Telltale: Speaking For The Apocalyptic Generation

Pop-punk collective TELLTALE are putting their own unique twist on misery. Shedding the skin of their ‘Timeless Youths’, fresh EP Lie Your Way Out showcases a more mature, unrestrained sound; tracks transcend beyond the constraints of pop-punk, toying with electronic bursts and alt-rock flares in a way that feels fresh and refined. Delving into themes of mental health, environmental decline and the struggles of being out on the road, this is an EP eager to be honest – but still dead-set on making you scream your heart out. We had a chat with bassist Tim Fogg and guitarist Bryce Marshall about the new release, exploring the importance of lyrical honesty, lockdown catharsis and… monster trucks?

Lie Your Way Out comes three years after the band’s debut EP Timeless Youth – and a lot has changed. “Personally, Tim and I both got married, bought houses, John moved from, like, Virginia, to Tennessee and Nashville,” Bryce tells us. “Everybody’s just doing all sorts of stuff, starting jobs, leaving jobs…“ And, of course, a degree of maturity has come as a result, Tim explains. “For the Timeless Youth record, I feel like everybody was a bit younger – a bit more naïve as far as how the world works, how the music industry works.”

Timeless Youth captured that much-loved, scrappy pop-punk naivety. “With that EP, we were just really excited to just get out, you know? Play a bunch of fast punk songs, play to as many kids as possible,” Tim says. “This newer record is definitely a transition. Lyrically and emotionally, everybody’s kind of grown up a bit, I feel like you can kind of see that in the tracks. I feel like it’s just more of a complete release.”

Lyrically, this EP is wonderfully cathartic. Tim explains how everyone makes an effort to get involved with the songwriting process, all able to get their own chance to purge some emotions on record – and John is the mastermind behind giving it that sparkly, optimistic sound. “Normally, me, Bryce and Travis will write something that’s and it probably has no melody at all, but then we send it over to John,” Tim says, “and we’re like, ‘hey, here’s a bunch of thoughts that I had at three in the morning – can you make this sound, y’know, less miserable or whatever?’ You send through those lyrics that are really dark and then it’ll go on like our poppiest song – and it just kind of works.”

Bryce explains the approach with Pessimist; “lyrically that song is just like, two thumbs down, rain clouds and everything you don’t want in life, but then like sonically, you’re like, ‘alright, cool!’ Let’s go drive top-down on a sunny day, hanging out with my homies!”

In terms of the contents of the Lie Your Way Out, the themes span from grind of trying to ‘make it’ to environmental woe. Apparently the process was hectic, seeing how themes could tie together like madmen stringing threads between pins on a chaotic pinboard – but everything eventually fell into place. “We brainstormed all sorts of stuff,” Bryce tells us, “like John with Slowburn – he was like, ‘we’ve never written about the environment and I kind of like living here on Earth.’ So we were like, maybe we should touch on that.”

The exploration of mental health is also something close to the hearts of TELLTALE, so was always going to be explored; “The four of us are always pretty open about mental health – we’re not afraid to say how we actually feel,” Bryce says. “There’s always a stigma – like nobody really wants to say that they’re sad, you gotta just put a smile on your face. Mental health is always a topic that we want to dive deep on.” And, given the last few years, the discussion felt more crucial than ever.

A lot of the ideas were originally discussed in late 2019, but the pandemic put off recording until early 2021 – but the themes remained fixed. As Bryce puts it, “the mental health stuff kind of just got even deeper and deeper.” If we consider a track like Cobain, the pandemic’s impact is clear – a track pondering the struggles of touring musicians, touring restrictions over the last few years have only made that more difficult.

With the themes remaining the same, the main sign of the tracks taking longer to be released is the sound. While Cobain’s themes are the same, the sound definitely is not. “When we first wrote Cobain, we actually put the Come As You Are guitar riff in the bridge – and then we were told by our lawyer that we would probably be sued by Courtney Love,” Bryce laughs. Instead, the group went for a different way of honouring the ‘27 Club’ – by honouring the newer era of Soundcloud emo rappers. “We kind of went with a different style there, more trap beats and electronic elements. They’re kind of a nod to emo punk and like the Soundcloud rap scene with like, you know, a lot of them having been dying early and stuff,” Tim explains. “It kind of completely shifted from like a country-type song, and then we added the more, modern elements to it and it kind of shifted the whole vibe.”

But, overall, TELLTALE just want to provide place of solace amidst all the chaos. When considering his favourite track, Bryce admits “it just it changes every day – and that’s why I think I think we captured pretty well – the emotions someone could go through at any time. Like, we have our darker moments, we have those moments where we’re just trying to be happy. You know, our music just helps ride through it all, knowing the world’s kind of on fire behind you.”

And, with that wistful, introspective nugget to ponder over – TELLTALE are off. But not before Tim adds in perhaps the most insightful input of the entire chat: “I love monster trucks. And shitty shark movies.” Well… Good luck finding the nuanced inclusion of those inspirations within the depths of Lie Your Way Out’s lyrics.

Lie Your Way Out is out now via Rude Records.

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