After much anticipation, Teenage Joans finally released their debut album, The Rot That Grows Inside My Chest, last week.
Featured in Tone Deaf‘s Get to Know series in 2021, the Adelaide indie rock duo formed in 2018 when Cahli Blakers and Tahlia Borg were still teenagers; just two years later, the band were triple j Unearthed High winners.
On their new record, Teenage Joans are on top form, cruising through a collection that contains karaoke-ready anthems and raucous breakdowns made for sweaty mosh pit swaying.
But who influenced Blakers and Borg? The former broke down the key inspirations on The Rot That Grows Inside My Chest for Tone Deaf, which you can check out below.
Following the release of their debut album, Teenage Joans will hit the road on a national album tour next month, performing in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, and Perth. They’ll then close out their year in style by supporting Foo Fighters in Perth and Melbourne.
Teenage Joans’ The Rot That Grows Inside My Chest is out now via Domestic La La.
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YUNGBLUD & 5 Seconds of Summer
The two biggest inspirations for this album were YUNGBLUD and 5 Seconds of Summer, and specifically YUNGBLUD’s second album, Weird!, and 5 Seconds of Summer’s second album, Sounds Good Feels Good.
Both of those albums sonically influenced The Rot That Grows Inside My Chest a lot. We just love the sort of “ear candy” that’s in those albums. There’s a lot of weird sounds that aren’t instruments that’s just happening through the songs.
Also, both albums have a really clear pathway and they both have an opening track that really cements: “We’re here! This is the start of the album” kind of thing, and then a closing track that finishes it off and wraps up all the storylines.
The Wonder Years
Another big inspiration was The Wonder Years with The Greatest Generation album specifically. I think that’s a pretty classic pop-punk album with a lot of emotion through it and a lot of storylines. And, again, it sonically influenced The Rot That Grows Inside My Chest a lot.
Between You & Me
Also Between You & Me, an Australian band, and their latest album Armageddon is just incredible. It’s so different and when it came out, we were already in the writing process, but we loved the way that that album leans sonically. It’s just a great album and they’re our mates as well. They’re really lovely people.
I feel like both our bands are leaning in very similar directions, which organically happened for both of us and I think that’s really fun. They’re really good friends of ours as well, so it’s just another bonus thing to be like: yeah, we love each other’s music, we love what we’re doing kind of thing!
