Stories Untold announce final album with release of “Mrs. Blues”
“We’ve had people hit us up saying they can’t stop listening to us, that they listen to us every single day, we’ve gotten them through 12 hour shifts or their workouts or through depression. It’s insane to think there’s people out there who have been moved by what we do.”
Detroit band Stories Untold announced the release of a new full length album earlier this week. Along with the album, the band also announced that this will be their final piece of work, and the band will be no more.
Stories Untold is currently made up of Kevin Quednau (rhythm guitar/ vocals), Jake Clark (bass Guitar/vocals) and Brennen Moloney (drums).
The song was recorded with Michael Martensen (Boys of Fall) at Undead Media.
“Mrs. Blues” is a slightly fresher sound than we’ve heard from the band prior. However, it still contains the emotion drive lyrics that are easy to sing along to that the band has coined. Moloney says that this song in particular led to the most tension between the band during the writing process.
“I think Kevin and I were about ready to duke it out,” Clark says. “Our friend Jacob Giampa actually brought up that the way we wrote this song is actually the same way that Blink 182 wrote “Feeling This” in the sense that both Tom and Mark just started writing their own lyrics to a song and they just put them together.”
“Kevin and I both started writing lyrics to this instrumental that we had written and we were trying to figure out which one we liked more,” Clark explains. “Like most solutions we have with our problems we just said well lets just do both and see how it goes.”
“At least for my portion it’s about how media like pushes people, and in the case of my lyrics how they push guys to be a man, and how it’s a pressure growing up.” Quednau says. “It sort of drives you to do thing you wouldn’t normally do. It becomes a part of you. It’s a big part of growing up but i don’t necessarily think it’s what people want, it’s what they’re told they want.”
“We both took from the concept of media’s pressures on people.” Clark says. “The way everything seems sexualized; you have to look like this you have to have this kind of demeanor.”
“I’m really glad that we came up with this song, because in many ways this song it ties into others songs on the album but there’s also no other song on the album that is able to accomplish what Mrs. Blues does,” Moloney says.
What’s truly striking about “Mrs. Blues” is the music video. The reverse styled video was all shot in one take by the band’s good friend Marguerite Wasinski (Stargazer Digital Media).
The band says that this was one of the more creative music videos they have done in terms of post production and overall style.
“The overall concept that we wanted for the video was more so happiness and purity, and just everything you can do in your life you should make count.” Clark says. “We tied that in with the paint. The water and the graves representing the moment that you’re born to the graves being the moment you will die, and all the stuff you do in between and making an effort to make sure you’re doing things for the better.”
The announcement of a new full length album was something that fans were eager to hear since their debut album Can’t Go Home.
“I think there’s a lot of pressure on this album because we wanted to do everything that we could do,” Moloney says. “We wanted to explore every sound that we could explore.”
“I feel like the album is very diverse in sound.” Clark says. “There’s definitely songs that sound like ‘Mrs Blues’ but there’s also songs that sound drastically different. I feel like people will see with the future releases that we went all over the board with what we wanted in the sound.”
The announcement of the album was bittersweet, as the band also revealed that this would be their final piece of work as the members follow their own different paths in life Clark says. Stories Untold lived a career that lead to opportunities such as opening for The Plain White T’s last year.
“For me personally, I really didn’t see this going anywhere,” Moloney says. “Jake was always saying we’re going to tour, we’re going to travel across the country and play music for people. I didn’t really believe him at all, we all laughed at him. Sure as hell it happened. I think it’s really cool because he had such a belief in what this thing could be, and it became more than we ever imagined it could be.”
“We feel like we can’t give Stories the attention that it needs in order for it be successful and to be where we want to be,” Clark says. “We figured hey let’s do one more and call it. We wrote one more album with everybody in mind. We’re going to do everything we’ve wanted to do writing music and explore all options and hopefully people like it.”
“It’s insane,” Moloney says. “I never imagined in a million years that I could play drums for a thousand people. Or that people would get our stuff tattooed on them. We’ve had people hit us up saying they can’t stop listening to us, that they listen to us every single day, we’ve gotten them through 12 hour shifts, their workouts, through depression. It’s insane to think there’s people out there who have been moved by what we do. We decided last year, no matter what happens we are going to put another full album out for people.”
“We want people to be able to listen to something and we’re going to put everything we’ve got into it because this is our last chance to do it,” Moloney continued. “I can’t wait for people to start to listen to it because I believe it’s a truly fantastic record.”
The band will be celebrating the release of the album on March 30 at The Crofoot, it will also be their farewell show. Tickets can be found here.
If you’d like to catch the band before then, they will be playing the Rock Room Art Mixer on January 24. More information can be found here.
*photo courtesy Jacob Giampa