On ‘Spiral in a Straight Line’, Touché Amoré‘s Jeremy Bolm and co. navigate a labyrinth of anxiety, existential dread, and the weight of borrowed time, crafting their most challenging and dynamic album yet. Check out our latest Upset cover story.
Words: Rob Mair.
Photos: Sean Stout.
“As someone who is part of the band and who has listened to this record a billion times now, I can hear every second where we’re on edge. I can hear where it feels like we’re coming apart. It only adds to the record.”
Touché Amoré’s Jeremy Bolm has been through the wringer on 2016’s astonishingly powerful ‘Stage Four’ and 2020’s equally potent ‘Lament’. It would have been easy to coast and dial one in for new album ‘Spiral in a Straight Line’, but the Californian hardcore heroes excel when they’re pushed to their limit. This desire to hit new watermarks has meant that the quintet (completed by Elliot Babin, Clayton Stevens, Nick Steinhardt and Tyler Kirby) have once again found new ways to reach catharsis through their music.
That we have a new record just four years after ‘Lament’ is remarkable, given how busy Touché Amoré have been. Anniversaries for their breakout ‘Parting the Sea Between Brightness and Me’ and follow-up ‘Is Survived By’ have monopolised the band’s time – not to mention their own 15th anniversary, which saw them play a handful of celebration shows last year. The band have clocked up some serious air miles this year, too, playing shows everywhere from Mexico, Australia and the UK.
And then there’s the extra-curricular activities. Jeremy managed to fit in a cameo opposite Daniel Radcliffe in 2022’s Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, playing the wonderfully named Jeremy Barf, while his record label Secret Voice has ramped up business, releasing some of the best hardcore, emo and screamo of the last few years, capped off by the outstanding compilation ‘Balladeers, Redefined’. He’s also the host of his own hugely successful podcast, TheFirstEver.
“There’s been a lot on my plate,” laughs Jeremy as we discuss this jam-packed four years. “It’s hard sometimes to feel like we’re not all on borrowed time, so in a way, I think this is playing into my head a little bit. I don’t know if it’s getting older or what, but the idea of being as productive as possible has been at the forefront of my mind a little bit. Not that I’ve ever not been too productive for my own good in the past, but now it feels so much more ramped up.”
In many ways, such a reflection is pertinent to the new album. ‘Spiral in a Straight Line’ may lack the cohesive narrative of ‘Stage Four’, which centred on the passing of Jeremy’s mother, or the thematic resonance of ‘Lament’, but it nevertheless has a through line. Being busy to the point of overload perhaps feeds into this idea of spiralling, but it’s also emphasised by the claustrophobic sense of foreboding which runs through every song.
“This record took a year to write – and a lot can happen in a year,” says Jeremy. “So, the overarching theme is this anxiety or dread that we can all feel, collectively, but also about all those dramatic life events that can happen in a year and how we move through those.
“I think the main symptom of it – especially in the title – is the idea of trying to keep focus while everything around you feels chaotic. It’s about keeping up appearances, staying straight, and seeming like you’re OK while everything else around you falls by the wayside.”
Tracks like the oppressive ‘Force of Habit’ and ‘Routines’ – two sides of the same coin – point to this sense of unravelling; one explores the compulsion to repeat habits, the other the power of routines, given the feeling of comfort one can take from such actions.
This idea is even more pronounced in the propulsive ‘Disasters’, which draws upon cataclysmic imagery of fault lines, avalanches and flash floods to hammer home the message.
Often, people give hardcore short shrift for the lyricism, but Jeremy’s penchant for poetry is put to excellent use here; you’ll be hard-pressed to find a more visceral and vivid song this year.
‘For Spiral in a Straight Line’, the band again teamed up with producer Ross Robinson. Given his ability to challenge the band and drive at the meaning of the songs, once again paid handsome dividends – and ‘Disasters’ is one such song to reap the benefits.
“He doesn’t do it every time, but when we’re talking through how we’re going to record a song – the motivation, how we’re feeling, what inspired it – all those sorts of conversations, and occasionally he’ll say, ‘Just focus on a line in the song’. That song has the line ‘It’s a torrential downpour on a rough patch’ – and I’m pretty proud of that. He was like, ‘Just focus on that, keep that image in your head’, and that became the synopsis for the entire song.”
The band had previously worked with Robinson on ‘Lament,’ where he took them far outside their comfort zone. Unperturbed and somewhat inspired by the previous effort, the band asked him to helm production duties again after he attended one of their 15th-anniversary shows.
“I say this with so much love, but it was definitely a double-edged sword,” says Jeremy when discussing reuniting with the legendary At The Drive-In producer (and cited godfather of nu-metal). “You go into the process saying, ‘Well, I know what to expect now, I know what the process is’, but Ross isn’t someone that will let you skate by. I spoke to him at that anniversary show and said we wanted to do the next record with him, and he said, ‘Next time, we’re going to go deeper’. I was like, ‘Oh, shit! I don’t even know what that means’. Then, you get in the room with him, and he’s got a whole new bag of tricks.
“I think intent is so dramatically important when making a record. Like, there’s nothing wrong with going into a record feeling positive about working with someone who is really fucking great at getting tones and making it sound great. There are a million landmark albums that have been recorded that way. Ross is brilliant at getting all that stuff, too, but we were going into the studio feeling ‘I don’t know what’s going to happen today’ or ‘I don’t know where these songs are getting pushed’.”
“This record took a year to write, and a lot can happen in a year”
Jeremy Bolm
The results speak for themselves. At turns, ‘Spiral in a Straight Line’ is their most accessible record; songs like ‘Hal Ashby’, which is named after the Harold and Maude film director and is about being misunderstood, sees the band land firmly in indie-punk territory.
Yet, it also contains some of their most challenging and weird songs to date. Notably, ‘Mezzanine’ is a chaotic and ferocious two minutes while ‘Altitude’ is a broody mid-paced number that serves as the centrepiece of an album choc-full of peaks and valleys. As an album, it flows beautifully, never resting for too long in quiet or intense moments. Bolder still, it really takes off in the closing triumvirate of songs – ‘Subversion (Brand New Love)’, which features Sebadoh and Dinosaur Jr legend Lou Barlow, ‘The Glue’ and the Julien Baker-backed ‘Goodbye For Now’.
“I hate to say it, but we live in this world where streaming has violated the idea of what an album is, so the back halves of records don’t get the same listens as the front half – whether that’s through attention span or playlisting of the singles or whatever. So, I think this mentality did creep into our decision-making in this album, where we were like, ‘No, let’s spread this all out, so the back half doesn’t just have the slower songs, let’s keep the energy fluctuating throughout the whole thing.”
It’s not the first time Touché Amoré have teamed up with Julien, with Jeremy saying she’s now the band’s MVP, while getting to work with an alt-rock icon like Lou Barlow was a privilege for Jeremy.
“This is the most thrilling part of the record for me,” he says. “The song that we reference, ‘Brand New Love’ by Sebadoh, that’s in my top 20 favourite songs of all time. So, when I wrote the song [‘Subversion’], I referenced the lyrics, but then I realised you can sing the chorus to ‘Brand New Love’ over the outro. They’re completely different sounding songs, but it actually works.”
The band then demoed the song using their friend Alex Estrada, who recorded ‘…To the Beat of a Dead Horse’ – “I think of him as our sixth member,” says Jeremy – before deciding to record the song with a guest contributor.
“I just got a wild air in my ass and was like ‘Why don’t we just ask Lou Barlow?’ It’s like the most brazen ask in the world – ‘Can you sing YOUR song on MY song’. It’s absurdly odd, and I am so aware of how crazy that request is. So, I got his information, wrote him a super thoughtful email, I sent him the lyrics, the demo with Alex Estrada, and the motivation behind the song. He wrote back and said, ‘This sounds like fun’. I could not believe it.”
Indeed, Jeremy seems genuinely humbled at how it all transpired, but this is a measure of the person he is. At the top of the call, he’ll apologise for missing a prior meeting after getting caught in the chaotic flight delays caused by the CrowdStrike tech blowout. “I just want you to know that I don’t feel like my time is more valuable than yours,” he’ll say with sincerity. Elsewhere, he’ll talk about his enjoyment of doing his podcast, where the focus isn’t on him, or the joy he gets from running the label, where he gets to elevate the work of other artists, like Soul Glo and Sonagi. He’ll even talk about his excitement from being invited to podcasts to talk about his favourite records.
Of course, when talking about Touché Amoré, the focus is often squarely on him, meaning he must face surgical questions about his lyrics or trauma. Nevertheless, he’s philosophical about this demand, continuously generous with his time, and appreciative of how doing this can benefit the band.
But this year, the stakes are raised. October will mark the tenth anniversary since the passing of his mother, which happened while the band appeared at Gainesville’s punk rock mecca, Fest. At the time Jeremy got the call, he was on stage performing with the band at the venue Eight Seconds (now called the Vivid Music Hall). This year – barely three weeks after the new album drops – they will find themselves back at Fest for the first time since her passing.
“Gainesville has always been a landmark spot for all of us,” considers Jeremy. “We haven’t been back in 10 years, and for me, I want to own it, take it back and have this new memory of Fest. It won’t fully replace the situation, but at the same time, there’s something special about going back and having this happen.
“I had a conversation with Pierce from Soul Glo about it, and I said that was my motivation for wanting to go to Fest. He looked at me and was like, ‘Are you trying to hurt yourself?’ I laughed and was like, ‘You’re not wrong!’”
If that doesn’t embody Touché Amoré and the motivation behind ‘Spiral in a Straight Line’, then we don’t know what does… ■
Touché Amoré’s album ‘Spiral in a Straight Line’ is out 11th October 2024. Follow Upset’s Spotify playlist here.
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