Telescreens

TELESCREENS

Telescreens’ third album Why the Lights Flicker is the NYC rockers’ most definitive

statement to date, showcasing the band’s conceptual ambitiousness as well as their ability

to write immensely satisfying music. Across this thrillingly sprawling record, the quartet—

Jackson Hamm (vocals/guitar), Austin Brenner (bass), Josiah Valerius (keys/synth), and

Oliver Graf (drums)—deliver full-throated anthems for breaking through the wall of endless

modern noise, firmly situating the group in the estimable legacy of NYC rock music as well

as within the history of the genre at large.

Why the Lights Flicker is the culmination of everything Telescreens (the band name a hat-

tip to George Orwell’s essential dystopian text 1984) set out to achieve from the moment

they were gigging in earnest as hungry 18-year-olds. Hamm describes the band’s first

record The Return from 2018 as “a concept album about a man who goes to space to try

and find God to ask him the ultimate question: what happens after you die?” “Making that

record taught us a lot about the recording process,” he adds while talking about

Telescreens’ reach-for-the-stars approach that was present from the very beginning. “It was

insanely ambitious.”

To wit: After initial struggles to recreate the exploratory sounds of The Return to the live

stage, a chance encounter with family friend and drummer Oliver Graf provided

Telescreens with the final piece of their musical puzzle. “He jumped on the kit and he came

in playing fucking hard,” Hamm recalls. “He’s the best fucking drummer in the world.” With

Graf behind the kit, Telescreens brought forth last year’s follow-up 7, which came about

during a three-day recording session in the midst of COVID lockdown anxiety and was

dedicated to a late friend who passed during the pandemic. During this time, Telescreens

also signed with a major label as the band commenced work on what would become Why

the Lights Flicker. After parting ways with that label earlier this year, the band is now

releasing the record independently with total control over their music.

”In the house that I grew up in, every time I’d write a song, the lights would flicker,” Hamm

says while explaining the album title’s meaning, elaborating that he was also inspired by

analytical psychologist Carl Jung’s 1960 book Synchronicity. “If you pay attention to the

world around you, you notice these moments of synchronicities that break the barriers of

time,” he states. “That is why the lights flicker, and it’s why this album is the peak of what

we’re about. As an artist, I completely conduct my entire life so that when I get struck by

the purity of the universe, I'm ready to be a channel for that energy.”

“Everything that we've learned—playing live to people and trying to give them this feral

reaction where they can lose themselves in the intensity of rock and roll—came together

while recording,” Hamm adds while talking about the culmination of the band’s efforts that

produced Why the Lights Flicker. “It’s our beautiful stab at trying to make a quintessential

album inspired by the New York City greats.” Indeed, this is thick and swaggering rock

music that’s draped across the chassis of Why the Lights Flicker’s 20 tracks—a collection

of buzzsaw guitars and raucous energy that addresses longing, love, and loss, or as Hamm

sums it up, “the result of the entire life that I've lived up until this point.”

First single “Nothing” anchors itself around a deliriously catchy spiral of a guitar riff that

emerged out of the type of act-first ingenuity that Telescreens have made their name on: “I

was fiddling in rehearsal and literally the boys just came in on the exact beat,” Hamm

recalls. “I stopped them for a second and wrote a little chorus, and the whole thing was

written in five minutes.” In his words, the song addresses the all-too-familiar modern

malady of “being so dissatisfied at the art that’s coming out and wanting to be shook in

ways that generations before us were. We're the generation that's getting force-fed

nostalgia instead of young artists making something new—and we're suffering as a

generation of people who have access to everything that was ever made in the history of

the world while everything new leads towards tropes of the past.”

“Other Side of Town” careens with a hooky keyboard melody and Hamm’s swaggering

vocals, while breakup song “Baby I Know You Well” ditches the woe-is-me balladry

associated with the genre by way of an anthemic invitation to rekindle what’s been lost.

Then there’s the sky-crawling “Preacher,” which keenly addresses the unhealthy adoration

of public figures in the modern age—as well as what we lose within ourselves through the

practice. “Everyone wants you to be something when you're a public figure, and what they

worship is dysfunctional,” Hamm states while discussing the song “People need somebody

to build up and then tear down.”

When it comes to Why the Lights Flicker, the only thing being torn down is the rules around

the NYC musical landscape, as Telescreens are injecting their surroundings with a sound

that’s at once classic-sounding and desperately necessary in its tendency to go against the

grain. “This record represents what we feel NYC rock and roll should sound like,” Hamm

says while talking about the crossroads that Telescreens find themselves at with this

album. “It’s a reflection of everything that is and has been around us for so long—all the

people we've met and have loved.” And with Why the Lights Flicker, that flock is sure to

grow exponentially.