** PLUS ** SIMPLE CREATURES // GRANDSON // AMERICAN FOOTBALL // LA DISPUTE // THE MAINE // EX HEX + LOADS MORE
April 2019 upsetmagazine.com
SWMRS INCOMING!
“THE WORLD IS F**KED UP”
ALBUM L AUNCH SHOWS APRIL 201 9 THURSDAY 11 TH APRIL
SOUTHAMPTON, CENTRAL HALL FRIDAY 12 TH APRIL
BRIGHTON, ST. GEORGE’S CHURCH SUNDAY 14 TH APRIL
CARDIFF, TRAMSHED MONDAY 15 TH APRIL
BATH, KOMEDIA TUESDAY 16 TH APRIL
LONDON, ISLINGTON ASSEMBLY HALL WEDNESDAY 17 TH APRIL
MANCHESTER, STOLLER HALL THURSDAY 18 TH APRIL
GL ASGOW, ST. LUKE’S CHURCH
ALBUM & TICKET BUNDLES: B A N D O F S K U L L S . C O M
Issue 42
THIS MONTH_
It’s no secret that SWMRS are one of Upset’s very favourite bands. Their last album, the fizzbanging ‘Drive North’, was the soundtrack to some of our early issues. They’re a band with everything. Not just the exciting, immediate songs, but also The Right Sort Of Attitude too. Pushing to make the scene around them a better place, their first Upset cover has been a long time coming, but we’re stoked it’s finally arrived. Elsewhere this month we’ve got two legit legends in the form of blink-182’s Mark Hoppus and All Time Low’s Alex Gaskarth, who’ve joined forces to form Simple Creatures. If you’re after something from the very top drawer, the new albums from La Dispute and American Football will see you right, while Grandson definitely brings the excitement. And then there’s the new record from Pup... more on that next month.
RIOT
APRIL 2019
HELLO.
S tephen
Editor / @stephenackroyd
Upset
4. SIMPLE CREATURES 8. EX HEX 10. CROWS 11. AS IT IS 12. THE MAINE 16. MARTHA ABOUT TO BREAK 18. BADFLOWER FEATURES 20. SWMRS 28. GRANDSON 32. AMERICAN FOOTBALL 36. LA DISPUTE REVIEWS 40. PUP 44. THE XCERTS TEENAGE KICKS 46. LIGHTS
Editor Stephen Ackroyd Deputy Editor Victoria Sinden Associate Editor Ali Shutler Scribblers Alex Bradley, Dan Harrison, Dillon Eastoe, Jack Press, Jamie MacMillan, Jasleen Dhindsa, Jessica Goodman, Linsey Teggert, Rob Mair, Sam Taylor, Steven Loftin Snappers Sarah Louise Bennett P U B L I S H E D F RO M
W E LCO M E TOT H E B U N K E R.CO M U N I T 10, 23 G RA N G E RO A D, H A S T I N G S, T N34 2R L
All material copyright (c). All rights reserved.
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Riot_
THIS MONTH IN ROCK
EVERYTHING HAPPENING IN ROCK
Mark Hoppus and Alex Gaskarth have teamed up for two-person supergroup, Simple Creatures. “I want people to say ‘Fuck, I had no idea these guys would make music like this’,” Mark explains. Words: Ali Shutler
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Ex Hex’s most collaborative offering yet showcases them at their most dynamic. p.8
The Maine have reinvented themselves once again for their seventh studio album, ‘You Are Ok’ p.12
“T
he tour is over, I’ve survived,” sung Mark Hoppus all those years ago but today, those words still resonate. “I don’t know what happened but at the end of an amazingly successful album and tour cycle for ‘California’ and the rebirth of blink-182, I came home, and I felt strange. I fell into this weird depression. I felt really empty, and I didn’t know why. I needed
to do something to break that.”
Rather than choosing to spend time alone in his room, Mark got out of the house and started creating. In his head, it was going to be a solo project that saw him collaborating with a bunch of friends but after he clicked so well with All Time Low’s Alex Gaskarth, the first person on the list, he realised they didn’t need anyone else. “We wrote a handful of songs that I really loved. The music brought me around to a much
Martha are turning heartache into something uplifting. p.16
better place.” After a couple of months, it was decided that this musical experiment should become a proper band. Welcome to Simple Creatures. “From that moment we said, let’s make as much music as we possibly can,” beams Alex. “We locked ourselves in the studio, started tweaking the songs we’d already written and started writing more material.” They’re still at it. There’s one EP finished, another due to come
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After twelve years together, The Maine have reinvented themselves once again for their seventh studio album, ‘You Are Ok’ - and they’re using it to spread a message of hope. Words: Jack Press
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“IT WAS IMPERATIVE THAT I GOT UNCOMFORTABLE”
A
s the twenty-tens enter their penultimate year, the dynamicity of music has shifted. Some bands have broken their moulds to burst through the underground and into the mainstream with brand new pop-driven sounds, like All Time Low and Paramore. There are also bands who either broke up or went quiet and are now touring their debuts on unnecessary nostalgia trips, like We The Kings and Cute Is What We Aim For.
There’s one band ripping up the Venn diagram by both sticking true to their roots while optimising their sound for the necessary evolution all bands aspire to. That band is The Maine, and on their seventh album ‘You Are OK’, they’re opening the floor for guitar music, as vocalist John O’Callaghan explains. “The biggest door that we wanted to walk through and felt like was wide open was rock music, like straight-up guitar music. I know that sounds so lame, but there isn’t a lot of bands doing that anymore.” It’s a brave statement to make when describing an album that mixes the bubble-gum pop-rock of 2015’s ‘American Candy’ with the noir alt-rock of ‘Lovely Little Lonely’ in a coffee pot of orchestral strings, guitar solos and arena hooks; but one that allows the band to look to the future as much as it nods to the past. “When we started in 2007, there was a scene, and that scene has since dwindled. That’s not to say there aren’t bands doing rock music or guitar music, there’s plenty sure, but in our world, in our small pond, there’s a lot of space for an album with guitars, and we felt like it was our time to step into that role. “You think back to the My Chemical Romance days and the early days of Taking Back Sunday, and even earlier than that with Sunny Day Real Estate, and you think about what was it about
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Rallying against the world around them, but with hope in their hearts, SWMRS’ second album proper isn’t so much a spark that starts a fire as a personal pledge. Music that matters, but that’s not afraid to have fun. Words: Ali Shutler Photos: Sarah Louise Bennett
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S
WMRS’ 2016 album ‘Drive North’ was a caustic, beat-up record of hometown frustrations, daydreamed adventure and mirror image unease. They wanted to get away. They wanted to figure it out. They weren’t even sure what ‘it’ was, but it drove the band forward.
The confusion, self-doubt and anxiety that zig-zagged through the album wound its way around the self-belief that SWMRS were going to find their own way. If there were answers to be had, the band were going to unearth them themselves. Riding ‘Drive North’ into the wild, SWMRS went out,
them versus the world. It turns out they weren’t alone. “We went through our early twenties during ‘Drive North’ and those years are so transformative,” starts guitarist/ vocalist Max Becker, “not only on the human psyche but also where your position is at in the world, what kinda people you want to surround yourself with and what values you hold dear. “We saw so many places and met so many people. We were really fortunate to come out of that whole process more wellrounded with a more global, bigpicture perspective on things. You realise you have way more in common with everyone than you ever thought.” “We had this unique
opportunity to explore all these different regions of the world and listen to people’s stories,” explains guitarist/vocalist Cole Becker. “When people go to a show, and they feel they can make themselves vulnerable to you. You learn so much about these kids, what everyone is experiencing and how they’re interpreting the world around them as it feels like it’s crashing down. That had a big impact on us.” “Going into ‘Drive North’, we were asking ‘how do we do this?’” continues Max. “Now it’s a case of ‘we’re in this’. It’s not finished, it’s not ever going to be finished, but we’re now in this zone with so many people, and it feels like we’re part of a big group because of that.” SWMRS’ first record as SWMRS was fiercely independent. Partly to prove they could do it by themselves, without help from famous dads or major labels, and partly because they didn’t want anyone interfering with their vision. ‘Berkeley’s On Fire’ sees the band team up
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GRAND
AMBITION One of the buzziest up-and-comers around, and newly signed to Fueled By Ramen, Canadian-American artist Grandson is hoping to inspire a generation. Words: Ali Shutler
G
randson wants to offer “a sense of being understood,” he says. “A sense of catharsis. A sense of empowerment and maybe, just maybe, a slither of optimism.” But if you’ve heard his music, you already know that.
Written in the trenches of the past few years, front line stories are flecked with grime and carry the weight of destruction. Jordan Benjamin couldn’t just sit back quietly and watch his generation drown in anxiety, confusion and grief. He had to get things off his chest. 2018 saw years of hustling come to a head as ‘Blood // Water’, a song about corporate greed, political corruption and daydream revenge, and the frustrated fury of ‘Thoughts & Prayers’ spread like wildfire. Soon after, his ‘A Modern Tragedy Vol. 1’ EP proved there was much more to his music than fearless reflection and anger. He wasn’t just shouting to be heard; he had something to say. This year’s ‘A Modern Tragedy
Vol. 2’ dug deeper into his fractured soul and found the strength to carry on. There’s probably going to be a Volume 3. There’s definitely going to be an album. Right now, Jordan is “enjoying the freedom of trying to make each song its own cohesive movie,” he explains. “I’ll keep doing that for a little, but by the end of this year or the beginning of next, I’m hoping to be able to present people with my first full-length album. I’m gonna make sure that when you hear it, it’s gonna be fire. I promise you that much.” It’s already been a wild ride, and it’s barely even begun. Grandson was very aware he was blowing up online. How could he not be? But rather than get sucked into a world of numbers and statistics, he spent most of last year on tour. “What drives home the importance of what I’m doing is meeting the people who resonate with these stories. Watching those streaming numbers go up is so gratifying
and might be indicative of some real momentum, but it’s hard to watch that manifest into actual change in your life, in the same way that being able to play a show does. That’s when it hits me just how this is touching people. It’s touching that such a broad array of strong, creative, passionate people are calling themselves The Grandkids.” Of course, Jordan wasn’t expecting people to connect to his stories as wholly, passionately and as completely as they have, but that’s always the hope. “If that’s not even on your radar, then you’re probably better off finding a real job and just doing this on weekends.” Ironically enough, back when he first started dreaming, Jordan didn’t always feel this way. “[I] wanted to be successful more than I wanted to tell anyone a particular story.” And no one wanted to listen. “Now, it’s more important for me to tell my particular story as honestly as I can and whatever follows from that will follow.” “I feel like the first EP very
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DDD OOO OOO MMM FFFUUULLLLLL B Twenty years on from their iconic debut, American Football return with a record that breaks new ground, and features a number of guest spots - including Hayley Williams. Words: Alex Bradley
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MMM III NNN BBBLLLOOOOOOMMM Upset 33
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La Dispute are back with their most personal album for years: rich, wide-screen opus, ‘Panorama’. Words: Steven Loftin
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