Having only released two albums across their eight years together as a band, LA shoegazers Teenage Wrist have covered a surprising amount of ground. Due in part to some personnel change between 2018’s Chrome Neon Jesus and 2021’s Earth Is a Black Hole, the former record saw the group primed to ride the nihilist wave of Hum revivalism Nothing’s been leading over the past decade, while the latter warmly welcomed emo-pop into the equation.
Their third album Still Love, then, feels like a perfect—and intentional—balance of those two eras, with vocalist Marshall Gallagher far from shy about spilling his influences while breaking down the album for us: Sunny Day Real Estate, White Reaper, Radiohead, Deftones, and Fontaines D.C. all get name-dropped as inspiration. If you noticed that the title track opens almost precisely the same way Catherine Wheel’s “Pain” begins, well, Gallagher probably noticed that, too. If you align that same track’s verses with those of Basement? Gallagher’s right there with you.
Perhaps more influential than what he and bandmate Anthony Salazar were spinning while the album came together were the artists the duo landed features from, ranging from recent tourmates Softcult on “Still Love” to dream-collaborator S.A. Martinez of 311—also recent tourmates—and David Marion from iconic post-hardcore act Fear Before. If nothing else, Gallagher’s collaborators helped pull Still Love in each of the countless alt-rock-niche-echoing directions that make it such a unique listen. “If left to my own devices, every song I write will eventually just become ‘Mayonaise’ by Smashing Pumpkins,” he confesses.
With the album dropping today via Epitaph Records, stream it below while you read through Gallagher’s breakdown of all the influences, gear, rock star rites of passages, and other elements that brought Still Love into being.
1. “Sunshine”
I had this chorus sitting in my voice memos for a couple of years before I cracked the entire song—pretty sure it popped into my head in a Whole Foods parking lot at a time when I was listening to a lot of Catherine Wheel. Literally years later I was fumbling around and landed on the main riff. We did this thing for guitar tracking where we were splitting the DI guitar signal to two amps—one to the distortion (usually a JCM800 or something comparable) and the other to a Roland JC-77, so we could have this gorgeous chorus running parallel to everything that we could blend in whenever we wanted ([we] learned that from Matt Hyde when we cut Counting Flies). Anyway, we made good use of that here. We need a little bit of sparkle even when we’re applying as much distortion as possible.
2. “Dark Sky” (feat. S.A. Martinez)
We wrote this tune with our friend Evan, who we met touring with 311 last year. He brought us a very “311” riff and we had originally sent it to P-Nut to lay down some bass. Unfortunately we were never able to get in the studio with him, so that didn’t end up working out, but we kept the bridge blank for a month or two and waited for inspiration to come. We considered calling in another feature, keeping it instrumental, cutting it altogether—but at the last minute I got a text from Evan with an attachment that said “New Pollution SA Vocal” (that’s what it was called at the time) and we completely flipped. S.A. was the first voice I heard on the Blue Album when I was in middle school, and I’ve been not-so-low-key obsessed with 311 since then. So hearing this and then getting to make a music video with him was a literal dream come true. I feel like a complete nerd saying all this over and over again, but it brings me so much joy—maybe too much.
3. “Still Love” (feat. Softcult)
I’m fully ready to admit now that this chorus is either a Sunny Day Real Estate song or a Basement song—if those are even different from each other or if it matters at this point in music history. As for the rest of it, I wrote the lyrics and melody in and out of a plane bathroom, and the main riff was inspired by this sweet Gretsch baritone guitar that Fender was kind enough to send me. I get bored of guitar easily, so I have to keep going to lower (or higher) tunings to stay fresh (eventually I’ll probably just be playing bass). This was another one that sat in my WIP folder for months, so I sent it to Softcult at some point while we were on tour with them and they cracked it wide open.
4. “Digital Self”
I was stumped on the lyrics for this one—all I had for a long time was the first half-line and the “digital self” bit. Nino [Anthony] and I went out to Yucca Valley for a little writing retreat at the beginning of 2022 and he helped me fill it out, which was cool because his lyrical mind goes places mine never would. There were about four different iterations of lead parts for this tune, and when we finally got to tracking them, none of them were getting me off after several hours of frustration. So after that I spent an entire day listening to White Reaper to try and channel some guitar goodness, and that seemed to do the trick. Those guys make me want to play guitar all the time.
Side note: Some of these lyrics skew a bit QAnon, but I promise it’s just about my frustration with social media and modern marketing.
5. “Something Good”
This song was supposed to be the no-brainer single, but as we moved further and further [along], the other songs just dumpstered it. Not that I don’t like it, it just didn’t come out sounding quite like I was picturing, largely due to demo-itis. There’s a part in the original demo where you can hear me say “My fucking head hurts” before the acoustic guitar comes in; I can’t remember if we kept it or not, maybe we replaced it with me saying “I know how to rock.” The point is I need to shut up while we’re tracking.
6. “Wax Poetic” (feat. Sister Void)
If left to my own devices, every song I write will eventually just become “Mayonaise” by Smashing Pumpkins. That’s basically what happened here. Lindsey [Sister Void] wrote a really cool poem/melody over some chords I was jamming on and I made it fuzzy. If you listen closely you can hear the distortion warble a little bit—I got a really cool LFO kind of effect going with a Grand Orbiter and it took the vibe up a few notches. Also, the “solo” is me singing (doing my best Robert Smith impression at the end) into a mic, then we shot it out to a bunch of pedals because, again, I get bored with guitar.
7. “Diorama”
We started this one with our friend Nathaniel Motte [of 3OH!3] with no original intention of it being a Wrist tune. Before we knew it we had a cello player coming in, Ryan from Holy Fawn contributing synths, I was swinging a microphone like a lasso around in circles while Nino was tracking a breakbeat…shit got deep. This is the closest we will ever get to our Radiohead phase. Or maybe not, maybe we just keep going farther down the rabbit hole. By far the hardest song of ours to sing—half of it is completely dry and not supported by anything besides acoustic guitar. I’m used to hiding behind distortion and this one didn’t let me do that at all.
8. “Cold Case”
This tune was the only demo we cut pretty much front to back in Yucca Valley when we were out there doing our rock star rite of passage writing retreat. That was around the time I was listening to nothing but Fontaines D.C. and it was very hard for me not to turn that melody into one of theirs. The screamy bit at the end is the one from the original demo. I had to cut that when no one was paying attention, and you can hear my voice crack like a teenager. One of those parts you only get one take to do— actually, on that note, the rhythm guitar and drums are all one take as well. We tried to do as much as we could on this record without editing. Sometimes it worked.
9. “Cigarette Two-Step” (feat. David Marion)
Basically my ode to Fear Before and Deftones, glad I finally got to do it in this band. Dave from Fear Before was kind enough to lend his vocals on this one, another one off the vocalist collab bucket list. Our engineer/co-producer Kevin also played bass here—turns out he’s a brilliant bassist and plays top-tier death metal, so this was perfect for him. Nino brought out his kevlar snare head (the same one we used on “Mary”) and cranked it to oblivion (we were trying to get that shitty early Korn sound—he even layered a pot or a pan under one of the fills to make it ultra trashy). We had a lot of fun with this production, threw a lot of drums through amps, got some of the craziest feedback…there’s a hilarious video of the studio view from the street where you can hear guitars blaring, like, halfway down the block.
10. “Humbug” (feat. Heavenward)
“Humbug” was originally an idea that came from Kam during the Chrome Neon Jesus writing sessions. It didn’t make the cut back then, but last year we both texted each other at the same time basically and said, “Can we have ‘Humbug’?” So as to avoid a bidding war, we settled on Heavenward being the featured artist. We figured it would be cool to give a nod to the “old school” fans (just saying that makes me feel ancient—we’ve only been a band for, like, nine years). Nino and I added some parts, shuffled things around a bit, and I played the angriest guitar solo of my life; you can actually hear my rage, and after that particular take the other two dudes were like “Whoa, I didn’t know you had that in you.”
11. “Sprawled”
I’ve been waiting to have saxophone on an emo song for a very long time, and I finally got to make the dream happen. As I get older, saxophone just sounds better and better to me…yacht rock is no longer a mystery. The meat of the tune was also inspired by that Gretsch baritone guitar. It’s about some wild shit that happened during quarantine and squeezing the juice out of important moments. I think Anthony may have had a panic attack while recording the outro.
12. “Paloma a.k.a. Ketamine”
We figured it’d be too easy to do the epic post-rock button on the record, so we decided to try something revealing and slightly uncomfortable instead. For this we made a little drum loop, pumped it through the PA speakers that were up for recording drums (we were also shooting kick/snare/toms through those to make ’em slap in the room mics), and I did several takes live. Which, by the way, is terrifying if you’ve never played the song live before.
