Premiere: Honest Debts Realize Their Dynamic Sound On “Can’t Be Trusted”
For the last several years, life has felt like walking a tightrope, where each day we balance our restless hearts and nervous minds as best we can, trying not to teeter into abject anxiety or useless detachment. It’s become commonplace unfortunately, but just talking about it can sometimes make the rope sturdier and wider in a way, providing a momentary reprieve from a swirling mix of rigid apprehension. No one has all the answers though, but sometimes, it just helps to look at someone who has gotten at least a little comfortable with the balancing act.
That’s where we find five-piece rock band Honest Debts on their new record. For years, the band traversed their own tightrope, trying to center themselves on an undulating strand of musical influences that jerked them in several directions. But with Can’t Be Trusted, Honest Debts seems to have found its balance, in sound and also in life. And it’s a stirring balance that showcases the band’s sharp talent and affecting resonance. Intriguing and invigorating, it’s an album we at The Auricular are proud to premiere a day before its official release on Friday, April 28th.
Across nine polished tracks, Can’t Be Trusted shows a newfound confidence and clarity from the band, with each track building upon the last to build a dynamic musical experience. The band’s signature skill is on full display, but there is also a sense of ease and fluidity that shows they’ve finally learned to take control of the varying influences that have guided them in the past. Alt-rock, Americana, blues rock, funk, soul; all these sounds pop up across the album with each connected by the band’s refined arrangements, clever melodies, and introspective lyrics.
That diverse range of musical influences is represented on the album’s cover art, a blossoming kaleidoscope (designed by Harry Slater) that displays the radiance of the band’s music. Each track offers a different fragment of the kaleidoscope, reflecting a vibrant and complementary aspect of the band’s sound. With clear detail, the artwork matches the honest and vulnerable themes portrayed in the music, as songs like “Not So Sure” and “Might Be The End” grapple with the ambiguity that can cloud our daily progress even as the music holds its skillful composure. A stirring union of lyrics and music, it’s an impressive reminder of just how much the band has cultivated its sound over the years.
Formed in 2017 as a quartet, the band quickly established themselves as an act with tight musicianship and loose styles. The original line-up featured Sam Valentine on guitars and lead vocals, Matt Elgin on lead guitar, Alex Roberson on bass, and Blake Hurt on drums with each member helping in their own way to distill the broad influences the band carried into songwriting. After gaining confidence and poise as a live act, the band put out their debut EP, No Beauty Lost, towards the end of 2018, a six-song record that captured their melodic agility and raw energy in equal measure.
As 2019 opened up, the band continued to grow its live repertoire, not even missing a beat when Blake Hurt exited the band and percussionist Jacob Hill joined. At the beginning of 2020, the band released “Your Way” as a single, the first of what was hoped to be several new recordings that would give the band plenty to promote in concerts and on social media. Less than two months after that single release though, people were stuck at home and performance spaces were closed thanks to the global pandemic. The band found themselves tucked away in apartments around the city, nearly going crazy without their usual harmonic outlet.
“I was just pacing through a room, not really knowing what to do with myself and not really knowing where to direct the feelings,” frontman Sam Valentine told us, speaking frankly about a pivotal time in his artistic career. It was a scary time for everyone; for Valentine in particular, he saw years of musical progress beginning to diminish due to something out of his control. Looking back on that period three years later, he’s able to see clearly how that uncertain time allowed him to cultivate the Honest Debts brand with more clarity and understanding.
“There are a lot of bands that come out fully realized,” Valentine detailed. “When they start, they just have a thing that’s really awesome and I don’t know that’s necessarily something that we had early on.”
The band’s abundant influence had a hand in blurring this artistic vision originally, something Valentine used to view as a crutch for the band. “I grew up listening to the blues and old country music,” he explained. “That’s how I identified for a long time and every band is a mix of genres with their own unique things. So initially, we were a blues rock band with some funk and Americana and it became hard to pin down.”
But after understanding that other bands deal with this issue as well, Valentine was able to shake this genre baggage that was weighing him down and begin to tap into a more authentic sound with sharp precision and broader comprehension. “Now, I just describe us a rock band… then you can all figure the rest out,” he stated with a chuckle, before quickly adding that it’s a notion that took some time to be comfortable with.
During this period, the core of Can’t Be Trusted would start to form as Valentine tapped into the restless and uncertain nature of his surroundings. Album tracks “January” and “Can’t Be Trusted” date back to this time, each helping to release some of the nervous energy that had started to boil as a result of the isolated anxiety. These songs help give the album a propulsive feeling as the music sprints in search of some remedy, anything at all to soothe our souls and enrich our lives.
Having these songs as a foundation was a pivotal moment in the new album’s genesis, but a long journey was still ahead for the band as they aimed for a full collection of songs to put out into the world. The first major hurdle was to return to live performances, something Valentine believes is crucial for the songwriting process as songs evolve and mature through each performance. “Your Way,” the single released just before COVID hit, is an example of how repeated live performances can truly shape a song for the band. Though it was already out in the world for everyone to hear, the band continued to tweak it before landing on something that was slightly different than what people may have heard originally.
“We actually ended up lowering the key a whole step,” Valentine revealed. “I think as singers, we always want to challenge our range and push things, but it just felt that the song had been recorded in a key that didn’t lend itself to the lyrics and instrumentation shining through.” In addition to that, the band also shortened the length, cutting about a minute of runtime to help tighten the song up and allow it to resonate in a more direct manner.
Around this time, the band expanded their lineup, adding Justin Ott on keyboards in order to help round out the sound the band was trying so hard to make cohesive and memorable. Moving forward as a five-piece now, the band continued to gain momentum, with some key performances in popular venues and spotlights through local programs, such as Shockoe Sessions Live which offered an early glimpse of what would make up their new record.
Still tweaking the sound though, the band began to grapple with how to release these songs, knowing that some of them may end up like “Your Way” with a completely different ambiance offered between the studio recording and live performance.
“That’s something we’ve always struggled with,” Valentine pointed out. “Do we want people to hear stuff that they know when we release a recording? Do we want to drop brand new stuff and then play it differently live?” To Valentine, the band is at its best after playing through the songs fully, letting each composition exist in the world long before a recording molds its perception and expectation. In this manner, the band can also approach recording with more confidence and conviction. “What’s going to serve the song best on a recording? That’s what I’m thinking about and hopefully knowing how a crowd has responded over several concerts will help that.”
Armed with this knowledge, the band kept writing new songs and shaping them through live performances anywhere and everywhere they could. Eventually, they settled onto a batch they felt worked best together and all that was left was someone to help them “capture the feeling” in the studio. That person would end up being singer-songwriter Chris Leggett, who they asked to produce the record out of familiarity and admiration. Earlier that year, Leggett had released his own record, From The Idle Mind, alongside his band The Copper Line, which featured a member of Honest Debts. “Chris is a buddy of ours and has been for years in the scene,” Valentine said. “Matt [Elgin], our lead guitar player, is Chris’ lead guitar player [in the Copper Line] as well so there’s some overlap. I had approached Chris because I really love his songwriting and his approach to lyrics and song structure.”
With Leggett helping to guide the process, the band settled into Chris Keup’s White Star Sound recording studio just outside of Charlottesville for a week-long stay in September 2022 as they livetracked the whole record. “Basically, the way the studio works is you stay on-site the whole time you’re recording,” Valentine detailed. “So we did five days at the studio and barely left the studio. Chris [Leggett] was there the whole time and was crashing in one of the rooms upstairs. We would just come down every morning and start making music.”
For the band, Leggett served more as an occasional voice, one that offered subtle tweaks and modifications here and there instead of shaping songs that had been polished long before. “It wasn’t so much of ‘You should do this,’” Valentine recalled. “He would have an insightful suggestion or say ‘Hey, I think you could get that vocal take better.’” This helped open the recording process up and let the band really capture the live feeling of songs that had become popular staples of their performances.
“I don’t think you get the same energy if you’re layering everything in,” Valentine described. “I think we responded better to the live tracking than piece-by-piece recording. Everybody in the same room with a click track and playing at the same time. It made us rise to the occasion a little bit. You really drill stuff down before you go into the studio because you want to do stuff in three takes or less. We would layer in vocals later, but I think it was much better for the sound than individual tracking.”
One song that benefited from this recording approach was “Keep Up,” a brisk funk rock song that came out of a need to just move around during the pandemic. “That’s a hard one to capture because live, it’s a dance tune,” Valentine explained. “It doesn’t have the most groundbreaking lyrics or anything like that. And I wrote it during the pandemic when I was aching to play a live show. I think our first show back was Brambly Park and everybody was still distanced and stuff like that. I need to move. I need to dance. And that song just came about.”
The band ended up tracking eleven songs, nine of which were chosen to represent Can’t Be Trusted. These nine songs represent the total reach of Honest Debts, a band that’s as comfortable in swirling funk grooves as they are in rollicking blues jams. That comfort wasn’t always present for Honest Debts though, and it’s something the band is not taking for granted now.
“I think it’s taken us the entirety of the time that we’ve been together to get to a place where we’re making our best music and we feel comfortable with it,” Valentine explained. “Not being worried about ‘Oh, we need to write rock songs or funk songs or Americana.’ I think we’ve taken the time over the years to write super authentically which helps us not worry about that and just focus on what music we want to play and not what we should play.”
It’s a balancing act for sure, but one Honest Debts seems to have mastered on the new album. Can’t Be Trusted is a testament to the band’s growth and evolution as musicians, as well as their ability to craft a cohesive and compelling album that showcases their diverse range of talents. We may not be able to walk the tightrope of life with such conviction and composure as this record offers, but at least it will put a little more assurance in each step as we continue to center ourselves as we progress.
Can’t Be Trusted comes out Friday, April 28th on all streaming platforms and Honest Debts is celebrating with an album release concert that evening at The Camel. They will be joined by Justin Golden & The Come Up with the doors opening at 9 PM and music starting at 9:30 PM. Tickets are $12 in advance and $15 the day of the show. For more information on the show, click here or view the show poster below.
