In the middle of a July heatwave we’re speaking with half of New York City’s Telescreens – singer/guitarist Jackson Hamm and drummer Oliver Graf – as they join a Zoom call before their show in Nantucket.
The band is on tour supporting their sprawling new album, Why the Lights Flicker. It’s their third record overall and second with Graf behind the kit. Interestingly, Graf is quick to reveal that when he auditioned for the band, he almost didn’t make the cut.
“He was playing quiet and all this shit,” Hamm says. “Then Josiah [Valerius, keyboards] jumped on the kit and was like, ‘Nah, let me show you,’ and Oliver goes bright red in the face. He sat back down at the kit and bled and broke the shit out of this practice kit that we were using. It was the moment the band was born. Plus, he’s a legend at the pub. He can drink so much!”
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“That’s actually why I’m still here,” Graf says with a laugh.
The album’s title, Why the Lights Flicker, comes from a phenomenon Hamm experienced writing songs in the house he grew up in, which he believes is a signal that he is channeling the energy from the universe. For Hamm, capturing that lightning in a bottle comes easy, but the real skill lies in sustaining that magic for the duration of a song.
“Everybody is capable of channeling from the outer realm or getting hit with some sort of pure inspiration from the collective unconscious,” Hamm says. “But where you become a musician is whether or not you can sustain that for three or four minutes.”
One way that Hamm sustains that magic is by putting the song before his capabilities as a guitar player.
“I can do the scale thing and I can do the shred thing,” he says. “It’s more about what kind of energy is being emitted rather than [whether it’s] a fast or impressive part.
“It’s like with Billie Joe Armstrong. You could say all the guitar parts are easy, but I challenge you to sing them and play them perfectly at the tempo that [Green Day] sing and play. Do it for 20 songs in a row. It’s fucking hard and it’s seriously physical.”
The band has already begun work on their followup to Why the Lights Flicker.
“[Lights] is our quintessential record that represents us as a rock band,” Hamm says. “A lot has changed since we wrote and recorded it. This next batch of songs is much more in the box. It’s just about cleansing the palette and letting the pendulum naturally swing toward things that sound fresh.”
