Free Throw: Piecing It Together

Sometimes when a genre gets a little squishy, subject matter gets a little saturated. When black metal became all about burning churches, it burned itself out. When nu metal heroes swapped being angry at their dads to being the dads their kids are angry at, nu metal dried up. These days it feels like emo-pop is about to implode on itself in much the same way the relationships they diarise do. There have been a few saving graces over the years, where bands like THE MENZINGERS and THE WONDER YEARS have let maturity soak their songs in the scent of progression both musically and lyrically, paying homage to their roots without sounding like the oldies still hitting up the club. Whilst it’s been quiet on their fronts, Nashville emo-poppers FREE THROW take the torch and fan the still-lit flames of 2019’s What’s Past Is Prologue with their fourth full-length, Piecing It Together; an album that very much sounds like an aging band piecing it together without compromising their roots. 

“At the end of What’s Past Is Prologue, at that time in my life, I felt like I had gotten better, like I was doing a lot better mentally and physically,” explains vocalist and rhythm guitarist Cory Castro, who is quick to put in perspective the personal growth that permeates Piecing It Together. “Moving on from that, I realised that getting better isn’t like the end, it’s not a finale, there’s no finality to getting better because you don’t just get better once and then you’re better forever, you know, it kind of keeps going back and forth, you just have to maintain your balance. That thought ended up being the thesis of this record.”

For a band who’ve spent their first three records sticking to pop-punk’s time-honoured tradition of telling the stories of their early twenties, FREE THROW – completed by bassist Justin Castro, drummer Kevin Garcia and guitarists Jake Hughes and Lawrence ‘Larry’ Warner – find themselves entering their thirties with fresh perspectives on both their past and their present. It’s ultimately where they set themselves apart from the pack: they’re singing about internal growth, rather than external pain.

“The whole subject matter of What’s Past Is Prologue was about this story of getting better and climbing out of the bottom of this hole and getting back on solid ground. And that’s all fine and dandy, but I think the one thing I’d want people to take away from Piecing It Together is that solid ground still has hills, mountains, and holes, but it’s still just solid ground, you don’t have to be perfect.”

In their early records, you can hear a band on the search for perfect. On Piecing It Together, FREE THROW are simply searching for a sense of parity between the light and the dark. Whilst it’s not been there from the beginning, projecting this battle on to their audience has grown in time as they have as songwriters and as people.

“When we started the band, I kind of just wrote songs about what was going on in my life, and I really didn’t think too hard about it. And then as the band has grown, and gone forward in time, it’s become a really important aspect of the band to me” admits Cory, beaming with pride at his own internal growth and the shared relationship it’s begun with their fans. “That’s why I like to always try to write my lyrics in a way where even if someone isn’t going through the exact same issue as I am, they can still relate to the song in a way that relates to their issue.”

It might sound a little primal for an emo-pop band to simply strip back the layers and sing something relatable, yet it goes deeper than that for Cory and co. It’s a feeling buried deep inside that rises up, manifesting itself within their music: “I think in my subconscious, I write the songs because I have this urge to feel like I’m not alone in what I’m going through, it’s kind of my way of reaching out, in a way it’s like my therapy. I can’t imagine doing a FREE THROW record without laying it all on the line.”

As much as pouring his heart and soul into his music is his way of holding his own therapy sessions, Cory isn’t convinced that everything’s all doom and gloom. Ever since 2014’s Those Days Are Gone, FREE THROW have thrown in a number of references, from It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia to their own songs. However, as new songs Worry Seed and Second Wind suggest, it’s Pokemon that really brings them to life. It’s been a part of the band’s DNA since day one.

“I love Pokemon, me and Larry both have Pokeballs tattooed on our wrists. That’s like the first tattoo I ever got. We were drunk one night, when I was like 22 and he was like, ‘do you want to get tattooed tomorrow?’ and I was like, sure. He’s like ‘do you want to get a Pokeball on your wrist?’ So I’m like, yeah, let’s do it cause I thought he was just joking. So the next day, he called me and we went to the tattoo shop, he had already made appointments and everything. I was like, dude, how did you even remember this?”

Whilst their younger selves found fun in a virtual world, their older counterparts seek solace from the real world. Their tendency to take inspiration from Pokemon, and reference it’s worlds, is their escape from the darkness of the music they make. “I think It’s definitely a bit of an escape, that’s another reason why we like our shows to be fun, and wild and a crazy good time rather than people just  dreading everything standing around,” he explains. “It’s like the nice side of the window; you can be upset and you can look outside and see it’s still a nice sunny day. So, if I’m gonna make songs that are really sad and put it out there honestly, I just don’t feel comfortable standing up there and being sad. Performing is the time of my life, I can’t help but be stoked. I definitely think that’s a really cool aspect of it, that we have all these songs that are deep and sad at times, yet our shows don’t ever seem to be.”

No matter which way you paint it, Piecing It Together is the sound of FREE THROW seeing their same lives from different angles. It’s something that not only feeds into their lyrics, but into their music too. Seeking the sonic maturity their minds were evolving into, they dove deeper into the bands they love – namely THE MENZINGERS, who make them feel like ‘they’re definitely in our thirties’ and THE WONDER YEARS. “I think if you’re into this genre of music a lot, you are at least into something from them at one point, I’m sure. Before this record, I started listening to some of their later records a little bit more and listening to Dan Campbell‘s songwriting and how personal it is, but how much you can still hear the storytelling and the growth in it.”

With that in mind, they found themselves teaming up with Will Yip, the very same producer who helped make magic with the aforementioned bands. Together, they unlocked a flurry of creative freedom they once thought impossible to hit, Cory explains, “when we’re writing records, it’s usually based around touring, so we’re always in FREE THROW mode. We’re always saying ;this is what FREE THROW would sound like’ whereas with writing this record, I was able to step outside of our box because I wasn’t constantly thinking about FREE THROW. I felt free to explore music without having to worry about what we have to sound like.”

No matter what stage of their journeys they’re at, FREE THROW are a band beginning to grow without crushing where they came from. It’s something so few bands hanging around the emo-pop parade ever manage to muster, yet they’re putting positivity on a pedestal whilst they’re Piecing It Together. 

Piecing It Together is out now via Triple Crown Records. 

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