“How shortly we rot again into the earth and begin over.” So go the ultimate traces of Algernon Cadwallder’s 2008 debut album Some Sort Of Cadwallader. The Pennsylvania emo band would launch simply two studio albums earlier than disbanding in 2012, a mere seven years after their formation. A minimum of their preliminary run was longer than that of their major affect, Cap’n Jazz, the Illinois punks who went uncelebrated till after their members earned later notoriety as members of American Soccer, the Promise Ring, and Joan Of Arc. Algernon’s members, too, would proceed in numerous different tasks, however web word-of-mouth cemented their origin story. In 2018, Algernon Cadwallader reissued their catalog after years of it solely being obtainable on Bandcamp or area of interest corners of YouTube. Then, in 2022, the unimaginable occurred: They went on a reunion tour. Name that aforementioned lyric a self-fulfilling prophecy or no matter, however judging by the best way Peter Helmis speaks about his writing course of now, he in all probability simply thought these phrases sounded cool.
“Once I began writing, this was simply the stuff that was popping out,” Helmis tells me matter-of-factly of the wonderful Attempting Not To Have A Thought. Out right now, it’s Algernon Cadwallader’s first album in 14 years and a return to their founding lineup: Helmis, drummer Nick Tazza, and guitarists Joe Reinhart and Colin Mahoney. The quartet wasn’t essentially anticipating to report new music after they introduced the reunion tour, however these reveals indicated a flame but to die out. Instantly, Algernon’s chemistry and slow-burning significance was outstanding not simply to the younger followers who confirmed as much as the gig in droves, however to the band itself, who’d wind up acting at Las Vegas’ inaugural Greatest Pals Perpetually Pageant in 2024 the identical night as — you guessed it — Cap’n Jazz.
However don’t mistake Algernon’s hiatus for inactivity. Following their 2011 sophomore album Parrot Flies, Helmis, Reinhart, and Tazza went on to kind Canines On Acid, in the meantime Helmis started one other mission referred to as Yankee Bluff. Reinhart joined the emo-folk legends Hop Alongside and has since resided as an in-demand producer at his personal Headroom Studios in Philadelphia, engaged on albums like Joyce Manor’s By no means Hungover Once more that’d grow to be modern classics.
However after Algernon — now a bicoastal band of kinds, as Helmis relocated to Portland, Oregon in early 2020 — lastly acquiesced to a chance to reunite, it wasn’t lengthy earlier than they felt that acquainted itch. “We have been like, ‘We keep in mind easy methods to be in a band, so let’s simply be a band,’” Reinhart tells me. Prophesied or in any other case, Attempting Not To Have A Thought was a no brainer and is much out of your mom’s reunion album. Those that beforehand delighted in Algernon’s black-comedy whimsy will nonetheless discover a lot of witty one-liners and self-deprecating wordplay, however that snark is seamlessly woven into real-world tragedy, such because the 1985 MOVE bombing that killed 11 Philadelphians and left 250 homeless. “I hate the USA specifically on performative holidays,” Helmis screeches on “Revelation 420,” a mathy ripper simply as playfully scrappy as its title implies, earlier than proclaiming his mobilizing rally cry: “My arms are megaphones pointed on the sky.” It’s precisely the kind of report you’d hope Algernon Cadwallader would make in 2025.
I spoke with Helmis and Reinhart over Zoom from their houses in Portland and Philly, respectively, about their reunion and new album. Learn our dialog, edited for readability, under.
What was the second while you determined to reunite?
PETER HELMIS: Our buddy Curtis requested us to play the Fest down in Gainesville, Florida. We just about simply gave him the usual, “Oh, that’s good, however we’re probably not doing that” reply that we’d been giving everyone. He simply laid it on further thick, telling us it was our time to return again, it was going to be superior, it was going to be his fortieth birthday — he threw that in there, too. So we’re like, we couldn’t disappoint you in your fortieth birthday. After which from there, we knew that if we have been going to hassle getting again collectively and re-learning all of the songs, we didn’t wish to simply do one present. So then we deliberate the tour. And in addition, I feel being midway by the pandemic gave us some perspective. Like, “If we ever wish to do it, we must always get on that and do it now.”
When did the thought of creating new music collectively begin arising?
JOE REINHART: It will have been shortly after the tour. We have been like, “Wow, that was enjoyable. I’d like to hold doing that. However we will’t hold doing precisely that.” And within the interim, we’d been having enjoyable simply kind of jamming whereas we have been rehearsing for the reunion tour. There was somewhat little bit of magic to us straight up being in a room fucking round with our devices. We have been like, “Oh, there’s one thing to that! However no time for that now. Let’s re-learn these songs.” However afterwards, it was sort of like, “Nicely, that was superior. How will we hold doing this?”
HELMIS: We didn’t wish to simply be a reunion band after that, simply enjoying outdated songs. We thought that may be sort of tacky and that perhaps we wouldn’t be doing it for the proper causes. Since we have been at all times in bands within the interim interval, we didn’t simply wish to play stuff that was, like, 15 years outdated. So we have been fairly open to the thought as soon as it got here up.
Working in your different tasks — and Joe, with you working as a producer for therefore many different bands within the studio — did you ever have moments the place you have been engaged on one thing that was unrelated to Algernon, after which realized, “Oh, shit, this appears like an Algernon tune”?
REINHART: I just about stole every part on the brand new report from bands I’ve labored with within the final 10 years. After which additionally, there was nearly the reverse, the place I spotted how a lot enjoying music with these guys since highschool up by Canines On Acid had actually formed how I take into consideration music, the selections I make, and what I are inclined to gravitate in direction of. It’s very a lot ingrained in me from having spent a lot time making music with these guys. So a few of that positively trickled into working with different bands, for positive, as a result of it’s simply part of how I hear issues.
HELMIS: I can’t do what I do in Algernon with another band. One thing about being with these guys, it simply kind of comes out of me like that, however after I play music with different individuals it sounds fully totally different. I feel if I attempted to make these different tasks sound like Algernon, I’d be forcing it, and it simply wouldn’t be proper. We’re this specific group of people who find themselves actually adept at responding to one another with the suitable response musically or energetically. I really feel like that’s our robust swimsuit, you realize?
I don’t know the way a lot you’ve picked up on this, however I really feel like that 14-year span between albums was simply sufficient time that I’m beginning to see newer bands pop up that remind me a variety of Algernon.
REINHART: Nicely, we didn’t write the e-book. We simply copied it and spelled issues incorrect.
HELMIS: Yeah, I don’t suppose we’ve got any room to complain there. I do agree with you, although. After we began enjoying music collectively, I wager individuals listening to us from the technology earlier than may positively inform the bands that we have been listening to and occupied with. Listening to among the bands from the technology after us, I can pick little components the place I’m like, “Oh, they in all probability hearken to us somewhat bit.” I don’t really feel unhealthy about it in any respect. It’s cool that it occurs.
You’ve talked about earlier than that you just didn’t really feel a ton of strain with this new album as a result of of your current legacy, not despite it. What made you’re feeling assured that individuals would resonate with the brand new music, and that placing it out could be expertise for you?
HELMIS: I feel we actually gauge that on what we have been listening to of ourselves. Like, we’ve at all times written music that pleases us and that we’d wish to hear. Should you instructed me, like, 5 years in the past that we have been going to get again collectively and write a report, I’d be like, “Oh, I understand how that’s going to go. We’re going to jot down stuff that’s attention-grabbing to us.” In any other case, we’re simply not motivated, you realize? And as soon as we hit that mark, there doesn’t should be any confidence that it’s going to be obtained effectively. We did precisely what we got down to do, and so we’re happy. We’re fortunate to have that legacy, and it does imply that persons are serious about listening to us. However to me, it doesn’t actually dictate what we’re purported to do or how we’re purported to sound. We’d write a ska report subsequent. Who is aware of?
Had been you writing the brand new album particularly with dwell reveals in thoughts?
REINHART: I feel we’re simply occupied with what might be enjoyable to play, no matter who or how many individuals are watching and the way they’re reacting to it. Like Pete mentioned earlier, if we will impress ourselves, that’s actually so far as we give it some thought. After that, sure, we hope individuals prefer it they usually’ll allow us to hold doing this, however that’s about as a lot thought as we put into that a part of it.
HELMIS: However I’ve additionally heard you say, Joe, out of your engineer standpoint, listening to the songs our 20-year-old selves wrote now being performed in fucking large rooms made you considerably aware of the area between devices and stuff like that.
REINHART: Yeah, positively. And I feel that there’s a variety of this on the report. Pete and Nick as a rhythm part leaves a lot room for Colin and I to simply be nuts. It actually wouldn’t work below another circumstances. However in a giant, cool membership or one thing, it interprets very well, as a result of there’s these huge booms of low finish with an area in between them, and it lets all the opposite items of the puzzle simply kind of match within itself.
HELMIS: I keep in mind it sounding a lot totally different to play the outdated songs on the reunion tour in these big rooms, versus these extraordinarily packed basements the place I really feel like individuals in all probability couldn’t hear something anyway. We’d have grow to be somewhat bit higher of musicians up to now 14 years, too, however I can’t say that for a truth.
I used to be actually pleasantly stunned with the stability you struck on the brand new report — it’ll make outdated followers glad, but it surely doesn’t sound such as you’re attempting to make one other Some Sort Of Cadwallader.
HELMIS: I feel we sort of felt the identical means, and we have been stoked about the truth that it simply kind of got here out like that. After we began writing new stuff, we have been attempting to maintain it below wraps, however our shut pals have been asking the way it was sounding and stuff like that. And I used to be like, “It sort of feels like if we had by no means stopped being a band and perhaps made just a few different albums in between.” Both means, I really feel prefer it feels like what would naturally come 14 years after Parrot Flies.
Lyrically, this album feels extra concrete and direct than the outdated ones, which may get somewhat absurdist generally. I feel it’s apparent why y’all felt compelled to get extra political right here, however I’m curious how the lyric writing course of has developed.
HELMIS: You’re spot on with there being a distinction between the lyric writing from again then and now. Like, after we began Algernon, I knew that I didn’t wish to sing from the primary individual, or an analogous perspective to mine. It felt like such a communal mission that I didn’t wish to shift it by making the lyrics first-person directional. In order that’s why I wished them to be as much as interpretation and sort of oddball and bizarre. However for this album, I didn’t know what I used to be going to jot down about earlier than I began writing. Lyrics and vocals just about at all times come final for us. I’d perhaps given it, like, one second of thought, earlier than I simply went, “Yeah, fuck it. I don’t care. We’re simply gonna throw it on high.” I sort of suppose it’s extra attention-grabbing when the lyrics or message doesn’t actually match with the texture of the music on a regular basis. I feel the band was stoked to listen to what was popping out, too, and that that is the stuff we’d be singing about.
REINHART: I’d at all times get excited each time he’d textual content me one thing he was engaged on.
I recognize and admire your capacity to jot down so impulsively with out overthinking it. Couldn’t be me.
HELMIS: First thought, greatest thought, you realize? I sort of deal with the vocals as a enjoyable problem for myself to make them sound attention-grabbing to me, the identical means we wish our music to sound attention-grabbing to us. We actually don’t cease engaged on a tune till we’re like, “OK, that’s as cool as it may be to us.” I’ll simply attempt spewing stuff after which decide the perfect half — like, “Oh, that’s the bar. That sounds sick proper there.” After which if something falls wanting that, I simply hold attempting various things. I feel I actually recognize juxtaposition in music, like an actual happy-sounding tune that’s about one thing tremendous critical, or vice versa. So I attempt to suppose much less about what the lyrics are like and extra about simply doing attention-grabbing vocals with melody. Like, I fucking love pop music, so I’m truthfully attempting to throw somewhat little bit of loopy, fucked-up pop sensibility in among the vocals. Once I get to shout one thing sort of fucked up over essentially the most bubblegummy pop hook you can’t get out of your head, that’s the head for me.
That juxtaposition — is there a standout second like that for you on the brand new album?
HELMIS: Um, that’s query. Joe, what do I sing about?
REINHART I feel my favourite, vocally and perhaps lyrically, may be “Shameless Faces.” A number of very highly effective traces sung with very attention-grabbing, catchy melodies, sung or screamed. It simply actually cuts for me, that one.
HELMIS: I’ll inform you a narrative. Once I was writing the lyrics for “What’s Mine,” I used to be demoing them in our spare room right here, which is the closest room to our neighbor’s home. Our neighbor’s aged mom lives there, too, and he or she’s like an 85-year-old chainsmoker. All the time smoking, at all times on the market, hovering round our home. I used to be singing this line about smoking exterior — “I’m smoking exterior, exhaling my entire life” — which has nothing to do along with her, however is an odd coincidence. After which my neighbor requested me in the future, “Had been you yelling at my mother about smoking or one thing?” I used to be like, dude, are you critical?
Who knew she’s the one individual on earth who chainsmokes exterior?!
HELMIS: I’m already so self-conscious about even my accomplice listening to me put down vocals. Now my rattling neighbor thinks I’m yelling at his aged mom.
One lyric I actually appreciated was “focus is more durable on the artwork than it’s on the artist.” I’d love to listen to extra extra about that.
HELMIS: I really feel like that’s a traditional Algernon lyric. That tune is an ode to one in all my favourite inventive processes, which is procrastinating. I personally prefer to procrastinate with different artwork tasks. I feel most artists can relate — while you’re doing nothing however engaged on this one factor in a selected craft, the creativity will get stale. You get diminished returns after at a sure level. In order that lyric was nearly placing an excessive amount of focus in a single place. Like, to me, like essentially the most inventive issues occur while you’re not being attentive to something, after which figuring out easy methods to acknowledge these inventive sparks and seize them at that second after which deliver them again to the method. In order that’s how I exploit procrastination. If I’m caught on one thing musically, I’m like, “Nicely, I acquired a portray over right here I’m going to work on,” after which whereas all that’s occurring, one thing else would come to me musically.
That’s attention-grabbing that you just say that, as a result of my preliminary interpretation of that line was from the attitude of the buyer of the artwork attempting to derive which means from it.
HELMIS: And that’s why leaving lyrics as much as interpretation is nice. That’s so a lot better than what I mentioned.
