Jon Simmons feels like a teenager again. Kind of like when he and his friends started Balance and Composure back in 2007.
Together they had grown into a cult emo/indie rock favorite over the years, but by 2016’s Light We Made things just didn’t click like they were supposed to. The end was near—or already there.
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“It was a burnout record,” he says. “We were all pretty exhausted, and the vibe wasn’t how it used to be, so it wasn’t fun anymore.”
Not long after Light We Made, Balance and Composure said their inevitable goodbye. It looked like they were really and truly gone. Simmons thought they were, at least.
(Credit: Ashley Gellman)
“I was kind of heartbroken,” he says. “I had an identity crisis a little bit afterwards.”
The community they had built grieved the loss of another Philly giant, one from an era when the city seemed to have a particular magic—or maybe just something in the water aside from pollution—that bred these sorts of bands. But the band started texting each other again during the pandemic, floating out the idea of writing music together—not necessarily being the beloved Balance and Composure, but just being friends who love playing music together, like it was before—without any pressure. Just have fun with it.
Obviously, it yielded results, and now the band released With You In Spirit, their fourth album, via producer Will Yip’s Memory Music label on October 4.
Yip, who also produced Light We Made, caught wind that they were cooking up some songs together on the down-low and, according to Simmons, wined and dined his old pals to get them back in the studio.
“He took us out to a nice dinner, dude,” Simmons laughs. “He was just like, ‘I heard you got songs. I want to help build these songs with you. Let’s get in the studio and see what happens.’ He got us a little drunk, and the rest is history.”
(Credit: Ashley Gellman)
Simmons makes Yip, a trusted collaborator and inarguably one of the nicest dudes in the game, sound nefarious. While it’d be funny to start the Will Yip Villain Arc, in reality he wanted new music, like the rest of their fanbase, and was actually freeing them from another potential pressure point in their comeback: dealing with the capital-I industry.
“We didn’t have to talk to another label and get, like, fake promises and all that ‘You’re going to be on the radio, and we’re going to have you here and there’ and it just isn’t true,” Simmons says. “We’ve been down that road so many times. […] Before we wanted to take over the world; now we’re just lucky to have people that listen to us.”
World domination tends to put a lot of weight on your shoulders, and Simmons already felt like he had plenty of that when the band started flirting with the idea of writing together again.
During COVID, while Simmons was living in L.A., his mother was diagnosed with lung cancer, and while he says she’s OK now, he still feels the pangs of guilt from how he felt at the time—disconnected from his sisters and family in a time of need—and the preemptive grief for what he thought would be the end of her life, and even potentially the relationships he had with his sisters.
“I kind of checked out mentally,” he says. “That’s kind of how I deal with things.”
That idea of disconnect inspired the album’s title and serves as its overarching theme and throughline. The album begins with “Restless,” a short overture on that idea of wanting to be there for someone but not feeling able to follow through, and being judged on action rather than intention.
Nobody knows where I’ve been
Nobody’s seen me since then
And it closes on a title track even more overt.
Guilt trip left in a voicemail
Erase or ignore still?
Or play it back all the time?
I’m not pulling my weight as a brother
That gets more true with time
Please recognize that I’m terrified
I’m mortified
I’m up all night
(Credit: Ashley Gellman)
Now Simmons’ father has been diagnosed with ALS, and he’s dealing with that same grief and sadness while trying to do a little better for his people than he feels like he had in the past.
“Heavy, not-fun feelings like that have been the backbone of the record,” Simmons says. “Just grieving people before they’re gone in a way.”
Part of coming back with this mentality of being there for people the right way meant being Balance and Composure for the fans in a way that was more than just an easy buck or half-assed comeback. There are plenty of bands out there that are more than happy to just reappear for a nostalgia festival or anniversary set or maybe a fancy vinyl repress and call it a day. If Balance and Composure were coming back, it had to be the right way. First was the “surprise, here’s new music” Too Quick to Forgive EP, but that sort of just got the conversation going. Were they back? Was this just leftover from previous sessions? They had to be clear that they were back, and that meant shows, but that also meant new music that reflected this era of the band as people and artists.
If Balance and Composure were going to be back, they were going to be back in more than just spirit. That was the whole point, right?
“That was really important to us—we wanted to play shows too, but we wanted to not just be a cash grab,” Simmons says. “The response was overwhelmingly amazing, and it just pushed us to finish the rest of the record.”
What they were left with, With You In Spirit, is an album that takes everything Simmons and the band have learned—both as artists and people—since the band called it quits.
Balance and Composure’s sound—a tug of war between loud and quiet, cathartic and meditative, groovy and menacing—lends itself nicely to everything Simmons and the band were going through. He could celebrate the new life for the band he and his bandmates had spent their lives cultivating, but use it to work out intense and real feelings of sadness about his family, now with an even greater musical support system around him than ever. There was no greater vehicle for him than Balance and Composure.
“This was what I’ve been looking for, to get these feelings out,” he says. “I needed this. This is my outlet.”
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