While most of the LP’s tracks were written over the last year, a few chestnuts from the band’s archives will be there. They’re much more personal and are very close to the heart, very raw.” “But the lyrics are kind of the opposite. “Sonically, we’re reaching for taller, wider, and more vast, more epic sounds,” says Petricca. While What If Nothing finds Walk The Moon reaching for bigger sounds, the band dug in deep while crafting its lyrics. “The song is partly inspired by the journey that I’ve been through just in my love life, but it’s mirrored with the relationship with my band members and just that we’ve decided to keep moving forward in the face of the unknown.” Petricca notes that it’s a thematically appropriate introduction to where Walk the Moon is at in 2017: “‘One Foot’ really sums up the theme of the whole record: Staring out into the unknown, being faced with uncertainty and what could be certain failure, but deciding to move forward and take that first step anyway,” he says. What If Nothing‘s first single, “One Foot,” marries the big-tent vibe of “Shut Up And Dance” to a slinky rhythm and Petricca’s strident vocals. “it just came out of us, this angry-boy energy.”
“That was the very first song that we wrote when we got back together in Austin,” says Petricca. That clamor shines through in particular on the What If Nothing track “Headphones,” which opens with a blast of noise before segueing into high-energy, hooky rock. “The approach was just making noise, getting back to our roots of being a rock & roll band and just playing our instruments and letting the sound bounce off the walls.” Walk the Moon reconvened last October at a recording studio in Austin, and their creative process was chaotic. There was a lot to navigate before we could really come back together and make music,” he continues. “In our time apart, we realized there had been some tensions between us.