‘Inside’ With The Wrecks, Indie’s Best Kept Secret

On April 1, Blue Hawk Records had the chance to attend an °1824 press conference for indie's best kept secret, The Wrecks. Beginning as a DIY project built out of long-time friends, The Wrecks have gone on to amass a cult following as well as mainstream success, with their most popular song, "Favorite Liar" currently holding 59 million streams on Spotify. The group has been embarking on multiple sold-out tours over the past years, with their upcoming tour, the "Inside: Outside" tour on track to do the same. Their new project, Inside :, supported by the upcoming tour, will be released on April 11 and follow the same DIY style the group is known for. Blue Hawk had the chance to sit down with Nick Anderson, the mastermind of The Wrecks, to get a better idea of his thoughts about the new project.

The project was born out of isolation, where Nick began to stay inside, away from the outside world, to create. After bad spouts of writer’s block, Nick began to realize that the project's concept was right in front of him: inside and outside. The first half of the project, releasing April 11, is written from the perspective of someone who is stuck inside and is seeing the outside world grow around them, or as Nick put it, "the outside world starts to grow in the cracks of the walls."

The production of the project keeps well with this theme, as Nick called it "home-grown", made almost exclusively in home studios and bedrooms. While the band has tried to make their productions bigger and record in professional settings, it was just never a good fit for them. They instead find less of a learning curve while working with their own equipment and therefore can be more creative with how they use that equipment. The visuals are also "home-grown", being created by the band members in spaces familiar to them. Anderson specifically pointed out the video for "Speed", which was filmed by a small team and self-produced himself in sets that were built in his Los Angeles home. He spent all his time creating different ideas and visuals within all parts of his home, making the video, and therefore, the project, feel like a labor of love and lived in. Multiple upcoming visualizers, all created by the band, also run heavily with this idea of the outside breaking down the walls of the inside.

The project keeps an honest tone throughout, as all their previous projects have. Anderson stated his aversion to using overly metaphorical writing in his lyrics, as he feels it takes the listener out of the project. Instead, while he doesn't write with the intention of relating to an audience, he feels honesty makes it easier for a listener to be in his shoes. "If you write something from an honest enough point of view, someone will find something to relate to." The project also is honest from a genre point of view, as Anderson, a producer himself, detests the idea of being put in a genre box. "Genre has never been front of mind, especially as a producer...The idea of using the same trick in multiple songs... feels dishonest."

At the tail end of our time with Anderson, we were allowed to hear the global premiere of the song "I Didn't Used To", which will be Track 1 on Inside :. The song had a raw passion to it, clearly grown out of the isolation and insecurity that comes from hiding yourself away from the world while desperately wanting to be a part of it. The music, while clear that it is home-produced, is still lush and full of things that fans will be picking out on their fourth or fifth listen. Anderson said of the song, "[It] Feels like the song I've been waiting to write my whole life... the

answers weren't clear to me right away". Since the song feels like multiple songs in one, it was the product of multiple different ideas blended into one to create a new and exciting idea for The Wrecks and their fans. I honestly believe that this song is going to become a lot of longtime Wrecks fans' favorite song by the group because of its honesty, humor, and complexity.

Their newest project, Inside :, will be released on April 11 and is followed by the start of their "Inside: Outside" tour on April 18. You can find the band on all major socials @wearethewrecks and streaming on all major streaming platforms.