Warning! If you’re reading this, you’re just in time for Telenova’s album release. And you don’t want to miss it. With a mix of electronic pop and alternative influences, The Warning sees Telenova master their already distinct voice. Between the grit and urgency in their sound, The Warning is both addictive and thoughtful. Exploring the tensions, contradictions, and anxieties of today’s world, it’s obvious that Telenova has no problem saying what’s on their mind.
Along with their contemplative lyrics, Telenova has a look that’s impossible to turn away from. Between their album cover, music videos, and sonic aesthetic, they know exactly how to present themselves. And we know that such a presentation doesn’t just happen. So we talked to the trio (singer Angeline Armstrong, and multi-instrumentalists/producers Joshua Moriarty and Edward Quinn) about exactly how this record came to be.
Welcome to The Honey Pop! We’d love to start with your history as a band. You guys met at a songwriting camp. How easily were you able to get to a point where you could be vulnerable with each other when writing?
(Josh) I think the first day we met, we were all on best behaviour and bringing the A-game. It was ace because we made a song we all really liked and didn’t just try and write something generic which can so often happen at songwriting camps. Vulnerability takes a lot of time as is always the case with any relationship, but when it does, you get to the deeper stuff. And I would say on our new album, The Warning, it’s probably the most vulnerable and honest we have all been with each other.
Visual Presentation
You seem to have mastered the art of aesthetics. What thoughts go into crafting the visual presentation of an album?
(Ange) I come from a filmmaking background—before I was in this band, that’s what I was predominantly doing and pursuing. So the visual worlds of our records are really coming together for me even during the songwriting process—it’s how my brain works.
We know that a lot of thought went into the cover for The Warning. Can you tell us a bit about the location you decided to use?
(Ange) This is a Melbourne Hitachi Train Carriage 187M from around the ’80s/’90s I believe! The train setting felt like it encapsulated the hurry and anxiety of modern life—which is one of the themes captured in the album.
Aesthetic choices can be as simple as making the album and song titles all caps. Why did you choose to do that for The Warning?
(Ange) When I started writing a bit of a creative deck for the album, it felt apt to be YELLING THINGS OUT IN CAPITALS. There’s a desperation to the record; we think all caps embodies that better than nonchalant lowercase. It might come across as containing too much earnest or desperation or angst, but that’s exactly what this album is.
You also lean into red, black, and green for this album. Why those colors?
(Ange) Red is pretty tangibly associated with motifs of warnings, alarms, stop signs, stop lights, fault lines, blood—that was immediately relevant as a colour that should always pop. I love the three colours red trilogy and the blatantly obvious use of colour motifs and wanted to embrace that for this record.
We didn’t necessarily set out to include ‘black’ as a colour; it’s more that I’m drawn to high contrasts in light and shade, so shadowy blacks naturally come from that.
Green is uncomfortable and gives a sense of unease, it’s also associated with the sort of office-core ’90s corporate disillusion that you see in films like The Matrix and even Being John Malchovich. I love a green tinge. It’s makes the seemingly banal or familiar so otherworldly.
(Josh) We were all just such huge fans of the Libyan flag after the Olympics, it felt underutilised in popular culture…
How do you translate those visual themes to a live performance?
(Ange) I’ve got a close eye across casting the vision for the lighting and visual layout on stage—we don’t always have the budget to pull off the vision, and it’s usually a modified/pulled back version. But for these upcoming shows, especially The Forum in Melbourne, we are going all out.
Because of the emphasis on visual presentation, how do you go about finding artists (directors, collabs, etc.) to work with that share your creative vision?
(Ange) I know lots of people from before I was doing music full time; you hold onto the ones you love working with and work with them again and again. I also honestly just follow a lot of artists on IG and if I’m a fan of their work—I usually reach out at some point hoping to collaborate.
Can you describe your ideal setting for fans to listen to The Warning for the first time?
(Josh) I saw a quote from Flea recently that said something along the lines of “people used to sit down and listen to music while they weren’t doing anything else.” It would be amazing if someone could do that! I remember being a kid in bed at night and listening to an album on my headphones while nothing else was happening; it was magical. We may have lost touch with that a little, but honestly, that’s not to say that listening to it while in the hustle and bustle of life as a soundtrack isn’t a cool way to experience it too. The record ain’t going anywhere, so it can be enjoyed (or hated..) anywhere, anytime.
Modern Anxiety
A major theme in this album is your anxiety about the world. What kind of challenges have you faced as an artist in the modern world?
(Josh) I would say every generation has anxiety about the world; it’s ever changing and evolving, but the one constant is the fear of its destruction. The Cuban missile crisis in the early ’60s, Y2K, The Nuclear Button in the ’80s that was gonna be set off by the US or the Soviets. Currently, it’s AI and a looming WW3. We are never far from a catastrophic event, it seems. That’s the bigger anxiety, but it’s also the smaller day-to-day anxieties of course, too; feeling a loss of human connection, a polarisation of ideologies and the rage-bait that fuels it, trying to keep yourself sane and hold onto your values.
The modern world has become overwhelmingly digital. How does this affect your branding? With social media, there’s a lot more pressure to have a strong personal image attached to the music. Do you enjoy that side of artistry?
(Josh) Grace Jones the ’80s icon said, “Everybody wants to be somebody, but at the same time, now that everyone is acting like they are someone, there is something more special about being anonymous.” I really resonate with the sentiment, and I wish it were that simple, Grace. Guess it’s easier to say when you became an icon in the ’80s…
With each release, you’re gaining more of a dedicated following. Do you feel any anxiety about having a larger audience?
(Josh) The more the merrier! Personally, I don’t ever see it being a problem. I can’t see us being at Coldplay level, but then again, I’m not the frontwoman who will have to deal with it! I’m just Guy Berryman, and I bet you don’t even know what that is, haha.
You’ve already grown a lot as a band coming out of Australia. Is there anything that has surprised you about growing as an international artist?
(Ed) To be honest, we are still a very small/unknown band on the international front. And I think we all know that to break ground over in Europe, the UK, or the US, there’s a lot of touring that needs to happen if you don’t somehow go viral. We’re keen on getting over to those territories and playing this new record live and seeing the reaction. I think there’s definitely a market for us over there. But in short—there’s room to grow internationally for sure. Just need to put the work in, baby.
Of course, this album is not all existential dread. There are moments of wonder and beauty as well. Taking all of this into account, is there a main message you would want listeners to get out of the album?
(Josh) I was writing a little summary of the album and was looking through a bunch of wise words by people I respect. I love Cormac McCarthy saying in his book, The Road, to “Keep a little fire burning, however small, however hidden.” You don’t even need to hide it; let it burn bright.
You have a great mix of songs that delve into everything from anxiety to joy. How did you choose the tracks that made it onto The Warning?
(Ange) I think we all have slightly different considerations when honing in on the album tracks and the overlap of those choices is what eventually made it on the album—Ed probably approaches it entirely from a sonic point of view. I’m really trying to hear which songs fit narratively/lyrically, and Josh is a combo of both. All these songs were written across a similar time period and reflect the anxieties (and moments of hope) of that time for us as a band.
Production
We love the production on all of your songs, but particularly these new ones. Can you walk us through the process of getting a song to its completed version?
(Ed) Well, most of the ideas are usually started in the studio with the three of us together. Or maybe Josh and I will work on a beat and then get Ange to sing on it. Ange will sing a number of scratch vocals, and then we’ll all kind of whittle down her melodies to the ones we think suit best. Josh and Ange are very in tune with that component of the process, and to be honest, it’s been like that since we were all placed in a writing room together in 2019. Where we first met.
We’ll then sit with the song for a little while and all tinker away at it in our own unique fashion. Ange may come up with more harmony/lyric ideas. Josh may rerecord some bass or guitar, and I’ll probably work on fattening it up.
Before recording an album, we’ll have selected maybe 20-25 of these demos that we like and figure out which 10-13 of these we’ll rerecord in another studio.
When we arrive at the studio for these album sessions, nearly everything is done. We just want to work on enhancing every little element and throwing some more ideas at the wall. Sometimes these sessions can potentially take a song from being a sleeper to a single. And other times we realize that the beauty was in the original demo—so we may not use much from these studio sessions for those tracks.
The result? 10 HEATERS with maybe 2-3 we can release down the stretch.
How important is the production to the way you convey a message or tell a story through song?
(Josh) I really love the musical idea of Prosody, where the meaning of lyrics and the way things are sung are complemented by the music and the production accentuates the meaning. If the lyrics are about claustrophobia, for example, you would have no reverb or echo on the vocal so it feels super up close and personal. I think we tried to do as much of that on this record as possible. Angeline had a lot of vocal production ideas to try and capture the right emotions and feelings to match the music.
Thanks for chatting with us! Last question: Was there any specific artist or album that you listened to a lot while working on The Warning? Did your listening inspire the sound or visuals of your album at all?
(Josh) I think by this point in my career, I’ve shed a lot of direct references. Other music doesn’t have such a profound effect on me so directly and distinctly as it did in my younger years. That isn’t to say that I’m not a thief because I’ve been as guilty of that as everyone in the arts, but there wasn’t anything I can think of
during this period that was having a serious effect.
If you get the chance, fully immerse yourself in Telenova’s The Warning. If you can’t listen while doing nothing else, we won’t get mad. But if you can, we recommend it. However you listen to The Warning for the first time, we’d love to chat about it at @thehoneypop on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.
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