Premiere: The Creepy Jingles’ ‘When Things Go Wrong’ is a beautiful song from a dark place
The Creepy Jingles. // photo courtesy the artist
We are always excited to hear new music from Kansas City garage rock foursome the Creepy Jingles, but never more so than when we get to share it with you all for the first time. The band’s debut full-length, Take Me at My Wordplay, released on High Dive Records back in 2022, and we got “Second Place Holder” on last year’s High Dive 10th anniversary compilation, The Deep End (Rarities and Other Stuff 2013-2023), so this new track, “When Things Go Wrong,” marks the first new material from the band in well over six months.
It’s well worth the wait, as the new song is maybe the brightest and poppiest material from the Creepy Jingles thus far, despite coming from a dark place. That’s kind of the specialty of the band’s singer/songwriter/rhythm guitarist/keyboard player, Jocelyn Nixon, and here, she absolutely soars. We’re excited to premiere it below ahead of its official release tomorrow, February 23.
Nixon explained the whole story behind the new track for us:
“I started writing the new batch of songs in November of 2022 when we were on a break. I moved into a new house the previous month and Nick [Robertson, drums], Andrew Woody, bass/backing vox], and I started to block out and shape the arrangements. We had a lineup change on lead guitar in February 2023, adding Wills [Van Doorn].
My goal was to write a whole new album from scratch and perform it live when we returned at Manor Fest 5, which we were able to accomplish. The reality of being a musician and a band as an adult is that it’s not always easy to balance everyone’s personal and professional lives.
Time and money created a bit of a barrier in producing the whole album, so we ended up recording the most power pop tunes in the bunch. We worked with the brilliant Paul Malinowski who, in my opinion has captured some of the best vocals I’ve ever had on record. Sonically, it’s a new direction, as these are much warmer catchier songs as opposed to the darker rock tone on Take Me At My Wordplay.
This is the first of four singles we will be dropping in 2024 and “When Things Go Wrong”’s lyrics were inspired by a judgmental person telling me to suck it up and deal while I was battling depression and fear trying to process all the anti-transgender rhetoric in legislation and media.
Did I need to leave my friends and family and move halfway across the country just to feel safe?
I hit a low point and it hit me hard. I felt criticized by someone I loved who will never quite grasp and understand my experience and chalked it all up to me self sabotaging. I wanted to capture the weight of feeling misunderstood and crippled by a world who wishes I didn’t exist and was actively seeking to bury me while I was breathing.”
