Did the recurrent nature of these conversations make it easier to get Twentytwo in Blue out of your system as soon as you stopped touring?

KIVLEN: Getting it out of your system is a great way to phrase it, because these songs and ideas had been building up for a long time. It was like suddenly all this material was pouring out of us. We got some new gear and guitar pedals and had too much anxious energy to create to give ourselves a break.

CUMMING: When you make music, it’s a particular art form in that it’s like a psychosis. Sometimes there’s things you can’t actually say. I wouldn’t go around saying, “We brought you into this place! You know we can take you out!” But I needed to say that, so I put it in a song. It’s insane to speak, but it kind of needs to be said. There’s all of these feelings we had to get out. While you’re writing it, the song informs you of what it needs to be. You just have to listen to it and support that.

FABER: It’s funny because we didn’t go into the record with that notion, but the more we worked on these songs the clearer it became that’s what was happening. When we looked back at the songs, we realized just how much they’re communicating what we were feeling.

Because our political climate has become so horrible, a lot of musicians are commenting on it in songs or in the overarching mood of their releases, including you. How did you avoid the cliches that traditionally come with political rebuttal?

FABER: That’s a good point, because it’s hard to write a song addressing politics without getting corny because there’s only so much you can say. We tried to change the viewpoint so it’s less about the specifics of what’s happening in our government and instead focuses on our generation. These are our ideas on what the future will be like. “Crisis Fest” is less about fuck the power animosity and more about the difference in societal values across generations.

CUMMING: There’s two points within that. One of my favorite lines in “Crisis Fest” is “You’ve been in school for 10 years now / 80 grand indebted down,” which is a problem that us in the United States are super used to. You don’t hear about that in songs, though, because it’s somewhat awkward to do. In a poem, it may look intense and weird. But songs can become a comical, sturdy way to address those things. The most important way to say things that are easily perceived as cheesy is to do it with the most heart that you have. That’s why I love glam rock. You see musicians with power do something earnestly, even if it’s campy, and you fall in love with it. When you give your whole being into something like this, like how we’re saying we’re uncertain but we’re resilient and here, I don’t believe that it’s misconstrued as cheesy. If the world hates it, we’ll be like, “Wow, shit. We really fucked up.” But when you know you’re doing something at the most you can, then I don’t know how it can be generic.

KIVLEN: “Crisis Fest” is a bit of an anomaly on the record because it’s the only song outwardly dealing with stuff that, on the surface level, can be perceived as political. A lot of the songs have a personal viewpoint that has an underlying effect from the political sphere we’re in. I think of “Burn It” being a personal song to Julia while being in the context of a story about wealth, as “Sinking Sands” is a personal song to me about the relationship of information, propaganda, and fascism.