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.
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