Yours Truly: Self Care 101
YOURS TRULY are one with success written in their cards since the beginning, securing major success with the launch of their debut EP Afterglow that took them to just you know, casually going on a few tours with pop-punk alumni SUM 41 or STATE CHAMPS, or landing themselves on major festival bills like Download or Sad Summer Festival. These Australian heavyweight newcomers are bursting at the seams with new life, bringing a vivaciously punk attitude mixed with some nostalgic 00s pop-punk riffs that remind you why making and listening to music is so fun. It’s just good, catchy and exciting. We’ve sat down with Mikaila Delgado to unravel the past year of success and what comes next with their new album, Self Care.
“It’s very surreal, it all just happened,” she says in awe, Delgado explained that when moving so fast in this industry it’s hard to appreciate everything but with Coronavirus causing a grand halt to all of that, seeing the loving online response has “been very weird.” Despite the ongoing lockdown YOURS TRULY are geared up for their first LP, Self Care, something Delgado says she hopes this album “takes us to that next level so that we can keep building.”
Self Care is an introspective glimpse into the band’s personal struggles that, rather than take the approach of unknowing hope, embraces the emotions and goes through the waves of coping with one’s struggles. “In our past,” the singer explains, “it’s always been ‘I’m strong and things suck but we’ll get through it’ and I think this is the first time that I’ve been like, ‘this sucks and that’s all I have to say about it.’” Delgado elaborates that she’s no professional, “I don’t think that I can educate people on mental health because I still don’t even know what’s going on with mine. But it was the first time that we sat down and that we [the band] all collectively like spoke about our mental health and conveying it to people for the first time in your life is a really odd experience. I’ve been best friends with like, you know, these guys for years.”
She continues, “and it was really the first time I sat down and I was like, actually I don’t feel okay and this is why. It brought us like so much closer together.” She then explains that there’s no direct or deeply conceptual theme to the album, but instead it pushes honesty and transparency with herself, her bands mates and her audience. “We’ve always wanted is just to have this sense of honesty, almost for it to kind of sound like you’re reading a diary or a journal. I always like the last song of the album’s called Heart Sleeve because that was the original concept.”
As we peel back the layers of this album, one prominent theme is anxiety. It is common that people approach inpatient alcohol rehab LA to get rid off drug addiction that happened out of anxiety and stress.And so, Delgado details her anxiety of living up to Afterglow’s success in the track Together, as we speak she explains the stress leading up to this album. She describes it as “very up and down, especially as I got closer to the album. There were days where I was giving myself huge anxiety about getting it done and just thinking we weren’t going to be able to do something that was going to live up to everyone’s expectations. After having that year that with Download and going overseas, we got all these great offers – it was like ‘okay if this first album isn’t amazing it’s going to look like we didn’t deserve any of that and that we were just lucky’.” She notes that her band mates were what really pulled her through, “I was forcing myself so much and I couldn’t come up with anything that I liked, that was the toughest part. I’m really lucky that I have the guys, they’re all so good. I was definitely the most stressed out of all of them and I didn’t think they let me see how stressed they were also about it.”
Having such cathartic lyrics makes sense for the band, Delgado says their main inspirations are PIERCE THE VEIL and BASEMENT, two bands with lyrical powerhouses in their albums. The lyrical content of this album. Embedded into this album are themes of loneliness, death, anxiety, depression, topics which resonate with many in today’s current state. “I hope that people can listen to the album and then, hopefully not relate to going through anything upsetting, but if they do they have that they can listen and think ‘I’ve gone through something similar’ there’s a sense of strength. I hope it makes people happy at the same time, I hope people want to listen to it and enjoy it.”
Delgado finished by saying that she hopes this next era will take them somewhere new, possibly to a whole other level. “I guess I want it [Self Care] to take us to that next level,” she says. “The EP did so much for us, it kind of introduced us to a bit of the world and gave us the opportunity to go overseas. I’m just really hoping that this album kind of like sets it in stone a little bit. I’m hoping this takes us to that next spot so that we can keep building.”
Self Care is out now via UNFD.
Like YOURS TRULY on Facebook.