L
ast year, the future of Walk the Moon
— the band known best for its blissed-
out hit “Shut Up and Dance” — looked
uncertain. A summer tour was canceled so
that frontman Nicholas Petricca, 30, could
return to his native Cincinnati to help care
for his ailing father, and the quartet took, he
says, “some much-needed time to ourselves.”
For Petricca, that included recovering from
a split with “the love of my life” (the woman
who inspired the “shut up and dance with me”
refrain) and from the startling success of a
song that broke the then-record for the longest
reign atop Billboard’s Hot Rock Songs chart in
2015 (27 weeks). “The song got so massive,”
he says. “It was sort of like, ‘What do we do
from here?’ ”
That November, the quartet reconvened in
an Austin studio. “It was really amazing to feel
like a band again,” says Petricca, whose spikybleach-blond hair belies his contemplative
manner. “To get back to where we started:
boys making noise in a room.” When his
father passed away the following February,
the band turned the wake into “a jammer,” he
recalls. “The way that painful experience was
alchemized into something fun — that’s the
stuff of Walk the Moon.”
Today, at a retro-’70s bar in Los Angeles,
Petricca, bassist Kevin Ray, guitarist Eli
Maiman and drummer Sean Waugaman
seem rejuvenated, psyched for the October
release of their as-yet-untitled third album.
A 2018 tour will follow. “These big moments
necessitated something introspective,” says
Petricca. “This record is evidence that we’re on
the other side, victorious.” The band worked
with producers Mike Crossey (The 1975)
and Mike Elizondo (Dr. Dre). “[Crossey] is this
rock’n’roll wizard, and Elizondo does these
badass hip-hop records, so it was neat to
combine those influences,” says Petricca.
The first single, “One Foot” (arriving in
September), encourages the same ecstatic
abandon as “Shut Up and Dance” but, unlike
its ’80s-worshipping predecessor, follows
EDM logic with a gravity-defying beat drop
and reverberating vocals. It’s indicative of the
album’s “bigger, epic sound,” says Maiman
— and of a reflective band coming back from
its longest break yet. “ ‘One Foot’ is facing the
void,” says Petricca. “The last record, we felt
like we had a lot of answers. This time, we
have a bunch of questions.” —PHOEBE REILLYAfter a monster hit, a long break and
their singer’s breakup, the pop-rock foursome
returns with a refreshed, “epic” new soundFrom left: Walk
the Moon’s
Waugaman,
Petricca, Ray
and Maiman
photographed by
Sami Drasin on
Aug. 7 at Good
Times at Davey
Wayne’s in Los
Angeles. Watch
Walk the Moon
discussing its
new music on
Billboard.com.
SEPTEMBER 2, 2017 | WWW.BILLBOARD.COM 53