Credit: Errick EasterdayThe Unlikely Candidates have been working on new music amid the COVID-19 pandemic to follow their chart-topping hit single, “Novocaine.” But as frontman Kyle Morris tells ABC Audio, you shouldn’t necessarily expect a “Novocaine” sequel.
“It’s a departure,” Morris says of the fresh material’s sound. “It honestly is.”
“[If] there’s one thing about this band, it’s we’ve never really stuck on one particular thing,” he explains. “Sometimes I definitely lament that…[but] most of the time I just really enjoy bouncing around from sound to sound, style to style.”
Morris does admit he tried to come up with some more “Novocaine”-esque songs, but they “didn’t stick.”
“Honestly, I usually don’t try [to replicate a sound], but this time I was, like, ‘Alright, let’s try guys. Here we go. Let’s get some other ‘Novocaine’-type stuff, let’s get a whole album of slacker stadium jams,'” Morris recalls. “And, of course, it did not work. We just kind of kept doing what we do, which is just, like, musical ADD.”
From a lyrical standpoint, “Novocaine” ties to a very specific point in Morris’ life, a point from which he’s since moved on.
“It’s a song that I wrote before I knew I was gonna get broken up with,” Morris says. “It was kind of like the precursor to that. Then I also wrote a bunch of songs after I got broken up with that are the same character, except sadder.”
“It’s been almost two years since I wrote ‘Novocaine,'” he continues. “The character’s changed and I changed and now I’m writing about different stuff. So it would feel a little more forced to go back to that specific vibe.”
By Josh Johnson
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