Boston-based emo-pop-rock quartet Future Teens have released their highly anticipated third studio album, Self Help today via Triple Crown Records. Alongside the album release, the band also shared the video for their new single, “Good Reason”. Watch it now below.
Self Help, the third studio album from Future Teens, brings their “bummer pop” title to life with ten tracks that blend glittering pop melodies and emo-rock with profoundly vulnerable confessions. The band is distinctively unafraid to confront their struggles with mental health using cathartic anthems that transcend identity, time and space and ultimately allow them, and their fans, to find strength in each other, rather than alone. “We’ve all learned the hard way that the best (and sometimes only) way to help ourselves is to ask for help from others,” says Amy Hoffman (vocalist/guitarist), explaining the origins of the album. “We didn’t set out to write a record about that, Daniel and I just happened to bring each other ideas with overlapping themes about mental health and struggling to get better – sometimes it’s like we have the same brain, even with such different lived experiences.”
Guitarist and vocalist Daniel Radin says the album title pokes fun at the idea that there is no such thing as a short cut to getting better, no matter how many self-help books or videos become trendy. Radin explains, “The name’s a little tongue-and-cheek because there’s a lot of media–texts, videos, etc.– traditionally that’s about shortcuts to self help or getting your shit together, and the reality is that there’s not really a shortcut to getting better or getting help. But they always say the first step is what? Recognizing and asking for help. So, a lot of the songs on this record capture moments where I realize that I am in over my head, or whatever I am doing is not working, and I need to figure out a productive way forward.”
On the choice to put a VHS tape on the album cover, Radin adds, “There’s just something fun about physical media. Like, we still make cassettes. We insist on having our records on cassettes and vinyl, and there’s something satisfying about holding a physical album in your hands. So, a VHS is a bit of a time-capsule, and a record is a bit of a time capsule, so it felt like a fitting image.” Hoffman says, “It’s a callback to the hey-day of mail-order, fix-it-now, self help tapes.”
Radin had been reading lots of Stephen King, prompting thoughts around the ideas of fate and empathy when the latest single, “Good Reason” took shape. Radin says, “Everything in his stories leads to a natural (or supernatural) conclusion. I’d also been thinking about what keeps people from caring about strangers. Lack of empathy is the simple answer, of course, but where does that come from? Why do some people have too much, and why do some people have none at all?” Radin continues, “These two things combined prompted the first line of the song, and the rest just fell out of me. It ended up sounding like a dystopian children’s rock song that provides a tongue-in-cheek answer to an impossible question. Why wouldn’t someone do the bare minimum for their neighbor? It must be magic.”
The accompanying video, directed by the band’s own Hoffman and Radin, recruits Helpy, a blue, plush VHS toy character who brings comfort and stumbles through life like everyone else. Hoffman shares, “The moment we saw Valentin Pujadas’ sketch of Helpy, we knew he had to be more than a sweatshirt. We brought him in for ‘Good Reason’ as a sort of Sesame Street character for adults – a sentient tape doing his best to help his new friends navigate the tough things, and fumbling just as much as the rest of us.”
Future Teens
Fall U.S. Tour 2022
Oct. 13 – Brooklyn, NY – MEADOWS
Oct. 14 – New Haven, CT – State House
Oct. 15 – Asbury Park, NJ – The Saint
Oct. 18 – Pittsburgh, PA – Mr. Roboto Project
Oct. 19 – Columbus, OH – Big Room Bar
Oct. 20 – Chicago, IL – Beat Kitchen
Oct. 21 – Detroit, MI – Sanctuary
Oct. 22 – Indianapolis, IN – Healer DIY
Oct. 23 – Cleveland, OH – The Foundry