he was like, ‘I’m going on tour for ages.’ And I was like, ‘Cool. So we have this date that the album’s due.’ And he was like, ‘I get back the day before that day.’ And I’m like, ‘Cool, well do you mind flying in from Japan after being on tour for a really long time and going straight to Sam’s house, tracking the vocal and then going home?!’ And he was like, ‘I guess I have to do that!’ So I wasn’t even there. They would just send me – because they were in Melbourne, I was in Sydney – and they were just sending us photos, videos and stuff while they were doing it. But it sounds awesome. I think that he is a great vocalist, so I’m really stoked have him on the album.’
The band will play some acoustic shows on the East Coast before heading out to play the famous Reading and Leeds festival in the UK before a short European tour is followed onto the US with Enter Shikari which means your best opportunity to get close with the band in the short term is the new album Toxic out on August 16.
Interview By Iain McCallum
Toxic is out on Friday August 16, Pre-Order/ Pre-Save HERE…
