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Only Twin is the current project of Thomas Dutton, who some Fueled By Ramen fans may remember from Saving Durden. However, Only Twin has pushed significantly into some new sounds, and with many years in on this project, Dutton now feels he has a better handle than ever on the sound of this band. Their new album “It Feels Nice to Burn,” which came out on July 19, speaks to summer and adolescent nostalgia with its blend of synth-fueled electronics and indie pop sensibilities.
I spoke to Thomas Dutton about the new record, the old emo-rock scene, the fear of death, and reality TV, check out my interview below while you listen.
I have heard that your new album, It Feels Good to Burn, represents your move to a more mature phase of life: marriage, fatherhood, is that what you were thinking about while working on this record?
I have a six-month old son, so all of the album was pretty much written before he was here. But I definitely was still working on it once he was born. It’s been a whole new chapter of life for me, I got married in 2022, and just had this little baby boy, and it’s interesting because I forever–and I think a lot of people feel this way–still feel like the 18-year-old version of yourself in a lot of ways. I’m a very nostalgic person, I love to try to tap into those coming of age feelings, and adolescent, finding-yourself and finding the things that really speak to you, and finding who you want to be and those kinds of things. Even though I’m kind of in this later chapter, now, with being married and having a kid, I still like to try and capture it in a way that feels nostalgic. It was interesting too because, just personally as a listener of music, gravitate way more to songs that are sad and depressing [laughs], rather than songs that are happy and talking about marriage and having children and stuff like that. So I was aware of that in a way that I was trying to sort of sing about or write about these things in a way that there was still sort of tension, and there was still some uncertainty with it, as opposed to just “everything’s great, la-dee-dah,” that’s boring to me, there’s no friction, there’s no rub. And so yeah, just trying to find the things that made it either very specifically my story, but in a way that can still feel universal to people, hopefully. Or yeah, just try to hone in on moments where even though it was the story that became my wife or getting married, there’s obviously still bumps in the road, and moments where you’re like not sure, moments where you overthink, or things like that.
Did you make music when you were an adolescent as well?
Yes, I have always loved music. My dad played guitar. He got my brother a guitar, who is a year younger than me. So when I was about 10 or 11 we started to play guitar a lot, but even before that I was obsessed with Disney movies, I even have a “Little Mermaid” tattoo. Disney movies made me want to perform, and the way that it was these stories and worlds coming to life. “Aladdin” was really my favorite. I just fell in love with the way that music can make a moment feel larger than life, and make it feel something that spoken word almost couldn’t capture properly. So yeah, guitar came into the picture, and I immediately started writing my own songs, really bad songs, and started little bands with my friends and made my brothers be in them. I was basically in bands from middle school on, and then really started taking it really seriously right after high school, when my first band got signed and started touring a bunch and all that.
That first band you were in that got signed is one people may have heard of right? Could you tell me more about that?
That band was called Forgive Durden, and it was very much in the emo-rock world, so we signed to Fueled By Ramen in 2005, I think, right when Fall Out Boy and Paramore and Panic! At the Disco and all those bands were succeeding. We didn’t quite get to their level, but we were in the thick of that world, and toured a bunch, and released two albums with Fueled By Ramen. Those are my roots, the emo-rock world.
That’s amazing, it must have been really fun to be a part of that cultural moment.
Totally. And Seattle, where I grew up, had its own robust scene within that world. So growing up and going to shows and seeing other bands that became local heroes to me, of just like “oh my god I need to do that, I need to be up there,” even though we’re only in a room with fifty kids, and everyone’s just screaming and sweating. It was very, very transformative for me in that way. And obviously that whole emo scene had a big profile globally and nationally, so it was a really cool thing to be a part of.
It was such a different time in music. MySpace era. When we got signed by Fueled By Ramen, who were in Florida, and we were in Seattle, we sent them music, and they were into it, but they wanted to see us play live, but we were all the way in Seattle and they weren’t going to pay for anyone to fly out because it was still an indie label at the time. So we were playing some tiny concert to probably fifteen people, and we had our friend film it on one of those cameras where the VHS tape goes right into the camera, and at the end of the show just literally took the tape out, put it in a padded mailer, and sent it off in the mail to them. And I guess they watched it and were like “yeah, they seem good enough.” So the fact that that was even in the same lifetime as the Tiktok of it all now, feels so crazy how far we’ve come from that. [laughs] Totally different time.
There is a sonic, or acoustic resemblance to some of the emo movement in this record.
For sure, I just mean the way that the industry works more. But it’s been great to see, for a while there guitars in songs were so not cool anymore, so to see guitars come back and to see this emo revival… not all of it’s great, but there’s some emo stuff that’s new that I love, and I’m like “oh my God, I can’t believe this is back in full force.”
What are some of those bands that you like to listen to?
I guess that they’re sort of adjacent to it, but I love the Midwest Emo stuff. One of my favorites would be Pinegrove, love them. He’s such a great writer. The twelve-year-old in me will still, in a guilty pleasure way, listen to the more pop-punky stuff. One band is called Knucklepuck, stuff that’s a little more poppy and polished, but it still feels good to my inner twelve-year-old. Stuff that is a little more earnest, a little more singer-songwriter-y, is the stuff that really speaks to me in a way that feels old but also feels fresh.
Turning to your present record, what was the timeline for writing these songs? Did they all coalesce at once, or had you been accumulating them for a while?
It was over the course of two plus years. The last record came out in 2021, so sort of since then. But some of the songs are how you’d imagine, I’d sit down or mess around with a guitar part, and kind of start writing a song around it. But other ones actually started, like the song “Pool Day,” I actually wrote that song for the girl who’s singing on it, Amelia Ali. So we had a writing session, and we wrote this song for her, and I was producing it so I was working on it, and obviously I sort of made it sound how I wanted it to sound. It ended up not being right for her, but I had spent all this time on it, and just sort of kept coming back to it and thinking “man, I really like this song, it’s really cool, it’s a bummer that she doesn’t want to use it for her thing.” Which I totally understand, it wasn’t the sound she’s developing. So I reached out to her and said “would you be cool if I released it for my project and had you sing on it?” And she was like “yeah, oh my god, I would love that, I love this song it just wasn’t right.” On the last record, a lot of the songs were like that, where there were these songs that I had worked on for other artists that didn’t end up getting used. But there was some aspect of them that I just loved and held on to, so I just revisited them and rewrote lyrics and melodies and changed things, but that’s where they started.
So it was over the course of two years, and the two main collaborators on it are my brother and this other great musician named John Paul Roney, who has this project named Boom Forest. Neither of them live in Los Angeles where I am, but my brother lives in Seattle, so he would just send me piano ideas or guitar ideas sometimes, and I would take one and run with it. John Paul lives down in Mexico City now, but he came up and spent a week with me. I already had most of the songs in a musical place, so it was just instrumentals, and I had written my own idea for melodies and lyrics, but he’s just an incredible singer-writer, so I asked him to help come up with some ideas. So we were really able to ramp up a bunch of the songs that week with his help. I’m really slow with lyrics because they’re just important to me. Some of my favorite artists ever are ones that are known for their lyrics. I wanted it to feel like you’re reading my diary but in a way that is hopefully clever and well-written. So I ended up rewriting and changing things over and over and over again. That’s the part that ends up taking me the longest. On this record it was interesting, I got the music done pretty quickly and then just spent forever rewriting the lyrics until they all felt right, or I felt like I was out of options [laughter].
It’s funny to think of the songs coming together slowly, because they all sound so summery to my ears, even when the lyrics are describing winter.
It’s interesting that you say that, because the record was initially–I was really close to finishing it all at the end of last summer. Part of me was like, do I start putting out singles in the winter? Do I put out a single in November, and have the record come out in February or March? But because my son was born in December, that really slowed everything down, and I wasn’t able to fully finish everything until later, which I think at the time was a little bit frustrating just because I was so close to being done with it. But I think you’re right. When you’re in it, it’s hard to zoom out and hear the record in that way, seasonally, because you’re just trying to finish it as quickly as you can. When I now step back and hear the record as it comes out, it’s weird, as soon as you put a song out you immediately hear it differently, because it’s no longer yours, and you’re hearing it through other people’s vantage point. It felt like “oh, this is right, this was so much more fitting that it came out this time of year.” It would have been so weird to put out “Pool Day” in November. So I’m glad it worked out the way that it did.
You mention religious themes a couple time, especially in the song “Born Again,” but you also say that “God is counterfeit,” and in “Japanese Wrestler” you talk about praying to a god you don’t believe in. That made me wonder, what do these themes mean to you?
I didn’t grow up in a very religious household at all, but it’s something that has always been really fascinating to me. I haven’t even set out to have it be in all of my music, but it just has found its way in, even if you go back to that old emo band Forgive Durden there’s tons of references to religious stuff. Organized religion is really sort of what I’m talking about when I’m being critical of it, I guess. Obviously it has many flaws and issues, but I still–I wouldn’t say I’m the most spiritual person, but there is to me the easiest way to say it is God is the universe, and trying to understand it, or trying to put our own tiny human society systems onto it is so silly, and fleeting, and I just feel like it’s this insanely massive, un-understandable thing! But there is something there, and there’s energy, and everything’s made up of the same stuff. But yeah, I think a lot of it comes down to death, and “Born Again” really touches on that. Death is scary, I think, for everybody. I am ultimately afraid of it. But one way that I’m able to cope with that fear is to say the scary thing out loud, because the easy way to make it not scary is to say “oh, after we die, we all go to this magical place on a cloud, and hang out for eternity,” but the scarier thing to say is that nothing happens, and that’s it, it’s over. So to speak that part out loud takes some of the power out of it, and just makes me exhale about it a little bit. If that’s the case, that’s okay, and also how amazing that we have this time right now where we’re at, and how fortunate and lucky we are to have this. And let’s savor it. It just makes now so much more important and amazing. That’s really what I was trying to do personally on that song, being okay with the potential for nothingness after this is all done. Not trying to shit on anyone’s personal beliefs, obviously there’s still huge benefits to living spiritually, and having that be a therapeutic output. But when it gets into the organized stuff and the brainwashing, the political motivated stuff, it gets pretty gross in my mind.
I’m also afraid of death. I think it’s scary to think that you’re nowhere. I try to think “it’s not that I’m going to be nowhere, it’s that I’ll be everywhere.”
Yeah, even if you don’t believe in reincarnation, that you’re going to come back as another person, or a squirrel or whatever, your body will decompose and come back as plants and trees, and that’s going to happen no matter what, that’s just a fact that we’re going to be coming back and be repurposed in this world. I love that.
Much lighter topic now, in “Love of a Lifetime,” you mention watching reality TV, and I wanted to ask if there are any shows in particular that you were thinking about.
One that my wife and I got really into during covid especially was Love Island. Especially that show, there are like a hundred episodes in a season, and literally nothing happens, they’re just sitting around talking to each other. So that was the main one. My wife watches a handful of other shows that I’ll dip in and out of. But that was the main show where I was like “let’s turn it on!”
Have you ever watched Love is Blind? What do you think of the music in these shows?
Oh, love Love is Blind. I’ve only seen this most recent season and the one before, I think. But yeah, really enjoy it. But, oh man, that’s the worst part of them. Love Island, especially when they have the artists come on and perform, just for the ten cast members, it’s the most awkward thing. It’s a concert for ten people and they’re all pretending to vibe out. It’s all very corny, lovey dovey. And it’s always a cover redone to be way more dramatic. But it is what it is.
In this album you mention Wisconsin, you mention Chicago… what kind of connection do you have to the Midwest?
My wife’s family is originally from Wisconsin, they’re from Racine and Fort Atkinson. My wife was born in Milwaukee and then moved to Virginia, and that’s where she grew up. They still have a lot of ties to Wisconsin. And then her sister lives in Chicago, so we’ve been out a bunch to visit them and stuff. I love specificity in lyrics, and throwing in a town or a city, especially if it’s one that doesn’t get mentioned as much, it’s fun for me as a writer. Fun to put little tidbits in there of things that are true but also interesting to sing about and put into lyrics.
Is there anything else you want people to know about this album?
It’s the second album for this project, Only Twin, and the first time around I spent so long just trying to figure out what this project was going to be, and what it was going to sound like. Originally the impetus behind it was just to be a calling card as a producer, to say this is the kind of music I would like to be making for other artists, so if you wanted to work with me this is my vibe. Because so often when you’re working with other artists, you want it to feel right for their sound, but you end up with all these mismatching songs that don’t feel representative of you. So that’s what I set out to do, to create this soundscape that felt representative of me as a producer and writer, and the kind of stuff I would want to listen to. It took me a long time to find those brand guidelines, so to speak, but it was really fun to do this record because I already had those in place. So it was more about building upon that last record and having it feel cohesive in that way, but also pushing a little bit further and testing the boundaries of what feels like it’s still an Only Twin song. You hear about Beyonce or whoever who says “I’ve written two hundred songs for this record, and these are the twenty I’ve decided to go with,” I can’t work that way at all! I wouldn’t want to spend any time on a song if I already have any feeling at all that it’s not going to be one that I want to put on the record. I would never let a song even get that far, the result of that being that I don’t have all these songs that are unreleased or didn’t make the record, that was sort of it. But this record, for the first time, had one where I was really trying to see how far I could go in a certain direction and have it still feel like an Only Twin song, and ultimately it didn’t! And it was hard for me because there were aspects of it that I really liked, but it just didn’t feel right and I had to let it die on the vine. And maybe it will be able to come back as something else sometime. I hope people enjoy it as a step forward from the last record, as something that feels nostalgic for something that they maybe didn’t even experience.
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Elizabeth Piasecki Phelan | @ONEFEIISWOOP
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