Transcript of Interview With Anand Balasubrahmanyan on JangleCast

Episode 139, 2/2/2026

Uptempo rock music

Vikram “Venom” Ramachandran (VVR): YEEEEAAAHHHHH! Welcome to JangleCast the only podcast that gives you a definitive answer on whether Tigers Jaw is a fourth or fifth wave emo band. We’ve got a real treat today, it's Anand Balasubrahmanyan from Seattle indie rockers Hollow Bodies. Anand welcome to the cast.

Anand Balasubrahmanyan (AB): Thanks for having me. Congrats on the set up.

VVR: Oh yeah, we’re doing vertical video, reaction videos, monetize it baby!

AB: Uh huh. You’re not going to, like, fact check anything I say on here?

VVR: What? I was talking about making money.

AB: Uh huh.

VVR: So you're back at it, back on the road. You’ve got a brand new album out

AB: Yep, it's called We’ve Never Been Wrong. It takes place at Newport Highschool on the eastside. 

VVR: You call this a concept album–can you explain the story?

AB: The album takes place at the 20th high school reunion for the class of ‘05 and all the songs tell the stories of people who are trying to reconcile who they thought they would be after high school with who they actually are now. 

VVR: A middle age wasteland?

AB: Haha, yeah basically.

VVR: Who are some of the characters in the story?

AB: The album starts out with the Unofficial Historian of the Class of ‘05’s first day of school. She gets a Clueless-style tour of the cliques at Newport High and gossips about all the people we’ll meet throughout the album.

VVR: Did I hear that there is a love triangle on this record?

AB: Well that's very generous to Hal, who never really had a chance. 

At the center of the story you’ve got AP Veronica who had an ill-fated high school fling with Emo Eddie, the lead singer of one of those Hot Topic punk bands. Veronica comes to the the reunion after hearing rumors about Eddie and wonders if he’ll show up. Eddie wants to see Veronica too, but he’s embarrased–kind of by who he used to be, but also about who he is now. “Five Years Too Late” shows how Eddie sees Veronica’s successful growth into a lawyer and how he sees himself.  

And poor Hal, he got rejected by AP Veronica in high school and now has a job at some tech company and thinks his new money and status can paper over how she used to see him…and of course we all know that kind of plan never works out. “Traffic” is Hal’s delusion that his sweet new ride can change people’s perspectives on who he is and “The Best Joke in the World” is his disastrous attempt to reconnect with Veronica.

VVR: And the song “Richard the III?”

AB: In the middle of the reunion, Emo Eddie is cajoled into giving an impromptu eulogy for a troubled theater kid who played Richard the III in high school and overdosed later in life. He biffs it. Terrible eulogy.

VVR: Why did you want to tell this story on a record, with songs?

AB: The great thing about music is it gives you this very intimate look at another person’s experience. I don’t know what it was like to be in Folsom Prison in the ‘50s, but the way Johnny Cash sings I can feel the shame and defiance and regret. 

Cash said a song writer needs three chords and the truth, but the truth looks and sounds a bit different depending on the person speaking it, you know? A concept record is great because the truth is complicated! The listener can get a more nuanced view when they listen to the whole arc of a story across an entire record.

I think it's interesting that a lot of the earliest concept records, like The Wall or Tommy, are these British guys trying to mine pop psychology to say something grand about the human experience. You know, Pink Floyd’s The Wall is all about how trauma and societal expectations make people close themselves off, and Tommy is about how a person’s search for truth can be corrupted when society at large wants to turn it into a movement or religion. 

For our record, we wanted it to take place at a high school reunion so it could be about more than one person’s self-discovery. It's about an entire class of people looking back on their lives and wondering, “how did I make this world I’m living in?”

VVR: Less of a hero's journey and more like a Ghost of Christmas Past kind of thing?

AB: Yeah, yeah. In the ‘70s, a lot of bands created these sci-fi epics. Rush imagined totalitarian futures to help explore what they saw as the fundamental nature of human beings. Power corrupts people at the top and everyone else feels trapped in a system they can touch and feel, but can’t change or completely understand.

Looking around at our world today I thought, you know, who needs sci-fi? Our economy is driven by social media companies that make money amplifying hate and conspiracies, or by people like Elon Musk who create angry cults of personalities to inflate their share price. We're living in a Rush album right now! So instead of a sci-fi concept record, I wanted to look at the people who created our current moment. The 30- and 40-year-olds who built and embraced these technologies and now are living unsatisfying lives within them. 

VVR: Did you go to your high school reunion?

AB: No.

VVR: One of the characters, Emo Eddie, is a failed musician. Do you relate to this character?

AB: No. 

VVR: Really?

AB: Let’s just say I was never a Sum 41 guy.

VVR: Molly sings lead on several songs on the album. That’s new for you guys.

AB: Yeah Molly’s a great singer. Her voice added a lot of depth to Veronica on “When We Dance,” and she wrote the lyrics for “Let the Light In” about a co-dependent relationship on the brink.

VVR: You’ve got a new drummer too?

AB: The great Paul Berryman–he used to play for some awesome Australian alt-rock bands. He plays some really driving beats on the record that sound fantastic.

VVR: What concept albums were you listening to or thinking about when you wrote the album?

AB: There are so many interesting concept records out there and we tried to channel other artist’s approaches on different songs. “Mile Marker” has these huge The Who riffs and “Let the Light In” is inspired by The Sunset Tree by the Mountain Goats. Those songs look at a group of alcoholic friends and how they use each other to justify self-destructive behavior.  

Arthur by The Kinks was another big touch point, where they use the story of a complacent middle-aged guy who buys a recliner as a metaphor for the sun setting on the British Empire. You see bits of that in Hal’s attempts to re-define himself by changing his job title instead of his attitude towards other people in “Traffic.”

“Reunion” takes from a more modern attempt at a concept record, Andy Shauf’s Neon Skyline. It's a kind of jazz-pop ensemble with talk-singing to tell a story through rumours overheard at the reunion. 

VVR: And it all ends in a parking lot?

AB: As all things in life must–just like Joni Mitchell told us. The album ends with “Who Feels Like Giving,” where the MC of the reunion asks the audience for donations to the alumni giving fund. Eddie and Veronica hook up and everyone can see it’s a terrible idea. 

VVR: We’ve Never Been Wrong – the new album by Hollow Bodies out today. Check it out everyone. Ok Anand, before you go we’re going to end today’s episode the same way we do with every guest. You need to eat this bucket of spicy chicken wings while I ask you about your childhood regrets. 

AB: What?

Uptempo rock music