With new music steadily being released this year, pop-rock band Broadside are uncovering the shadows and reaching out from the dark. The Richmond, Virginia pop-rockers have spent the last ten years carving out their addictive, deeply personal groove since the release of their monumental debut album Old Bones. With vocalist Oliver Baxxter, guitarist Domenic Reid and bassist Patrick Diaz, the trio now invite their listeners to take a look into the most confident dimension of their sound that embraces this darker, more mature era.
Between grainy black and white glowing visuals, eerie lyricism and daunting production, Broadside’s new releases all take inspiration from a harrowing 1950s classic. “[Our new music is] themed all around different episodes of The Twilight Zone,” Baxxter tells Melodic Magazine. “We like the air of the grainy, macabre and bizarre [ideas] of, ‘What will happen on the next episode?’ But also we feel like we’re living in The Twilight Zone right now so it’s a good time to be creating.”
Broadside first turned down this darker path with the release of “I Think They Know” in April, which coincided with their signing to Thriller Records the same day. The haunting track explores paranoia, perception and imposter syndrome. “One of the things that I think I lost [from] being in a band for so long was trying to uphold what I thought people expected of me,” he says. “There’s the person you portray and then there’s the person you want to be portrayed or perceived as. ‘I Think They Know’ is basically a catchy song that on the surface level people go, ‘Wow, I just sing it over and over again!’ But the song is about the monotony of life and how the sun gets you out of bed and the moon forces you back into it.”
All four of the band’s recent singles disguise these heavier topics beneath upbeat, catchy facades. On the first listen, “Warning Signs” presents itself as a lively song crafted for summer before revealing its details of an all-consuming toxic infatuation. “Someone You Need” and “Blissed Out” also deal with topics of internal struggles over an addicting instrumental.
All three of the band’s recent singles disguise these heavier topics beneath upbeat, catchy facades. On the first listen, “Warning Signs” presents itself as a lively song crafted for summer before revealing its details of an all-consuming toxic infatuation. Broadside’s latest addition, “Someone You Need,” also deals with topics of a relationship’s struggles over an addicting instrumental.
“[‘Someone You Need’] is a self-serving song, but it’s also an idea of just wanting to be, as gruesome as it sounds, in someone’s skin. I want to be protectant of your feelings, but I know that I’m not safe with my own,” he adds. While the meaning behind “Someone You Need” can be interpreted as turbulent, it can also be seen as a love song about navigating through personal traumas to give someone the love they deserve.
As the band powered through the creative process within their recent music, their focus settled on resonating with the current versions of themselves and the feelings of every person who is going to give it a chance. “Lyrically I was coming from a place of soul searching for myself…”
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