As Waterparks release their awesome new album JINX, mainman Awsten Knight reflects on the record's genesis and the raw, unfiltered emotions that fed into their most challenging album yet...
The name of Waterparks’ sixth album came to Awsten Knight like a sign from on high. Over the course of three days, multiple people suggested to him that he call it JINX. It was befitting not just of his way of naming each Parx release in alphabetical order, but the chaos of the period before and during it was birthed. Along the way, Waterparks had cancelled the release of the companion album to 2023’s INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY – a sequel titled INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY 2: LOST IN THE PROPERTY – and parted ways with the majority of their team.
Awsten had been rolling the name around in his head anyway, and unconsciously, he had a vote of confidence that he’d landed on a winner.
“JINX was one of the titles that just felt right,” he says. “Living with it over time, seeing it on my wall every day, it just made perfect sense.”
The other reason he landed on the word was the testing process in which the album was made. Under the watchful eye of friend and close collaborator Joe Ragosta, he was encouraged to scrutinise his every lyric in a way he had never done before. The offcuts piled up to the point that several songs on the album, he believes, could have been eight minutes long if all the individual lyrics for them were used.
He uses the album track Gwen Stefani as an example, “Essentially that song is about failing to connect with people, and part of it comes after botching a real life human interaction. It's like, ‘Hey Alexa, am I fitting in? Am I doing this right?’ There was a whole continuation where I'm just like talking to Alexa for another 30 seconds and Joe was like, ‘Why the fuck are we staying on this Alexa thing for so long? It’s a little bit too fun. I like when you make things tongue in cheek, it shouldn't be funny.’
“I’ve had many terminal cases of demo-itis, and I'm like used to hearing things a certain way. So when we start cutting them up or killing lines there, it things start to sound completely nonsensical. It was a fucking challenge, and I feel like it definitely pushed me so much more than like a release ever has, for better or for worse. But at the end of the day, it was worth it.”
All of this editing, rewriting, rethinking and rephrasing has helped to sculpt an album that represents Waterparks at their largest and loudest. It’s just as colourful as anything else they’ve put out, alive with charisma, wit and feeling, but they’ve taken swings they have never taken before.
Look at the collaboration-stuffed opener TELL ME WHY, which is near-theatrical as it brings Mark Hoppus, Danny Elfman, Eric Nally and Sorry My Love on board for a joyride to the afterlife as Awsten imagines being torn apart when he reaches the pearly gates. There’s strawberry-sweet love songs like BETTER THAN THERAPY and NOBODY BUT YOU. As we’ve heard already, IF LYRICS WERE CONFIDENTIAL gets eye-wateringly vicious as Awsten vents about the toxicity of online fandom. ‘I hate fifty per cent of our fans,’ he sings.
Awsten bottles the feeling in the moment, when it’s at its most immediate and raw, and filters it later.
I put [my feelings] down constantly, as flow state and as lizard brain and as childlike as I can,” he says. “And when I sit down to actually make the song, I look at all these primal pieces and I go, ‘All right, where do you fit together?’ I begin the more analytical side where I organise it. As the idea’s floating by me. I'll pick it up, put it in my bag wherever they come from. I save them in my phone. I've got a million fucking notes until I feel like I'm in the space to begin trying to translate it to the outside world.”
In more ways than one, JINX was an emotional whirlwind. As the days and hours passed until its release, the prevailing emotions were weariness, but most of all, pride.
“There was just so much to let go of and so much to say and do, and it was such a challenge to articulate it in a meaningful way that I thought was good enough to be better than anything else we've done,” Awsten says. “I feel like put everything in it. Everything went into this.”
JINX is out now. Keep an eye on Kerrang! for even more from Waterparks.
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