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Loveless announce new album, release “magic” opening track Heart-Shaped Soul
Frontman Julian Comeau promises “Loveless in a way that’s never been heard before” on the band’s upcoming album Loveless II, which is dropping in September.
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Loveless: “I have a lot of passion to grow… We can embrace the culture we came from while also bringing something new to the table”
A brilliant second album. Reading & Leeds. An enormous North American headline tour. Everything is poised for Loveless to properly explode in 2024 – and that’s no mean feat, given their rapid rise in the first place. Julian Comeau details his wild journey so far, and why things are only getting better…
- Words:
- Emily Carter
- Photography:
- Ryan Scott Graham
Julian Comeau is currently deep into the dusty recesses of his email inbox, on the hunt for a near-decade-old message that pretty much changed his life. 2016, 2015… sat at his screen he searches away.
“I can tell you exactly when,” he ponders over the sound of tapping keys. “Let’s go, let’s scroll through…”
The singer-songwriter is filling Kerrang! in on his days spent roaming around a different kind of stage to the one he finds himself on these days, as the frontman of pop-rock’s hottest band Loveless.
A musical theatre kid growing up, almost 10 years ago Julian had been working as an understudy for the Deaf West revival of Spring Awakening – a Tony Award-nominated show that took him to downtown Los Angeles and Beverly Hills. And then, as the musical made its way to Broadway and Julian was on the verge of getting his big job in New York’s legendary district for all things drama, through no fault of his own, he was let go. Sure enough, he’s still got the memo to prove it.
“I don’t think I’ve ever told this story,” he admits. “Ah, man, what a wild experience that was. They were like, ‘We have a contract with our casting agency. They have to cast someone and we’re not recasting any of the main cast, so we have to let them cast the understudies.’ And they did not let us audition – the swings were all let go. Which is a shame. I didn’t understand at the time, but I understand it now.”
Truthfully, this rejection sucked. It wasn’t personal and it’s just one of those things in life, of course, but for Julian it was tough to take.
“I was very angry for many years,” he reflects. “Even talking about now I’m like, ‘Man!’ I’m grateful for the experience, and I’m glad it didn’t work out, because I think if it had worked out, I would not be nearly as successful. Or as happy. My life would look very different. I was kind of miserable doing it, to be honest. It was really hard. And it was one of those things where, as an understudy, you’re more valuable – they never wanted you to move up. For the last two weeks of that performance I played Moritz [Stiefel], and they did not want me to move up; they recast Moritz as opposed to just giving me the role.
“I’m sorry,” he adds with a laugh, as these distant memories are hastily put back in their figurative box. “Get me going about it and I’ll tell you my deep, dark secrets, you know?!”
Theatre’s loss, though, is unquestionably rock’s gain. Since that fateful correspondence, Julian has emphatically thrown himself into music more akin to Stand Atlantic than Steven Sater: filling in with friends’ bands, writing hundreds if not thousands of songs, learning how to produce. These days the 27-year-old can do it all, having been inspired by pop-punk in his early years but has subsequently dipped his toe into everything from alt.rock to metalcore. He’s worked solidly and shrewdly at honing a successful career path, and alongside fellow multi-instrumentalist Dylan Tirapelli-Jamail, Julian’s musical baby Loveless positions him as one of the most inspiring and accomplished young musicians in the alternative world today.
“I couldn’t really write, and I was okay at guitar, but I couldn’t produce, so I always had to be in other people’s bands,” he remembers of his initial post-theatre exploits. “And then my friend Kyle Black was like, ‘Why don’t you just write and record your own stuff and then get a band?’ And that’s kind of what slowly happened and how we got to Loveless. I wrote the entire first record [2021’s Loveless I] as a solo project, just bouncing it off me and Kyle. It’s one of those things where, had all of my other bands not worked out, and had I not been other people’s singer for so long, I don’t think I ever would have gotten sick of that and decided, ‘You know what? I’m gonna do it myself!’”
Now, as you’ll already know, Julian’s made it to the cover of Kerrang! for the first time. And it’s a big deal for him, as he graciously hits pause on his daily Thoren Bradley workout routine (“My heart rate is still at 103!” he chuckles, glancing at his Apple Watch) for a chat about everything that’s brought him here. And, even more excitingly, everything to come.
He’s an honest, self-aware interviewee, constantly making jokes at his own expense and not taking things too seriously – as you’d expect from a chronically online personality. Indeed, Julian boasts a huge – and hugely dedicated – following on social media, having gained Loveless serious amounts of attention during the pandemic through viral covers on TikTok.
Though he has a handle on it all, there’s also a complicated relationship with online fame at play. Like so many artists in this era, having to pair the role of ‘musician’ with that of ‘influencer’ in order to help keep the lights on isn’t his favourite thing in the world. But, he understands it’s all part of it.
“I would love to not care,” Julian says of the social media #numbers game. “Because I do care, and that’s one of the most draining aspects. Quite frankly, if you’re out of sight you are out of mind – especially in this day of doom-scrolling. Nobody’s just casually looking for music anymore – people don’t give new music a chance and you have to grab their attention and keep their attention. It’s taxing as a content creator; I’d rather just be a musician. I’d rather focus on that aspect of my job, because that’s what I got into it for: to inspire other people. I don’t think it’s very inspiring to be a content creator.”
“It’s taxing as a content creator; I’d rather just be a musician”
Still, it is how they got all those eyes in the first place. In fact, the band’s colossal 2022 cover of Elley Duhé’s Middle Of The Night (over 70 million streams on Spotify and counting) saw the duo reach an audience that has spilled over into actual, real Loveless fandom. And that’s always been the aim from the get-go.
“I would love to have a song overshadow Middle Of The Night at some point,” the frontman enthuses. “I’m really proud of that song – one day that song is gonna buy me a house. I’m actually working on that: my parents are gonna sell their house and we’re gonna move into a duplex together. My dad is in his 70s, and my mom’s almost in her 70s. I don’t want to age her up, she is in her 60s! Take that part out. My mother is a beautiful young woman who is not in her 70s (laughs). And I want to spend all the time I can with them.
“It’s one of those things where, without that song, there’s no way I could even think about, like, splitting a mortgage. So I am forever grateful for not only the financial things that it’s done for me, but also for the amount of people it reached. People are like, ‘I found you through Middle Of The Night or [Loveless’ cover of Billie Eilish’s] Happier Than Ever and it made me look up your original music.’ That’s what gets me through the day – that makes me cry (laughs). That’s why I do it.”
And with their second album Loveless II dropping in September, Julian’s hoping to break free of this viral malarkey once and for all…
It would be a severe understatement to say that Julian loves writing songs. Even as he speaks with us now from his Californian home studio, he’s happily surrounded by guitars, gear and gadgets, ready to hit record at a moment’s notice when inspiration strikes. Which, rather frequently, it does. Case in point is Loveless II, for which he managed to accumulate 114 songs and ideas – yes, really – to whittle down into the 12 concise tracks that ultimately make up the final tracklist. Well, actually, we say “whittle down”, but it wasn’t quite that simple.
“With the first album, I just wrote 12 songs and said, ‘Here’s the album,’” he says. “And there was nobody else to tell me if it was right or wrong. Whereas with this one, there’s so many great songs that I really want to put out that did not make it, and I think deserve to come out still. Cutting things was the hardest part, because we as a band can’t release a 30-track album. As much as I wish we could. We’re not Taylor Swift yet…”
It was made all the more difficult by the fact that Julian is, endearingly, very much his own hype man. He knows when he’s cracked a songwriting code, and will forever fixate on the “fresh, new shiny thing” he’s come up with that day.
“That’s a sign of delusion of grandeur, or something,” he laughs. “Every time I write something I’m like, ‘This is the best thing ever.’ I’ll send it to the group chat and they’ll be like, ‘Pretty good…’ But I will get so obsessed. People will be like, ‘Okay, this is great. But, actually, I really relate to this other song that you wrote.’ And I’m like, ‘Well, when I wrote that one, I thought it was the best song ever. But this song that I just wrote, this is the best song ever!’ I’m lucky in that regard – my self-doubt doesn’t set in until, like, four songs. It’s a blessing and a curse!”
Another reason Loveless were indeed blessed with such a wealth of music was due to the fact they constructed what Julian calls a “dream team” to help bring his vision to life. The “core” of the record, he says, was written “pre or around Loveless I, just me sitting either at my home studio, or in my bedroom at my parents’ house”. But he and Dylan also teamed up with studio whizzes like Zach Jones, KJ Strock, KANNER, Andrew Goldstein, Tim Randolph and Erik Ron to fully assemble all the pieces as they stand now. Although, when it comes to recording vocals and capturing his own (extremely impressive) voice, he’ll always take the reins…
“I have a problem!” he jokes. “I love recording vocals. If that was the only part of the job, being in the studio, I’d be the most famous singer in the world. If you didn’t have to market and tour and promote and wear 30 different hats at once… If I could just record vocals all day in my living room or my bedroom, my studio, whatever, I would be set for life. Unfortunately, there’s a couple more things you have to do beyond that, but that’s my favourite part, for sure. I could do that all day.”
Lyrically, Loveless II is also a step up. From early single Picasso’s brilliant, ‘Blue like Picasso / Green like Monet’ chorus to the heartfelt deeper meaning behind the recently-released I Love It When It Rains, he worked diligently – as always – on perfecting his words. That’s what we’re assuming, anyway?
“I steal it all!” Julian laughs. “No, that’s not true. I was listening to Noah Kahan during a lot of the making of this record. There was a bit of, ‘Man, this guy’s so good with words – how do I get half as good?’ I write from a very stream-of-consciousness way – I usually just sit down to write, and if something doesn’t happen and if the words don’t come, I don’t write a song that day. Sometimes it works out great, but other times I’ll look back and be like, ‘Man… you couldn’t have found a word that rhymed with fire?’ That’s a song on our first album – the fans will understand that reference (laughs).
“Some days are better than others, for sure. But the process and how I get there is really roundabout and sometimes not straightforward. To me it feels not as intelligent as, like, ‘I just came up with this brilliant lyric because I read so many books from philosophers!’ Like, no, I’m just a guy that sometimes comes up with smart thoughts, and is lucky enough to record and write down every thought.”
Said thoughts are much more introspective on this album. With hindsight Julian refers to early material as “angry” and “bitter” in places, whereas Loveless II is less pointing the finger and more about asking questions of himself.
“It’s like, ‘How can I improve? How can I get better? How am I going to feel now that these things have happened?’” he explains. “I want to say it’s a less anxious album. I have a chronic anxiety disorder, so it’s not just gonna go away. But working out has kind of changed my life. I didn’t write these songs when I was working out, for what it’s worth, but I do feel like I can listen to them now with this newfound sense of clarity.
“For the first record it was a lot of, ‘I’m hurt and I’ll never feel better and it’s always going to feel like this,’” Julian continues. “And with this one it’s hopeful – not just that things are gonna get better, but that things will get better. That, to me, is exciting. And there’s a love song on this record – there’s a song about wanting someone, as opposed to wanting someone dead (laughs). That’s not something that I ever thought would happen: that I would have the love-full Loveless song!”
And he’s already thinking about how future Julian can top what’s just been done. Ever the number-one Loveless enthusiast, and no doubt with a hundred more fresh ideas whizzing around his brain as we speak, he’s an infectious mixture of proud but also hankering for the future.
“I’ve never been this excited – and it’s only our second album so I guess that’s kind of silly to say,” he says. “A lot of people are like ‘the sophomore slump’ and I’m like, ‘This is like the sophomore bump for me!’ The quality of the recordings, the quality of my voice… it’s just miles ahead of where I was on the first record. And I’m sure I’m gonna piss off some fans by saying that – they’ll be like, ‘You sounded so great on the first album!’ But I just feel like I’ve gotten so much better since then. I hear a really confident vocalist on the recordings, which excites me to no end. If anything, I’m ready for the third album now!”
Much has happened, then, even in just the few short years that Loveless got their break. Ask Julian how he’s changed, and his initial answer is much more literal, more physical, and, um, more hairy than any grand existential musings you might expect from someone turning the page on a potentially monumental new chapter in their life.
“I have a moustache now,” he shrugs quick-wittedly. “Much to the chagrin of my management (laughs). My manager April will always give me shit about it – she’ll be like, ‘Shave off the moustache,’ and I’m like, ‘You just added another month to the moustache tally!’”
Besides his “beautiful facial hair” (Julian’s words), things have progressed significantly for the singer on a personal level. In a rare moment of seriousness, he reveals he’s “happier, healthier, more confident” than ever before, and has tried his best to fix some “self-destructive, self-sabotaging habits” of old.
“In every way I’ve grown as a person,” he smiles. “I think I kind of stagnated and plateaued as a human being for years, and I didn’t really know why. And then obviously the pandemic hit, and it was both a blessing and a curse for me because it was a lot of time where I just had to be alone with myself and my thoughts. I do have things that are kind of ingrained in me – problems with my mental health that are chronic, and will last beyond just taking care of myself and focusing on the positive. There’s always that little undercurrent.
“…I prioritise taking care of myself in a way that before this band, and before I had to think about how I’m perceived in this world, I would have just kept being kind of annoying and kind of mean,” he admits. “I look back and I think that I was not a very nice person, even two years ago – I think, ‘Man, that guy sucks.’ And I’m grateful for that as much as, like, 10 years ago I was the worst! Every year I get better. As opposed to being like, ‘Man, 10 years ago, I was at my peak.’ I’m grateful that I feel like I’m getting hotter, healthier, happier, and better at being around other people with every year that I’m alive. I think for a lot of people, it can be the opposite.”
“Every year I get better”
But what of the next 10 years? Julian’s burning ambitions have already taken Loveless to sold-out venues on both sides of the pond, not to mention the stages of Reading & Leeds next month. And there’s no reason to imagine anything will get in the way of that trajectory – especially armed with Loveless II. With evolution at the forefront of his mind, and looking to the mainstream domination of the likes of Fall Out Boy and Panic! At The Disco, the frontman doesn’t put a limit on what can be achieved going forwards. The only perimeter, truly, is his own imagination.
“I have a lot of songs, and I have a lot of passion to grow,” he asserts. “I don’t think Loveless will ever stop being rock-focused – I love guitars, and everything I write has a little bit of rock’n’roll in it. It might just keep evolving. If anything, that’s what I want to do. I don’t want to stagnate. I don’t want to just write the same record 10 times.
“It’s like Pierce The Veil and Sleeping With Sirens – a lot of the scene bands from that era, they’re doing things that are different, that are not just like, ‘We did the scene record and now we have to do another scene record because we’re a scene band.’ No, no, no! We can evolve and still embrace the culture that we came from while also bringing something new to the table. And that’s what I hope to do. That’s what I hope to keep doing. And just on a bigger and better scale every single time.”
No doubt, that will come. Julian’s drive will certainly make it so – after all, it’s a rare quality to have the guts to emerge from a crushing blow in one career to become a promising frontrunner in another. And he’s worked bloody hard to get here, for sure, but he can also stop to appreciate that fate probably stepped in a bit, too…
“Is this the right word?” he asks, peeking down at his keyboard again – this time to start searching for suitable synonyms. “I feel insurmountably lucky… I feel unassailably lucky (laughs). I just feel incredibly, incredibly lucky to have this opportunity. I know that I’m very privileged to have the audience that I have, and the reach that I have been kind of gifted, and I do not take it lightly.”
Likewise, Loveless have now got a whole team around them who will keep this momentum streamrolling on. But Julian himself wouldn’t even think about taking his foot off the gas for a second, anyway.
“The work has just started,” he grins. “I have a lot that I want to do that I’m excited about, that I’m ready to go for and try new things that are out of my comfort level, and hopefully succeed. I know that I might not be the best singer or the best editor or the best songwriter, but I know that I will work harder than 99 per cent of people and that’s what sets me apart.
“That’s what has gotten us to where we are and that’s why I’m gonna keep working hard,” he promises. “That’s all I know how to do.”
Loveless II is due out on September 13 via Rise Records. The band play Reading & Leeds on August 23 – 25.
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