Schön! 50 | ayra starr

The roar within the sold-out, open-air Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on 6th July arrived long before BTS even appeared. Despite London’s soaring temperatures, the lights fell and the highly anticipated London leg of the ‘ARIRANG’ world tour began, marking the first time in seven years that all seven members of BTS stood together on a London stage. The atmosphere felt less like a reunion and more like a continuation, as though the story had simply been waiting for its next chapter.

J-Hope led the charge, emerging for “Hooligan” with one arm raised as if conducting the crowd itself. Flames erupted across the stage while dancers punctuated every “ha-ha-ha” movement with razor-sharp precision, turning the opening into a statement: BTS hadn’t returned to revisit the past, they had come back with something new. Moments later, ARMY were already fully immersed singing every word of “Aliens” back towards the stage like a choir. The response wasn’t prompted, it was instinctive. 

As the show progressed, it moved effortlessly between the scale of a global stadium production and moments that felt incredibly intimate. Cameras lingered on handmade ARMY signs before Jin appeared holding a handwritten one that simply read, “BTS LOVES ARMY.” RM looked around the stadium and said, “Here we are. BTS.” It was a simple statement, yet it carried the weight of everything that had happened since their last London performance seven years ago.

Then V issued a challenge: “Let’s make London the loudest stop on this tour.” The city answered. For roughly the next three hours, ARMY chants became another instrument, so intuitive they often blurred the line between audience participation and performance. BTS gave the stadium every ounce of energy they had, and ARMY returned it with the same intensity. Seven years may have passed, but the connection between BTS and ARMY didn’t feel restored. It felt uninterrupted.

During “SWIM”, enormous white sheets billowed around the inner stage in the hands of the dancers, creating the illusion that the members were suspended above water. It was one of the evening’s quieter moments, demonstrating that the group doesn’t always need explosions or fireworks to command a stadium. Quiet exchanges between the members on stage revealed just how instinctively they still moved as one, despite years away from performing together. These fleeting interactions made ‘ARIRANG’ feel less like a meticulously rehearsed show and more like seven artists rediscovering the joy of sharing a stage.

BTS quickly shifted the mood as “Not Today” exploded into life, with dozens of dancers armed with illuminated batons moving in hypnotic circles around the members, transforming the stadium into a sea of synchronised movement. The energy barely had time to settle before the unmistakable opening of BTS’ 2017 “MIC Drop” sent the crowd into another frenzy, showing that nearly a decade later, the tune still lands with remarkable force.

And if that song reignited the past, “FYA” from their newest studio album, ARIRANG showed exactly where BTS are headed. Jets of fire erupted across the stage as the audience bounced in unison, shouting back, “Everything lit, it’s fire. Everything big, it’s fire.” In one of the night’s many spontaneous moments, Jungkook and V broke into an impromptu dance together while dancers in front of them fired towering flames into the night sky. 

Each performance highlighted BTS’ chemistry, but looking around the stadium revealed the scale of the community they’ve built beyond the stage. Fans had travelled from across the UK, Europe and even beyond. Arriving with handmade banners, exchanging photocards and gifts with strangers who shared the same devotion, Tottenham Hotspur Stadium became the meeting point for a global community brought together by these seven artists.

That philosophy extended into the show’s design. The production balanced heritage and progression throughout the night. The 360-degree stage placed BTS at the centre of the stadium rather than the end of it, removing the usual distance between artist and audience. Architectural details inspired by Korean design framed the performance without overwhelming it, allowing cultural references to feel integrated instead of ornamental. 

Rather than remaining on the central stage, BTS stepped onto the stadium floor during “IDOL”, surrounded by a vast procession of dancers carrying oversized flags as confetti rained from above. It felt less like a concert and more like a triumphant parade, drawing every corner of the stadium into the celebration. The mood shifted once again when RM smiled and began, “Smooth like butter…” The reaction was instant. Before RM could finish the opening line, the stadium had already taken over. Even alongside an album built around new material, BTS’ global hymn remains woven into the shared memory of both the group and their fans.

photography. Courtesy of HYBE/BIGHIT MUSIC
words. Sandy Aziz

suit. Stella McCartney
shoes. Toga Pulla
opposite
jacket + dress. Valentino

What if we could touch the stars and push the boundaries of space exploration for the sake of humanity? It’s a concept that human beings have been toying with for decades, and Apple TV’s ‘Star City’, a spin-off of ‘For All Mankind’, explores the inner workings and politics that go into sending someone to the moon. A bold historical fiction that doesn’t pull its punches, the series takes place in soviet Russia at the height of its power, being the first to have a cosmonaut walk on the moon. Enter Alice Englert’s Anastasia Belikova, the first woman to make history and walk on the lunar surface. Now back on Earth, she has to contend with being a victim of her own success, living in the shadow of the state, and finding that space may have been less complicated. 

There is a melancholy to Anastasia when audiences meet her. And it’s Englert’s acting expertise that shines through here. We’re given a window straight into Anastasia’s mind; she longs for adventure, to explore, to play, the actor explains through the course of our conversation. But she is made to marry, be shuttled around like a prize, and is, for all intents and purposes, grounded. What comes to fruition is a reckoning of someone coming to terms with their reality. The rose-tinted glasses are off, and now she has to face whatever comes next.

Chatting with Schön!, Englert discusses why she thinks humanity is obsessed with space exploration, working on an open set, what she loves about the genres of fantasy and horror, what her thoughts on Anastasia’s inner monologue are, and more. 

I love the idea of alternate histories, ‘V for Vendetta’ and ‘Inglorious Bastards’ delve deep and ask the question, ‘what if?’ What was it about the story of ‘Star City’ that fascinated you? What were your thoughts on Anastasia being the first woman to walk on the moon? 

Oh my gosh, I actually found a diary entry the other day from just after I had my first callback for the role, and in it, I’m writing about Anastasia, “I like her,” and then at the end, I don’t want to say I love her in case I don’t get it. I’m writing about it like it’s some high school crush. For me, I’ve always had a crush on space. I don’t love it in a fabulously detailed factual sense; it just makes my tummy flip with excitement. This idea that you’re floating. 

When I spoke to Garrett Reisman, who is this astronaut who has been an advisor to Matt (Wolpert) and Ben (Nedivi) for many years, we were talking once I had the role about how, at the end of the day, it’s so compelling to be up there. There’s something really just magical and joyful and genuinely out of this world about the whole thing because I was really interested in the way that an experience like that can almost be an enlightenment experience. An awakening. And how much it can be a jolt to come back down to Earth. 

When you see the world differently, and you think, “I thought I had some power, I thought I had control over my life,” and I think for me this comes down to that kind of magic I’m really interested in, in all genres. I’m drawn to the epic as well as the existential. 

You do such a wonderful job of making us feel Anastasia’s melancholy at being back on Earth. She’s a victim of her own success. You can feel her struggle. Can you walk us through what it takes to get into that mindset as an actor and what you would say Anastasia’s inner monologue is?

First of all, thank you; that means a lot. It’s kind of funny and meta, but I’ve always found doing press a little bit terrifying. I just had so much compassion for her feeling eclipsed by her own expectation of who she has to be — even in my own dime-sized version of that. I think everyone who has to exist in an industry where, for whatever reason, you have to appear aspirational, something is gnawing inside of you. 

The real person has to break, and the other one has to somehow keep it together, and I just thought that was really fascinating and beautiful. I feel like whether you’re in an industry where you have to be somewhat public-facing, or you’re in normal life, having to step outside, trying to put something on the hell zone that is the internet. I remember when you’re a kid, you go to school and all that, and it’s like, “Oh don’t worry no one’s saying anything as bad as you’re saying to yourself,” and then the internet came along. 

I do think it’s so interesting the way it’s such a reflection of our consciousness. If we keep thinking, eventually we’ll arrive at some kind of trap door or solution or resolution, but we’re very well matched to just exacerbate our anxiety further and further and further. I don’t even know if I articulated that properly, but let that be an example of how silly the mind can be. 

I read that if you weren’t a director or an actor, you’d be writing a fantasy novel. What would your fantasy world look like?

I can’t tell you because I actually am writing it. I just so appreciated the genre growing up, and I think that’s also what drew me to ‘Star City.’ What I like about fantasy is that it allows you to see the narrative of us in the world from a different perspective. It can show us places where we could have compassion or empathy, and explore curiosity and bias that we may have picked up along the way. I’ve always liked fantasy for that. Fantasy and the supernatural genre and sci-fi have always informed science.

Einstein had an imagination and was thinking about riding around on a rocket or whatever. Don’t quote me on that. [laughs] I remember the story, but it always takes imagination for the next leap forward. I was reading this great book by Carlos Rovelli, who’s a wonderful Italian writer who writes about quantum theory in a way that someone like me can comprehend. He talks about how every time we’ve moved forward it took letting go of one thing that we truly believed to be the backbone of science. You can’t take everything with you. That also takes this huge openness to imagination. I love that those things inform and hold hands with each other. 

What is the kind of fantasy story that helped inform you as you were growing up? 

‘Narnia’. I just used to listen to it on the tapes, and it also kind of terrified me. I like ‘The Hobbit’ and the whole ‘Lord of the Rings’ trilogy. I have a somewhat Hobbit haircut at the moment. [laughs] I do gravitate towards ‘The Hobbit’ a lot. I have to say ‘Kindred’ really blew my socks off. I only read that more recently. Octavia E. Butler is just such an incredible force in the fantasy world. She does exactly the thing that I love, which is transporting you to places that you otherwise thought you were familiar.

There’s also this Australian writer called Ian Irvine. He’s a marine biologist, and I remember finding one of his books and it was full of the most incredible landscape descriptions that I’ve ever read. I love ‘Frankenstein’ and ‘Dracula’. I love that women and femmes have contributed so much. 

I also really like supernatural horror. I really like Mariana Enriquez as well. ‘A Sunny Place for Shady People,’ you might enjoy. A lot of inspiration came from me and my best friend. We would play the most elaborate fantasy games for years when we were kids. With huge respect to the genre, I was obsessed with other worlds. We would play in New Zealand, and that place is Middle-earth. It was hours of being wolves or some kind of creature. We were just so embarrassing because we played these games for way too long. We were busting into adolescence. 

We’ve discussed ‘Star City’ being an alternate history, an alternate universe. Is there a part of history you would want to explore and play in and kind of your own twist to? 

Another good question. I’m interested in when the continents hadn’t broken up yet.

Pangaea! 

Exactly. I think that’s my truth. I’m interested in the ice age. I’m curious about when we started wearing shoes. When did that evolve? I’m curious about love in the very early days. What did that look like? I want to see hunter-gatherers. It’s just so fascinating. I did read this book once called ‘The Kingdom’, which was a fictionalized exploration of when Christianity was more extreme early days. It was a hippie alternative. I just thought it was interesting to imagine something that controls our calendar year as an alternative lifestyle. I always hesitate to be too casual about things that are super important to people. I’m a curious type, and I like figuring out how these things form. I thought that book did a great job of looking at that particular time and exploring how this writer, in his real life, found deep faith and then also lost deep faith. 

top + skirt. Miu Miu
opposite
shirt. Souvenir Stand

There’s a moment where you can already tell that her faith in the States is shaken now that she’s back on Earth. There’s a moment when she’s in that club and in the bathroom, and she’s given an out by that agent. I don’t know if this was purposeful on your part, but for a split second, you can see she’s considering it before shaking it off and reaffirming her fealty. What’s going through her head? Do you think she knows she’s being set up? 

I wanted her to be someone who was surprising herself. I really wanted to play her as an adult who was now experiencing her first real adolescence — someone who has realized they actually don’t know who they really are, but there is something inside of them that is beginning to wake up. She also loses all her autonomy at the very moment she has the most power. I think that she has to have secrets even from herself.

What I thought was really different about the way that she is intelligent is that it is a very intuitive emotional intelligence. It’s the kind of thing that you develop from growing up around a parent or a system that could and will blame you for anything at any time — where you have to be more than yourself, or you have to be what they need you to be. I think that requires abdicating your autonomy and a feeling of privacy, which is a theme in general. I felt that she had to move with the secrecy of a teenager through this situation. That’s the roguishness that can lead you into danger. You can’t trust that your adventurousness is not supported. It’s a strange situation to be in as someone who is ‘growing up’ in the series. 

You’re not a stranger to film sets; you directed your own feature that premiered at Sundance (Film Festival), and you have family in the business. What’s something that you learned on ‘Star City’ that you haven’t learned on another film set?  

I was impressed by how Matt and Ben were so approachable. It’s something I’ve experienced before, but they really wanted to know how we were doing and how we were feeling. They wanted to know if anyone was being a dickhead [laughter] because that actually matters. That wasn’t a one-time thing, you know? They were sensitive about it and made sure to check in. We were very lucky to have zero dickheads, but they really create an environment where they want you to feel flourishing and safe, where you don’t feel frightened to speak up, which is sort of the opposite of the material we were working with.

It was a really refreshing boundary between what you’re seeing on screen and the environment that you’re making that work in. There was just this genuine belief that you shouldn’t have to suffer to have empathy and compassion to do your work. It will be hard; there will be days when I have the flu, but I’ll also be skydiving, and it’s snowing, it has its charms, but there are times when it’s also intense. It just felt like it was hard in the right ways. You could know in your body why you felt sore or tired. That was just a beautiful thing to see. It was just nice to see some humanity. And to work with such nice people.

Of course! You want your film sets to be open and collaborative. You don’t want it to be a toxic work environment, because you don’t do your best work under that type of scrutiny or pressure.

It’s a total fiction perpetuated by assholes to justify that they don’t know how to express their pain another way. I have compassion for that, but it’s not enough to put up with it. I’ve found that whenever I’ve been able to direct, people are so smart and they have such good ideas. You just have to get out of your own way a lot of the time and be there together. I guess that’s another thing I like about the show: the relationships between people and the exhaustion and the compromise and the human cost of trying to always be first. It doesn’t take you nearly as far as it would to be creative, and to be curious instead of competitive. 

One of my favourite things that I loved early on was the relationship between Anastasia and Sasha. The first time you really see Anastasia smile is when they’re at the club together. How would you say their relationship develops over the course of the season? 

I feel so silly. I feel like I didn’t see how their relationship developed coming. I think that’s all I should say. [laughs] I loved working with Solly (McLeod), he’s so great. We’re both very silly, but also very serious as well. We want to have some space to enjoy the process, and we really trusted each other. We took our characters seriously. We just wanted to do what we thought they would really do, and that was so encouraging. It was surprising and obvious, in many ways. I loved it. They realize they have a real understanding of the other. They’re both outsiders, and they realize that they’re outside… together. It doesn’t feel so bad.

What I loved is that they’re something so special about going beyond the ick. The ick they have for each other, they ick they have for their lives. They have such deep ick. I feel like neither of them appeals to the other. Neither of them is a prize. For me, it’s interesting to see how people behave when they actually start understanding each other instead of feeling like, “Oh, this person will elevate me in some ways.” The business part of that is so very cut and dry for them. I like the way human nature grows like weeds on cement, and it bumps the pavement up. They’re supposed to be in this arrangement, but what are you going to do when you put two absolute weirdos together? 

They’re going to do more weird things. Another moment that I’d love to touch on is her leaving him waiting at the altar. I know it’s not a funny moment, but I couldn’t help but laugh. 

I love that. I’m so happy to hear that. I find it quite funny to think that he’s like, “She’s not my type anyway.” It feels like it’s got that gallows humour. It’s both tragic and funny. I think the show does have that in it, which I really like. 

What is it about space exploration that you think keeps coming back for more? 

I always think it’s about mortality, to me. It’s about identity. I find it quite striking that we know more about the stars than apparently we do about the bottom of the ocean. Which feels weird and compelling. I think that there’s something about the way we move and try to understand and comprehend what’s outside of our space. I think it appeals to me because it’s such a literal interpretation of our human beings’ endless search for ‘who am I?’ And ‘where are we going?’ And there’s something, I guess, about the final frontier. There’s something about adventure. But we’re pretty scared about dying, and there’s something about going into that night where being with it must be compelling. 

And lastly, if you could sit down and have a conversation with Anastasia, what advice would you give her? If any?

Oh gosh, you know, I think I’m learning from her. Which I know is a funny thing to say as the actor. But I suppose I’m in a collaboration with the others and the story. I felt like I had slightly forgotten – and this is so cheesy to say, but still so true – that being brave also means being terrified. And that you don’t have to stop feeling terrified. It’s not something you vanquish. It’s something you live with. Nick Murphy had said in the audition, “Can you play this one as if you know you will fail?” And I was like, “That feels too familiar.” [laughs] But I think we forget the sensation of cowardice, that we feel like running, that you can’t do this, that you feel like you know you can’t do this, and having to do the hard thing anyway. I think that’s what I learned.

top + skirt. A.W.A.K.E. MODE
opposite
bodysuit. Valentino

photography. Samira Eugster
fashion. Jessica Skeete-Cross
talent. Alice Englert
casting. Emma Fleming
hair. Sandra Hahnel @ Caren Agency using Only Curls
make up. Terri Capon using Rare Beauty
lighting technician. Niko Mrtj
production. Clara La Rosa
interview. Dana Reboe

Six years ago, The Band CAMINO was supposed to spend the summer of their breakout year opening up for 5 Seconds of Summer. Like so many plans in 2020, the tour disappeared before it ever began, leaving behind one of those lingering what-ifs that every band collects along the way. Now, after years of touring and an ambitious discography, they’re finally stepping onto those stages — only this time, as a band with a far clearer sense of who they are.

“We’ve lost band members, we’ve changed teams, our music has shifted… It feels like we’re in a place to truly appreciate this opportunity more than we would have then,” Jeffery Jordan says from their dressing room. They are two dates into what will be a 43-show run, one of the longest tours they’ve ever done. Much has changed in the six years since they were originally booked for a support slot: lineup shifts, evolving creative ambitions, and a double album have transformed what was once a rising alternative trio into a band entering an entirely new chapter. 

With growth and a newfound perspective that can only be gained with time, those six years didn’t just reshape The Band CAMINO — the themes became the foundation of ‘NeverAlways’, their latest album. Released across two volumes over the course of a year, the project reflects on identity, change, and the push-and-pull between who you are and who you’re still becoming. Every detail serves that larger idea: hidden callbacks, mirrored visuals, and a tracklist that loops seamlessly back to its opening moments transform the record into a continuous cycle rather than a collection of songs. 

Fresh off the release of ‘NeverAlways Vol. 2’ and in the middle of finally joining 5SOS on the road, Jeffery Jordan, Spencer Stewart, and Garrison Burgess of the Band CAMINO sat down with Editor Kelsey Barnes to reflect on the long road back to this moment, the evolution behind the album, and more.

You were originally meant to open for 5SOS in 2020, so this feels like we are righting some wrongs. I want you to think back to The Band CAMINO in 2020 and reflect on your growth as a unit since then. I think it’s cool that you’re able to come to this tour with a new perspective and experience.

Jeffery Jordan: A lot has changed. Honestly, it does feel like we’ve been bummed about losing that tour for the last six years, but now that it’s come full circle, it starts to make sense. It feels like we’re in a place to capitalize on it and truly appreciate it more, and make the most of the opportunity at this point in our lives more than we would have at that time. We’ve lost band members, we’ve changed teams, our music has shifted, our taste has shifted. I’m 31 now, so I would’ve been 25 then, and you’re just in a lot different place from 25 or 26 to 31 or 32. It feels much different.

At that point, you only had a handful of EPs out, too, so now you have a lot more to pick through. Ten songs, is that the setlist?

Jordan: Ten, and we’ve actually only played nine the other night because we have 40 minutes. 

Garrison Burgess: It rolls by really fast.

Jordan: Yeah. I guess we had three EPs out at that point. We’d just signed with Elektra in 2019, we’d gone on our first two headline tours, and then coming into 2020, we had the Dan + Shay arena tour. Then we had the 5SOS tour later that year.

Spencer Stweart: We were on the way to Philadelphia for the Dan + Shay tour, and halfway there, they were like, “Yeah, turn around For the foreseeable future, we’re not doing any shows.” Crazy.

You’ve been touring ‘NeverAlways’ over the last year. How has the experience of people singing those songs back to you changed your relationship with them? Building an album and songwriting is such an intimate process, but when you actually hear other people singing those songs back to you, it’s a completely different experience.

Jordan: Yeah, you see the songs in a whole new light. You almost see them the way you saw them at the beginning again. When you first write a song, it’s new to you, and you’re excited. Not that you don’t stay excited, but there’s a freshness to it.

Stewart: It breathes a little more energy into them. I think they all mean something different to everyone, so it’s nice to see different perspectives and also remember your own perspective when you were writing them. I think that’s pretty cool.

Jordan: Yeah, it takes them back to the beginning a little bit. It’s like a new beginning for the songs. Especially with ‘Volume 2’, we wrote a lot of those songs in 2024, and they’re coming out in 2026. We’ve been so close to them for so long that finally getting to put them out into the world and hear them for the first time is like, “Oh, this is what they actually sound like again.” I couldn’t even tell anymore. Maybe that’s just because we sat on them for so long.

Was it important for you guys to release this as a double album instead of having it exist as its own entity?

Jordan: Yeah, the thought was, with so many of our last few projects, we’d put out a body of work and then go dark for a few months while we made the next album. We’d taken some time to find ourselves on this album, and we’d written all these songs. We didn’t want to just put them all out and have that be it. We wanted to spread them out over the course of 18 months – almost two years – as one cycle instead. I think we’re in such a singles-driven world.

When I interviewed you guys right before ‘NeverAlways Vol. 1’, you were teasing songs like “Afterthought,” and you were like, “Maybe it’ll be a deluxe, we don’t know.” It’s nice to see it come full circle.

Jordan: We could put all 22 of these songs out at once, and then they’d only be new for a little while. Or we could spread those 22 songs out over a longer period of time and keep giving fans new things to chew on and new songs to discover. It’s hard enough to get people to listen to an 11-song album, let alone a 22-song album. It just felt like a fun pivot to doing a double album.

A headline show is very different from opening for 5 Seconds of Summer. There are songs like “Daphne Blue” that obviously have to stay in the set, but with such a vast discography with a lot of bangers and fan faves, how are you structuring the setlist for this compared to other tours?

Burgess: It’s interesting because the setlist conversation could be three or four sit-downs before we even start building one. We have a list of songs we know people want to hear, but when you’re putting out a new body of work, you’re taking a guess and hoping people connect with certain songs. It’s kind of like picking your favourite children, and that’s difficult. We always have a lot of alternates available at the end of a set that we can throw in. For example, on the last tour, we only played “Afterthought” every once in a while because we’d just decide, “We’re feeling it tonight. Let’s do it.” Having those options is nice, but it’s definitely a process. I think we do a pretty good job of keeping those peaks and valleys throughout a set.

For this 5 Seconds of Summer tour, it’s basically 10 bangers back to back. For a headline tour, we’re trying to take you on more of a journey – high-intensity moments, then putting us in our feels for a second, then building the energy back up again and just having a good time.

Jordan: For this set, we’re really trying to keep the energy high because we’re the opener. We’re trying to give people a snapshot of our whole sonic palette – a brief introduction to who we are as a band – without having too many slower or more intimate moments. Those songs can be hard to pull off as an opening band. So it’s a mixture of high-energy songs while also giving the most accurate representation of who we are to someone who’s never heard us before, and hopefully winning them over as a fan while keeping their attention for the whole set.

“Do What You Gotta Do”, that pre-chorus scratches something in my brain. I don’t know what it is. I wanted to ask a little bit about writing and recording that song specifically.

Stewart: Yeah. I wrote that song with a guy named Andrew Goldstein, who’s a frequent collaborator of ours. We’ve written a few with him and a guy named Jack LaFrantz. It was completely different at the time. The only thing we actually kept from the original version was the pre-chorus, so it’s funny that you mentioned that.

At the time, we were just kind of throwing paint at the wall, and I think it was a little more left of center than what we would typically do. It’s definitely a little poppier, and I don’t want to say it had a Taylor Swift sort of thing, but that’s kind of what we were going for at the time. Then we brought it to the guys. We didn’t end up using it for the first half because we were still workshopping a couple of things, and I think it came out a hundred times better once we all got involved.

Jordan: Have you listened to the original recently? I listened to it the other day after it came out, and I was like…

Stewart: Yeah, it’s extremely different. I think we definitely landed on the right version. For the same reason as you – there’s definitely something about it. I think it’s the phonetics with the melody. There’s something there, so I’m glad we kept it.

Jordan: We did write a new pre-chorus for it.

Stewart: It just didn’t feel… It wasn’t better.

Jordan: We had to go back to the original.

Then, with “Holly,” I saw people commenting on Instagram that it was like a Taylor Swift moment with the key change. What was the decision behind that? Was it just something that felt right at the time?

Stewart: We’ve been wanting to do it for years. We’d just never done a key change. We could never figure out a non-corny way to execute it.

Burgess: It genuinely happened in the room because it’s such a freeing track. Somebody — I don’t remember who, it could’ve been any one of the three of us — very vividly just said, “What if we just did it, guys?” We were like, “We may as well try stuff now.” We do it every night now, and it’s great. It feels good.

Volume 2, to me, feels a lot more outward-looking, whereas Volume 1 seems a bit more introspective. Is that something you guys would agree with? And was that intentional when you were separating the two volumes?

Stewart: I think, in a way. I do feel like a lot of the songs we put on Volume 2 just needed a little more time, and some we intentionally put on the back end, but I don’t know.

Jordan: Yeah, we definitely tried to tell a story with each one. I don’t know if we actually knew what that story was, but we had a feeling about which songs we wanted on the back half. I do think maybe, subconsciously, there is less of that introspective stuff on the back half and more relationship-retrospective, where you sit in the world, getting older… Those kinds of songs. It was definitely a puzzle trying to figure out what belonged where, because there were some songs where we thought, “Let’s just wait on this. We should keep tweaking it.” We also didn’t want there to be a clear favourite where people would say, “Oh, Volume 1 is way better.”

Like, “it has all the singles.”

Jordan: Yeah, exactly. That’s how a lot of deluxe albums feel. It’s like, “Here’s all the singles, and now here are the leftover songs that didn’t actually make the album.” We didn’t want that. We wanted to spread everything out. “Holly” was definitely the song that everyone – from the team to the label – felt was the most commercial, the most radio-friendly single. We thought, “Let’s sit on it.” That was tough because part of me thought, “What if we just put it out now?” But instead, we decided to build momentum with Volume 1. If we really believed “Holly” was that song, then let’s save it for the right moment. Now “Do What You Gotta Do” is doing really well, and it feels like we did save certain songs for the right moment.

I love “Mirror Mirror.” That was an instant favourite. The line, “stuck somewhere between who I am and who I want to be,” I really, really love.

Jordan: Thank you so much. People ask what’s the hardest song to finish – that song! [Laughs]

Stewart: It took us forever. We had the whole song, but we could not figure out that tag.

Jordan: We changed that line so many times. The original line was something like, “My montage of mistakes goes on for miles. I’ll lay them out for you to see – all of me.” We just felt like there was something better we could put there, so we kept changing it.

Stewart: We auditioned so many different ideas.

Jordan: We’d leave the studio thinking, “Okay, I think that’s it,” and then we’d listen back the next day and think, “That’s not it.” We’d go back into the studio and try something else.

Burgess: I’m pretty positive it was the final piece of the record. Other than mixing, I think the last vocal punch on the entire record was that line. I can’t think of anything we worked on after that.

Jordan: Even now, when I listen to the song, I still haven’t heard it enough times for it to feel completely settled. I still catch myself thinking, “Wait… which ending did we go with again?” Then I hear it and go, “Oh yeah… who I am and who I want to be.”

There’s a fade from Volume 2 on “What’s Always Been” into Volume 1’s “Has Just Begun” that I really love. Can you talk a little bit about the decision to loop Volume 2 back into Volume 1?

Burgess: Yeah. I remember when we did it. I actually still have the file. I don’t know if we’d planned it before… I think we did.

Stewart: That was one of the first things we did, even before we had finished all the songs.

Burgess: Yeah, because we already had “What’s Always Been” and “Has Just Begun,” and that originally was the outro of “What’s Always Been.” I don’t remember who suggested it, but I have the file where we tied them together. I was like, “Guys, I think this is going to work.” We just took a couple of pieces from the end of one song and moved them to the beginning of the other, and it tied together really well.

Jordan: They were both in the same key, and we knew we wanted to use “Has Just Begun” as the intro. We also knew they were in the same key, so we thought, “How can we connect these?” It didn’t make sense to have them both at the top of a record.

Then, you know, the titles come from the lyric in the last song: “What’s always been has just begun.” So now it completes the phrase, and it completes the loop. The first single was called “Infinity.” We have all these…

Stewart: Circular moments.

Jordan: Yeah, all these loops and circular patterns – patterns of life cycles. That was the theme of the whole album, and it felt cool to represent that by completing the loop.

I usually ask artists or bands, when they release an album, whether it feels like a chapter closing or a chapter beginning. But with this one, it feels very much like a closing chapter because it is so circular.

Stewart: Yeah, definitely. It was a full thought that we’d been working on for, what, two years? It is a little bittersweet to say goodbye to it. I mean, we’re starting to say goodbye to it because everybody else is just saying hello to it.

Jordan: Right. For us, it definitely feels like the creative chapter is over. We saw the vision through, and now the songs get to go do what they do.

Garrison, you took on a much larger role with the production during this era. I wanted to ask a little bit about that experience and whether there was anything on the two Volumes that was a production decision you made that might surprise listeners or that they maybe haven’t picked up on yet.

Burgess: I don’t know if there was a specific decision that would surprise anybody. I think we just really wanted to work on this record ourselves. Between Volumes 1 and 2 — because, as we said, some of the songs on Volume 2 were written at the same time as songs on Volume 1 — a lot of it was just the three of us wanting to take stabs at something that felt new and fresh to us, based on what we’d been inspired by. Anything we either produced ourselves, co-produced, or worked on with somebody else, the idea was always to start with the three of us, our brains, and what we were trying to say and get across. Between producing some of it ourselves and then taking ideas to other people, that’s really how we came up with the record.

I believe ‘NeverAlways’ came from a misheard quote, right?

Jordan: Yeah. I was reading something, and I thought it said one thing. When I went back to find it, it wasn’t there. For some reason, I thought the quote was saying that the way this person chose to live their life was, “I either want something in my life never or always.” It’s an extreme way to live, and it obviously doesn’t apply to everything, but when it comes to relationships or the things you really want to commit to, it’s about being fully in or fully out — not living in that gray area. That was the idea.

I don’t know where I got it from because that’s not what the quote said at all. But then we wrote the song based on that idea — the song on Volume 2 that’s called “Never and Always.” We didn’t have the album title yet, but we had these themes, and we had that song. We wrote it with the band Hovvdy, if you know them — they’re super sick. Then we thought, “Well, we could call the album Never and Always,” and eventually we just landed on ‘NeverAlways’, based on the song and the overall theme because we already knew we wanted “Infinity” to be the first single, everything just kind of fit together.

Has the title or its meaning changed for you guys after this past year?

Jordan: I don’t know if it’s changed. It just feels like it fits more and more as time goes on. It just feels like the right title. It’s like anything — maybe when you say it enough times, it just starts to feel like the right name.

Stewart: Yeah, I think once we had all the context of both parts of the record, especially with what you were referring to earlier — the more introspective side versus the more outward-looking side — it all started to make a lot more sense. We also inverted the words on the records, so it all fits. It all feels like it exists in the same world. It makes more sense the more time goes on, just living with it. Especially with the continuation between the records, all the pieces started to come together. You make all the pieces, but you don’t always have the opportunity to put them together until the very end. So it’s nice to see that they really do fit.

Burgess: It was personally just cool to see. I don’t think we really started the album cycle intending for it to be a concept album, but then, like Spencer was saying, all the puzzle pieces started to fall into place. It was cool to watch them all come together in this weird, ethereal way and think, “Oh, shit.”

Jordan: It was the first time we’d really made a concept album, and it came together because of the songs. After we’d written a few songs, we realized, “Okay, there are themes here.” Once we recognized those themes, we were able to write the rest of the songs around them. So the songs gave us the theme, and then we wrote more songs around that theme.

Another cool thing — and I don’t think anyone has really noticed — is that the whole tour design was based on “Mirror Mirror,” which wasn’t even out yet. The whole graphic was a mirror, the stage design was based around mirrors, and we were like, “This will make sense eventually.” Obviously, there was also the inversion of the album title. There were a lot of little things that tied together, and I feel like you didn’t really get the full picture until much later, which is cool to me.

Stewart: There’s a lot to chew on.

Lastly, if you were to put Volumes 1 and 2 in a time capsule for someone to look back on in 20 years, what do you hope they take away about who The Band CAMINO was at this moment in time?

Jordan: Oh boy. I feel like they’d be like, “Wow, these guys really captured the depths of humanity.” [Laughs] 

Stewart: I think, like Jeff was talking about, we’re all in our 30s now. We just crossed over into a different time in our lives. We’re young… old. That’s what I always like to think about. It’s interesting because we exited our 20s, and your 20s are for learning what you like and learning what you don’t like. Once you enter your 30s, you start implementing all the things you learned during that time in your life. I do think this record reflects that because, when you’re in your 20s, you’re thinking about relationships a lot. That’s still a huge part of your life, but now Garrison’s been married for six years, and we’re all in long-term relationships. It’s just a different type of growing up. It’s definitely a growing-up record. I hope people see it not as a transitional period, but as a really important, pivotal period for all of us on a personal level.

Jordan: Hopefully, a lot of the themes stand the test of time. It’s about what it feels like to be human, to go through change, heartbreak, and growing up.

Stewart: There’s just a certain maturity and depth to it.

Jordan: Yeah. Now that we’re older than we were when we put out ‘Tryhard’ or any of our first EPs, obviously, there are people who want us to keep making the same thing over and over again. We always want to honour the songs that got us here, and we’re always going to play those songs. We’re not going to go make a jazz fusion record — we’re still going to make music that sounds like The Band CAMINO. But we’ve learned a lot over the past decade, and it feels like we should have the freedom to share that. Maybe we don’t have that much wisdom yet at 30, but it does feel like the older we get, the more depth I want to put into the music.

There are bands that are in their 30s or 40s and are still writing about the exact same things they were writing about when they were 20. I always want there to be room for a fun pop song — like “Holly” is really fun and loose, and there’s always room for that on a record. But I also want there to be an evolution in the thoughtfulness, the depth, and the life lessons in the music. In theory, we’ve all learned a lot and grown a lot as people, so hopefully, we have more to say the older we get.

You want the music to grow as you guys grow. You’re not going to be 19 forever.

Stewart: Exactly. Otherwise, it becomes inauthentic. You want the music to be a reflection of who you are, and I think we did a good job of that.

Jordan: We left it all on the field, baby.

‘NeverAlways Vol. 1 & Vol. 2‘ are out now. Catch The Band Camino on tour this summer with 5 Seconds of Summer.

photography. Kevin Sikorski
talent. The Band Camino
interview. Kelsey Barnes
special thanks. Ted Sullivan @ Atlantic Records
photography assistants. Cameron Curland + Greg O’Connor