For flipturn, success didn't arrive overnight. It grew steadily with every show, from college house shows at the University of Florida to sold-out venues across the entire country, earning the band an international reputation as an indie rock powerhouse. By the time flipturn released their debut album, Shadowglow, in 2022, they'd become genuine road warriors while still in their mid-20s, growing their audience with festival appearances (including acclaimed sets at Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza, and Governor's Ball) and shows alongside Two Door Cinema Club, The Revivalists, Mt. Joy, and Rainbow Kitten Surprise.
Shadowglow was the culmination of years of hard work for bandmates Dillon Basse, Tristan Duncan, Mitch Fountain, Madeline Jarman, and Devon VonBalson. The album rapidly expanded their fanbase, along with shows at bucket-list venues like Brooklyn Steel in New York City, the 9:30 Club in Washington D.C., and Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado. Even so, that didn't make it any easier to be gone from home for two straight years. "We grinded the hell out of Shadowglow, and the pace was nonstop," says frontman Basse. "The album's success allowed us to get in front of a lot more people and play a lot more shows...but we weren't necessarily thinking about the mental repercussions of being gone so often."
Somewhere along the way, flipturn began gathering inspiration for a new album — one that measured the distance between endurance and exhaustion, between dreams and reality, between outward appearances and internal struggles. To do so, they left town once again, writing songs in a cabin tucked away in the North Carolina mountains before recording them in the South Texas borderlands. The result is Burnout Days, the most collaborative and cathartic release of flipturn's career.
"We wanted to create an immersive world," says guitarist and synthesizer player Mitch Fountain. "We were really intentional with the sounds we wanted for each song, and we paid attention to every single detail."
Those details spring to vivid life with tracks like "Juno," whose opening riff — a stuttering keyboard sound that wouldn't sound out of place on a house record — was created when Fountain accidentally knocked his JU-06A synth off its stand. "It smacked the floor and created a really unique patch — one that Mitch couldn't even figure out how to recreate at first — which inspired the entire song," remembers drummer Devon VonBalson. Caught halfway between 21st century indie rock and New Wave-inspired nostalgia, "Juno" helps introduce Burnout Days' mix of ethereal, airy atmosphere and raw, rhythmic moments. It's a sound that's always in motion, never remaining in one place for too long — just like flipturn itself.
If Shadowglow highlighted flipturn's strength as songwriters, then Burnout Days expands the spotlight to showcase the five musicians as sonic architects, too. Working with producer Chad Copelin (Colony House, Sasha Alex Sloan, Wilderado), they took inspiration from the world around them: the lush nature surrounding their home in Jacksonville; the pecan trees and desert landscape of Sonic Ranch outside El Paso, Texas, where they recorded the majority of Burnout Days; and even their own live show, purposely crafting moments on the album that would come alive onstage. "There was one day in the studio where we looped the opening riff
of the same song 100 times, just to get it perfect," VonBalson remembers. "Going into this album, we wanted to make sure we were creating a unique atmosphere. It was really fun approaching these songs from a production-minded standpoint, while still keeping the feel of a band."
That meticulousness and maturity is present through the record. "We’ve been writing more songs that have grit and bite," explains Jarman, who began playing bass after watching a Silversun Pickups concert during her final year of middle school. "We're not afraid to be vulnerable. We still love making fun, upbeat tracks that you can dance to, but we think it's just as important to write songs that lead to introspection and the complex emotions we may experience as young adults." Appropriately, "Rodeo Clown" is an alt-pop anthem about the weight of everyday expectations and the lure of escapism, punctuated with MDMA references, gauzy synths, and a groove built for dance floors. During "Sunlight" — which Basse began writing after watching his little sister take their mother (a Celtic folksinger who introduced her children to live music at a young age) to rehab — the bandmates build their way toward a grungy finish, matching the vulnerability of Basse's lyrics with an angsty swirl of distorted guitars and crashing cymbals. "Tides" even uses the waterfront imagery of Jacksonville — particularly the band's communal home on the St. John's River, where manatees, dolphins, and alligators have been known to swim past the dock — as a metaphor for the changing tides in one's own life. "We've been touring and working together for years, learning to balance our work life with our personal lives," Jarman adds. "Being at home reminds us how to stay grounded and slow down. More than anything we've ever written before, this record is partially inspired by nature in our home state of Florida: cicadas, rivers, sunlight, dragonflies, and butterflies."
Those years on the road together — the countless hours spent in vans, green rooms, and onstage, navigating the twists and turns of not just the music industry, but of day-to-day life in one's mid-20s, as well — made the creation process easier, with all five members contributing to Burnout Days equally. They combined their influences into a unique sound that defied genre, using indie rock as a launchpad for something deeper, darker, and more diverse. They wrote songs about the challenges faced by their generation: self-esteem, addiction, codependency, and the need to push forward at all costs. And together, they found the beauty that exists even in times of burnout.
"Everyone can feel like this; it's not just musicians," Basse says. "Burnouts can happen whenever you're so passionate about something that you throw yourself into it one hundred percent. That can happen whenever you push yourself too hard, and this record is about being OK with it, and finding ways to cope with it. We love what we do. These songs are stories about the side effects."