Exclusive Interview: Chrissy Costanza discusses Against The Current's new album 'Past Lives'

The wait is over! Against The Current’s sophomore album ‘Past Lives’ is now available worldwide and it’s certainly worth making a fuss about. All eleven tracks will make you come alive!

From the infectiously feel-good ‘P.A.T.T’ to the beautifully vulnerable ‘Sweet Surrender’, there really is something for everyone on the record. The album may be titled ‘Past Lives’ but it’s one that will surely stick around in the lives of fans for years to come.

We caught up with Against The Current’s vocalist Chrissy Costanza last week. In our exclusive interview, the songstress spoke about: creating ‘Past Lives’, her favourite lyrics from the record, the band’s musical evolution over the years, the next music video we can expect to see and much more.

You can read highlights and hear our full interview with Chrissy Costanza below!

From battling your inner demons in ‘Voices’ to realising a relationship or friendship needs to come to an end in ‘Strangers Again’, there’s a lot of relatable themes on your new album. What do you want people to take from it?
“I think, ultimately, my goal for this album was to stop worrying about what would happen to me and start thinking about how I was reacting to it, how it was making me feel and what I was doing about it. The world is going to happen and it’s going to suck sometimes, it’s going to be awful, but I think what you do about it and how you react to it and how you let it make you feel is really up to you. That’s what I want people to take away from it. The power is still in your hands until you let someone take it away from you.”

We love the lyric ‘when I miss you the most, I’ll lace up my armour and fight for us both’ in ‘Personal’ – are there any lyrics you’re particularly proud of writing on this record?
“A lot of the lyrics in ‘Personal’ honestly were really important for me because there’s like a whole lot of metaphor in there and I really love a good metaphor. I think my problem is maybe being too metaphoric to the point where people are like ‘what are you talking about?’ In ‘Come Alive’, I really like the opening lines of it where it’s just like “I’ve been floating on a dark wave, don’t want nobody to come rescue me” because I’ve been in a bad place but I’ve become so content with it that I don’t even want to leave it. I think that’s a pretty relevant thing that a lot of us deal with. When we get into these bad spots, we become so content in our own misery and pain and being numb that we forget that we still can be rescued whether it be by ourselves or someone else.”

‘Personal’ is a song that is exactly that; very personal. By pouring your heart out, did you find the writing and recording process harder or would you say it was cathartic?
“I think it was both. It was really difficult obviously because it’s something that I have been trying to write about for a really long time. We wrote so many different songs on that subject matter. So many times, it just never felt right and it never felt it was coming out the right way. I think the reason that time was so hard but also so cathartic is because it was finally being said the right way. So it was definitely a huge part of my personal healing process.”

‘P.A.T.T’ and ‘Sweet Surrender’ are two of our favourites from the album – do you have a favourite or is that like picking between children?
“Yeah, it is like picking between children. I think ultimately it’s just whichever one I’m listening to the most at the moment which I think, for me right now, is probably ‘Come Alive’. I don’t know, I love all of them so it really just depends on the day.”

Musically, we’d say that ‘Past Lives’ is most like ‘Wasteland’ from your back catalogue and there’s even a reference to the song in ‘Friendly Reminder’. Was the reference intentional and how would you say your sound has evolved since your debut album?
“Yeah, the reference was intentional because I think that song (Wasteland) was all about I don’t want get to that place and then I did get to that place so I was like well here I am. ‘Friendly Reminder’ was like let’s pull ourselves out of this now. I think our music is always going to be chronological in the sense where it follows us and how we’re feeling at the time when we write it. So it’s a natural progression that ‘Friendly Reminder’ comes out of that.

“I think, in general, our music has progressed so much. We changed our writing style a lot. We’re a singer, a drummer and a guitarist but we no longer felt bound by those three things like ‘the first thing we need to write for each song is a guitar part, a drum part and vocal melody part.’ We opened so many doors for ourselves because we stopped boxing ourselves in and being like ‘this is the formula’. We were kind of just like we’re going to write however we feel inspired to write today.”

With that in mind, is there a song that took particularly long to write?
“‘P.A.T.T’ and ‘Come Alive’ took many tries to get right so those were the ones that we wrote quite a few times before we were happy with where they landed. Mostly, it was from a lyrical kind of point because the lyrics are very simple in both of them. We wanted it to just be the right balance and getting that right sometimes is really frustrating and time consuming. I think ‘I Like The Way’ actually also took quite a while. We took our time way more on this album than with ‘In Our Bones’. For ‘In Our Bones’, most songs were just written that day and were done that day. This time, it was okay for us to go back in a few times and we just kept going back until it felt exactly right.”

If you could go back and release another single from ‘In Our Bones’, which song would you choose? Is there a song you really wish you did a video for?
“Yeah, I would probably say ‘Runaway’. I love ‘Runaway’ and it was one of the first songs we wrote for ‘In Our Bones’ too so I think I definitely would have loved to have done a video for ’Runaway’ if we went back. Maybe ‘Blood Like Gasoline’ or ‘Chasing Ghosts’ as well.”

At the time of doing this interview, you’ve released two music videos from the new record. How did you find filming the videos for ‘Strangers Again’ and ‘Almost Forgot’?
“They were so much fun. We worked with the same director on those two music videos, Kyle Cogan, and he just had a really good idea of what I wanted to portray in each of the songs and what I wanted the physical portrayal of the music to look like. So he was really fun to work with because he just made the ideas come to life; much better than some other people maybe would have. He just really understood what I was trying to get at.”

Can we expect a third music video soon? We’d love to see one for ‘Voices’.
“Yeah and you hit it right on the head. We’re getting ready to release the ‘Voices’ video. We posted just one photo, or two photos really, online of behind the scenes from that recently. That’ll be coming out soon and we’re really excited for that one.”

You’re currently touring the UK and Europe, how are you finding the shows so far and how would you say the crowds here compare to the rest of the world?
“They’ve been awesome; we always love coming to the UK and Europe. When we came to the UK for the first time, we headlined. We came over on our own and didn’t come over on a support tour which was unreal for us to think that our first time here anyone would give a shit about coming to see us. It meant the world to us and there’s kind of just always been that special bond ever since where we’ve come back so many times and have always felt like we’re being received by family.”

With an ever-growing discography and lots of fan favourites, how do you go about picking the setlist? Is it quite hard choosing which songs to perform?
“Yeah, it’s really hard now because there’s so many songs. You know, it is nice that with our fans they’re so diverse. There’s so many favourite songs; it’s not like ‘these are the songs everyone likes’ and the rest are just kind of there. They really have very different opinions from each other but that makes it difficult to make a setlist because someone’s always like ‘but what about this?’ and we only have so much time in the set. I think on ‘In Our Bones’, it was a little more obvious which songs we could drop but now people are very vocal about when their favourite song isn’t on there. We’re trying to do our best but, ultimately, a couple are going to get left out.”

Your new album is called ‘Past Lives’ – if you could go back in time and tell yourself a piece of advice in a past life, what would it be?
“Probably just trust your gut and trust your intuition. You know what’s best for you at the end of the day. I think there’s so many times where I second-guessed myself because other people were telling me that things were okay or not okay. Deep down, I knew what was right and what was wrong for me and I didn’t always follow that. So I think I would just go back and tell myself to listen to myself more and that I don’t need to impress anybody.”

With your new album ‘Past Lives’ now released, we imagine you’ll be incredibly busy for the foreseeable future. What do you have in store?
“Definitely a ton of touring. We’re going to do a Europe tour, we’re going to go to Asia and we’re doing a lot more in the future that is yet to be announced. Hopefully more music videos and visual content for the album as well.”

If you could leave a message for your fans, what would you say?
“It’s cliché but just, honestly, thank you. We could be making music and just putting it out there; nobody could pick it up and nobody could listen to it and we wouldn’t be able to come to all of these places. Because you guys care enough to listen to our music and come to see us when we come to you, we’re able to keep doing this which is the thing we love to do most so it’s all because of you guys. Everything that is here is because you built it so thank you so much.”

‘Past Lives’ is available here on iTunes and here on Spotify. The record, which was released today, features Against The Current’s latest singles: ‘Strangers Again’, ‘Almost Forgot’, ‘Personal’ and ‘Voices’. It follows the band’s debut album ‘In Our Bones’ and joins their incredible discography.

As mentioned in the interview, Against The Current have lots of shows lined up to promote their new material. We attended their recent gig in Manchester and the atmosphere was absolutely electric. Chrissy, Will and Dan had the crowd in the palm of their hands. You can view their tour dates here.

Are you loving Against The Current’s new album ‘Past Lives’ as much as us? Which are your favourite tracks? Let us know over on Twitter @CelebMix!

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