It’s no secret that the music industry is having a tough time at the moment. With festivals, gigs and tours on hold for the foreseeable future, it was refreshing to hear a whole lot of positivity when we spoke to Wallflower vocalist and guitarist Vini Moreira-Yeoell about their upcoming release ‘Teach Yourself To Swim’.

A few years in the making, ‘Teach Yourself To Swim’ is Wallflower’s debut album. Having appeared on festival line ups over the past few years, and toured with the likes of Boston Manor and Employed To Serve, the band had been holding back on committing to shows more recently in order to focus on plans for tour dates to support the release. Although they had an idea before of how things were going to go with promoting the album, the tour plans are the only thing that’s really changed. While touring may have been the main focus on getting new fans exposed to Wallflower’s music, they have instead been given “a nice opportunity to spend a little bit more time with the people who were already invested in the band and having stuff for them to enjoy”.

Talking about promo, Moreira-Yeoell says “a lot of it has been thinking on our feet and improvising, but I feel like we were always going to end up doing a bit of that anyway”. In fact, he talks about how they’ve been lucky to be able to do more than they previously would have in some aspects, like making a video from their bedrooms, putting out covers in support of CALM and starting a podcast. The home filmed video in question was put together by Wallflower’s long-time collaborator Callum Jupp, and released for second single ‘Eat Away At My Heart’. Moreira-Yeoell describes the whole process as a chance to “spend a bit more time on this thing that we enjoy doing so much,” giving the album a good push into the world and working with what they’ve got.

The three videos supporting each of the releases from the album so far are very different, with a hard hitting edit for first release ‘Hungry Eyes’ and a digital visualisation accompanying ‘Passer By’ along with the ‘Eat Away At My Heart’ lockdown take. Moreira-Yeoell talks about how this reflects the varied sound of each of the tracks, which all have a different energy and a different message to put across. This sense of variety is something the band really wanted to emphasise in the album campaign, showing that this debut record displays different sides to the band both musically and visually, but remains quintessentially Wallflower at the heart of it.

Moreira-Yeoell admits that they might have previously encouraged the perception of being a serious, moody band, but stresses that this doesn’t mean that they’re boring people, describing how the video for ‘Eat Away At My Heart’ allows Wallflower to show the fun side of their personalities in a way that fans perhaps haven’t seen before.

Looking at the darker side of Wallflower for a moment, we talk about the inspiration behind the writing for ‘Hungry Eyes’, which is heavier than most of the album, and also explores new lyrical avenues compared to the band’s previous output. Where earlier tracks have been written from a place of self-reflection, this was more of a reaction to external events, looking at the numbness of society towards global injustices. Moreira-Yeoell describes how “that outward thing that happens definitely has inward effects on all of us in the same way that personal problems do” and how the writing is still self-reflective at the same time as contemplating everything else. He adds that putting a political undertone into a Wallflower song felt like stepping out of their comfort zone, but that the band agreed they were all more than happy for these avenues to be explored. They don’t want to restrict themselves to being a band who are just about political messages though. “We’re never going to be a Rage Against The Machine who have that one purpose”.

Wallflower are clearly a band who work collaboratively but also fluidly, by their own admission at times overthinking everything they do and subsequently changing paths accordingly. Discussing their musical journey through previous releases, Moreira-Yeoell describes how each of the EPs and standalone singles have done their own thing, and that the album was a natural progression from where they found themselves after the release of the EP ‘Where It Fell Apart’, which was originally penned as an album. The tracks on that particular release had started using more sampling, synth and industrial influence just as interest in the band was picking up, so rather than force an album at the time, they adapted to make an EP they were really happy with.

Of the album’s release in June, Moreira-Yeoell says “every single step of every song, every release we’ve ever done, there’s always [been] a clear thing for us of how we’re going to do it this time, so it just felt right”. Some tracks were written years ago but are now very different from where the band was when they first started throwing ideas around. For Wallflower, the preparation time was a chance to get to know what they do well, what they enjoy doing and what sort of route they’d like to go down to make an album that they love. Working out all the details may have taken some time, but they wanted to get it right.

A recurring theme that appears around the unfolding of this album is this sense of care about every aspect of the record and attention to detail. It’s incredibly important to Wallflower that this album tells an entire story. From the tactically released songs from separate parts of the record to the striking album cover, everything has been meticulously planned out to create a holistic package. With ‘Teach Yourself to Swim’, they want to deliver a carefully considered product, with fans getting to know everything visually as well as musically. Moreira-Yeoell talks about how a big part of their writing process involved thinking about holding the vinyl and absorbing the artwork as a partner to the music. They wanted to create a concept whereby “the longer you look at it, the weirder it gets,” taking inspiration from old school Pink Floyd records. He describes the cover art as “a visual representation of the weirdness and the ebb and flow of life in general”.

The title, too, can be interpreted in different ways. Is it about taking matters into your own hands and sorting out your own issues, or is it more to do with learning to go with the flow? Perhaps it’s both? Moreira-Yeoell mentions that Wallflower’s songs come from a perspective of mental health, and this sense of introspection and exploring different avenues of thought is apparent in everything they do. This is a band that cares just as much about your experience with their music as they do about the journey of producing it themselves.

Delving further into what they want to achieve with this debut record, Moreira-Yeoell discusses how people consume music in different ways. He suggests that the world of streaming has somewhat seen the death of the traditional album structure, with many listeners skipping through singles rather than listening to an album from start to finish. If the priority for some bands is to get the singles and put them at the front of the record, sometimes the rest of the album can seem like an afterthought. In contrast, Wallflower hope that with ‘Teach Yourself To Swim’, they have created a definitive album, with a start, middle and end. “We wanted to do something that felt more like that classic album experience”. The aim is that all the songs have one general overarching sound and feel but with no two songs sounding the same.

In the same thread, they didn’t want their isolation covers to sound too much like themselves nor like the bands they were covering. Wallflower wanted to cover the Coldplay and Bon Iver tracks in a different way, exploring different aspects of their own sound and considering paths they might want to go down in the future. Guitarist Sam Wooley did a lot of the work orchestrating their own flare on those songs, and this is something Moreira-Yeoell hopes they can continue working on together after lockdown.

Thinking about the future, Moreira-Yeoell talks about how this is the most time he has ever spent working on vocal harmonies, layering, and working out melodies, and describes the process as a great learning experience and a fun challenge. The band are planning a big change in the culture of how they perform, trying to bring in more visual aspects and make more of a performance of their shows. ‘Teach Yourself To Swim’ is the perfect platform for Wallflower to embark on their new audio-visual journey, whenever and wherever that may be.

‘Teach Yourself to Swim’ is out on 5^th June and is available to preorder here

ELLIE ODURNY