Last month we had the honor, privilege, and time of our life (pun intended) at the pop punk/emo/alternative rock festival that has taken the world by storm over the last three years – When We Were Young. The fest’s über-current presence in today’s music scene mixed with the appreciation-based nostalgia for the soundtrack of many of our youths is something we thoroughly enjoyed reporting on and something we are very, very, very thankful for.
Few albums have had such an immediate impact on an entire genre like Feel Something by Movements. It helped revive the emo genre and spark new life into the scene. The aesthetic of the record alone was enough to take over all of Tumblr at the time, and we are certain that the band could have not released another album ever again and toured on just that one for decades. However, we’re extremely thankful they didn’t because as it turns out, Movements is still dropping their best material to date. They are not a one trick pony.
In 2023, Movements released a masterpiece entitled Ruckus. This LP saw them going in a whole new direction. It was a bit less sad than the previous two records and had a higher octane. On some tracks, vocalist Patrick Miranda was heard spitting out the words with grit, and on others, his voice soared with passion. Those moments by Movements helped put the record on my Top Ten Albums list last year.
At When We Were Young Festival a few weeks ago, the band played their aforementioned album, Feel Something, front-to-back. It was an incredibly life changing experience for fans, as it was not only fantastic to see and hear an incredible album with perfect deep cuts be performed live in full, but it was a chance to experience the outpouring of charm and charisma that Movements brings to every show. Yes, they are one of the greatest live bands you can see in 2024, at a festival, on a tour, or wherever else you can catch them.
We had the opportunity to sit down with frontman Pat and discuss the older records, the newer records, and everything in between. It was exhilarating.
Right out of the gate – Feel Something is being played in full here at When We Were Young Festival. How are you feeling?
Oh, man – excited, a little nervous. There are a lot of songs off this record that we don’t play or haven’t played in years, so revisiting some of the old ones is pretty crazy, but we’re super excited. It’s our most popular record, so we’re expecting it to go over well.
I’ve got to say, it’s crazy because a lot of the bands on the bill are 20-30 years into their career. Then we have you guys – a bit newer with three records to your name. How does it feel to be one of the younger band son this bill?
Dude, it is sort of weird. It’s funny, too, because today, literally today, is the seven-year anniversary of Feel Something coming out. It hasn’t even been out for 10 years yet! It’s been out for seven years today. It is odd to be brought into this world of all of these legacy acts… and maybe our music lends itself to that. This is the music we grew up listening to, so we’re very much ingrained in this community as music listeners and as people, but also being put on the same level as peers with bands we consider our inspiration; [they were] gods in our teenage years. It’s pretty cool, man. It’s a very humbling feeling.
I think it’s a testament to how great that record is. There are few bands like you on the bill. It’s more or less Movements, Neck Deep, and State Champs, and still, the impact has been profound.
Yeah, absolutely! That is truly such a blessing. The fact that it has become such a moment for people, culturally in our scene, that this record meant so much to such a wide variety of people… that is really special. We’re happy to be here.
We do have to talk about Ruckus. Tell me about the reaction to that record. From what I know, and from what I have sene, it has been amazing.
Ruckus has been out for just over a year now. The last year of touring on that record has been unbelievable. We’ve never had more fun playing shows. We’ve never had a better reaction to new songs played live. The crowds have been phenomenal, man. We’ve been playing some of the biggest shows we’ve ever played in our career. It’s truly been so much fucking fun. We’re just really excited to keep pushing it. Obviously it’s a change, right? We sort of grown past what we’ve done in earlier years with different records. We’ve tried to transcend the genre that we’ve been pigeon-holed into. Not that there’s anything wrong with being in this world, right? Being a part of this community is always going to be our core, but we wanted to see how much further we could take it. I think that means trying to push those boundaries a bit. So far we’ve seen a lot of growth and positive output from changing things up a bit.
You don’t want to make Feel Something eight times. No one wants to do that.
Exactly! To be fair, as much as people might complain, “Oh, this just doesn’t sound like their old stuff, so I don’t like it as much,” if we were to make a record every single time that sounds exactly like what you would expect a Movements record to sound like, everyone’s argument would be, “Well, this just sounds the same as everything else they’ve ever made and it’s not as good as Feel Something.” There’s really no winning! So we might as well do whatever the fuck we want, you know what I mean?
Yeah! I went to that headlining show at Starland Ballroom on the Ruckus Tour and when you played tracks like “Lead Pipe,” it felt like all of Jersey at once was jumping up and down. You can see the connection first hand.
Dude, that is a phenomenal show for you to have been to! That’s fucking sick. We had such a fun night that night. Yeah, going from opening Starland Ballroom when we toured with Senses Fail – we were opening that tour and nobody knew who we were. Five years later, headlining Starland Ballroom, sold out, and kids are going fucking crazy for the new stuff? It’s the most incredible, overwhelming feeling of, “Holy shit! This is doing something. It’s working!” We’re having a fucking blast. We’re having the time of our lives playing music that we wrote that we weren’t sure if anyone was going to like. We’ve got all these people supporting us. It’s so fucking cool.
Even after Feel Something had already been accomplished and started making waves, you did that Story So Far tour. You were the first band on the bill at Starland Ballroom and four years later, you sold it out yourselves!
It is absolutely crazy. This is no slight by any means, but on that Story tour, Turnover was the direct support band on that tour. We were the opening band. It was us, then Citizen, then Turnover, then Story. Our most recently headlining tour, which ended three weeks ago, was with Turnover as direct support to Movements, which is the craziest, most mind-blowing, and amazing feeling. Turnover is one of my all time favorite bands. Knowing that we have gotten to a level we can bring them out on a tour with us and they want to tour with us is the coolest shit in the world. I’m so glad they were down to tour with us. They could have easily been like, “No, fuck that. We don’t want to tour with the band that was smaller than us,” or whatever. They were like, “No, we love you guys. We want to do this tour. Fuck yeah, let’s do it!” That is so fucking sick and such an amazing feeling. We ride for those bands so hard. I’m so happy they still want to tour with us.
That’s awesome! Speaking of Ruckus, “Barbed Wire Body” is not on the record. I was wondering why that is.
“Barbed Wire Body” and “Cherry Thrill” were both just singles that we recorded in the interim between No Good Left To Give and Ruckus. It was sort of this moment where we were trying to figure out what we wanted to do for Ruckus. “Let’s just do some shit that’s weird and outside of the box and see what happens.” We did those two songs and put them out. People were into it, which was cool! We were pushing the boundary here, but not getting too far out of that boundary. Then we were like, “Ok, let’s just say ‘fuck it’ and do a whole record like that and see what happens!” That’s how Ruckus came about. We felt like since those two songs had already been out for so long. it didn’t make sense for them to be on the record. We totally could have put them on the record. but it was kind of nicer to have them stand by themselves as just singles and allude to what we were going to do in the future.
A totally new and fresh album – 10 new tracks for the fans. I get that.
Exactly!
With a Movements set, your songs are so dynamic. “Daylily” and “Full Circle” are more melancholy and sad. “Tunnel Vision” and the aforementioned “Lead Pipe” are intense. How do you build that live show and make a setlist that can balance that?
Right! We have long conversations. Our bass player is the one who curates the setlist. We have long conversations every time we go on tour. “How do we build this set to fly right?” You can’t play all of the fast songs all at once then play all of the slow songs because everybody is going to be bored by the end. We find ways to play fast songs for a few songs then slow it down a little bit. Then maybe find a medium tempo song that we can bridge into more fast songs.
Now, with Ruckus, a record being mostly upbeat, it’s really cool because we have a lot of ebbs and flows throughout the set. It keeps everybody’s attention span locked in for the whole set, but, yeah… it is sort of a conversation every single time. “How are we going to make sure this doesn’t get boring?”
And make sure it doesn’t cut too hard! With Ruckus, it’s such a wide range. “AMP” is upbeat, but not in the way that “One of Us” is upbeat. It’s a different kind of soul to the band.
Yeah, it is! It is very much different ends of our spectrum as far as what the band is. At this point it’s hard to quantify what exactly we do as a genre. We do a lot. That stems from us having wide influences of what we listen to and consume, then use as our inspiration for writing music. “AMP” and “You’re One of Us Now,” although they are on the same record, they are on different ends of that spectrum. I think that’s what I really like about Ruckus; there’s the heavier end of the spectrum and then there’s the lighter poppier end of the spectrum and then everything in between. It’s all still a Movements album at the end of the day, but every song there’s a little bit of something different. I think there’s something for everyone in that record. I think that we want to continue to try and do that in future records, as well.
I know it’s early and Ruckus is only a year old, but have you started the songwriting process for a fourth album?
Not totally! We’re going into the studio at the end of the year to do some writing. Then we’ll probably start working on recording a new record maybe this time next year. We still have a bunch of touring to do on Ruckus – †hat’s taking up most of our time. It’s been a really busy year of touring and we’ve still got a solid six months of tours ahead of us that we’re really excited about. No new music yet, but we are definitely going to work on some stuff next year.
We love to hear it! Going back to the reason why we’re talking – When We Were Young Festival. What is it like to be unearthing these deep tracks from Feel Something? There are a lot of songs that fans will hear live they will never hear live in a normal Movements set.
Totally! There are some deep cuts on this record. I’m really interested to see whether or not people are excited for them. A deep cut can go one of two ways – it’s either everybody going, “Holy shit, they’re playing this deep cut,” and they’re go wild for it, or they’re going to be like, “This is a deep cut. I don’t really know it.” It’ll be interesting to see what happens. I do feel, especially at a fest like this where the nostalgia aspect is so huge, that the deep cuts are going to go over pretty well. I am excited to play them because it may be the last time we ever play these deeper cuts. It’ll be fun!
So no plans to unearth these in future setlists?
Probably not, honestly! We’re really working on moving into a new era of this band and a lot of those deep cuts on Feel Something don’t really make the cut. Obviously when the record turns 10 and we inevitably do a 10 year anniversary tour/show or whatever it ends up being, we might end up making an appearance with these older songs. Who knows?
I also feel like you have some sad songs, but hearing “Daylily” and “Submerge” back-to-back is a double gut punch.
I get you, man! Exactly. We’ll see what happens. You never know what’s going to happen in the future. We might end up playing them.
I do also need to ask about the VHS feel for Ruckus. It’s such a strong imagery.
Yeah, we wanted to do something that felt, again, nostalgic. There was something that I was feeling when we were writing that whole record. It made me feel like a kid again… youthful energy. I don’t know why, but it was fun and exciting. I have these distinct memories of being a kid falling asleep on the couch on a summer night. I’m up late. I fall asleep watching TV and I wake up and it’s three in the morning and the TV went from being normal Cartoon Network to weird Adult Swim.
[Laughs] That is such a distinct nineties/2000s kid memory!
You’re like, “I can’t comprehend what’s happening. I don’t understand what’s happening. This is so weird. I feel like I’m in a fever dream. What the fuck is going on?” It’s hot. You’re stuck to the couch sweating. I just had that distant memory and that’s what this record felt like to me. I wanted to showcase that in the visuals. We did a lot of nostalgic VHS. We did a bunch of these little infomercials, paid programing type ads. It was fun to tap into that nineties kid nostalgia.
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