About Telescreens:
Telescreens’ third album Why the Lights Flicker is the NYC rockers’ most definitive statement to date, showcasing the band’s conceptual ambitiousness as well as their ability to write immensely satisfying music. Across this thrillingly sprawling record, the quartet—Jackson Hamm (vocals/guitar), Austin Brenner (bass), Josiah Valerius (keys/synth), and Oliver Graf (drums)—deliver full-throated anthems for breaking through the wall of endless modern noise, firmly situating the group in the estimable legacy of NYC rock music as well as within the history of the genre at large.
Why the Lights Flicker is the culmination of everything Telescreens (the band name a hat-tip to George Orwell’s essential dystopian text 1984) set out to achieve from the moment they were gigging in earnest as hungry 18-year-olds. Hamm describes the band’s first record The Return from 2018 as “a concept album about a man who goes to space to try and find God to ask him the ultimate question: what happens after you die?” “Making that record taught us a lot about the recording process,” he adds while talking about Telescreens’ reach-for-the-stars approach that was present from the very beginning. “It was insanely ambitious.”