Why Festivals Are Like The Last Two Minutes Of A Basketball Game

For their third album, Another Language, Texas four-piece This Will Destroy You spent the better part of a year writing the songs primarily in the studio after what has been described as a “prolonged vacuous dark period that threatened to break both the band and the members themselves.” With the album finally released in September last year, the band has been back on the road playing shows again. Guitarist Chris King said despite the album being made in the studio, it didn’t take long to adapt the songs for the live arena. “I feel like initially on there was a little bit of finessing and figuring out the best way to kind of get things going live but I definitely feel like at this point things are pretty honed in and we feel confident that things are flowing well. We just got finished playing a festival in Austin called Levitation and festivals are a good gauge for playing live because it’s a very do or die environment. You have, like, ten minutes to set up and play and it’s like the final two minutes of a basketball game. It can be intense in certain aspects playing festivals so it’s probably a good gauge of where the set is at now and we feel like we’ve performed well under pressure and feel good about this set and how everyone’s playing.”

"Festivals are a good gauge for playing live because it’s a very do or die environment."

The new album now sits amongst a long catalogue of songs from their decade-long career so far, including 2011’s Tunnel Blanket and their self-titled debut from 2008, alongside a handful of EPs. King says the more upbeat songs of the new album help contrast with some of the darker parts of the set. “It’s been a great transition into the older material and it’s been a nice dynamic with the previous record, Tunnel Blanket being a little darker and slower and it meshing with that and having more upbeat songs like Invitation and New Topia. It’s been a nice way of increasing the palette and diversifying the set and just kind of adding more to the experience, and the ups and downs of things. It definitely feels good having the new record as a placeholder and having these songs to play, I feel like they fit in really well with the previous material and they’re translating well live so we’ve been really happy with it.”

The band return to Australia this June, playing songs from the new album as well as spanning the rest of their catalogue. After that King says the band will do a mini-tour of the US before starting work on some new releases. “We have a couple of scoring projects coming up in the next year that we can’t really disclose what they are or who’s involved but we’re really excited to be a part of that,” King explains. “But we’re definitely going to take some time in late summer/early fall to start writing, get some studio time lined up and get things going.”