Inner Waverecently announced their new album, SEE YOU WHEN I GET BACK, will drop on February 27 via Nettwerk. SEE YOU WHEN I GET BACK captures a group in transformation: maturing with age, navigating loss and getting sober, while incorporating feedback from three feverish years of post-COVID touring for their 2021 record Apoptosis. “We started to notice that the most energy we’d get from the audience was from upbeat songs,” points out guitarist Elijah Trujillo. “We were really trying to capture that with this album, so we ended up going back to our roots—stuff we grew up on, like garage rock—while still adding our own flavor.”

Once life on the road began to slow, Inner Wave decamped to their rehearsal space (lovingly dubbed “The Swamp”), where See You When I Get Back began to materialize over the past year. “We got very detail-oriented with the sonics of the album and started recording in many different ways we hadn’t tried before,” shares Sotelo. He and keyboardist/engineer Jose Cruz, who went on to join the band after co-producing Apoptosis, were the key architects of this try-anything-once approach.

Along with experimentation, the creative process of SEE YOU WHEN I GET BACK found Inner Wave navigating significant personal change: namely, the passing of their first manager, Gonzo Lubel, and songwriter and close friend Bram Inscore, the latter of whom contributed to the album. “There’s been such extreme highs and lows in the last five years for us,” Sotelo reflects. “These are big life things that you just can’t ignore. There’s no way around it.” Once their hectic tour schedule wound down, Sotelo and bassist Jean Pierre Narvaez decided to quit drinking. “I don’t think I would’ve been able to make this record with the guys if I hadn’t made that decision,” Sotelo says. “It allowed me to re-evaluate who I was, and who I thought I was—in the context of the band, as an individual, and as an artist.”

Blending the three-chord structure of a classic pop song with frequent changing of time signatures, “CHILD” embodies the “try-anything-once” approach that the band took into the recording process for the album. “This is one of those songs that deserves to be on Song Exploder,” shares bassist Jean-Pierre Narvaez. “I think super fans, music nerds and musicians alike will be psyched on figuring this number out. There are only so many songs that work in the “pop structure” context that can hold down a weird time signature and be as fluid as this one.”

The lyrics for “CHILD” see lead vocalist Pablo Sotelo reminiscing on an idealized version of the past. Fittingly, the key references for the track came from two older songs: “I Believe in a Thing Called Love” by The Darkness (2003) for the intro, and “Just What I Needed” by The Cars (1978) for the guitar tone.

Inner Wave
See You When I Get Back
Tracklist
Nettwerk Records

01. MADRE
02. SWEET
03. CHILD
04. PUSH
05. PULL
06. BIG FOOT
07. FAR AWAY
08. IF YOU LIKE
09. ONLY FOR YOUR EYES
10. WOLFIE
11. SAME IS THE CHANGE
12. HIGHWAYS
13. ALL OF THE THINGS

Pre-order See You When I Get Back by Inner Wave HERE