'A Distorted Guitar Remains Undefeated': Twin Atlantic's Sam McTrusty on 'Meltdown'
Monday, 05 August 2024
Written by Rishi Shah
Photo: Stevie Kyle
For a man about to check off a long-simmering career goal, Sam McTrusty cuts a jovial, relaxed figure. The Twin Atlantic frontman is calling us en route to soundcheck at Glasgow’s Garage, taking Stereoboard on his journey – quite literally – from home to the venue’s back door, via a brief taxi ride. Tonight will complete a jigsaw puzzle, ticking off the last major venue in their hometown the band are yet to play. “I'm delighted, because now I can literally say that we’ve played every venue in Glasgow,” he beams.
Having moved half the world away earlier this year — to Toronto, more specifically — this summer stint back in the UK has fallen perfectly for Sam, who squeezed in a birthday party for his daughter before a run of intimate Scottish shows, spanning Dunfermline to Stirling. It’s a homecoming – in multiple senses – that helps build up to the arrival of their eighth studio album ‘Meltdown’ on August 9.
Exploding onto the scene with riff-tastic records such as ‘Free’ (2011) and ‘Great Divide’ (2015), Twin Atlantic have revised their sound in recent years, exploring electronica and pop on ‘Power’ (2020) and ‘Transparency’ (2022). ‘Meltdown’ takes things back to square one: it is a deliberate, instinctive return to their roots in the form of an 11-track rock ‘n’ roll epic.
It’s perhaps closer to pop-punk than anything else, channelling Blink-182 and Waterparks on the glorious Stuck In A Car With You and Fall, while World Class Entertainment’s riff is simply built for stadiums. But why now? Why is it the right time to roll back the years?
“There’s a million reasons,” Sam says. “Over the last seven albums, it feels like we learned how to make a rock song better. I'm obviously the most biased guy you’ll ever ask this question to, but I feel like we got better at it.”
He’s right. This is their most consistent album in an age thanks to a simple, effective mission statement. “Let’s just do what we know that we're good at,” Sam says. It became, he says, their “obsession” for the past two years. With a masisve UK tour in the diary for November, here he tells us about the Twin Atlantic live show, the influences behind the album, and the purpose that a bold, loud rock record can still serve in 2024.
How are you feeling ahead of tonight’s hometown show?
We’re like a well-oiled machine at this point. We’re constantly obsessing over how to make the show better, no matter the size of the venue. Last night, we played to 300 people, and we care as much about the details of that as we do when we’re headlining a festival stage. We're putting as much thought into the setlist. We don't really like to be self-indulgent, because rock bands kind of get away with that. You can go away and have an instrumental bit, and all that stuff that rock bands have been egregiously taking advantage of for years. But [people are] there for a night out, and a lot of our songs are big party moments, I suppose, so we like to make sure we're putting on a real event for people, the way we would imagine putting a DJ set together.
Where does that obsession still come from, so far into your career?
It's always right there. It's been the thing that's kept us afloat, this crazy drive and work ethic. Ultimately, under every family in Glasgow, somewhere there's a working-class origin story, and you get instilled with that from an early age. So I think we just transferred it over into being in a band, and I think it’s why we've got a lot of respect for the opportunities that we've been given to travel the world. We just pour all of that gratitude into taking the band really seriously and always pushing to be better. Don't get me wrong, we definitely have our diva moments too!
Having now played every major venue in Glasgow, can you pick out your favourite hometown shows?
The staple [answer] is the Barrowlands, just because of the history of the venue. There's not many venues left in the whole of the UK, to be honest, that have the original interiors from the 1950s. If you're from Glasgow, grandparents, and great-grandparents grew up going there on nights out at the weekend, because it used to be a dance hall before they turned it into a touring venue. It's hard to look past that.
But we're dead lucky that in 2015 we got to headline the big arena here called the Hydro. When we started our band, the venue didn't exist – so it was never really a goal of ours to play, because it literally wasn't there to dream about. It snuck up on us that we ended up booking that show and playing to 13,000 people, and that almost felt like the peak of the band. It’s one of those things that we’re still not really over, all these years later. I'll probably never get used to the idea that we got to do that.
Why was now the right time to lean back into your roots?
Before, we just couldn't bring ourselves to make the same record twice. Even if it was detrimental to success, at least then we'd have a purpose behind making each record. I suppose that we've always known, deep down, that’s what we're best at [writing rock songs] but we really got a lot of self-fulfilment out of constantly searching to see if we were good at something else. That's probably why we've been a band for so long. If we'd made the same album three times over, we probably would get bored, and our fans would get bored, and it wouldn't have been a journey, you know what I mean?
How did you go about the pacing of the album, from the snappy pop-punk through to the slower rock ballads?
The reason why I got into writing songs was listening to bands like Nirvana, Blink-182 – fast-paced and aggressive, but still melodic. All my favourite rock bands have their loud and quiet moments. Everybody loves a big rock ballad. We tried to show, I suppose, more of a human side to being a rock band, where you have these really intimate, vulnerable moments, but we try to make them as widescreen and cinematic as possible. I try to always reflect that when we put an album together, both sides of what I love about ambitious, big rock songs.
You mentioned your original influences, but did any recent artists shape the inception of this album?
Hearing Turnstile sparked something inside me again, where I wanted to write riffs again, have satisfying kick-ins and half time moments. You can't delete that from my musical DNA. Even the reformation of Blink-182, seeing them go back to their roots and making fast-paced punk rock songs again, was inspiring. [Foo Fighters drummer] Taylor Hawkins passing away, and seeing the rock community all rally around – all these little tiny moments inspired the decision to go, ‘Fuck it, let's just stop pushing away from this and dive back into it.
What purpose do you think making a big rock record serves in 2024?
What I’m seeing from playing live, is that it just gives people an ultimate freedom to let their hair down. You can’t really be cool, try and be reserved – you need to let go, and just fully go mad. I’m noticing – you can almost see it – people going ‘fuck it’ and rocking out, jumping up and down. A distorted guitar played the right way remains undefeated, basically, after all these years.
Twin Atlantic Upcoming Tour Dates are as follows:
Thu November 07 2024 - NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE Boiler Shop
Fri November 08 2024 - LEEDS Wardrobe
Sun November 10 2024 - MANCHESTER Manchester Academy 2
Tue November 12 2024 - CARDIFF Tramshed
Wed November 13 2024 - OXFORD O2 Academy 2 Oxford
Thu November 14 2024 - LONDON Electric Brixton
Sat November 16 2024 - NORWICH Waterfront
Sun November 17 2024 - BIRMINGHAM O2 Academy 2 Birmingham
Fri November 22 2024 - DUNDEE Fat Sams
Sun November 24 2024 - EDINBURGH Assembly Rooms
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