Q&A: Before the release of his band's third full-length LP, Raspberry Moon, Will Anderson spoke with Paste about the attention that followed Cartwheel, writing from a happier place, and the art of things left unsaid.
Will Anderson isn’t exactly known for writing love songs. The force behind Hotline TNT, he’s built a cult following on fuzzed-out melodies and emotionally raw anthems on heartbreak, change, and existential dread. Their Third Man Records debut, 2023’s Cartwheel (one of our 50 favorite albums of that year), marked a breakthrough, ushering the band into a new circle of the greater DIY/indie-rock landscape. With this newfound attention came the kind of pressure that could either warp a project or sharpen it. Anderson kept steady while life shifted around him. The biggest shift of all: He’s in love, but he’s not quite ready to give it all away.
Raspberry Moon, Anderson’s third LP as Hotline TNT (out June 20), moves toward warmth, love, and an optimism the project hasn’t fully embraced before. The album builds on the raw immediacy of Anderson’s earlier work, letting the melodies shine through without sanding off the grit. The music and writing features heavy input from Anderson’s bandmates, Lucky Hunter, Haylen Trammel, and Mike Ralston, and tracks like “Break Right,” “Julia’s War,” and “Candle” mark Hotline TNT’s full transformation into its catchiest, truest self. We recently caught up with Anderson to discuss Raspberry Moon’s evolution, the strange dance of self-disclosure, and the particular joy of doomscrolling his own comment sections. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Paste Magazine: Raspberry Moon was more of a collaborative effort for you, with the guys from your current touring lineup having a hand in the recording process. Did you feel the impact of new perspectives?
Will Anderson: There are just more chefs in the kitchen this time, and I trust the chefs and those guys make good food. I’ve been serving the same meal for a long time. It’s like, we love Panera Bread. I think I’m Panera Bread here, but at some point you’re like, “I want to try something new. Let’s go to Sweetgreen, let’s go to Cava.” We’re getting into a higher level, another tier of fast food with this band—maybe even gourmet in some cases, fast casual.
Was there anything you were seeking inspiration from or building off of while recording? Either within or outside of music?
A lot of the obvious stuff that everyone compares us to, it’s definitely still there. We listen to a lot of Gin Blossoms, a lot of Teenage Fanclub—those are our mainstays. A lot of Goo Goo Dolls [is] definitely being played in the van. Counting Crows, Smash Mouth, ‘90s rock—we all love the ‘90s. And then, outside of that: Midwest, 1990s, working-class outsider art. Mark Borchardt. Our producer Amos [Pitsch], who’s in a great band called Tenement, he and I share a lot of the same background and influences.
I’m curious to hear about your relationship to self-disclosure in your lyrics. Do you feel you’re more guarded or more open on Raspberry Moon?
I go back and forth on it myself. I feel like, even right now, I have always loved doing interviews and talking about my work and my music, and I love reading other people’s interviews. I like pouring over old interviews with my favorite bands from the ‘80s and ‘90s, so I’m kind of two minds, but I also appreciate when artists of any kind are a little bit more guarded and let people figure it out for themselves. I don’t want to connect the dots for everybody. It’s weird like that.
Yeah, like, “I’ll spill, but I’m not going any further than that.”
I do love sharing my thoughts and I have a lot of things to say, for sure, and I love presenting it the way I want to present it. But I also want people to draw their own conclusions. Then someone like Doug [Dulgarian] from They Are Gutting A Body Of Water, who I feel like takes the opposite approach. He doesn’t really give a lot of interviews, and he has his body of work presented the way he wants it. It’s not super straightforward, but it’s rewarding, too.
Do you feel a need to answer to whatever comes post-release?
I try to be an open book and talk to anybody who wants to talk to me, but there are people out there that I’m sure will tell you I’m an asshole, that I have a bad rep as being grumpy and grouchy—and I’m a little bit of both.
We all exist in multitudes.
Exactly.
Raspberry Moon leans into more positive themes around love and relationships. How was it writing from that perspective? Was it harder in a way to talk about the happy emotions as opposed to the turmoil, or was it a relief?
I hope that if anyone’s been following along with my lyrical content, they’re like, “Oh, finally he is happy. Something good is happening in his life.” That’s how I feel. A lot of the old stuff is about being dumped or being the dumper. These are more like love notes to my now-girlfriend. This is my longest relationship I’ve been in, and it’s just happenstance, so it felt great. There’s still some sad songs in there, for sure, but it was very rewarding and I feel very proud of the songs that are happy and about Jill.
Were there any specific sounds or textures you were chasing during these sessions that were different from your past records?
The softer, cleaner acoustic guitars in [“Dance the Night Away,” “Lawnmower,” and “Where U Been?”]. Not that I haven’t had ballads or acoustic guitars before, but we definitely wanted to intentionally get some ‘90s radio-rock ballads on tape.
I personally really love “Lawnmower.” It gives a “That’s The Way” or “Tangerine”-era Zeppelin kind of acoustic reprieve. What was the process of writing that one?
That’s one of my favorites [that] I feel like no one really singles out, so I’m pleased that you did. That one, I think, is honestly my favorite lyrical moment on the album, and that’s about a breakup. Not really any particular breakup in my mind, but just having the last conversation before you break up, pretty much and saying, “For as long as we’re both still in this room, we’re a couple, but I know the second I leave this room, it’s over.” It’s such a raw emotion, and I hope it was captured well on that song.
It’s kind of deceptively cutting, because at the top it feels like the clouds parting in a way, just in terms of the instrumentation. There’s a delayed reaction.
Yeah, definitely. I mean, that song is heavy for me in a lot of ways too, because the lyrics, it’s very Zeppelin, Big Star kind of acoustic instrument rotation. My dad plays flute on that song.
Oh wow, I love that.
Yeah, he’s getting old. He’s got cancer. There are a lot of lyrics about my dad on both this and the last album. We go to a cabin every fall together, just the two of us. I recorded him with my phone. He’s on two of the songs on the album.
That’s really nice you’re able to share that with him. Do you feel like your creative process has evolved since you first started making music?
I feel like it’s been mostly the same formula for 15 years. Lyrics might be the one thing that I can point to that I hope I’ve grown at a little bit over the years. I try to experiment a bit more with who the narrator is, whether it’s exactly me or if it’s getting into someone else’s headspace.
Cartwheel obviously cracked a lot of things open for you. Did you feel any pressure working on the follow-up?
Definitely. I didn’t expect Pitchfork to give it Best New Music. I didn’t expect all the positive reception. It was overwhelming in a very cool way. I never really had to care what the critical reception was going to be, because I was always going to keep making records and just stay in my lane as a DIY band. And it turns out, now that I’ve gotten the good press, I was like, “Okay, I actually do care what the critics think.” It’s hard not to want that. Everybody wants to give off the image that they don’t care.
If this new record gets poorly received, it’s not the end of my world or the end of my career, and there are lots of examples of albums that I love that aren’t received well that go on to become classics. I don’t even want to make albums that are supposed to be catered towards either the fans or the critics. But I am myself a critic and a fan, and I like to make my voice known, and I like to read record reviews and people’s taste, and I think that’s all an important part of just music culture. I like reading entertaining stuff, whether it’s good or bad. I want to see what people have to say.
Did it feel as overwhelming as I’m assuming it did? Did you notice a shift with fans IRL?
I think, in this year—this decade—converting reception into asses in the seats isn’t the way it was in the past. If we had gotten those kinds of reviews in 2005 or 2006, we would’ve been like, “All right, we’re like ‘Indie Royalty’ now.” There are definitely more fans now than there were before, and that’s cool. That’s great. I don’t feel overwhelmed by it. 95-percent of the time I’m at the merch table, I’m ready and want to talk to anybody who wants to. It’s kind of my default, to turn the spotlight back onto them and say, “Are you a musician, too? What’s up with you?” I’m not better than you. I’m just a guy with a guitar and I’m doing my thing and you’re doing your thing. The fan relationship, I hope hasn’t changed too much. I try to stay accessible and read all the DMs and all the Reddit posts.
Yeah, how has the online of it all been? Do you lurk?
Yeah, actually, I do read pretty much everything. I’ve got the Google Alert set up and everything, so I see it.
Oh, God.
I kind of thrive. I think there’s a bit of Andy Kaufman in me. I think I’ve made some adjustments as the band has grown, but I also feel like, for a lot of people, it’s part of the show: If you talk shit on the Instagram page, I’m going to comment back. And I do, and I like it.
It is noted. It is screenshotted.
Oh, I have it all. I have records of everything, and this has been part of my personality for a long time. There’s this one guy who doesn’t follow the band, doesn’t follow my personal account, but he goes out of his way to comment like, “Hey, this sucks.” And I’m like, all right, I can see your page. You’re not on your burner account. I say shit back to him. I think it’s funny. It doesn’t phase me. I’m not making music for him, but if you want to talk shit, I’ll talk shit.
