What was supposed to be a challenge to half•alive member Josh Taylor to pen 50 songs during a seven-month break from film school turned into a huge viral moment and a record deal for half•alive. Song #11 among the original 50 in the challenge, “still feel.,” broke out in 2018 and continued its momentum in 2019 as a mainstream alternative radio hit. The Long Beach trio of Josh Taylor [vocals], Brett Kramer [drums], and J Tyler Johnson [bass] got together in 2016 and set out a charter to create music as “a small universe for people to get lost in.” “still feel.” really came to life when Taylor drew on his film school background and self-directed a choreographed video by JA Collective that surpassed the 10 million mark, within two months. Taylor stated, “lyrically, it’s focused on a point in my life when I was in transition between work, friends, relationships, and everything else. I felt like I lost my roots and I was floating. The story could’ve gone either way. At the same time, I knew that there was something more to bring me back to a place of feeling rooted again. It’s the push and pull once more.” Releasing their debut album ‘Now, Not Yet’ in August of this year, half•alive has sold out numerous shows while seeing other tracks like “Runaway” and “Ice Cold“ (ft. Kimbra), resonating with a growing fanbase. “Our goal is to make music flexible enough to change as we change, so we’re not stuck playing songs that were only meant for one season of our lives,” Taylor stated. “Sigmund Freud theorized that the ‘Super Ego’and ‘ID’sat on opposite ends of the spectrum, with the ‘Ego’landing in the center. Carl Jung proposed a similar theory of shadow self—the things that we don’t wish to acknowledge within us are competing against the things we love about ourselves. Both agree on a beautiful expression of tension that we go through. It’s a pull between light and shadow, spirit and flesh. One brings us into life and another leads into death, leaving us in a state of being half alive.”
B-Sides caught up with the guys at Great American Music Hall in San Francisco to talk about their debut, working with Kimbra, sleeping in bunk-beds, holograms and more. Check out the interview and their newest video for “Breakfast”:
