Since the release of their first smash-hit single, Shut Up and Dance (2014), Walk the Moon has become a household name across the globe, and the indie pop song has been certified seven times platinum in Canada alone.
Now, on the tail-end of promoting their latest album, Talking is Hard (2017), the Ohio-based rock band has released a brand-new single entitled Timebomb.
Since its release, Timebomb has dominated modern rock and adult contemporary radio stations across the continent and even allowed the four-piece to play on a number of major television networks.
Walk the Moon’s rapidly increasing success landed them a gig opening for one of the world’s biggest rock acts — Muse — this year during their highly anticipated Simulation Theory world tour.
The tour kicked off in February and will make three stops this week in Canada alone, including Toronto, Montreal and Quebec City.
WATCH: Walk the Moon’s latest smash-hit single, Timebomb
READ MORE: Muse announces ‘Simulation Theory’ world tour, with 3 Canadian dates
Walk the Moon was founded in 2006 by frontman and key songwriter Nicholas Petricca. The group signed with RCA in 2012 and released their first major-label album, which was self-titled.
In total, the band has released four studio albums, six EPs, one live album and two No. 1 charting singles in the U.S. (Shut Up and Dance and 2017’s One Foot).
Ahead of their Canadian shows, Petricca, 32, took the time to sit down with Global News and talk about the history of the band and even gave an update on their highly anticipated fifth studio album.
The singer also detailed how they landed the gig with Muse, how it feels to go back and play older songs and what fans can expect from a Walk the Moon concert.
Nicholas Petricca: To me, the song is all about the fear of falling in love. Because love is a very scary thing. But it’s also a good thing… in the way that anything that’s worth having in this life or anything that’s worth looking for is a risk, right? Love is risky. It could end, or you might mess it up or so on. [Laughs] But it’s because it’s precious that it’s really worth it. It’s a complete gamble. Love is inevitable, and there’s really nothing you can do about it; there’s really no choice. [Laughs]
We are, but it’s not clear yet what it will actually look like — or, certainly, even when. We just have a lot of music in the works. We were actually in the studio quite a bit last fall recording new music and songs that we had started writing for the last record that were left unfinished. Right now, while we’re on the road, we’re writing new songs as well. We have a lot of new developments that we’re just… [Laughs] We’re unsure what to do with it all. But I think, inevitably, it’ll all be part of a record at some point, whether that’s a concept album or something else entirely.
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The short answer? Yes. But adding onto that… [Laughs] I think when I was in high school (and) college and falling in love with bands that made me want to be in my own band — like The Killers and Coldplay or Muse — I sort of pictured myself on that level. I just had this certainty. I was like “Yep, of course. I can do this. We’re gonna do this.”
Honestly, it’s probably a nice blend of all of those things. It’s very subconscious. Maybe you could also take the flipside and call it an inability to focus. [Laughs]
The four of us actually come from very different musical backgrounds and, individually, we’re all interested in a lot of different music. It’s hard to narrow down our influences. We’ve definitely never been the kind of band that writes two songs that sound the same — and we probably never will be. Even within each album, the range is so eclectic. I feel like there are some artists who have a specific feel or sound, which is why some people keep going back to them. Take Tyko, for example. I want to listen to Tyko because I can just put on his music and I’m suddenly in the world of Tyko, which just feels like an absolute dream.
I wish I could tell you there was a crazy story behind that, like if we were drinking at a bar in Japan and bumped into the guys and went to karaoke with them or something. [Laughs]
[Laughs] Yeah, we definitely could. But no, we found out that they were going on tour, submitted for it and they liked us and decided to take us out with them. We’re actually sitting on a tour bus in Atlanta right now before we hit the stage. I talked to the Muse guys recently and one of them — I won’t say who — is sort of the guy who chooses the bands they tour with so it was really cool to hear that he picked us out of all of these bands they could have picked instead.
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Do you find that it’s intimidating playing these huge arena shows at all? Does it feel like the next step for you guys?
It’s both! I would say it’s intimidating but also totally inspiring at the same time. Intimidating, of course, because those venues are much larger than the space we’ve ever filled on our own. We’ve played big crowds and amphitheatres, sure, but it’s different when you’re filling this huge indoor space and you know that some folks are a few feet from you and then some are even a thousand feet from you. I believe it’s a great challenge for us every night to come up and own that space and know that it’s our job to kick off each night for this bad**s band.
That’s the beauty of this whole thing. We love to play live because every night is different. It’s infinitely different. The audience consistently brings a new life to each of our songs — even if we’ve played it a thousand times. It’s not like we all get together just to rehearse something like Shut Up and Dance because that would get repetitive. [Laughs] The live aspect makes every night something different and exciting.
I do think it’s interesting now because we get to see which songs have stood the test of time and still feel relevant to us as human beings and which songs we can’t relate to as much after growing up a bit more. But it’s been really fun recently to kind of look back in the vault and pull out some of the songs we haven’t played in a really long time.
I love this question and I still never know how to answer it. [Laughs] Every night, we leave nothing out. We put it all up there. Whether we’re playing two hours at our own show or just one song on TV, to say the least, we’re gonna come out sweating. You can expect us to put all our hearts into it every single night to provide our fans with a proper rock show.
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Walk the Moon is Petricca (lead vocals and guitar), Kevin Ray (bass), Eli Maiman (guitar) and Sean Waugaman (drums).
Tickets for the Simulation Theory tour with Muse and Walk the Moon are now available. They can be found here.
Simulation Theory Canadian dates
March 28 – Toronto, Ont. @ Scotiabank Arena
March 30 – Montreal, Que. @ Bell Centre
March 31 – Quebec City, Que. @ Videotron Centre