It looks like a simple idea when it’s written down. But for the Flatliners, a Toronto punk band who’ve been on tour pretty much non-stop for the last decade, it sparked a sort of quiet revolution in their ranks. What if, instead of grinding through the gears of writing a new record while quite literally doing the same in the van, they just...went home for a while?
“You start a band when you’re a teenager, like we did, and then you hit the road and don’t look back, right out of high school,” frontman Chris Cresswell says. “And then you realise, ‘Shit, I’ve been on the road for 10 years’. No joke. I’ve missed so much.”
After some sporadic touring (by their standards) following the release of ‘Division of Spoils’, a collection of b-sides and curios, in 2015, the Flatliners retired to Toronto and adapted to several changes in circumstances that would help pave the way for ‘Inviting Light’, their fifth album and their first for Rise. Cresswell moved to the other side of the city, they lost their long-time rehearsal room and each member set about spending the sort of time with friends and family that hadn’t been on the docket for a long while.
If you’re into the idea that the circumstances surrounding a record will form part of its DNA, then you can file ‘Inviting Light’ away as compelling evidence. It’s the latest in a line of partial reinventions by the band, who’ve shifted from the hyper-kinetic ska-punk of their ‘Destroy to Create’ debut through their punchy, breakneck Fat Wreck years, which yielded an excellent trio of LPs in ‘The Great Awake’, ‘Cavalcade’ and ‘Dead Language’, to arrive at an almost serene, golden-hued rock album.
Make no mistake, ‘Inviting Light’ is a departure. Where previous releases have sought to kick the listeners’ teeth in with their opening gambits (say hi to July! August! Reno!, Calming Collection and Resuscitation of the Year), here Mammals displays a more considered, melodic set of aims.
It’s emblematic of the record’s shift towards peppy guitars and hooks, tied together by Cresswell’s weathered, adaptable croon, but also a statement by a band who, perhaps surprisingly for some, appreciate the changing faces of Wilco and are happy to follow the Clash down the rabbit holes that popped up around ‘London Calling’ and ‘Sandinista!’. “I love music so much,” Cresswell says, with an edge to his voice. “It’s our lives. Music shouldn’t be about staying in your lane.”
“The band is 15 years old now,” he continues. “It’s such a cliché, but you get to this age and you start reflecting. You start thinking about your life: past, present and future. And being in a band, with that outlet to write about it, it can be a really powerful thing. Feeling your age, knowing that where you come from is a good place, and being super proud of what you’ve accomplished with your friends. And making sure that you don’t get bored or comfortable. Trying something new. You never know what’s going to happen tomorrow or on the next tour.
“I’d like to say it just happened and it kinda did. But because we moved out of our jam space, because we were renting hourly rooms, we had so much more time to talk about how we wanted to do things. To say we had to be more economical with our time sounds so lame, but we had to trust our gut and go with our instincts. We never had to watch the clock at the jam space. That was a new thing for the first time in nine or 10 years.”
Beneath the surface, specifically on the lyric sheet, you’ll find choppy waters, though. As much as ‘Inviting Light’ is an open, positive musical experience its accompanying words betray Cresswell’s anxiety at the 24/7 culture that has become normal to us. Whether you’re talking a morning scroll through the assorted miseries documented on Twitter while you were asleep or a work email account that pings through dinner, that encroaching feeling of saturation is a major undercurrent here. On Hang My Head, he barks: “All my friends are nervous wrecks.”
“It’s an overwhelming time to be alive, hopefully for a lot of people in a good way,” Cresswell says. “But for a lot of people it’s in a bad way. The number of social anxieties that are popping up now is a lot. It’s good that people are talking about it. I’m sure people have felt like this for decades but when our parents and grandparents were kids there wasn’t a name for all this stuff. It’s different. The president of the United States is an internet troll. That’s basically the epitome of what the human race has come to. It’s embarrassing. I get to go into my own brain about it and write about it and try and figure it out. I never will, but I’ll always have something to talk about and think about and write about.
“I worry for what’s to come for generations in the future. What’s next in this always being on culture? Always being reachable. It’s kinda creepy. You can use these methods of communication for good things but I don’t know if a lot of people do. It creates this second life. It’s the perception you want people to have of you. It can take over. I don’t want my friends’ kids, or my little cousins to never speak to people in person, never call people. I don’t want face to face encounters to go away.
"Your alarm is on your phone to wake you up, so you pick up your phone to turn your alarm off and you’re lying in bed and you’re just cruising on your phone for half an hour: I have this many text messages, I have this many emails. I get overwhelmed. I just want to throw the thing out the window, but I can’t because then no-one can get hold of me and you have to be reachable.”
On Human Party Trick, meanwhile, Cresswell transposes the idea to encompass his unease at the expectations that sometimes land on his shoulders as the band’s mouthpiece: press, post-show hangouts when you just want to sleep...that sort of stuff. “I don’t mean boo-hoo or fuckin’ feel bad for me, but it is a weird thing sometimes,” he says. It’s one of the album’s best songs - a hook-laden piece that bounds from a widescreen riff to a satisfyingly crunchy conclusion - and neatly weaves together some of the lessons that have sunk in during the Flatliners’ tenure.
When the band formed in 2002 they were 15 and this year they’ll turn 30. That’s plenty of water under a bunch of bridges. It’s also a lot of moments where those closest to Cresswell, guitarist Scott Brigham, bassist Jon Darbey and drummer Paul Ramirez had to live with the fact that, eventually, they’d pack up the flight cases and disappear through the door again.
“Most of us have been lucky enough to have those people in our lives, those partners who have been with us for a while and I guess, in a way, it’s all they know about us,” he says. “They have to be OK with us being away all the time and we know we’re lucky to have them. That goes for friends and family, too. You miss a lot when you’re away on tour. You get into this weird headspace sometimes when you’ve been away, especially when you’re deep in the weeds on a really long tour.
"You get this self imposed guilt trip and you beat yourself up over it, at least I do sometimes. And then it turns into a song and you sing that song for months on the road and it’s this weird vicious cycle. But that’s a lot of being an artist. You look for something to torture you, in a way, so you can keep going. It’s a weird way to live, but we’re lucky to have people in our lives who understand it.”
There will need to be a measure of understanding when ‘Inviting Light’ hits the ears of long-time listeners for the first time. Even the band’s close friends, in fact, took a few spins to get locked in with it. But once you’re in, you’re in.
From the gossamer guitar line at the centre of Indoors to the drawled chorus of Unconditional Love and Infinite Wisdom’s lurch back to the old way, it’s an album stacked with risks that largely come off. It’s by people who have put in the hard yards to get here and who don’t much care if you don’t think they’re punk anymore. “We just wanted to be a band,” Cresswell says. “It’s music. It’s art. It’s whatever.”
'Inviting Light' is out on April 7 through Rise Records.
The Menzingers + The Flatliners + The Dirty Nil Upcoming Tour Dates are as follows:
Tue April 18 2017 - SOUTHAMPTON Talking Heads
Wed April 19 2017 - LONDON KOKO
Thu April 20 2017 - MANCHESTER Academy 2
Fri April 21 2017 - BRISTOL Bierkeller
Sat April 22 2017 - GLASGOW Oran Mor
Sun April 23 2017 - DERBY Venue - Derby
Mon April 24 2017 - NORWICH Epic Studios
Click here to compare & buy The Menzingers Tickets at Stereoboard.com.
We don't run any advertising! Our editorial content is solely funded by lovely people like yourself using Stereoboard's listings when buying tickets for live events. To keep supporting us, next time you're looking for concert, festival, sport or theatre tickets, please search for "Stereoboard". It costs you nothing, you may find a better price than the usual outlets, and save yourself from waiting in an endless queue on Friday mornings as we list ALL available sellers!
