First Dance
POP-PUNK TRIO Meet Me @ the Altar broke out during the pandemic as a vibrant newcomer to the scene — and has since performed at Lollapalooza and When We Were Young and in March kicked off its first headlining tour. Now, its members — vocalist Edith Victoria and guitarist/ bassist Téa Campbell, 22, and drummer Ada Juarez, 24 — are eager to expand on the genre they grew up listening to with their debut album, Past // Present // Future, released March 10 on Fueled by Ramen.
What conversations inspired the sonic direction of this debut?
VICTORIA We wanted for it to be experimental. If fans end up liking those songs, we have so many different avenues we can take for the second [album] — and not have our fan base be so confused as to where it came from.
CAMPBELL We didn’t want to trap ourselves in the box of genre, which a lot of artists do and a lot of fans inflict on bands, too. It’s our art at the end of the day, and we want to make the music that makes us happy. If other people like it, that is great. But if they don’t, it’s still music for us. A band who did it perfectly was Paramore: Their records all sound different, but it’s still them.
Were there times when you thought the project was finished before realizing it needed adjustments?
JUAREZ So many times.
CAMPBELL We thought we were done in April and didn’t get done until November. In the beginning, there were so many swaps because we weren’t sure of what specific sound we wanted this album to have. As we had more sessions and fell in love with songs, we started to really understand. Those would beat out some of the other ones that we didn’t really feel fit that cohesive vibe. We had a last-minute session, wrote a couple more songs and had to put them on the album.
The first line on album opener “Say It (To My Face)” addresses being an industry plant. Why did you decide to kick it off with that?
VICTORIA We wanted to start this album rollout with an in-your-face moment, and that song definitely is. We’ve heard it so much since signing to the label, just people saying shit for no reason. We get that more now than I think we ever have.
CAMPBELL In between [our 2021 EP] Model Citizen and “Say It,” we had all that time to see what people are saying. It was like: “We’ve been gone for a while, but we’re back. We’re going to address it, and we’re moving on.”
You’re on your first headlining tour after supporting Green Day, Coheed and Cambria, The Used and more. What have you learned from those bands?
CAMPBELL To be able to tour with bands who have been doing this for so long, we really studied those kind of acts because they alter their songs around the show and alter their show around the songs. It makes you think, “Oh, I could be doing this” — whether it be a clapping thing or whatever — in our own songs. We tried to absorb as much as we could.