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.