Taking Back Sunday’s lead guitarist is chilling in Des Moines, Iowa, before a show on their current American tour. Yet even miles away from Aussie shores, John Nolan’s excitement for the upcoming shows with Seattle boys Acceptance is palpable.
“My wife and I were over and we rented a car, stayed in Sydney for a little while,” Nolan begins, as he considers the first thing that pops into his head when presented with the words ‘Australia’ and ‘touring’.
“We drove out to the Blue Mountains, then down the coast and went to some beaches, south to Wollongong… It was really great because it was my second or third time touring in Australia, but I hadn’t really gotten to experience much. So that was the first time I really got to see and do some things.”
With their current US run in support of latest record Tidal Wave kicking off just a day after its release, the axeman relates, “It’s been really cool in general to play the album front to back to people, and see them start responding and getting into the album in a live setting (not through the Internet or something).”
The dynamic five-piece’s seventh offering, dropping two years after Happiness Is, was recorded with the mindset of each song never being finished until the band met their final deadline. Some of the tracks Nolan remembers being particularly “up in the air” were the nostalgic ‘Homecoming’, and the blistering album-opener ‘Death Wolf’.
Tidal Wave’s driving concept is the crushing experience of you trying to outrun something that you know you simply can’t escape, and things take a hard-hitting turn as Nolan recaptures a dark part of his past where that imagery surfaces.
“When I graduated high school, I decided I wanted to be in a band and that’s what I wanted to do for a living, which is a little bit crazy. There were a few years where that decision started looking really bad. I had a decent-enough job to pay my rent and get by, but I didn’t have a lot of prospects for really making it as a musician. I remember around that same time, my long-time girlfriend and I had broken up, and I was living alone in my first apartment… It was just extremely depressing, and it felt like everything was sort of happening at once and nothing was working out in my life.”
“Weirdly enough, it was only a little while after that that I ended up joining Taking Back Sunday and the band started.”
“I can’t believe that it’s been six years,” the guitarist then reflects on re-joining the rockers in 2010, after initially breaking away back in 2003 (along with bassist Shaun Cooper) when personal and musical differences pulled them apart.
“It feels in a lot of ways like a lot less than that. I’m really proud of us and everybody in the band. I think we’ve managed to really accomplish something by putting out these records, especially this newest one. I feel like we’ve all gone on this trip together and made it work, it’s really cool. There’s a big thing that comes from working and playing music together consistently over all these years. The thing that’s crazy is that Tidal Wave is the fourth album that the five of us have put out, and it’s the first time there’s been three consecutive ones with the same members. So there’s a natural progression that happens, that can’t if people are coming and going.”
That seamless flow threads through Nolan’s unique lead vocal dynamic with Adam Lazzara, and as he explains, “One thing that happened when we first got back together was that we wanted to make everything about the song. I think we’ve always tried to put it in that context and we work on who’s going to take or even write what part of a song.”
The chat shifts in the complete opposite direction here as the musician looks back on unconventional ways of making music. One such approach permeates Tidal Wave, with drummer Mark O’Connell creating digital beats in GarageBand, while the group tried to figure out how to incorporate that into the overall sound.
“It definitely pushed the record in a different direction, because that’s not something we’ve done before,” muses Nolan. “Mark’s always been involved in writing music with the band but just not in that way of putting all these tracks together on his phone… I think he made us make different choices in how we were going to play our instruments. It was always very digital and synthy, so we were like ‘It’s obviously not going to sound like that, but we want to keep the spirit of his idea alive’”.
However, a huge part of John Nolan’s life is his journey as a burgeoning solo artist, with his sophomore record Sad, Strange, Beautiful Dream releasing just last year. A tangible feeling of relief is felt as the guitarist admits “One of the things that I’ve really appreciated from doing the solo stuff is there’s no pressure on me.”
“I can do whatever I feel like. I mean there’s some pressure from myself to make good music and be a good performer, but I feel that’s how it should be. It gets hard and there’s definitely expectations on Taking Back Sunday, whether we’re performing live or putting out an album, and we always try to get away from that and keep the focus on what our own expectations are. But it’s a constant challenge. So it’s really enjoyable for me to put out something and go ‘This is what I wanted to do, and I hope you like it’. It doesn’t have to sell a lot of records or be critically acclaimed.
“It’s interesting that some of that stuff has ended up affecting what I do in Taking Back Sunday as well. On the solo album I would go down these roads that I wouldn’t have with a Taking Back Sunday record, but then I kind of found with the newer album that I was going down some of the same roads, even in the context of recording Tidal Wave. That was cool, and the big thing was realising that I can do what I want to.
“I don’t have to feel limited or that I have to do a certain thing a certain way.”
Ride the tidal wave with the Long Island rockers whey they bring it crashing down to our shores on the dates below, and prepare for it the best way you can by grabbing the new album here.
TAKING BACK SUNDAY AUSTRALIAN TOUR DATES
Friday, March 17th
Enmore Theatre, Sydney (Lic/Aa)
Saturday, March 18th
The Triffid, Brisbane (18+)
Sunday, March 19th – SOLD OUT
170 Russell, Melbourne (18+)
Tuesday, March 21st – NEW SHOW
170 Russell, Melbourne (18+)
Wednesday, March 22nd
The Gov, Adelaide (Lic/Aa)
Thursday, March 23rd
Metro City, Perth (18+)
