’23 was hell for me, to be honest,’ says Edith Victoria vocalist with band Meet Me @ The Altar. ‘Thinking about the person I am now, versus two years ago is crazy.’ The 25 year old with the best hair in music (arctic blue and lime braids with a fringe) and drummer Ada Juarez have been through a whirlwind recently. The duo are the last remaining members of the band who, in 2023, the New York Times hailed as the ‘future of pop punk’.
In April it was announced that Téa Campbell – who had formed the band with Juarez in 2015, when the two met online and started writing songs via text and email – had left the band. In a statement posted to her Instagram Campbell wrote that she wanted to ‘step away and pursue other passions more aligned with who I am today.’ These, according to her Insta stories, seemed to include recording solo material.
Worried Sick, the first EP the band have released as a duo, is notable for its tone shift from their debut album 2023’s Past//Present//Future. It’s a rawer sound for the band, who worked with Mike Green (Paramore) on it. ‘He really understood that part of Meet Me @ The Altar that accentuated that punk and heavy energy in us,’ Victoria says. Lyrically, too, it’s blunt and direct. ‘I really used this EP as a kind of therapy. I just allowed myself to write what I was feeling: my emotions were huge and diverse. I hadn’t felt that sad ever in my life.’
The churning ‘Dead To Me‘ is a poisoned arrow of an opener. Against militaristic drums Victoria sings: ‘they painted you as the villain/ But I stayed when nobody would…Stabbed in the back, and it tracks/ To exactly what they knew you’d do.’ Fans have naturally assumed the worst, a user on Reddit even speculating that the lyrical tone is a ‘call out on Téa leaving’.
Did you know she was exiting?
‘Looking back now, I would say there were some tell-tale signs,‘ says Victoria, choosing her words carefully. ‘The best thing for all of us was to follow our hearts. We’re all happier now.‘
But that wasn’t the only setback the band faced. A year after Past//Present//Future was released they were dropped by the major label Fueled By Ramen who they signed with in 2020. They got lost in the shuffle of a restructure when the label was merged with 300 Elektra Entertainment and then with the Atlantic Music Group.
It seemed like a deathly blow from a band who brought their love of 2000’s bands like Panic! At The Disco, Paramore and Fall Out Boy to a place that was teetering on the mainstream: they played the Late Show With Stephen Colbert, opened for Green Day and Hayley Williams wrote to them thanking them for ‘carrying the torch’.
‘We had a very special experience because when we signed to Fueled By Ramen our entire team was women,’ says Juarez. ‘But they all got fired. They lost our team and then they lost us.’
Compared to major label debut Past//Present//Future the sound of the Worried Sick EP is less polished. And it’s no surprise, the album was co-written with John Ryan who helped write and produce One Direction’s last four albums (along with much of Sabrina Carpenter’s Short n’ Sweet). While producer John Fields had worked with Miley Cyrus, the Jonas Brothers as well as Busted.
These weren’t collaborations that were forced upon them: when they were signed the band proudly talked about the poppier side of their influences: early Kelly Clarkson (they covered Miss Independent), Mizzunderstood-era P!nk and even the 00s’ era of Hollywood Records. Additionally with a visually bright image, and wacky, Monkees style interactions, they christened themselves ‘Disneycore’
But for a band who began independently it wasn’t a move that was without its compromises. ‘At one point we were writing the songs for the deluxe edition of Past//Present//Future and they sounded pretty different to the main 10 songs,‘ says Victoria. ‘And we were like ‘this is what we should be making. But it was too late. We’d spent I don’t know how much money on the songwriting sessions for those 10 songs, so you have to bite the bullet. (The label) steer your decision making. We felt like we had no choice.’
The air-punching ‘From The Start’ from Worried Sick seems to deal with how the record business loses interest in you when you’re not the shiny new bauble anymore. ‘I guess that I’m not such a pretty face anymore/ No longer number one in your book/ Just ’cause you’re got a line out the door/ I’m not your second choice when I was first,‘ sings Victoria.
‘That’s my deranged love letter to the music industry,’ she explains. ‘Until you have your first industry heartbreak, you don’t understand what it’s like. You hear these horror stories about the business, but you don’t think it’s going to happen to you. And it’s worse, because maybe you thought I’m clever than this.’
The band are better off now though, says Victoria.
‘It’s scary – the band exists in a much smaller situation now,’ says Juarez, ‘there’s less people in our ear and we’re more personally involved like with picking out photos we prefer and making flyers. Our blood and sweat is in everything now.’
The band, whose presence was important in a largely heteronormative white scene, says the current political climate in the USA is like a ‘bad dream‘. ‘Everything’s scary,’ says Victoria. ‘We are literally in hell – like why is everyone 90 years old and weird? My mom is buying up (contraceptive pill) Plan B’s because she’s worried (the government) will stop it. But there’s still some hope.’ She says Meet Me @ The Altar are political just by existing ( ‘Just existing as a woman of colour is political in itself‘) and that the Trump administration has actually been good for music, stoking the fires of righteous indignation and inspiration. ‘I think it’s changed punk pop for the better. Like The Paradox are doing really well and no one is weirded out by the fact they are black.’
With a new full-length album due next year, Meet Me @ The Altar will be focusing on the less polished side of their sound. They are working with producer Mike Green again but he is a ‘studio only’ member. ‘Our number one rule is: no boys on stage!’ they say in unison, laughing.
