True Faith perform a "Leucovorin Rescue" with their new 7-inch

New Leucovorin Rescue b/w What Is Owed 7-inch from the Boston coldwave and post-punk trio through emerging independent label à La Carte Records

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True Faith

The creative minds of medical students can be a fascinating place. Through the course of studying, they experience life, death, and everything in between through a reflection of the best and worst of the human condition. For True Faith, the medical school life of Travis Benson and Quentin Moyer not only help shape the Boston-based coldwave and post-punk trio’s sound, but also its emotion.

After the January release of debut album As Much Nothing As Possible via à La Carte Records, and the addition of a new member — and fellow medical student — in Dylan Kotliar, True Faith return on April 2nd with the "Leucovorin Rescue b/w What Is Owed" 7-inch. Its timing is no coincidence; it arrives when Boston traditionally experiences a seasonal rebirth, from its endless supply of graduating classes tossing their mortarboards skyward to the salty populace shaking free the winter doldrums as the city explodes in colorful open-air optimism, True Faith are emerging out of their own shadowy origins.

“This 7-inch is really a transition point between our more synth-focused material from As Much Nothing As Possible and our new guitar-focused material with our next album,” says Benson. “As a two-piece, I think we had the realization that replicating much of As Much Nothing As Possible live would be extremely difficult. With — hopefully — live shows returning on the horizon, I think we had the understanding that if we wanted to perform these tracks live, we would need more people involved. Dylan Kotliar joined the band to play bass and this opened up a lot of different avenues for us to explore. Between his contributions to songwriting and our ability to practice as a band again, this helped shift the sound from less of a synth-pop vibe from some of As Much Nothing As Possible to more of a post-punk feel a la The Chameleons, 'Second Empire Justice'-era Blitz, and 'Mesh and Lace'-era Modern English.”

As the guitar tones of the "Leucovorin Rescue" 7-inch emanate out of the speakers, its lyrical content takes shape. Expanding on a lot of the themes of As Much Nothing As Possible, and furthering Benson’s penchant for a lyrical hook that takes residence in the listener’s head and sticks around long after the song ends, the A-side barrels across its nearly five-minute runtime with razor-sharp precision. As Benson frantically offers up a repeated line of “I feel it coming down / On me,” it’s impossible not to think of the medical terminology that lends itself to the title, but also the band’s own lifestyle as medical students, where the pressures of the classroom, lab, and real-world all intertwine.

“The term was used for the song,” Benson says of "Leucovorin Rescue", “because it serves as a metaphor for having an outlet or release to save you from the unwanted side effects of life that we often experience.” And as the song nears its completion, leading to the swirling synth-fed dark-pop of "What Is Owed", the weights of True Faith’s world become exceptionally clear.

“I think that many people can have the assumption that there is an inherent privilege that is experienced by many people who are pursuing graduate-level education,” Benson says. “For the most part, they are right. But for us, we are very much out of our element. Each of us coming from rather humble backgrounds, to say the least, attending medical school is a major culture shock. The rigors of medical school are already anxiety and depression-inducing on their own; you are constantly forced to work 80-plus hour weeks, made to feel that you are constantly at the bottom of a hierarchy, etc. It’s just very demoralizing, especially for people who are not from the typical class that occupies that space. This has certainly influenced our songwriting and provided a cathartic outlet to escape that world for a moment.”

About

There’s an old adage about Boston and how its residents will treat you: cold, distant, and standoffish at the start, but over time what emerges is a certain warmth, a sort of familial bond that takes shape and becomes apparent just when you either need it most or when you least expect it. In a way, that oddly reflects the music and mood of True Faith, the Boston-based coldwave trio whose longest-standing members, Travis Benson and Quentin Moyer, do not hail from New England, but instead have entrenched themselves within the city’s often lonely and militant culture of medical school.

Benson and Moyer’s time spent here, arriving from Portland, Oregon, and rural Eastern Pennsylvania, respectively, saw not only the formation of the band, but the crystallization of the True Faith sound to the point where it falls today: a disaffected twirl through the shadows of post-punk, darkwave, and electronic pop, but with a cerebral center based in the emotive state of the human condition. Like a proper Bostonian, it reveals its different layers the longer you spend time with it, and its affection slowly begins to glow from a core that is remarkably gentle and affirming.

And whether that’s by intent or not is beside the point. The emotion rooted in the True Faith sound is one reflected by Benson and Moyer’s experiences here in medical school and dalliances with the unforgiving and despondent Boston winter. Ironically, a break from studies brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic gave the pair time to flesh out what would become their debut album, January’s As Much Nothing As Possible LP, mixed and mastered by Will Killingsworth at Dead Air Studios in Western Massachusetts and released digitally and on vinyl through emerging independent label via à La Carte Records.

“Boston can be a cold and desolate place,” admits Benson. “But I think the bigger influence has been us both being students and trudging through a dehumanizing career process. Burnout, depression, and suicide are all unfortunately common occurrences in our field and our own experiences traversing this landscape have absolutely been the biggest influence in the writing.”

“For a long stretch we had been working 60-to-80-hour weeks in the hospital,” says Moyer. “Until one day — for some reason — we stopped doing that for several months in 2020, and thus we had the time to reflect and build what is now True Faith.”

True Faith originated as a Benson solo project, taking his love of post-punk and deathrock from his teenage years out west and creating an outlet for bleak, desolate compositions that complemented the overall feeling of defeat and malaise of life in 2020. The addition of Moyer, which came after True Faith released a self-titled cassette earlier this year, both filled a void and allowed a proper path forward. This year, the band added fellow medical student Dylan Kotliar to its lineup and will soon be implementing a live drummer.

“I could sense the limitations I would have as a solo project, both from a technical aspect but even from a creativity aspect — I find it best to have others to bounce ideas off,” says Benson. “Quentin and I have played together before and I knew that his style would really complement mine well. His addition has been an asset in the terms of writing, which I feel is evident when you compare the material on the cassette vs the LP.”

But Benson still feels True Faith and its sound is “still a work in progress,” one that will likely evolve as the two continue their journey and they emerge from studies, whether that be here in Boston or elsewhere. “The reality is that this project is still in its infancy and still has a lot of room to grow and hone our own sound,” he says. “At the start of our collaboration together, we were separated due to social distancing and we relied on bouncing recordings back and forth to each other. Now that we are able to be together in the same location, it opens up more opportunities in terms of writing. I feel like our initial work has had a more rigid process due to that distance now we have the ability to adapt and alter things in real-time.

What As Much Nothing As Possible is, as it stands on the precipice of its release, is a testament to where True Faith is at this moment in time, both as a musical project entrenched in a new, more minimal brand of darkwave synth, but also for whom Benson and Moyer are as people, living in a new city, approaching, embracing and at times rejecting the guarded layers that surround the skepticism of the people who call Boston home. And as the stark exterior begins to fade away, revealing the emotion hardened at its center, the album suggests this is just the beginning of a larger, as-yet-undefined story.

“My hope is that it heralds bigger things to come,” says Moyer, “while remaining timeless to what motivated us musically in the first place.”

Source True Faith

June 8, 2021 9:50am ET by True Faith  

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