Teenage Wrist are a difficult band to define. Over the past eight years the act have continually evolved their sound, a process that’s peaking with their third full-length Still Love. Reaching new heights in both scope and execution, the album sees the duo—Marshall Gallagher (vocalist, guitarist, bassist) and Anthony Salazar (drums, vocalist, percussion)—producing the album themselves to handcraft their most expansive collection of songs to date from the ground up. The result is a self-realized collection of songs that saw the band borrowing vintage gear, bringing in friends in the form of members from 311 and Softcult and incorporating tasteful pop sensibilities to craft a collection of songs that redefines the band’s sound while staying true to their guitar-driven roots. “With this album we were just trying to get ourselves out of the safety zone and into the danger zone,” Gallagher explains. “We took a lot of risks and it was a really fun record to make.”
The process of creating Still Love started in early 2022 with a writing retreat at Joshua Tree National Park a couple of hours from the band’s homebase of Los Angeles, where the duo started planting the seeds that would become these songs. “We found a small place and just isolated there,” Gallagher explains. “We set up all the equipment in the living room and this whole record was an attempt to do a lot of things we’ve never done before.” That sense of liberation carried over into every aspect of the album from the production to the artwork and overall aesthetic. “We didn’t have a preconception about how we were going to be received for this record, so we decided we should just create something organic that we feel completely present making,” Salazar explains. “There was no other intent than for us to express ourselves.” While the playing on Still Love is remarkably proficient, there isn’t a lot of studio trickery present on the album. It is the sound of something being created in real time with no goal outside of self-discovery and pure expression.
