Boys Who Think put out their first full length, self titled album on Friday, January 24.
The four piece indie rock act features Evan West on lead guitar and vocals, Liam Butler on keyboard and backing vocals, Daniel Trenholm on bass, and Mitchell Tuck on drums. They celebrated at their album release show at The Ship, supported by Little Fauna and Book Club.
Rife with heavy distortion and introspective, dreamy lyrics, “Boys Who Think,” is an enjoyable listen spanning 8 songs and about 40 minutes. The album consists of songs they have played at shows around St. John’s for a year, recorded, mixed, and mastered by local production company Bad Times Club.
Boys Who Think spoke to The Muse about their creative process and musical inspirations when creating their first LP.
Classical Training in the DIY Scene
The St. John’s independent music scenes admirably embody the do-it-yourself spirit, but some classical training definitely doesn’t hurt. Partially hailing from Memorial’s music program helped Boys Who Think with some more technical aspects of writing and efficiency. Using these techniques, West generally took the lead on songwriting, and brought ideas to the rest of the band to fill in as they saw fit.
“We started with sheet music, which is very uncommon in the scene,” West says, “ but you know, why not! If you can read the sheet music you can quickly see what’s there. We’d use bar lines and chord sheets to learn the songs fast.”
“Three of us are classically trained, not necessarily on the instruments we play in the group … but Evan and I were both jazz minors … so we have a certain literacy, we know how to work with the charts – it’s helpful,” keyboardist and vocalist Liam Butler added.
Musical Influences
It’s always interesting to watch bands ‘Frankenstein’ together each members’ individual musical interests to create something new and exciting. The band cited influences across many genres such as punk, indie, psychedelic rock, Midwest emo, and jazz.
“I like to joke that we all look and act like we’re in different bands, we each have a different style but I think it comes together pretty nicely.” West said, “I say that I write indie music, but with influences of jazz, psychedelic rock. I like more atmospheric writing… I write mostly about feelings as opposed to situations – but some of [the songs] are just fun.”
“There are a few shared interests too!” drummer Mitchell Tuck interjected, “I know we’re all pretty big into Steely Dan. I feel like there’s some parallels between some parts of our songs and that whole jazz fusion world.”
Reception and Future Plans
The album has seen a positive reception so far. Boys Who Think appears to have a core group of people that attend each show religiously. Avid show-goers seem to be glad that the songs are finally available for streaming after hearing them live over the last year.
While the songs on the album are fantastic, the band spoke briefly about their ‘joke’ song that ended up a fan favorite – a surf rock tune called ‘Surfin’ that West said is their only song written collaboratively by all four members.
“We wrote it completely as a joke,” Tuck says.
“We started cutting it from our performances because its all anyone would ask for,” Trenholm adds, “You’d get up on stage, play the first song and throughout the set everyone’s just like “play Surfin’!” after every song.”
“It would be even more disheartening when you get new viewership in and they come up after the show and they’re like “oh man that was fantastic, I loved “Surfin'”!” Butler said.
Boys Who Think is planning on taking somewhat of a backseat in lieu of their album release. However, some members are planning on independently participating in the Unpossible NL’s February RPM challenge which Butler dubbed “a good opportunity to workshop some new material to potentially bring to this ensemble.”
Listen to “Boys Who Think” here:
Boys Who Think by Boys Who Think