Teenage Joans Announce Debut Album 'The Rot That Grows Inside My Chest'

Adelaide rock duo Teenage Joans have announced the release date for their highly anticipated debut album, The Rot That Grows Inside My Chest, on Friday, 13 October, via Domestic La La.

To accompany the exciting album announcement, they unveiled the first single from the record, Candy Apple, following the track Superglue, released earlier this year.

The lyric video for Candy Apple is filled with colourful animations of kitchen utensils, skeleton heads, bunnies, human hearts, beds and images of the duo alongside the cartoons.

Comparing a broken relationship with a candy apple – sweet one day, rotten the next – Teenage Joans mine through pop-punk and indie rock and shoegaze influences, making for a propulsive and relatable new single that showcases why Teenage Joans are one of the most beloved up-and-coming acts from South Australia.

You can check out the lyric video and the album’s tracklist below.

“Candy Apple was our first introduction into writing songs with a way more honest and personal lyric style. When we wrote it, we kind of knew it would point us in a new direction for this new era, as we think it definitely shows our maturity,” the band revealed in a press release.

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They continued, “We loved the metaphor of ‘falling in love with a candy apple’, the way something so sweet and beautiful can rot really easily, and we took that into both the aesthetic side of the album when we were making the visuals and the thematic side of the album too.”

The thirteen tracks on The Rot That Grows Inside My Chest were produced by Jarred Nettle and indicate a sonic diversity previously unheard of by the band.

“This is Teenage Joans in its purest form,” band member Cahli Blakers explained in a statement. While there are plenty of influences on the album – from Paramore to blink-182, Teenage Joans didn’t work with any other artists. Blakers added, “There’s no co-writes on this album; it’s all us.”

Tahlia Borg continued, “Our music has evolved so much, and all of our different inspirations have come together into this one little baby – our little baby.”

Teenage Joans burst onto the scene with their 2021 debut EP, Taste Of Me, which The Music’s Keira Leonard succinctly summarised as “angsty, wholesome, unified and so damn fun.” It’s been a long time coming for the duo’s debut album – you can pre-order it here.

Teenage Joans’ upcoming shows include playing at Sly Withers’ SideFest on Tuesday, 15 and Saturday, 19 August, as well as appearances at Grapevine Gathering this October on a line-up that stars Vanessa Amorosi, The Wombats, King Stingray, and many more.

On Wednesday, 30 November and Wednesday, 6 December, Teenage Joans will open for Foo Fighters in Perth and Melbourne, respectively.