A sense of family for the lonesome - a raw documenting of life's intense highs and lows within a symbol of home
By Tom Adams November 2022
"It has never just been about about music for me. There's always been a multidisciplinary experience about how something makes you feel about yourself"
It may belong to Belgian lead singer Joachim Liebens, but it becomes quite clear he wants The Haunted Youth to represent something far more meaningful: a family for anybody who feels like they're alone. Even back when the 29-year-old was making demos in his bedroom during his time at music college, his nostalgically sounding indie-psych sound became a major cathartic release to allow him to channel his deepest thoughts into his music.
Now, The Haunted Youth have just officially released their debut album Dawn Of The Freak to the world, serving as a product of a rollercoaster last two years. An autobiographical depiction of some of the biggest highs and lows, the record serves as a documentation of someone who feels displaced in life, or most importantly, it serves as a symbol for finding somewhere that feels like home. Just two weeks on from the release of Dawn Of The Freak, I wanted to take Joachim back to 2020 where this project began to find out what started his drive to make the music he has since released.
“For me, music has always been the main aspect of my life. I’ve always been touched by music, I’ve always been interested in it, but I guess it took so long because I didn’t really have the environment where I could get into that role. Growing up I was drawing and painting a lot so there was a lot of visual input, but I realised I was always portraying a song or using music as a guiding force. Especially when I was in high school, it became a kind of therapy for me because I was that lonely kid at the playground, didn’t really know how to make friends and kept to myself basically. You could see everyone around you connecting, having girlfriends and going out, but I never got to do that until I was nineteen because my parents kept me inside because I was a little rascal! So I’ve always stuck to music and my bedroom, locking myself away to make something visual or musical. The visual side came more naturally because my dad used to be a bit of a painter and drew for me and I’d try and draw it over".
"Then, when I was twenty or twenty-one I was studying painting in the arts school in Brussels", he went on. "But month after month I was becoming more depressed because I wasn’t satisfied with the creation side. I decided to really go for music, learn how to play an instrument, sing, discover a lot of music that I wasn’t into before and really accept that side of me, even though I was twenty-one and starting the journey kind of late, but I really wanted it! Slowly over the years I started to find my own sound after studying a lot of different styles to learn about what I like and what I didn’t like so that when it came to forming The Haunted Youth, I wanted it to reflect the relationship I had with music in my own project. Even though I put a lot of myself into it, I always try to connect the story of the song with someone else so that they’re not alone and that’s why I called it The Haunted Youth so it exists as a group… a generation of freaks trying to connect and come together."
Joachim then touched upon how important it is to balance the vulnerable side of his lyrics with calming synthesised instrumentals, which has become a recognisably bittersweet component of The Haunted Youth's sound. “I used to be a lot more depressing in my songs. The best songs by other artists that were the most magical to me were bittersweet and I’ve always been attracted to artists like that such as Joy Division, who are one of my favourite bands of all time because they did that wonderfully. There is always this huge darkness but also something that makes you feel understood and at a place like home so I really like when music has two sides to it.”
It felt refreshing to hear first-hand how deeply personal his music really is to him. He began to explain how a fan posted a lyric video in Spanish online for his song 'Teen Rebel', with the background photo being a picture he'd coincidently saved and printed out on his wall not long before. The feeling of someone on the other side of the continent, or even world, listening and connecting to his music clearly brought him immense motivation in a more profound way, and perhaps in a way that feels like this massive family.
He also spoke about a comment he'd read online from New York publication Consequence describing his sound as "guitar-driven and coated in a velvety dream pop haze reminiscent of Tame Impala and MGMT..." - quite the high praise for any artist but especially Liebens.
“Funnily enough they’ve both been a huge influence to me! Especially Tame Impala because content-wise it really struck a chord with me, songs like ‘Why Won’t They Talk To Me?’ are like my high school diary! That’s when I realised there is a place for me in music and that I’m not this rockstar wearing sweatpants all day, smoking weed and just keeping to myself in my bedroom writing songs about puberty, growing up, friends, love, heartbreak… whatever awakens the demons inside. My first album really feels like a hello world this is me kind of moment, but then I feel as soon as I’ve done that, my next ambition will be searching for the story of everyone that listens to my music. I’ve never been a hooker but I might write a song about a hooker because I consider those people to be part of that whole idea of people that perhaps may feel left out or fucked up in a way. That’s what Kevin made me feel! MGMT was a little bit more superficial lyrically, more psychedelic, slightly less personal, but more cryptic. Like when you listen to ‘Kids’ by MGMT or especially ‘Time To Pretend’, I felt I already had a deep connection to those lyrics as if it felt like what they’re saying is gonna happen to me someday… It was weird. Do you ever have a calling for something sometimes and you read lyrics, then read your own story into it because you’re full of it you know? It just described so beautifully and painfully how I viewed it at the time."
"I had this dream of going away and leaving everything behind to pursue this music adventure and just leave all my darkness behind to go on the road with a family, as a band, and just enjoy life and make people happy", he explained. "Both artists inspire me in their own way! I have blasted their albums like everyday for seven years straight so there must be something in there right!? It feels an honour to be part of that because in music it’s never really your own thing like there’s always a reflection of all the other things that exist in your specific prism. Every bit of music has elements of others in it, it’s just balanced differently, but also seeing Kevin Parker do everything by himself… he accepted it worked for him better that way. I enjoy making music with people but I accepted it never got to the same point of therapeutic satisfaction or quality, I always felt something was missing in the end or I wanted to take the song home and make it my own so I thought why don’t I just focus on writing songs myself. It’s also a lot easier for a band when they know the song and what their part is, especially when it comes to playing live compared to how it sounds on the record. Like I could never make one version of a song, there would always be a remix, a stripped down version, a more extended version - which is what we did with the song ‘Broken’ - so it’s been a really interesting journey so far.”
And that journey just doesn't seem to be slowing down at all. The debut album is out and The Haunted Youth have been booked for a number of major music festivals across Europe this summer. Anyone in Joachim's position would need a breather just to process the past few years! As he casually lights a spliff from his dark-lit room over our Zoom call, he begins to tell me his inspiration for the debut album, Dawn Of The Freak, and the whole eerie idea behind the freak.
“The whole album was a real deep dive into my own past. At the same time I was watching a lot of horror movies, especially the classics like the 1974 The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and the OG, grainy, dusty shit you know, and what I started to notice was I kept empathising with the bad character or the evil guy because I always saw something that showed they were dealing with something or had been through something dark. For instance, Leatherface is an example of a traumatised person that has been raised by their environment in such a way that they can’t change anything about themselves. Then you see them, whether socially acceptable or not, trying to deal with it in a way. That’s why I often use bizarre imagery like the mask you see in the videoclips - that is my archetype of the freak! The mask almost has no face, but it’s still a face and it still expresses how I feel The Haunted Youth feels about themselves when they look in the mirror and take the mask off. The videoclip of ‘Coming Home’ has no mask in it and that’s on purpose because the story is about being home and showing myself to my friends and my girlfriend, so I thought should the mask be here? I decided it shouldn’t because I’m where I need to be so there is no mask, which is kind of the whole idea.”
There often seems to be darker lyrics attached to many of the album's songs, however underneath the surface it becomes evident there's a major feel-good celebration of youth and nostalgia, especially associated with the record's biggest received single 'Teen Rebel'.
“There seems to be a lot of excitement about that one! Obviously I like all my songs but ‘Teen Rebel’ felt the most direct and simple, but still had a lot of meaning. The song started as if it were a picture of my old-self as something I had been through with my first group of friends that I really belonged to. It was also at a time where there were extreme highs and extreme lows and we were trying to find ourselves in our early twenties, very disconnected from society and our homes. Everybody came together to that group to celebrate freedom and try to get away from the homes they were coming from. So it also has that sad vibe to it, but you could choose whether the song makes you sad or happy. I think just everyone being excited about that one helped me pick that song as my first because you’ve gotta start somewhere right!”
Joachim then described another track off the record, 'Fist In My Pocket', a song with a much slower vibe to the rest of the album due to its acoustic sound, and feels like a direct response to the song before it, 'Coming Home'. “In my personal chronology that I made around a year before making the final order of the album, I put it in front of ‘Coming Home’ because I wanted to grab everyone by the throat and then release it kinda thing. Also because of the production, it feels almost like a secret song on the record and in a way it glues it all together despite originally thinking ‘Coming Home’ did that, although they both do, but they’re also each other’s opposite in a way."
"Fist In My Pocket was actually the first song of The Haunted Youth and it was exactly what I wanted The Haunted Youth to be about and what I wanted to feel when I made music. When I used to talk down on my own demos a lot when I wasn’t satisfied, I was always told like no it’s really good, you should release it! But for me, there was always something not feeling quite right and I wanted to make it perfect despite what people said, then I wrote the first bars to ‘Fist In My Pocket’ and I was like fuck… I’m crying writing my own song because it’s so cathartic for me. That song has the most lyrics of any song on the album and that one felt like opening up and letting it all flow out you know. The version of that song that is on the album is actually the only recording I did for it because so much happened in that moment of recording. You can hear my girlfriend and dog entering the room, and I could just hear the footsteps of my dog and thought that’s cute, I’m just gonna keep playing. The connection of the dog just made me more emotional because it’s so sweet and started licking my fingers whilst I was trying to play the strings. That song brings so much pain and you can really understand what the song is about by the way I’m singing and choking up just trying to get to the end of it… and that’s real! That wasn’t performed or anything, I was actually trying not to cry, so it was really important to get that song out so I’m really happy that it’s the way it all ends because it’s a general overview of everything you’ve just heard on the album.”
It's obvious how big a part symbolism is for The Haunted Youth, especially when it comes to the original song writing process. “Before a song or lyric, there is always an image or movie scene running through my mind, and that’s what I use to get into the story. That’s also why I like the album cover so much because in the background there is this single car driving away in the exact environment I was picturing. Three weeks before we had to send the album cover away for the vinyls and stuff, we had a completely different cover for like two years but then I saw a picture at my mum’s place where I thought, fuck, this has to be the cover! It has never just solely been about music for me, there’s always been a multidisciplinary experience about how something makes you feel and discover about yourself. I love when music can show you something you were looking for but you can’t really put into words because you’re still processing something and growing as a person. It just gets you… better than you get yourself sometimes, and that’s what I really love! I don’t think I would ever write a song about stuff like love in a Beatles-style way, like I still love those kinds of songs, I need to have some pain in the song and for it to be a necessity for me otherwise I’m probably not gonna finish it.”
Before concluding our Zoom call, I wanted to ask Joachim how exciting he is to finally be back playing some major festivals next year, including playing the main stage of Belgian festival Rock Werchter. “It has all been so awesome man! Last summer, lockdown rules were still either fully or half-engaged and that really sucked because it was all just parents sipping champagne around tables - all with umbrellas and face masks - about twenty or thirty metres away from us… it was weird weird. Then this summer, everything felt back to normal again for the first time and I got to play at all my favourite festivals such as Best Kept Secret, then all of a sudden Rock Werchter came in, Pukkelpop came in, Tomavistas came in, and those four represent the pinnacle of my youth when it came to festivals. I never did a lot of festivals but actually playing them myself… I felt like fucking Liam Gallagher! That’s what it felt like to me and I was really honoured, especially having people be really excited. I’ve played shows in Spain for example where people are singing along to the lyrics of ‘Shadows’ when it wasn’t even officially released and I was just like what!? It makes you feel relevant and to be honest, I haven't felt that a lot in my life that I’m needed in a way, or that I can bring something to the table. I felt like a nobody for twenty years so it’s really beautiful to be able to do something good knowing people are actually excited!”
The Haunted Youth's Dawn Of The Freak is now available to stream on Spotify.
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