There it was, written in bold, black letters on a shipping label, with an ‘x’ in the exclamation mark of T!LT and all-caps for emphasis, style, or both.
T!LT HATES THE N.H.I. (aka the New Haven Independent).
Driving the point home was another sticker in the same handwriting:
T!LT HATES FREE PRESS
To be fair, there was also T!LT EATS BIG GREEN SNOT, T!LT MADE PANDAS SNEEZE, and the heaviest blow in my opinion, T!LT IS NOT INTERESTIN’.
“Every story you hear about us is true, even the good ones,” said Mike Scialla, singer and guitarist for New Haven punk band T!LT. He makes the stickers himself to pass out at shows. “We’re slandering ourselves so we can stay true to who we are.”
Bandmates Scialla, singer/guitarist Luca Costantini, and bassist Hayden Carter told me they were in legal proceedings with Michael Bublé — “Fuck Michael Bublé” — before telling me that wasn’t true. When they collectively made a drawing of a sexy, hairy snowman at the end of our time together, no one wanted to claim credit, so they blamed it on drummer Connor Simpson, who couldn’t make it that day. The bandmates were well-versed in uttering outlandish statements in a calm manner, but it wasn’t just to commit to the bit. Every little joke had a deeper purpose in the T!LT philosophical landscape.
Understanding this helped me understand T!LT’s new grunge, punk, dance rock album Terra, which dropped May 29 to a committed base of waiting fans. “It’s a sharp record,” said Scialla, noting it might take a few listens to get to the hidden meanings.
In T!LT’s noisy, energetic song “Movies,” which opens the album, the repetition of “You and me/ Me and you/ You and me at the movies” might seem to illustrate a fun night out. The exaggerated coolness of a spoken part near the end, telling a story about sitting by someone at the movies who says “Hey, you seeing this shit?”, turns the fun into something doubtful.
“‘Movies’ is about farming each other for content,” the band told me. Watching the movies but also being the movies.
The album’s last song, “G33kb@R,” is a deliberately overdone celebration of a vape, while in reality none of the band members vape anymore. A close listen to the lyrics reveals an underlying message about wasting away and numbing yourself.
In “Framed!”, T!LT gets a case of mistaken identity. “You say, you remind me of someone that I know/ And I can’t remember for the life of me/ Who the hell it was/ You got me all hung up on it,” they sing over high-powered percussion and guitar, growing more and more pained throughout the song. Scialla wanted to capture this feeling of being told, “You’re like this, your band is this way,” while being in a band where “our image is just us.”
“We’ve sort of always been loud and obnoxious. We’re just unfortunately now being rewarded for it,” Carter said.
Some of the songs on the project are almost three years in the making, even preceding their drummer. “I consider that the current T!LT,” said Costantini, remembering the moment drummer Simpson joined. Once Simpson was in the picture, possibilities opened up for them. They played the Austin festival South x Southwest (SXSW) and were able to book gig after gig.
“We found Connor in a zoo,” Scialla explained further. “In the penguin pit.”
Before Simpson, the band cycled through a few different members who came and went. Before that, Costantini, Scialla, and Carter, now 24 and 25, were in high school together, being unruly and gladly getting in over their heads. They told me about a show they put together called Storage Wars, set in a powered storage unit in the winter. “Someone brought a baby,” they remembered. The same person also brought a hookah. “We were 17, trying to handle this.”
“T!LT shows — where babies are made and hookahs are broken,” Scialla tossed out. Possible material for a future sticker.
If the band sticks around long enough, I told them, they may someday see an actual T!LT baby, one made at their show. “Throw him right on drums,” Scialla said without missing a beat.
The band creates all their songs together. Scialla or Costantini often come up with the original concept, which they then present as a demo to the group. The other bandmates learn and tweak the song. When they play it live, it changes again.
That’s how bands make music, Costantini told me. “It goes through a lot of hands.” Each song is like a baby, “raised by all these people you have to trust.”
In a way, maybe this is the real T!LT baby. Raised by a group of guys who put on, in Carter’s words, a “hyperbolic level of rowdiness,” at once a performance and an echo of the reality of life in a maddening world. Terra is still a newborn, less than two weeks old now. Knowing the full shape of its existence will take a few (hundred) more listens, a bunch of live shows, and, at T!LT’s constant invitation, being in on the joke.
