Truth Club Break Down New Album Running from the Chase Track by Track: Exclusive

Jonah Krueger
·9 min read

The post Truth Club Break Down New Album Running from the Chase Track by Track: Exclusive appeared first on Consequence.

Track by Track is a recurring feature series in which artists guide readers through every song on their latest release. Today, Truth Club take us through their latest record, Running from the Chase.

Indie rock up-and-comers Truth Club return today (October 6th) with their sophomore effort, Running from the Chase, out via Double Double Whammy. A noisy, mesmerizing, beautiful collection of 12 enthralling songs, Running from the Chase arrives as the band’s latest exercise in poignantly rebelling against mundanity, despair, and bouts with mental health.

Whether the band is attempting to make as much noise as physically possible (“Blue Eternal”), playing it soft and sweet (“Exit Cycle” featuring Indigo De Souza), or managing to swing between the two (“Siphon,” “Break the Stones”), Truth Club sound invigorated, creative, and at the top of their game. They’ve expanded upon the groundwork of their debut, Not an Exit, mining more drastic dynamics and grander emotions than ever before.

“We’ve played around with a couple different arrangements, dynamics-wise, which has kept it feeling fresh and exciting to bring to the stage,” drummer Elise Jaffe says of the title track. “While we were still in the early stages of writing Running from the Chase, I remember our friend Max Gowan saying that it felt like ‘a new type of Truth Club song’ had just been unlocked.”

Each new cut shows the band “unlocking” new avenues to explore, new heights to climb. It’s the sound of a young band with no shortage of engaging ideas, and they seemed poised to go nowhere but up.

Listen to Truth Club’s Running from the Chase below, followed by the band’s Track by Track breakdown of the record. You can also grab tickets to Truth Club’s upcoming shows here.

“Suffer Debt”:

The main guitar part of this song has existed for years now — I remember hearing Travis absentmindedly messing with it between practicing other songs that we were actively playing. The first time we started working on it as a band, Kam played this really melodic bassline that changed the whole feel of the song. As the structure started to really form, Yvonne came in with the guitar line that sits on top, and I’m still always impressed with the ways she manages to come up with melodies that compliment what’s happening in the rest of the song, but feel like they’re coming from this new and different place.

Recording “Suffer Debt” was a really fun process. I felt like there needed to be a little more ~something~ in the repeated four quarter note hits in the verses of the song, and ended up putting together what we referred to as a “Biblically Accurate Hi-hat” — which included a bunch of semi-destroyed old cymbals, beads, and clips. It added just the right crunchy texture I was hoping for. We also had fun with some various other sounds with this song, as well as with the rest of the record. Taking inspiration from my wind ensemble days, I recorded some bowed glockenspiel notes that made it into the final cut. — Elise Jaffe

“Uh Oh”:

In many ways, this song was the catalyst for the whole album. A lot of the songs on Running from the Chase had been kicking around for some time, but when lockdown happened, we stopped playing together, and progress halted. “Uh Oh” was the first (and only) song I managed to write by myself during that time. I sent the demo of it to everyone else and was like, “Something to look forward to!!!” It put into perspective for me how important it was to be able to write in a room together. It was an equalizer. Something fresh and whole to connect the old ideas with the new ones. Musically, it’s a celebratory, hopeful song. You can hear our eagerness in the instrumentation. The lyrics definitely belie this feeling, but that tension symbolizes the emotional framework of the album. — Travis Harrington

“Blue Eternal”:

It was funny coming into the studio for this one because as Travis was about to go in to record the vocals, he mentioned off-hand that it would be cool to have harmonies, which I hadn’t even considered before then. It took us a second to get on the same page, but it came out good ‘n right. It was real fun witnessing Travis and Kam work out their solos for the end, from when they were just riffing on some seriously wacked-out stuff in our living room to messing with different pedals in the studio. Some of the ideas were WILD, but it landed in such a sick place overall. — Yvonne Chazal

“77X”:

This was one of the first Truth Club tracks I was directly involved in writing. Travis and I sat down together and worked out the verse motif together one day, like yeaaars ago — before Not An Exit even came out. Then months and months later, it was one of the first songs we worked on when we came together as a full four-piece, and it was one of the first times that I got to write a “guitar solo.” I remember coming in with it and the band going wide-eyed and being like, “That’s awesome,” and it made me feel really proud, at a time when I was still feeling kind of shaky on guitar. This song holds a real special place in my heart for that reason. — Y. Chazal

“Clover”:
“Clover” is an ancient Truth Club relic, I think it may be like the fourth or fifth song Travis and I wrote together? (Now we’re sitting here trying to map out what songs we played at each of our first two shows in order to remember.) There was an earlier recording of this song that almost made it onto Not An Exit, but I’m glad now that it’s being released in its current form, with a more full range of textures and dynamics than prior. Returning to playing “Clover” after a long break has been fun — I play drums a bit differently than I did while we were writing the song. Finding new ways to play older parts has always been fun, as well as an opportunity to reflect on how I’ve grown throughout this project. — E. Jaffe

“Exit Cycle”:

Recording this was the first time we collaborated with anyone outside of the band. Yvonne and I layered our vocal arrangements and realized that it was still missing something. Kam or Elise would never be caught dead in front of a microphone, so I texted Indigo and crossed my fingers that she was around. We got lucky! I think she was leaving to play some shows the next day or something. Her vocal performance made my jaw drop. It was so amazing to watch her process in the studio, for her to come in, listen to the song a couple of times, and then just work at it until she found her way to what’s on the final recording. — T. Harrington

“Siphon”:

This song is the absolute ripper of the album imo — it smacks. This was a pivotal song for me as a guitarist because the rest of the band had mostly figured out their parts, while I was left with finding some heat for the second/lead guitar part. That was intimidating because 1.) I could tell that the song had sooo much energetic potential and 2.) I’m a pretty mellow guitar player on my own, so finding these higher-energy parts was stepping out of my comfort zone. I remember sitting meticulously for hourssss just playing over and over again the bridge part at the end, slamming distorted notes until I found the next one, sort of laying the part down note by note. I definitely feel like I unlocked something with this one. — Kameron Vann

“Dancing Around My Tongue”:

This song truly does feel like dancing around a point. The two guitars weave in a way that’s super tangly, making it hard to pull them apart, all the while the drums and bass pulse through. It gives me visions of notes dancing in air, limbs trading places and stepping into one another’s space, twirling back and forth, becoming one and then not. That interlocking arrangement compliments the lyrics so well to emphasize that feeling of dancing entanglement — struggling for, searching for, and eventually finding resolve.

It’s hilarious because this song gives us the most trouble to play live out of all of them; so much so that we will stop playing it for months at a time. There’s just something in the dynamics and motion of the song that feels tough to capture live…..we’ll figure it out :’) — K. Vann

“The Chase”:

I remember when we were first messing around with this one. It was something we could just vamp on for a super long time and emphasize different hits to change it up just enough for it to be engaging, but you still kind of get sucked into the trance of it. Then when we realized that we could kind of slam out of it into Running From the Chase, that really locked into place. When we play it during our set, it provides such a nice, like… restful moment. And it’s also been something fun to have in the back pocket if someone, like ~ breaks a string on stage and we need to stall :~) (Kam stole my smiley face idea.) — Y. Chazal

“Running from the Chase”:

I didn’t learn the definition of ‘titular’ until being in a band with Travis and hearing him refer to this track as such. This is still one of my favorite songs off the album to play live at shows. We’ve played around with a couple of different arrangements, dynamics-wise, which has kept it feeling fresh and exciting to bring to the stage. While we were still in the early stages of writing Running from the Chase, I remember our friend Max Gowan saying that it felt like “a new type of Truth Club song” had just been unlocked. — E. Jaffe

“Break the Stones”:

Definitely an emotional outlier on the record. It felt kind of strange to realize this was the one song that drew from an almost entirely manic place. Those sounds in the background during the first half of the song are recordings of us playing musical chairs. Musical chairs is a pretty deranged game if you think about it for way too long. — T. Harrington

“Is This Working?”:

For the full experience, start this video when the song hits the 2:52 time stamp: — K. Vann

Truth Club Break Down New Album Running from the Chase Track by Track: Exclusive
Jonah Krueger

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