Taking Back Sunday's Adam Lazzara Discusses Five Little Known Facts Making New Album '152'

“You would think after 20 years, we knew what each other was going to do,” Adam Lazzara said upon Taking Back Sunday announcing their new album, 152. “But there were so many times making this record where I heard the initial idea and thought I knew where it would go, but then I was super surprised. It’s those kinds of surprises that make it so exciting. That’s why we all still want it so badly.”

In a joint statement, the band added, “152 offers a lot more hope and light than we first realised when we were in the thick of it, putting it all together. We’ve been fortunate enough, through our music, to grow up with a lot of people going through the same things at the same time and probably feeling the same way. Our hope is that you’re able to find a little bit of yourself in this new collection of songs because you’re not alone, and neither are we.”

To celebrate the release of 152 and the band’s upcoming Good Things Festival and sideshow appearances, we caught up with Adam Lazzara to find out some behind-the-scenes facts about the album.

152 is the first record that we didn't just record in one studio in one place. We recorded on Long Island, in New York, and we went to two different studios in Los Angeles, too, which was great.
Fun fact about 152 is that all of the photos, the artwork, all the videos, everything, all started at this house that we found out east on Long Island. And I looked around at the guys at the time, and I'm like: Man, if you would've told me that there was a part of Long Island that looked like this, I probably would still live there.
Another fun thing I don’t think anybody knows about is that we tracked a good amount of drums at our buddies in the band The Maine. They have a studio in Arizona; it's this house, and they let us sleep over at their house and track a bunch of stuff for our record.
Also, for 152, we did a lot of tracking at The Killers’ Studio in Las Vegas, Nevada, which was really great. They have all kinds of really cool weird gear. They had this electronic drum set from the early 80s; it's all hexagonal and like a Gretsch Black Hawk or something. But it's just sitting in the corner collecting dust, and I'm like: what are you people doing?! This needs to be on display, out all the time. And then, we spent four hours sampling it.
And one more little-known fact about 152, which is our new record…this even applies to some of our past few records; there’s a fantastic tool that a lot of people have in their pocket probably at all times on their iPhone: GarageBand.
So many ideas are sketched out in GarageBand on our little pocket computers, and then we can bring it to everybody and be like: ‘Hey, no, I was thinking more like this’. And then play a really rough version of it, and then you go from there to when you put it together actually in the studio. So that's another fun fact, I feel, for anybody out there who might be thinking: oh, I want to get started, or I don't have the right stuff or anything like that. Don't forget, you’ve got a GarageBand in your pocket probably right now!

Taking Back Sunday are performing at Good Things Festival and a run of sideshows in support of 152 - you can find all the dates below. 152 will be released on 27 October via Fantasy Records. You can pre-order the album here.

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