INSIDE VOICES According to the band, everybody has inside voices, and in their latest album Liminal Space (2022) they offer a glimpse of some of their own. ARTICLE BY VANELIS RIVERA AND PHOTOGRAPHY BY KELLY MOORE CLARK “That is a very lackluster story,” says Tyler Jones. Auburn hair styled in a mullet mohawk, ear gauges, and black-rimmed, rectangular glasses, the vocalist and guitarist of Inside Voices is not exactly one to blend into the background. “So, Conner’s girlfriend just pitched the name. I don’t know where she got it from,” he says, mentioning the band’s drummer, Connor Matthews. “We heard that, and we were just like, that sticks.” Perhaps the name of their band doesn’t have any specific meaning (because they are not quiet by any means), but therein lies the message says Jones: “It can have whatever meaning anybody wants it to have.” According to the band, everybody has inside voices, and in their latest album Liminal Space (2022) they offer a glimpse of some of their own. Usually categorized as Indie, math rock, and emo, Around 2009, Jones and Matthews started Inside Voices prefers to stick to the description performing together as teenagers. “Connor and “Louisiana Y’allternative Rock.” Though Jones I were playing music together like in various points out that the band’s early years were bands in high school and whatnot…from there, “definitely a lot more punk, but we had a lot of math we just kind of clicked; we found that we had like rock influences.” In fact, his guitar playing was this chemistry,” says Jones. Breaking away from heavily influenced by bands like The Fall of Troy, the “metalcore emo bands,” they formed another Chon, and TTNG (formerly known as This Town band called No Regrets where they began to Needs Guns). “So, heavily post prog rock mixed write their own music. But then, Jones split after with a lot of math rock” explains Jones. Overall, graduating from high school, moving to Ruston. he and Matthew have been “massively” influenced While a student at Louisiana Tech University, by indie rock bands Title Fight and Glocca Morra, Jones kept writing, thinking, “I just gotta get back ~ VANELIS RIVERA a foundation still present in their current writing. to Connor, I gotta. That’s my drummer.” Jones Their music and music tastes have not necessarily finally got over to him with a handful of songs, and the result was changed drastically, but they have explored different avenues, their first self-titled EP Inside Voices (2016). Their second album and further texturizing their sound. “We don’t really know what the first LP was then released in 2018, Consecutive Normal Songs. “We genre class for ourselves [is],” says Jones, but they enjoy hearing the did that with Eric Woolard, a buddy of ours that lives in Jackson,” vast input from people. One comparison they’ve gotten a few times says Jones, explaining that the band has been recording with him is with alternative rock/power pop band Weezer. Whenever they for close to 10 years. “We met him while we were in high school. dropped one of their music videos when still a three-piece a viewer And so, it’s been cool, like, growing as musicians and seeing him posted under the video, “Not bad, but I’d rather get my Weezer first grow as a producer.” hand.” Jones freely admits, “Oh, we laughed so hard at that.” For a while, Inside Voices was just a three-man band, until Currently, Jones writes most of the lyrics, though Matthews Matthews started pushing Jones to add a second guitar. “I’m really has a few credited to him, particularly the song “Both” in the EP weird about creative control,” says Jones. Fortunately, the addition Seek (2020). Thematically Jones is drawing mostly from personal of an extra guitarist happened naturally. Already acquainted with experience. His early songs were a bit “random.” He was just Alex Stokes by way of their early band days, the pair began to joke graduating college and was writing on a variety of experiences. One about having Stokes join a practice, but when he finally came to of his favorite songs is about his cat Cheese; another is about a game jam “everything flowed really well. And now we’re here.” The most he used to play with college friends called Dark Souls. Some songs recent addition has been Taylor Bice on bass who joined the players get even more specific, like the one recounting the time Jones ran around 2021. over a bear on I-20. By the 2020 album, his points of exploration
A harmonious combination of similar music tastes and playing “whatever feels good,” as Jones puts it, is what makes Inside Voices the kind of band you would go see even on a Tuesday night.
