Zero Mile PresentsTHE USED
Plain White T's
TUE, 1 OCT 2024 at 07:00PM EDT
Ages: All Ages
Doors Open: 06:00PM
OnSale: Fri, 14 Jun 2024 at 10:00AM EDT
Announcement: Tue, 11 Jun 2024 at 10:00AM EDT
When Bert McCracken says that the songs that comprise Toxic Positivity are some
of the most sincere he has ever written, you know he doesn’t speak those words
lightly.
For as long as he can remember, McCracken has used music as an outlet to lay bare
his innermost thoughts and emotions. For 23 years, that writing has enabled The
Used to deeply resonate with fans the world over. Exploding off the back of
universally adored rock anthems such as ‘The Taste Of Ink’, ‘Take It Away’ and
‘Pretty Handsome Awkward’, the many millions of streams and record sales
(including the platinum-certified The Used and In Love And Death) their career has
yielded are one thing; the human connection formed between artist and audience is
priceless, however. To that end alone, The Used can consider themselves four of
the luckiest and richest men in music.
“Humans share such similar experiences and similar tragedies and everything in
between,” McCracken says of the intimate connection he has with people in all four
corners of the globe. “I feel that if I’m writing honestly, and I’m writing from the
heart, our fans will feel it.
“This record is quite tough of me to listen to,” he adds, “because it’s a reflection of
times in my life that have been some of lowest ever.”
If most albums are a document of a singular time, a place, and a feeling, then Toxic
Positivity can lay claim to being a document of two, and the journey between them.
When The Used entered the studio of longtime collaborator John Feldmann in the
autumn of 2021, the result was 10 songs recorded across 10 days that would see
McCracken, bassist Jepha, drummer Dan Whitesides and guitarist Joey Bradford
spilling sweat and blood for anything up to 14 hours at a time. Emerging from the
eye of the Covid pandemic, and created in the shadow of a world that socially,
economically and politically felt as if it were rupturing at the seams, the tracks were
imbued with a negativity and despondency that spoke of experiences both shared
and deeply personal, with McCracken suffering from a deep depression and
addiction issues. Recent standalone singles ‘Fuck You’ (‘I'm a shadow of the one I
once knew’, McCracken cries) and ‘People Are Vomit’ (‘This future’s fucked before it
got started!’) were, unsurprisingly given their titles and riotous anger, born of these
sessions.
“Honestly, we thought we had a record right there,” laughs Jepha today. But
McCracken especially couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that the story those songs
were telling was not yet finished. “I felt it captured an emotion, but it was one
without an ending,” he says. Instead, he wanted his band’s ninth full-length to carry
a narrative that spoke of his own ever-changing headspace, as well as that of a
society slowly emerging from pandemic hibernation and isolation.
McCracken doesn’t fully accept Toxic Positivity as a ‘concept record’, in the
traditional sense, but rather a “day-in-the-life journey of a depressed, anxiety-ridden
person”. “I think it flows cohesively like a concept record, but it ends up travelling
here, there and everywhere, so it’s a little scrambled,” McCracken explains, “just
like my days are a little scrambled. There’s a lot of emphasis on ‘me’ and ‘I’, where a
lot of the poetry of the past records is about ‘him’ and ‘his’ or ‘they’ and ‘theirs’. It’s
a little more selfish and reflective in the literal sense on where I am at and where I
was at.
“Waking up in a dark place has been such a huge part of my life in the past couple
of years,” McCracken continues. It’s little wonder, then, that Toxic Positivity opens
with the words “I’m the worst I’ve ever been.” “But for me, I tend to feel at my best
at night time,” he adds. “That’s when I’m most at peace in feeling, ‘Everything’s
going to be ok.’”
And so The Used gathered once more at the beginning of 2023 for another 10-day
songwriting and recording sprint. The results fizzed with the same vigour and
energy as those earlier songs, inspired by the collaborative process of a band that
have never felt tighter. Yet they slowly began to take on a more hopeful lyrical turn,
too, inspired by post-lockdown touring, and time spent reconnecting with their fans
and each other.
“I wanted the record to end with something for people to grab onto,” McCracken
smiles, referencing the closing Giving Up, which opens with the admission
“Yesterday I woke up wanting to die” and concludes with the repeated mantra of
“I’m not giving up on me”. “I want people to understand that, no matter how bad it
gets, you don't have to give up. Everything always feels different no matter what. So
what you're feeling right now you will not feel later on.”
The collection arrives under a title created with its tongue firmly in its cheek, but
one that comprehensively sums up its overarching emotion. “You see other people
living their lives and smiling and it makes you hate everybody in the world who's
doing okay,” McCracken explains. “Even though you know, deep down that
nobody's doing okay.”
Absorbed front-to-back in its finished form, Toxic Positivity pulls from every facet of
The Used’s definitive sound. There’s the buzzsaw riff of ‘Pinky Swear (Save Me)’; the
sweeping, arena-sized chorus of ‘Headspace’; the earworm hooks of ‘The Worst I’ve
Ever Been’; and the underlying pop sensibilities of ‘I Hate Everybody’. Hell,
McCracken even digs deep for throwback screams on ‘Dopamine’. Displaying a
depth of sonic variety while never allowing an inch of slack into its taut
cohesiveness, this is the past, present, and future of The Used represented in 11
tracks that combined barely break the half-hour mark.
“I feel we’re a very personality orientated band,” Jepha explains. “You can hear
each of us in our instruments, and then Bert’s voice ties us all together and anchors
us. Our influences within the band vary so much, and this record is the perfect
melting pot of everything we’re all hearing. I see this record almost as a different
branch of reality from where the band could have gone after (2009 album) Artwork.”
“I think it has a lot of the love and the compassion and the viciousness of our first
couple of records,” adds McCracken with a mischievous grin.
Then, of course, there is the influence of producer John Feldmann. A near
ubiquitous presence in the Used story – it was he who was instrumental in helping
break the band, and who has manned the controls of every one of their records, bar
2017’s The Canyon – both McCracken and Jepha speak to how their friend and
collaborator simply ‘gets’ the band like no other. “He’s helped us be better
musicians and, frankly, better people,” states Jepha. “He pulls from us things that
no one else could. Everything he does comes from such a deep love of The Used.”
“And his studio has the most amazing coffee,” laughs McCracken.
It would have been much needed for Toxic Positivity’s marathon writing and
recording sessions. Jepha laughs recalling the discomfort that working at a songper-
day speed instinctively felt to him, but both he and McCracken agree that the
results it yielded were inimitably honest and inspired, necessity indeed proving the
mother of invention. “The more you tinker with a song, the more you can lose sight
of its true essence,” is how Jepha sees it. “It felt like how it did when we were
making our very first album,” nods McCracken.
It exemplifies. too, the prolificacy of The Used. After 23 years and nine records, it
speaks of the strength of the band’s collective collaboration and also their innate,
unquenchable thirst to create. “I think we have no choice but to write and write and
write,” says McCracken. “It has always just been in us, and we’ve had to get it out. I
read a quote once that said you either work your entire lifetime on four great
pieces, or you write thousands of pieces and become great that way. Everything
that we feel, I think it always makes for a good song.”
In that regard, McCracken is humble to a fault, for the simple fact that the songs
within Toxic Positivity are far more than merely good songs. They mark the latest
chapter in a truly great career. And, like those that have come before them, they will
truly matter.
Event Venue
The Eastern, 777 Memorial Drive SE,Atlanta,GA,United States
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