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TurnoverThere is a closeness at the heart of Turnover’s aptly titled new album,
‘Altogether.’ Though it’s the first collection the trio has written while living
on opposite coasts, the record actually represents the group’s most
collaborative and connected work to date, showcasing the intuitive,
near-telepathic relationship frontman Austin Getz has developed over the years
with his bandmates.
“Instead of making things more difficult, being far apart helped us learn to
appreciate each other even more,” says Getz. “As a band, we’re closer now than
we’ve ever been before.”
Recorded at Philadelphia’s Studio 4 with longtime creative foil Will Yip at the
helm, ‘Altogether’ finds the group breaking new ground on a number of fronts.
Pop sensibilities inform the writing for the first time, with elements of funk,
jazz, lounge, and disco mingling alongside the band’s trademark indie grit and
punk energy. Lush melodies and infectious hooks reflect the newfound freedom and
confidence that have inspired Getz since his cross-country move to northern
California, while adventurous recording techniques and instrumentation lend a
fresh perspective without sacrificing the kind of precise detail and rich
intricacies that have come to define the band’s recent studio output. The result
is an album that boasts both sonic sophistication and emotional accessibility in
equal measure, a major leap forward in sound and vision that reveals time apart
as the true key to togetherness.
The title is fitting in another way as well, according to Getz. “On this record,
more than in the past, we wanted to keep in mind the beauty of writing ‘popular
music,’” he explains. “By that I mean music for people who don’t have the time
to delve into the niches and find fringe artists, music for those of us who are
busy with work or our families or whatever problems might be around. Music is
real magic that can change people’s days and lives, and the more people
listening and loving, the better.” Turnover first emerged roughly a decade ago
in Virginia Beach, VA, but the group’s critical and commercial breakthrough
didn’t arrive until six years later, when they cracked the Top 5 on the
Billboard Heatseekers Chart with their acclaimed sophomore album, ‘Peripheral
Vision.’ The band—which consists of Getz, his brother Casey on drums, and their
childhood friend Danny Dempsey on bass—followed it up in 2017 with ‘Good
Nature,’ a streaming smash that racked up roughly 40 million plays on Spotify
alone and which Vice proclaimed to be “their best album yet.” Reviews were
similarly glowing around the world (Pitchfork praised the record’s “rhythmic
propulsion and harmonized guitar sparkles,” while Exclaim! hailed its
“shimmering instrumentation and luscious harmonies,” and The Line of Best Fit
swooned for its “plush production” and “subtle maturity”), and the album earned
the band headline dates everywhere from Brooklyn Steel to The Fonda Theatre
along with their first appearance at Coachella.
“With ‘Peripheral Vision,’ I was starting to experiment with psychedelics, and I
was feeling alienated from a lot of the things I’d been raised to believe and
accept,” Getz reflects. “That album asked a lot of questions, and I felt like
‘Good Nature’ was my attempt to find the answers to those questions. This time
around, though, I found myself in a very different place, both literally and
metaphorically.”
Starting over from scratch somewhere new, particularly somewhere as rural and
isolated as Getz’s new home in northern California, proved more challenging than
he had anticipated.
“The move was great in a lot of ways,” he explains, “but the experience also
de-romanticized a lot of the notions I had about leaving everything behind and
relocating to the woods. I realized I’d been undervaluing a lot of things that
were actually really important to me, like having friends and family close by. I
had to come to terms with being a stranger and learn how to trust new people and
make new connections all over again.” For the first time, Getz found himself
looking inwards instead of outwards for inspiration, writing as an act of
self-exploration rather than in response to any external stimuli. “There was a
deepening of my relationship with music that came out of the whole experience,”
he explains. “Instead of waiting for some revelation to arrive, I would make
myself sit down with a guitar or at the piano and just play until something
interesting happened. Often what came out surprised me.”
Sometimes an entire song would reveal itself in ten minutes; other times, Getz
would land on a guitar riff or a chord progression that he’d revise for months.
The band spent time writing together in-person on tour and during time off in
New York and Portland, with Yip flying out to join the band for the latter.
“Will’s much more than just a producer for us at this point,” says Getz. “He’s a
close friend and a reliable piece of what our sound has become.” That sound is
the product of a remarkably wide range of influences and tastes, which Turnover
synthesizes on the album into a whole far greater than the sum of its parts.
“Working remotely for the most part, everybody was able to send ideas around on
their own schedules, and nobody felt too protective of anything, so the new
songs started to reflect each of our personalities more than ever before,” says
Getz. “Collectively we like everything from jazz to folk, disco to rock and
roll, and a lot in between, and it’s where we all intersect that things start to
feel special. With the three of us and Will all contributing to the writing
together, the songs turned out better than anything any of us could have done on
our own. That’s what makes the experience of being a band really unique as
opposed to just one artistic mind.”
‘Altogether’ demonstrates the band’s eclectic mix of personalities from the very
start, opening with a lo-fi, jazzy intro that quickly gives way to the driving
drums and delay-drenched guitar of “Still In Motion.” Like much of the album to
come, the song is a meditation on change and perspective, on learning to quiet
your mind and appreciate the moment before it’s gone. The bittersweet “No Reply”
reckons with guilt over failing to be present with a loved one, while the
effervescent “Much After Feeling” recognizes the sacrifices we make to stay
connected across geographical distance, and the breezy “Parties” grapples with
the kind of self-consciousness that can leave us prisoners of our own design.
“There’s a part in that song where the tone completely changes,” says Getz, “and
that represents the moment when your walls finally come down and you start to
just appreciate where you are. The lyrics go from describing the nervousness you
feel in a particular moment to just describing the moment itself because you’re
finally out of your head and able to recognize the beauty that’s all around
you.” Getz taps into that beauty throughout the record, stopping to smell the
roses and ground himself in ways that might have seemed impossible even just a
few years ago. “Starting to feel at home in the country,” he sings on the hazy
“Valley of the Moon,” while the sultry sax of “Ceramic Sky” hints at the simple
and sensual pleasures of falling in love, and the playful “Plant Sugar” channels
80’s Britpop as it makes a case for mindfulness. “I was stressed out when I
first started writing that song, but then I looked up at the sky and saw the
constellations and felt ridiculous for being worried about anything,” he laughs.
“It reminded me that sometimes you just need a little change in perspective to
appreciate how lucky you really are.” Turns out, that’s all Turnover needed,
too.
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