Imperial Teen: Still Connected After All These Years
Roddy Bottum and Will Schwartz discuss the challenges and rewards of making All Over You, Imperial Teen's seventh album.
Thirty years after their debut album, the members of Imperial Teen still find themselves drawn to one another. Their recently released seventh album, All Over You, is the sound of a band whose creative bond has survived distance, demanding schedules, and the passage of time.
For Will Schwartz, making another Imperial Teen album was never a question.
“It’s just what we do,” he says over Zoom one recent Sunday afternoon. “It’s just a part of your life, so you just — I don’t know, you don’t overthink it, you just do it.”
Bandmate Roddy Bottum wasn’t quite so certain. He had thought Now We Are Timeless, released in 2019, might be their last record. Yet once the conversation about recording another album began, the idea began to feel right.
With the band’s four members living in different cities — Schwartz in Los Angeles, drummer Lynn Truell in Denver, bassist Jone Stebbins in the Bay Area, and Bottum in New York — getting everyone together required considerably more effort than sending a text.
Schwartz and Truell began working on songs at her home in Denver, and Bottum and Stebbins joined the process later.
Recording involved separate trips, including a studio session devoted to bass and drums. “It’s just so many parts and so much work,” Bottum sighs. “And every decision we make is a conversation and a move towards the next step. For me, it wasn’t so fun to make. It was a struggle.”
The finished album, however, made the effort worthwhile. “I love it so much,” Bottum says. “It’s my favorite that we’ve done. I feel really proud of it.”
As he should. All Over You is a pleasure from start to finish, a delicate balance of hard-driving rhythms and feathery, melodic vocals. It’s smooth and rough-edged at the same time.
One of the album’s best songs, “Hands All Up,” is a perfect example of this unexpected blend.
“For me, especially rock stuff, anything that sounds like it’s trying really hard or being on top of stuff is a turnoff,” says Bottum. “And what I love about the Imperial Teen sound and that song is it feels a little bit laid-back and behind the beat a little bit and relaxed and the opposite of braggy, if that makes sense.”
Schwartz describes the song as an account of life in a band, including the peculiar disconnect between public recognition and the work required to pay the bills. A musician can have a video on MTV, he says, and still turn up at the supermarket covered in dirt from a gardening job.
Making music together requires accommodating four busy lives and four sets of ideas. Schwartz says the occasional friction comes less from artistic disagreements than from not having enough time to explore something one member wants to pursue.
For Bottum, who also serves as Faith No More’s longtime keyboardist, the logistics can feel endless: travel, recording sessions, texts, conversations, decisions.
“And we do everything ourselves,” he says. “We just finished a part of a tour in which it’s just the four of us in a van.”
Bottum is careful about calling Imperial Teen an LGBTQ band. While he and Schwartz are gay, Truell and Stebbins are not.
“But there’s definitely a queer sensibility and a queer perspective that comes up in what we do,” he says.
Asked what he can say after thirty years to Schwartz that he couldn’t when they began, Bottum turns the question inward.
“I’m more comfortable hearing things that I wasn’t able to hear before, maybe,” he says.
Schwartz recognizes that change. “He does. He takes things in and makes adjustments.”
Bottum returns the compliment, describing Schwartz as receptive and giving. Their connection extends to writing lyrics together and knowing what will make the other person smile.
“I think we’ve gotten better at specifically listening to each other,” he says. “Our language has really become in tune in terms of songwriting.”
Imperial Teen appears Friday, Nov. 6, at 9:30 p.m. at Comet Ping Pong, 5037 Connecticut Ave. NW. Tickets are $18.87 in advance, including fees, and increase to $25.05 on Nov. 6. Visit cometpingpong.com/livemusic.
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