Thanks! I Hate It - Sound In The Signals Interview
I recently had the opportunity to interview Thanks! I Hate It. We discussed the writing process for new song “Nobody Actually Likes The Tambourine”, lyrical inspiration, the potential for new music, musical influences, working with Take This To Heart Records, merch, and more. Check it out below.
First, thanks for the interview.
Thanks for having us!
You recently released your new song “Nobody Actually Likes The Tambourine”. Can you tell me about writing that song?
The way we've written pretty much all of our songs has been to get the structure figured out on guitar, then we try to get a passable instrumental demo recorded. Once we have all the instrumentals in place, we give it to Sam to write lyrics and record vocals. As far as the writing process for Tambourine went, it was a little bit of an outlier. The skeleton for the chorus was written by Ryan L, our drummer. Then I (Will, guitar) kind of built the rest of the song around the chorus and leads & harmonies were written and added by Ryan J (guitar). Once all the pieces were more or less fleshed out, we gave it to Sam to add vocals. The original demo that we took the chorus from was completely different from where it ended up, but we're really happy with how it came out.
I really like the lyrics. What was your lyrical inspiration?
(Sam here) Thank you! I get a lot of inspiration from other songwriters like Brian Sella (The Front Bottoms), Doug Martsch (Built To Spill), Stephen Malkmus (Pavement), Courtney Barnett, and Leah Wellbaum (Slothrust). I think Stephen Malkmus and Courtney Barnett especially know how to just form words and sentences that sound good and don't necessarily even mean something very deep or meaningful. That's sort of what I did for the beginning of tambo, I just wanted words that sounded right and had a good flow with the song. Then I took it from there.
You’ve released a couple singles this year. Is there any chance that we’ll hear more new music soon? Have you been working on an album or EP?
You'll definitely hear new music in the near future! We can't be too specific yet, but it's something we've been working on for a long time and we're really proud of how all of it came together. We'll be able to say more early 2023.
I’ve seen your band described for fans of Taking Back Sunday and Modern Baseball. Do you feel like that’s a fair comparison? Who are some of your biggest influences?
It's not a comparison I would've come up with myself, particularly TBS, but I can definitely see where it comes from. We do get called pop-punk fairly often, and we all have pop-punk bands we love but I don't think we would self identify that way. We call ourselves Mid-WestCoast Emo but as long as people enjoy the music, it doesn't really matter to us. Both MOBO and TBS have been big influences on us, MOBO especially for me (Will). Some of our other main influences are Hot Mulligan, Free Throw, The Starting Line, Mannequin Pussy and Tigers Jaw, as well as pretty much all the other bands in the DIY emo space, there's just way too many to name.
You signed with Take This To Heart earlier in the year. What’s the experience been like so far?
Take This To Heart has been great since we signed, they've been super helpful with getting things kind of off the ground for us, especially with things like production costs and merch for touring. They're also very open to whatever we want to do creatively, so there's no pressure to have a certain sound or anything like that. Signing with them was a huge deal for me (Will) personally because some of my absolute favorite bands are either on the roster or alumni of theirs. We also didn't bring much of a following, they just signed us based off of the music which I think is kind of a rarity these days and we'll always be grateful to them for the faith they put in us.
You have a possum on a skateboard shirt you’ve been selling. I really like that design. Who came up with the concept and designed it?
The possum design has pretty much been a staple for us since we commissioned it. It was designed by our friend Christine (@Christinekos182 on twitter) and we've gotten a ton of mileage out of it. We basically asked her "hey can you draw some merch designs for us?" and she gave us some really great stuff. I think it fits our vibe really well both musically and our personalities.
Thanks for taking the time to answer the questions. Do you have anything else that you would like to add?
No problem, it's been awesome. We just want to say thank you to everyone who has given our music a chance. We really enjoy doing this and we hope it's something we can continue to do for a long time. Also, we've started keeping count of every time someone's said “More like 'Thanks I Love It!'” after a set so please be sure to keep that going.
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