Sydney pop punk favourites Yours Truly have never been shy to looking inward and evolving with each release. After their most recent EP is this what i look like?, three of the four members embarked on an acoustic tour up the East Coast to celebrate the release in a new light. Originally intended as a companion project to their 2020 debut album Self Care, the EP reflects on the darker side of managing mental health. With themes of anxiety, identity and social awareness, the band doesn’t hold back in their latest effort after the world put their lives on hold.
We caught up with vocalist Mikaila Delgado to chat about the new EP and upcoming tours.
“It was fun. Sydney and Melbourne were really loud and I feel like Brisbane’s always more chill,” she says of the acoustic show at Lefty’s Music Hall in Brisbane last night. “It was a completely different vibe but we just rolled with it. I had family there so it had that aspect to it.”
The tour saw them stop at Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane for acoustic renditions of the entire EP, as well as old favourites. An intimate setting allowed fans to be up close and personal to the band and also gave Yours Truly a chance to experience their live performance with a stronger emotional connection.
“Playing these new songs and having people actually know the words to them is really cool. Usually, we play with in-ears, so I just have my voice and the guitar in my ears and can’t hear anything else. But I was sitting there and hearing people singing and I remember being like, woah, the song came out not that long ago.”
“When we did that little tour of Self Care last year, we didn’t get to talk to anyone because we were all like, if we get COVID, it’s all over. Doing these acoustic shows and speaking to people who come up to me and talk about Self Care and how it got them through so much, it gave me that confirmation literally two years later,” she laughs. “This tour has been very emotional and rewarding. I didn’t realise it was going to mean so much to us.”
is this what i look like? demonstrates how the band can articulate a more introspective and critical narration of their lives, with experimentation sonically as they grow as both musicians and people. With a title like that and a mirror in the cover art, it’s clear that there was a lot of reflection amongst them in recent years.
“We finished recording Self Care and the next day we went into lockdown. The album was done and we were like, what do we do with it?” she explains. “I came up with this whole concept of self-sabotage as a darker side of Self Care. As we started writing the EP, we said it didn’t deserve to be B-sides of the album. It had to be its own thing.”
The seven-track project explores new sonic territory and heavier themes than their last release, complete with some exciting features from Josh Franceschi of You Me at Six and Drew York of Stray from the Path.
“It changes all the time,” she says when asked about her favourite song on the EP.
“I feel like “Hallucinate” for just how epic it is that we have Josh on it. We put a breakdown in the song as a joke but we were like, that’s actually kind of sick. I also found that song was the hardest to write, so I feel like it was worth hating it for so long. Everyone really likes “Bruises” but I hated it before Drew was on it and now I like it,” she laughs.
Meeting your heroes is often preceded with caution, but Delgado was beyond pleased with the experience. Having grown up as a huge fan of the band, the collaboration with Franceschi was a big deal for her.
“I remember getting to the studio when we were tracking it and him coming out. Just talking to him about the song and him telling me he really liked it, which is why he wanted to be a part of it, was really cool. The best part about it was that he’s actually such a nice person.”
Yours Truly will be touring the US with I Prevail this September and October before embarking on their own 10-date national headline tour in November. With a busy few months ahead of them, the recent acoustic tour was a good way to ease back into the live setting while taking a moment to slow things down a little.
“It was the Walk Over My Grave tour, then it was the rescheduled dates tour, and now it’s the is this what i look like? tour,” she laughs. “Everyone keeps talking to me about how the Sydney show is on the same day as Good Things and I’m like, don’t worry man, we’re changing it. We’re not competing with Bring Me The Horizon down the road.”
It sounds like the tour is shaping up to be something special, so you won’t want to miss them when the band rolls through your town later in the year.
“We’re just excited to play all the new songs live with a full band. We’re going back to the UK and we’re going to the US, but after these acoustic shows I can’t wait to play these shows at home to people that I can recognise from the Afterglow days. It’s also the first time we’re taking a whole crew with us to do lights and things like that, so it’s going to be the best looking Yours Truly shows and a big step up in the career for us.”
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