Heading back to our shores next month, Silverstein will be doing a leg of shows in Australia for their ten-year anniversary tour of Discovering the Waterfront. In this interview, frontman, Shane Told reminisces about the journey of the record, the band’s sound progression and what his journey as a musician has meant for him. With their new record, I Am Alive In Everything I Touch, coming out soon, it’s clear that the past decade has offered many occasions to reflect on and be proud of…
So your album Discovering the Waterfront is turning ten this year. How do you feel about this milestone?
I think it’s really cool, you know. When we did the record, it was our second album but it was kinda our first real album – we wrote it all together and we went to California and recorded it in a big studio with the big producers. It was the first time we’d ever done that and I think for it to be ten years and for people to still care about it so much is pretty special. We feel pretty proud of ourselves that the record stood the test of time like this.
So what is it like to see an album reach a stage of maturity and watch it evolve? Do the songs mean different things now?
It’s kinda cool because I’m in my early 30s now and I was in my early 20s back then and there’s a certain immaturity in some of the lyrics. I don’t mean an immaturity in the vocabulary, I just mean some of the ideas; the emotional ideas and stories. It’s funny looking back 10 years later and kind of looking back at my younger self, being able to have all this experience. Some of it makes me smile and it’s kinda like, “Oh, young Shane. You were so silly worrying about whatever you were worrying about 10 years ago.” The perspective is so different but at the same time, I look back at some of the stuff and it’s like teaching my older self something.
So in terms of sound progression, this album was very raw in its development. How did the band’s post-hardcore/emo sound develop?
For our band, we came from a lot of different musical backgrounds. We’d all play in bands before and it was very diverse. I was in like a straight-up, fast-speed punk band; Josh was in a ska band; my old guitar player, Richard was in a metal band. So for us, it was all very diverse and I think that made it a little more difficult to find our sound in the beginning because we had a lot of different influences pulling us into different directions.
It really wasn’t until Discovering the Waterfront where we found a little bit of consistency in our sound again. Even today, we have such a wide dynamic in our music where we can go from something very, very soft and quiet to something extremely heavy and everything from very fast to very slow. I think for us, we enjoy that diversity and I think it’s kept it interesting for us too.
I can see that from your live performance as well because the last time I saw you guys was back in Soundwave 2011. You guys put on such a show – I enjoyed it so much.
Oh wow, that was a long time ago. Actually, it’s not really that long ago – it feels like forever ago.
You guys seemed to enjoy the crowd as well. It was a really hectic show because I was getting crushed against the barricade.
Yeah, sounds about right. Well, Soundwave is cool. I mean, we did it twice. It’s a real clusterfuck the way it works everyday because of how far apart cities are in Australia. They have to move the entire production and then all the bands have to fly and there’s so many logistics that can go wrong, you know. Often, something will go wrong and then you kinda have to work around it but that’s cool. The crowd is coming out and people are so excited; it makes anything like that totally worth it and the organisers do a really good job.
Yeah absolutely. So I’ve always seen the band as poetic and illustrative when it comes to the lyrics of your songs and I feel as though each album has a specific concept within the titles. How does the inspiration for a concept come about?
Well, every album is different, you know. I talked about how I’ve grown up over the last ten years and there’s been a lot of changes in my life, back and forth. I think where you’re at in your life dictates the subject matter and what you’re trying to say and what you’re trying to get out of it as an artist and that’s how we kinda roll with it. For example, A Shipwreck in the Sand, which was our first real true concept record, was sort of a metaphor for my family; my family was going through some sort of economic struggle at the time.
When you look into the new record, it’s actually very much a personal record about me getting older and kind of having this realisation that Silverstein is my life and it’s kinda my life’s work now; the relationships that have formed and some of the instances that I have had over the last 15 years of my life. So really, I couldn’t write the record I wrote ten years ago now. For me, it really has to be something going on personally to be able for it to make sense.
That’s how a band’s music usually evolves anyway because sometimes the lyricist goes, “Oh, I’ve had an epiphany, I’m gonna write this down” or the band wants to change sound direction – that’s how a band works in my opinion.
I think one thing we haven’t done though is we’ve never said, “Oh, we’re gonna change our sound.” We’ve never said, “Our next record needs to be heavier or it needs to be catchier” – that’s one thing I think is a big mistake when bands really try to force something. I think it’s important to have a natural progression and that’s something we’ve done musically, you know. We get in a room and we write our songs – that’s the record and I mean, lyrically everything is based around an idea or a personal way of thought and that’s a little bit different but musically, our sound is something we’ve tried to just naturally progress through our time.
I’ve found from your discography, you guys are really consistent with sound. I was listening to an album of yours and it’s made me realise how underrated you guys really are as a band.
I mean, we just do our thing, you know and I think maybe our consistency is even somewhat of a fault because we’ve never ventured out and tried to do anything mainstream. We’ve always kept it real and made a natural progression and our fans have kinda been with us every step of the way so I think that’s why we’ve been able to do this for so long.
Yeah, I think it’s really important to have a loyal fanbase and it’s interesting to see how other bands, like Fall Out Boy, have evolved in terms of their sound dynamics. It’s interesting to see bands naturally progress in sound because the diversity of audiences in live shows changes.
Well, with us we have a wide variety of audiences too. I mean, what’s interesting about our band, especially when doing these ten-year anniversary shows is that we’ve had people coming to see us for 10-12 years and they’re like in their 30s and they had to get babysitters to leave their kids at home. At the same time, we have kids coming out that are 12-13 years old and they were literally in diapers when the record came out and seeing everyone in one room, still enjoying it and still taking meaning out of the songs is pretty special. I’m sure in Australia it’ll be the same thing; you’ll see a very wide and diverse crowd.
That’s cool. So I’m guessing the crowd have been responding well with the album being played in full?
Yeah, it’s cool. It’s kinda funny because usually when you go to a show you’re excited about what’s gonna happen next ’cause you don’t know. With this, everyone knows what we’re gonna play next but they’re just as excited – if not, more excited so it’s kind of an interesting dynamic. It’s like when you see a movie for the first time, it can be great but sometimes when you see it for the second time it’s even better, even though you know what’s gonna happen; it’s just a different kind of experience.
Following up on that, some bands like to sit on the fence when it comes to anniversary tours. In your experience so far, what makes an anniversary tour stand out from a normal tour?
Well, there’s a theme to it, you know. I mean you can kinda look at it the same way as a concept album from a regular album. There’s a concept and there’s a theme to an anniversary tour and we definitely didn’t sit on the fence about it at all. We planned this out for the last year and a half and we were very excited about playing these songs because we knew that the fans that were coming out were gonna be excited about it too.
It’s really just a great dynamic with everybody, you know. We’re all under one roof and we’re there for different reasons because they’re there to hear these songs and we’re there to play them but at the same time, we have the same memories and the same nostalgia thinking back over the last ten years of this record so it’s pretty cool to share the memories with everybody.
Do you feel like you’re a young person again now that you’re playing Discovering the Waterfrontin full? How old were you when that album was released?
I was 24 when it came out so yeah, I guess so. It’s funny when you ask me that question because I had to say my age the other day to a person and when it came out of my mouth, I was like, “Holy shit. Am I that fucking old?” It’s weird because I don’t feel that old. I kinda feel like I haven’t really grown up. Maybe it’s because of what I do and most of the time I spend at shows with people a lot younger than me so I kinda feel like we’re all the same age and it doesn’t really matter.
So your new album is coming out in May which is pretty exciting. Looking at the single, “A Midwestern State of Emergency”, how would you describe the overall feel of the album?
I think that song is a pretty good indication of what’s on the record. It’s got a big chorus but it also has a big, heavy riff as well and there’s some big screams too. I think it’s the first track off the record for a reason; we felt like it kinda tied things together nicely. There is stuff like “Milestone” which is the other song we released – that song is very heavy and very fast. There’s other stuff too where we have an acoustic song and a mid-tempo kind of rock song, which is maybe a little different for us and also an ambient five-and-a-half minute track too. There’s really a lot of diversity and that’s always something that’s been present in our music, so why stop now?
Yeah, I was watching the music video and I thought it was pretty intense. How did the idea of the music video come about for that single?
It was just the director. He came up with the idea and it was actually pretty crazy. Usually when you do a video, it’s a long time in the making – there’s a lot of planning involved and then you go back and forth about the ideas and you figure out how you’re gonna shoot it and then you have to take months to edit it. This whole thing took like three weeks – he had the idea, he came up with it and he shot and edited it. It was so cool how fast the process for it went. I think when you hear the words, it kind of paints the picture of the song and it makes sense but at the same time, it’s also part of the album where it’ll just tie everything together.
Longevity in a band looks good on paper but it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s something easy to achieve. What has made Silverstein such a strong band at this point in time?
There’s so many answers and so many factors but I think one thing we’ve done is that we’ve always put our music ahead of everything else, you know. A lot of bands, they’re very preoccupied with photo shoots and their image and what clothes they’re gonna wear and how many social media followers they have and I think for us, we see the trends come and go. It’s just been important to make sure that we’re consistent with our music and we put that first so I think that’s always what we focus on and we let the music take care of the rest.
—–
Catch Silverstein live on these tour dates with support acts Dream On Dreamer and Young Lions!
Sunday, May 3 – The Hi Fi, Brisbane 18+
Tuesday, May 5 – Cambridge Hotel, Newcastle 18+
Wednesday, May 6 – Manning Bar, Sydney 18+
Thursday, May 7 – Magpies, Canberra Lic/AA
Friday, May 8 – 170 Russell, Melbourne 18+
Saturday, May 9 – Fowlers Live, Adelaide Lic AA
Sunday, May 10 – Amplifier Bar, Perth 18+
———-
