Veteran alt-rockers Taking Back Sunday recently visited Billboard’s New York studio and brought their fiery, emotive songs from new album “Happiness Is” to life in a stripped-down, acoustic setting.
Watch them perform “Flicker, Fade” below:
This March, Taking Back Sunday returned with “Happiness Is,” their sixth studio album and first in three years. It’s a strong rock album, which finds the quintet returning to an indie label (Hopeless Records) after three studio albums for Warner Brothers. It also finds vocalists Adam Lazarra and John Nolan continuing their second stint together, as Nolan had left TBS during their second, third and fourth releases.
PHOTOS: Taking Back Sunday’s ‘Happiness Is’ Gallery
“When we went into recording ‘Happiness Is,’ we didn’t have a label,” Lazarra says. “It was really freeing, because there wasn’t an outside influence or little voice, which is something that makes this record very unique… It allowed us to try stuff that we typically wouldn’t have tried.”
Watch the full studio interview below:
This time around, Lazarra also became more comfortable in expressing emotions openly.
“I used to think things had to be very cryptic in order for a lot of people to relate to it,” he says. “But as it turns out, it doesn’t have to be like that. We wanted to try our hand at something that was putting things a little more plainly.”
Watch those emotions come out in the group’s performance of “Stood A Chance”:
Taking Back Sunday promoted their new album by touring with the Used, repping selections from their catalogue dating back to 2002’s “Tell All Your Friends.” For the band, it’s not hard at all to bust out old favorites like “Cute Without the ‘E’ (Cut From the Team),” as their fanbase has grown with them.
Says Lazarra, “At our shows you’ll see folks from the age of 13 to 35,36. To be able to bring all those people together, who are in all different stages of their lives, and to have them enjoying the same thing, I think that’s a pretty cool thing.”