Balance And Composure: ‘It Feels Like Our Little Pocket Of Music Is Stronger Than Ever’

Who said you can’t still be surprised by a band in the social media era?

In April 2023, Doylestown rock band Balance And Composure reunited after going on hiatus in 2019 and released two great songs, Savior Mode and Last To Know. Last year, they revealed that they weren’t done there and released their fourth album and first in eight years, With You In Spirit.

Teaming up with longtime collaborator and producer Will Yip and releasing their new music via his label, Memory Music, Balance And Composure returned with a sound their fans know and love: dark, brooding rock songs pulling from emo influences.

Where 2016’s Light We Made saw the band experiment with lighter textures and leap into shoegaze, With You In Spirit is closer to 2013’s The Things We Think We’re Missing. It captures the grit and emotion of that release and the groove the band enjoyed in recent years.

“I truly believe that this is the best collection of Balance And Composure songs there’s ever been,” frontman Jon Simmons said upon dropping the first two singles from the album, Cross To Bear and Sorrow Machine, last May. “It has the heavy stuff, it has the fast stuff, it has the groovy stuff. It has everything they’ve worked on over the last 12 years.”

Simmons still feels it’s the band’s strongest work. The Music is catching up with the singer ahead of Balance And Composure’s long-awaited return to Australia next month.

Don't miss a beat with our FREE daily newsletter

It took the band two years to record With You In Spirit. Today, all the band members—Simmons, guitarists Erik Petersen and Andy Slaymaker, bassist Matt Warner, and new drummer Dennis Wilson—have day jobs and families, so taking a month off to record a new album wasn’t possible.

“We had to fit it in on weekends when everybody could or worknights for a couple of hours,” Simmons admits. “So, we slowly chipped away at it, but that gave us a chance to digest and reflect on the music to see what it needed, what it didn’t need, and to change things.

“That benefited the record a lot—I feel like it’s our strongest work; it’s our most polished sound; we’ve tightened everything up.”

He continues, “And I think it shows because we’ve had time to really digest it throughout the years. I know me personally; I have songs in my past that I don’t like, you know what I mean, and I didn’t want to have that feeling for this record. There [are] songs I regret that could have been better, but for this record, With You In Spirit, I feel like I worked my ass off to make sure that I like it myself [laughs].”

As for what that process looked like, Simmons says he spent many nights of “total rewrites of lyrics, starting over from scratch, rewriting melodies,” and testing five different melodies against each other.

“I took it very seriously because I wanted to be proud of what the record is,” he shares. “I think, personally, it is the most melodic record we’ve made. That’s what we were going for—something really melodic, and I think we achieved that. I think time helped us… We could pay more attention to details in that way.”

With You In Spirit is undoubtedly Balance And Composure’s most melodic work. At times, the guitars combined with Simmons’ vocals sound like swooning (Closer To God, Believe The Hype), while the darkness and build-up in Cross To Bear and Sorrow Machine sound totally massive, the band embracing soft-loud dynamics perfected by Pixies, Manchester Orchestra, and one of their greatest heroes: mewithoutYou.

Most of all, though, the record is utterly hypnotic. During its 38-minute runtime, there’s no escape from its pull.

mewithoutYou was a rock band from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. They were recognised for balancing spoken word and screamed lyrics and “free-ranging” drums, bass, and guitar—a sound you hear in Balance And Composure’s music if you’re familiar with both bands.

On Sorrow Machine, there’s heavy drumming and an aggressive riff that feels like it’s pulled from the 2003 mewithoutYou track Paper Hanger. It sounds like an instant classic while throwing back to a band that’s inspired them throughout their entire career.

“mewithoutYou is our collective favourite band, probably, as a band we all agree on and have been influenced by since the beginning of the band,” Simmons shares. “We’re humongous fans, so that is cool to hear what you just said.”

The Philadelphia rockers even joined Balance And Composure on their farewell shows in 2019. It’s an experience Simmons describes as “Amazing.”

“It was a dream come true, and they were so good. We just feel really lucky,” he notes. mewithoutYou broke up in 2022.

Balance And Composure were among the emo scene's staple acts in the early 2010s, along with bands like Citizen, Basement, Title Fight, Modern Baseball, Tigers Jaw, and La Dispute. One couldn’t scroll through Tumblr without seeing the Separation or The Things We Think We’re Missing album covers or lyrics, the iconic maroon Basement hoodie, and Citizen lyrics and the Youth artwork.

It felt like a movement, a community. But now, the bands who are still around—all of them except Title Fight and Modern Baseball—are releasing their best music.

Simmons concurs, “It’s like everybody’s back besides Title Fight. It’s who we need! Obviously, we need to get Title Fight back together [laughs]. But, it’s cool: it feels like the scene is stronger than ever, in a way, or like our little pocket of music with all those bands… I just feel like everyone’s being appreciated in a way that they deserve. It’s a beautiful thing.”

Balance And Composure’s hiatus hit Simmons particularly hard. The singer confessed that he felt like a part of him was missing as long as the band was inactive.

“I feel like I had a piece of me missing for a few years,” he tells. “It was really hard, but I didn’t want to pressure the rest of the guys to do anything, so I let them speak up whenever they wanted to speak up.

“And Eric, our guitarist, was actually the first person to say, ‘Do you guys want to get in a room and try to make music? Like, with no pressure or anything.’ I watched everyone respond and say they were definitely interested. And then I said, ‘Of course, let’s do it.’ It was a really happy day.”

Recalling the emotions from those sessions, Simmons says, “It was like a reunion; it felt like a family reunion. [It was] like hanging out with my long-lost brothers I hadn’t seen in forever, and then we were having fun and laughing and making noise, and it just felt right, like ‘This is where we’re supposed to be right now.’”

Balance And Composure will return to Australia for the first time since 2017 this March. The last time they were here, things felt very different. Right now, the band is firing on all cylinders and feeling grateful to be back, enjoying music and touring. That 2017 tour was another story.

“Around the time we were last in Australia, we were burnt out a little bit,” Simmons says.

“Yeah, we were exhausted, and we didn’t have our whole band together. We had a fill-in for one of the guitarists, so I don’t know. It was kind of like the beginning of the end, and then we broke up in 2019, and that was really hard for me. It was like a relationship breakup, you know? So, I went through it. We just weren’t in the best place mentally to do it then, and I’m just glad to be doing it again.”

How is the band feeling now? “[Touring has] been so fun. Like, better than ever. It’s like our whole spirit is lifted, and it feels so good to be back; we feel really lucky.”

Balance And Composure will perform at the second edition of the New Bloom Festival this March alongside British emo kings Basement, melodic hardcore outfit One Step Closer, hardcore band Drain, rock group Glitterer, and emo rockers Sweet Pill.

An event that celebrates everything emo, hardcore, alternative rock and everything in between, New Bloom has also locked in a string of local legends to open proceedings in Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane. Balance And Composure have also announced a handful of sideshows.

Commenting on the line-up of any emo music fan’s dreams, Simmons exclaims, “It doesn’t feel real! We are so excited, and we cannot even believe the line-up is what it is, and we’re so happy about it. So, it’s a great feeling. It feels like it’s a dream, in a way, but I’m excited.”

If you’re an Aussie fan heading to any of the shows and you’ve already listened to With You In Spirit and told your friends about it, Simmons thanks you for that. If you haven’t listened to it, here’s how you should:

“Light a candle, put on your headphones and zone out to it. I think you might enjoy it. If not, that’s cool too [laughs]. I still respect you, but Australia, we’re excited to come visit and play some shows there. I hope to see you at the show. We can’t wait. We love your country, and let’s rock and roll.”

Balance And Composure are touring Australia next month. You can find tickets via the New Bloom Fest and Destroy All Lines websites.

Destroy All Lines Present: