A Conversation w/ wilt
Photo by: Lexi Yob
For wilt, the Los Angeles-based rock band composed of Chelsea Rifkin (vocals), Aaron Liebman (guitar), Andrew Vance (guitar) and Dan Bermudez (drums), everything has led to this moment. Their consistent touring schedule, including the band’s first international headline tour next month, and recent singles have rolled out the red carpet for their upcoming debut album, when no one’s watching. In a chat with Hear it!, wilt spoke about everything leading up to this release, including their collaborative creative process, their years’ worth of experience on the road, and their evolution as a band.
You just wrapped up a stretch of North American tour dates including headline shows as well as opening for both Jutes and Mothica on their tours. What have you learned over the years from performing live so consistently? Is there a stop on this run that you’re still thinking about?
Chelsea: “We’ve learned what works for us on the road and how to make touring at this level the most comfortable for sure. We all know what’s expected from each of us and how to communicate, and this last tour we didn’t bring anyone! It was just the four of us. We’ve also seen what has and hasn’t worked on stage with the crowd, and bringing that experience into our live show has made us much stronger. Our favorite stop on tour was a headline show we did in Richmond, our first show there ever. It was in a packed out bar and there was the best energy!”
Andrew: “The biggest thing that I've learned from touring is there's a difference between having a good show and playing a good show. Not every show will be perfect. Sometimes shows are hot. Sometimes you're tired. Sometimes you're annoyed. Sometimes the audience is super lively. Sometimes they’re very reserved. And either way people after the set people will come up to us just the same and say how much they loved it. You just have to go with the flow. Through touring over the last two years, doing three full U.S. tours and a European tour now, I think we've all figured out how to put all those factors aside to play the best show we can.”
I also have to know what the energy in the room was like when you added your cover of “All the Things She Said” to your setlist. Why’d you pick this song to play alongside your originals?
Chelsea: “We always try to play a cover when we open to win over the people that’ve never heard of us! We’ve played songs like ‘Covet’ by Basement and ‘Drain You’ by Nirvana. ‘All the Things She Said’ has been one of our favorite songs for a while, and its resurgence in Heated Rivalry felt kismet for this cover. We put our own spin on it with heavier guitars and screams, and it’s been a crowd favorite every time we’ve played it.”
Andrew: “It’s such a fun song to cover. The energy in the room always picks up, especially when people don't know us on these opening tours. I see people’s faces light up, start singing along and get out their phones to film it.”
When you think about your early years together, where does your first international headline tour fall on your musical bucket list? What else have you already accomplished that you sometimes can’t believe?
Chelsea: “Touring internationally in general was top of our bucket list! We are sooo grateful to our bestie Taylor Acorn for introducing us to those markets, and we’re still pinching ourselves that we get to go there twice in one year. It’s so surreal to have already sold out shows over there, thousands of miles away from us.”
Andrew: “Even going to Europe as a support for Taylor Acorn this year was such a pinch-me moment. When we got the invite, we all hugged, and were honestly holding back tears. The fact that we’re already going back to Europe this November is amazing and hard to wrap our heads around, especially seeing so many low-ticket warnings and sellouts. It'll be the longest stretch of headline shows we've ever done by far, and with all this new music we have out, it's so exciting.”
Photo by: Lexi Yob
Can you share a bit about your latest single, “suffocate,” and the inspiration behind it?
Chelsea: “‘Suffocate’ was the last song we wrote for the album and definitely the most collaborative. Aaron and Andrew had this super fun syncopated guitar part à la Queens of the Stone Age and I wanted to add a Turnstile inspired melody. The lyrical themes stem from feelings I’ve had through wilt’s journey. No matter what we’ve accomplished my mind always finds a way to beat myself down, and get jealous. It’s so hard to not compare yourself to others in such a competitive industry and this song is a lot about the guilt that comes with feeling that way.”
How have these last four singles introduced listeners to the world of your debut album, when no one’s watching?
Chelsea: “Every single has been a great sonic preview of what’s to come! It’s also given a glimpse into the core themes of the album: always finding the bad in the good. Always ruining things for yourself.”
Dan: “I think the last four singles really clearly show how we’ve evolved our sound over the last few years. When we made this record, we wanted to put together something bolder and heavier, but also more cohesive than our previous works. I feel like we were able to make something that we can definitively call the ‘wilt sound.’ Each single we’ve released shows a different aspect of our sound, with the third single, Dent, feeling the most all-encompassing.”
How are each of you feeling knowing that your debut album is out so soon? Are you more nervous, excited, or a mixture of the two?
Chelsea: “I’m So excited. I’m so proud of these songs and this project and I can’t wait for the world to hear it. Of course it’s always nerve-racking to put yourself out there so intimately, but I’m more excited than anything.”
Dan: “I'm feeling quite nervous. It's been a whirlwind, honestly, since we even recorded it back in January, from the Taylor Acorn tour we did in Europe, to shooting the music videos through the spring and the summer, doing photos, and then going on this Jutes’ run. The last two months especially have just flown by, and it's really scary when you put so much work into something over such a long period of time.
When we started the band, we just did it single by single. While this is definitely the right direction to go, there's something less scary about doing it piece by piece, because if what we do doesn’t connect, we can just move on to the next thing. So much has gone into this album that we can't just let it go. We really need it to stand on its own and make a splash, please the fans that we've already made and find new ears too.
In the last two years we found a formula to promote ‘bite my tongue’ and to some extent ‘gwen’ on social media that really worked and opened up opportunities for us - but it feels like finding our feet again entering this era of new music and figuring out how to get it to connect. The landscape of music and social media is always shifting.”
What led to the shift from Chelsea writing the lyrics largely on her own and the boys producing to when no one’s watching being a more complete collaboration? Can you describe this creative process and how you worked together on these songs?
Dan: “On previous works, entirely self-producing our music was incredibly rewarding, but simultaneously, very exhausting. It’s hard to maintain objectivity when the same four brains are exclusively attached to the music from the beginning until the end. Because of this, we decided to bring in a producer, Carlos de la Garza, to handle the technical aspects of the record and provide the guiding hand and objectivity that was hard to find within ourselves.
Additionally, we wrote the songs on this record in a much more collaborative way. Rather than piecing together parts remotely and splintering off for writing, we decided to workshop everything in the room together, from lyrics to guitar parts and so on. Making our record this way strengthened the band internally and made the record feel like it belonged to all of us in a really special way.”
How have you evolved, personally and musically, since you released “gwen” in 2022?
Chelsea: “Our relationship as band has gotten much closer through years of touring and writing, and we’ve really honed in our sound.”
Dan: “We’ve all grown leaps and bounds as musicians, as a band, and as friends since we released ‘gwen.’ I think for all of us, making this band a reality and having the opportunity to experience recording/touring/having fans/etc has been an absolute dream come true.”
Photo by: Lexi Yob