Telenova never rushed the creation of her debut album, but her rise to the top spot still seems rapid.
Two EPs in three years (2021’s Calm and 2022 Stained Glass Love) made the band one of the most notable bands on the Australian music scene. Their art-pop gems with frequent trip-hop digressions and electronic flourishes earned them a large national fan base.
In 2023 they released only one single, “Lost in the Rush,” but we now know that they were actually just preparing for the biggest year of their career yet in 2024.
Last week (16 August) Telenova’s debut album was released, Time is a floweris bigger, bolder and more ambitious than the band’s previous releases and successfully expands their already existing artistic universe.
There are standout tracks like new single “Margot,” which takes its name from a famous Australian actor (a nod to the band’s professed love of cinema), and the darkly seductive “Power,” which we named “A Song You Need to Know” in April.
The smoothness of Time is a flower becomes even more impressive when you learn that Telenova produced the album themselves and deals with weighty topics in the lyrics as if they had been doing this together for much longer than three years.
Amidst their busy touring schedule, with Telenova currently on the road in Australia, the trio of Angeline Armstrong, Edward Quinn and Joshua Moriarty found time to take a closer look at their debut album. What you can read below is:
Telenova’s “Time Is a Flower” is out now. Check out the band’s tour dates here.
Time is a flower Title by title:
“The Wallpaper”
Ange: Lyrically, the songs on the album share a lot of common motifs and imagery – we never intended that, but it came about organically as we were writing the album and then choosing which songs would make it.
I wanted a literal prelude to the album that would act as an opening statement or a sort of treatise – both musically and lyrically – and set the stage for the narrative that runs throughout the album. It introduces the motif of “I feel like I’ve been here before” and the title “The Wallpaper” also seemed suitably poetic as it literally sets the backdrop for the scenes that will play out afterwards.
“Tear”
Editorial staff: The basis for this track was sitting on an old laptop of mine for a while. I think I made it during Melbourne’s second lockdown during COVID. I had a bunch of stuff that I hadn’t shown Ange or Josh when we were writing the record because I’d almost forgotten about it, but when they heard this they immediately wanted to work on it. It’s a pretty freaky sounding song so I didn’t know if it would work for Telenova. But once Josh and Ange put their special sauce on it, it all came together. I love that dirty sounding piano and the turkey sample at the beginning.
“Perfomance”
Josh: This is the only co-writing on the record outside of the band – we worked on it with Melbourne producer Styalz Fuego. We started from scratch, there was no song or framework, we built it all in the studio with Styalz and Ange wrote the vocal melody that day during the session. Ange and I spent quite a bit of time on the lyric, it went through two or three iterations before we landed on the metaphor of a flower in love with the sun and the approaching night and afraid of death in the dark. We didn’t add much else to the production – there are a few guitars here and there and a few piano interludes.
“Margot”
Ange: The song is about the self-destructive nature of envy and comparison – especially in the age of social media – how we watch someone from afar and think they are so perfect, prettier, have it all together, are never insecure, have the perfect life… basically we think they must have come straight from heaven, like they’re a god. But the more you get to know people, the more you realise that everyone is just as insecure as you are and the perfect image is just a facade. “Margot” is not a single person to me. It’s just a name I chose to sum up all the Margots out there that I think we, especially women, tirelessly compare ourselves to.
Why the name “Margot”? I had just seen the film. About time and Margot Robbie plays this really classic blonde bombshell who’s always sunbathing on the lawn, leafing through a book, flirting from afar with her best friend’s brother – that image is what inspired the first line of the song. Such a classic image. Thank you, Margot. The song quickly evolved beyond that first line, but she was the original building block!
“Shocks, traces”
Josh: “Tremors, Traces” was about a chord progression I came up with while we were working together in my home studio. We wanted to do a slow dance groove number in the Avalanches style and I think we achieved that. There’s a nice little chord change in the bridge that really catches the ear and adds a bit of flair. The strings are by Melbourne composer Tamil Rogeon and the rest of the instrumentation was recorded at Head Gap Studio in Melbourne.
“January”
Editorial staff: There’s a lot to say about the incredible lyrics of “January,” but I’m going to focus on the music. Josh and I made this beat when Ange was away for a couple of weeks, I think. So we tried to make three beats a day and then listen to them the next week and decide if they were shitty or not. We went a little crazy and I was messing around and pretending to whine on the guitar but accidentally hit the perfect note to lead into the chorus. I don’t usually talk about Guitar Hero stories, but this one was a complete accident that came out of a joke. And now it’s one of my favorite moments on the record.
Photo credit: Clint Peloso
“Restless”
Ange: When I first heard the crisp lo-fi water sample alongside the piano chords, this song felt like the score of a scene to me. I immediately heard this kind of whispery, intimate, dry voice speaking. I remember watching the behind-the-scenes footage Don’t forget me! (one of my favorite films) and Michel Gondry talks about how the internal voiceovers in that film were all done super quiet and super close to the mic to create that feeling of being right inside someone’s head, super intimate. I wanted the voice to convey that feeling. It’s a second part to the intro track “The Wallpaper” in many ways. (It) acts as another anchor that ties the narrative of the songs on the album together. That striving and longing for something divine but being pulled back into the mundane, the cyclical experience of “I feel like I’ve been here before,” having these thoughts, feeling this way, asking these questions…
“Time is a flower”
Editorial staff: We recorded this song with Chris Taylor (Grizzly Bear) in London. The sound he got out of the guitar in the chorus was exactly what I was hoping for in the sessions with him. It just explodes perfectly with that reverb into the abyss as Ange sings. This song will always remind me of the incredible time we spent with Chris for two days working on Telenova tracks. A dream come true.
“Disco in my head
Josh: This was a song I wrote the beat for. I had recorded a guitar part on my iPhone and used that sample in the track. The guitar sound at the beginning is my electric guitar recorded through my iPhone’s microphone. I wanted to do something like a Dandy Warhol 4-chord chorus. It got new life when Ed put some sprinkles in the bridge and we added live percussion.
The bridge vocals were actually written last minute on the last day in the recording studio while I was recording everything for the album – call it a stroke of luck. The bass sound is killer if I do say so myself – it’s a Rickenbacker knock off that I played hard with a pick. The reference for the bass sound was “Electric Feel” by MGMT as earlier in the week before we went into the studio I had seen a kid on TikTok playing along to that song and he was playing a Rickenbacker so I thought we could give it a go.
“Preamble”
Ange: It’s funny that this song came about towards the end of the writing phase. (It) was actually a happy accident of Ed just playing around with old vocal stems, a voice memo and a beat that he really liked. We wanted to keep the same chopped up/sample-like feel in the final version of the song. The repeated lyrics “I feel like I’ve been here before” is a central feeling that runs through the entire album: this questioning of the nature of time and our place in it, this recurring return to the same thoughts and longings about existence and the condition of humanity.
“The Call of Heaven”
Editorial staff: I think this is the oldest song on the record. We wrote it around the time of the first EP, but it seemed like a perfect change of pace for the album. I love Ange’s little “ahhhhs” in the beginning and how the beat keeps building but never overtakes the atmosphere created by the nylon guitar. I also LOVE this song because you can easily replace “Heaven’s Calling” with “Alec Baldwin”.
“Bird of Paradise”
Josh: This was one of the first songs we wrote for the record, but when it all came together we always knew it would be the last track. There’s something magical about the drum break. It feels alive and has a trippy trip-hop feel to it. Tamil Rogeon did the string arrangement which really took it to another level. The guitar solo at the end was recorded by Ed in my home studio. We never tried to re-record it because it had a certain crazy magic to it.
