“Making this album was a very difficult, sleepless journey that took a lot out of me, but each day and night throughout that process, I could see the light at the end of the tunnel,” says The Wreck’s vocalist/producer Nick Anderson about their sophomore album ‘Sonder.’
“I wrote this album because I had to,” he declares. “I was slowly and poorly processing a breakup, and for a while there, the breakup was winning.” At some point, though, he says the tables turned and the breakup became everything he needed for the last two years to write music that he was proud of and was true to him as a writer and to the progress of the band.
The first song Anderson started working on for ‘Sonder’ was the bold and emotional pop punk title track, and it initially began as a “club track,” but he says he “decided to switch it up and make a pop-punk song instead” (the beginning of the finished song features a “blown out 808” from that first version).
“There is usually one song per record where the lyrics are improvised and that was the case with ‘Sonder,’ I improvised the verses. I knew I wanted to name the song ‘Sonder’ before it even had a chorus. Knowing that is what motivated me to finish the song. I wanted to put it on the record so bad, for the namesake of it.” The ‘Sonder‘ music video was directed by Natalie Hewitt and it’s a colorful lo-fi studio performance that showcases how truly energetic, and joyous, the band is when they’re playing live.
As for the making of the rest of the album, Anderson says it was a “lonely, emotional, angry, sleepy, and loud process. 5:00 AM would roll around and I’d be sitting in my studio next to my snoring puppy trying to perfect the same guitar take that I began attempting two hours before then,” he remembers. “But I knew I was onto something with this new music, and every fiber of my being wanted to see it through. I haven’t felt this excited or optimistic about releasing a body of work in my entire career.”
While also benefiting from what he’s learned over the years regarding production, he says that ‘Sonder’ feels a lot like a “return to the writing process” that he had when the band first started. “There’s something for everyone on ‘Sonder’ and I hope the right songs find the right people when it comes out,” he concludes.
On ‘Sonder‘, there are not only their distinctive witty, frantic genre-bending tracks (‘Sonder,‘ ‘Don’t Be Scared,‘ ‘Unholy,‘ ‘Ugly Side,‘ and ‘Lone Survivor’), but also their take on mesmerizing alt-rock love/loss ballads (‘Where Are You Now?,‘ ‘Dystopia,‘ ‘Unrequited,‘ ‘No Place I’d Rather Be,‘ ‘Normal,‘ ‘I Love This Part,‘ and ‘Where Are You Now’ featuring girlhouse).