Interview with New You: ‘We really wanna make memorable melodies that get stuck in your head’

Tacoma and Seattle, Washington power pop band New You will release their debut EP ‘Candy’ tomorrow that feels, in their words, ‘like the soundtrack you vaguely remember from that teen movie you can’t quite place’.

The band comprises Blake Turner (vocals, guitar), Cody Gores (guitar), Chase Valentine (bass) and Mike Parker (drums), who formerly played in emo alt-rock band Regress together. During COVID, Turner and his wife moved to Massachusetts, where he started New You as a shoegaze solo project. A year later, they moved back to Washington state, he got in touch with his former bandmates and New You took off: ‘It’s a power pop project, the name is a happy coincidence,’ Turner said.

With the aptly-named ‘Candy’, New You has put their best foot forward with five hand crafted power chord earworms that are sticky sweet but never cloying. Employing big pop hooks and a dry wit, each song offers something a little different: ‘It’s a power pop forward sound,’ Turner said. ‘We’re influenced by Jawbreaker (an American punk rock band), Superdrag, anything that’s driving but pop forward. We really wanna make memorable melodies that get stuck in your head.’

They’ve certainly achieved that with the opening track ‘Listerine’, which starts off as an upbeat, 90’s era summery love song but gets decidedly weirder and darker as the song progresses: As the lyrics go: “I wanna be your favourite magazine and swim inside your Listerine. I wanna spin around your happy dreams and everything in between”. It pays tribute to their 90’s rock influences, such as Superdrag, early Foo Fighters, and Third Eye Blind. For me, is the standout track on the EP: We nearly did ‘Listerine’ as a single but we decided to keep it back to give people a feel to the album,’ Turner said. ‘There’s a level of cohesiveness in terms of exploring the soundscape but we wanted to experiment. ‘Listerine’ and ‘Big Surprise’ are the big, driving songs.’

‘The lead guitar riff really stuck in my head but I didn’t know what to do with the rest of the song’

‘Listerine’ actually started out as a demo before New You became a full band: ‘The lead guitar riff really stuck in my head but I didn’t know what to do with the rest of the song,’ Turner said. ‘Chase, our bass player, was messing with it and retooled it a bit. My version was more power chord based. That broken up sound of the guitar getting plugged in, he did that. When I was writing the vocals, I wanted the repeated refrain. Olivia, my friend from Cowboy Boy (an LA power pop band) lent her voice to the track, she’s amazing.’

It’s one of those winding songs that’s very story-driven, moving from sweet love song into something darker, murkier and more obsessive: ‘I wanted the lyrics to inhabit different personas and perspectives,’ he said. ‘The song appears to be about pining for someone in a way that’s romantic (laughs) but if you really listen to it, the scenario gets weirder and weirder. The guy is very obsessive. Is it unrequited love or is he putting her on a pedestal?’ It’s a question that the song deliberately doesn’t answer.

Earlier this month, they released their first single from the EP, ‘Big Surprise’, which also evolved out of an old demo that Turner had: ‘We wanted something driving, with a drum beat that doesn’t let up, that’s very urgent,’ he said. ‘I thought it would be fun, it’s a sarcastic rumination on the state of the world, the insane bullshit we have to deal with on a day-to-day basis. It almost feels selfish to try and smile through that insane shit and find moments of joy. It was a fun one to make.’

It erupts with a big, chunky riff before the drums come in a few seconds in and keeps the energy pulsating all the way through. As the track goes: “You don’t wanna lose it but you’re scared to get too high. Push the daisy through it. It doesn’t matter when we die. It’s a big surprise.”

‘The feel of the music determines the way the lyrics go’

Interestingly, they typically write the melodies first and then decide what the song could be about: ‘The lyrics come on top, I’ve never operated the other way,’ Turner said. ‘The feel of the music determines the way the lyrics go. I throw about scat melodies (laughs) when I’m trying to unlock the song, my process is haphazard!’

‘Day Dream’, the third track on the EP, marks something of a shift: ‘You’ve got those clean guitar tones, it’s softer, it opens up the sound on the EP,’ he said. ‘It’s not just punk rock. ‘Washed Out’ is a power chord song, it swings in a couple of different directions.’ Unusually, the backbone of ‘Day Dream’ was written by Gores and Valentine: ‘They’d primarily written it for another project but we really loved how big it sounded,’ Turner said. ‘They took the reins for the most part. My favourite band The Pixies go from loud into quiet, we wanted to do that on this song. The big harmony at the end, it’s like the song is building to that finale. There’s no verse/chorus structure but we have four layers of guitars (laughs). It’s a great example of a song that I couldn’t have done without the help of my friends. It’s the song I never could have written but I think it would be such a good singalong moment at a concert. We haven’t played any of these songs live but we have a show this Thursday with Hockey Dad (an Australian surf rock band), we got offered a slot, so we’re super, super excited!’

‘Fairweather’, the closing track, kicks off with a chuggy riff that pulls the song along and encompasses elements of all the other tracks on the album: ‘It is probably the song that I’m happiest about, you have to listen to the whole EP to get to it, so it probably won’t get listened to a lot (laughs), although I hope it will. I was going for a Blake Schwarzenbach from Jawbreaker feel. What I really like is the second verse when the distorted guitars are gone and the clean, acoustic sound comes in. The song gets flipped on its head from punky to something else.’

‘The song is about always being the new kid, about feeling alienated’

The story behind the song is inspired by Turner’s own childhood: ‘The song’s got that melancholic sound,’ he said. ‘I moved around a lot as a kid, I couldn’t put down roots. The song is about always being the new kid, about feeling alienated. The other guys in the band grew up around each other and I definitely feel that I missed out on the chance to do that.’

Now, they’re looking to mix it up again on upcoming songs: ‘We don’t want to stray too far from being a guitar-driven pop punk band but there’s a lot of room to play within those parameters,’ he said. ‘An earlier song of ours, ‘Suffer’, is very fuzz heavy but nothing on our EP has that fuzzy sound, that was by desire but we want to bring that back for the next song (laughs). We don’t want to become a band that’s too stale, we want to play around a bit.’

If he could write a song with anyone, he picks John Davis from Superdrag, an American rock band from Knoxville, Tennessee: ‘He writes such underrated, catchy songs with big hooks,’ he said. One of Turner’s biggest inspirations turns out to be Rain Fest, a three day hardcore/punk/metal festival that used to take place in Seattle every May: ‘It was the best thing,’ he enthused. ‘I’m very sad that it’s gone. Their DIY ethos informed everything I’m doing now, even though it’s a different genre.’

(Photo from left to right: Cody, Blake, Chase, Mike.)