A rabbit—the overarching character and face of little image‘s newest album KILL THE GHOST—represents a guiding force that pushes and inspires the band as artists. It embodies the kind of magic we all chase in pursuit of meaning, Jackson Simmons, vocalist and guitarist of little image, says in a chat with Melodic Magazine in March.
While chasing their own rabbit, little image took it in their own power to document an introspective journey filled with all of life’s contrasts—the good and the bad, easy and hard, connection and disconnect. KILL THE GHOST, little image’s sophomore album, sees the magic—represented by the rabbit—as a reason to keep going. This inspired the band to seek the one thing we all crave: understanding.
Behind the 14-track album is a world of resilience and passion, where three band members, vocalist Jackson Simmons, drummer Troy Bruner, and bassist Brandon Walters, rediscovered themselves and took pride in their artistry. “I don’t think we’ve collectively been this proud of something together,” Simmons says. “It’s just we went through a lot of stuff together in the process of making this album. I think you can hear it a little bit, just in terms of like we really fought for it.”
It’s been a long time coming for little image, as they now have another album to add to their growing discography that includes their synth-driven, alt-pop debut, SELF TITLED, released in 2023. “It feels pretty surreal though that we’ve been sitting on this album for it feels like two years at this point,” Simmons says. “So to finally be able to get it out is just exciting and feels like turning over the page a little bit to the next chapter.”
SELF TITLED was created out of little image’s desire to experiment with synthesizers and find the next sonic direction they wanted to go in. During this time, Simmons says they were trying to figure out the logistics of the band, asking themselves questions about the band’s future, like if it was sustainable for a living, what their sound is, and what their intentions and purpose are.
When the act of creating KILL THE GHOST came around, the band decided they wanted to reconnect with an interest that they had shifted away from in SELF-TITLED. “Coming into this record, I think we just always loved guitars from the day we’ve started little image. We’ve just always loved playing guitars and we kind of got away from that on SELF-TITLED a little bit,” Simmons says. “So I think that’s a big difference coming into this next record. We just wanted more guitar-driven music again, we wanted to kind of go back to our roots just a little bit.”
As the record started coming to life, the band prioritized keeping things sounding raw, scaling back on adding anything extra to the tracks. Keeping this type of sound captured a signature band-like feel. “I think that was the biggest thing, we just wanted to sound like a band again. Not that we didn’t sound like a band on SELF-TITLED, but there were a lot of tracks and a lot of electronic stuff happening and I think we were just like ‘Dude, we’re a band.’ We just want to be a band again, so I think that was the biggest shift mindset wise going from the last record to this new one,” Simmons says.
“KILL THE GHOST,” the album’s introduction and title track, was chosen to begin the album because of its energy and how it sets a precedent for the record. As soon as listeners hit the play button, they are met with a charged riff accompanied seconds later by an intriguing drum beat. The rest of the song takes an adventurous route, pushing and pulling, taking and giving, to craft an addictive, boundless experience. “I think we had tried to make an intro to the album, like we all sat down and really tried to just create together, and it just never came to a point where we were like, ‘Yeah, this feels like the start to the album,'” Simmons says. “So we just were like, ‘Let’s just start it with “KILL THE GHOST.” It’s a banger, it’s a rippin’ song and it’s exciting.'”
Although the record contains 14 tracks, upwards of 30 songs were written. Taking a different route from how they’ve made an album before, the band decided to avoid limiting themselves to writing a certain amount of songs and instead allowed themselves the freedom to write however many and then pick the ones that felt best like the album from there. “We just kind of wanted to challenge ourselves with that…
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