Mikaila Delgado - Yours Truly 'From Self Care to Almost Self-Sabotage'

Sydney pop punk four-piece Yours Truly have been treading through bigger waters this year. When we say bigger, we mean across the entire world and back, dipping their feet in for a feel of what the overseas touring circuit is made of. In between health scares and COVID cases, of course, as frontwoman Mikaila Delgado exclaims:

"We were over there for three months, just playing any show that we could get. We were like, 'We're gonna make this count while we're here'. So we went over for the Against the Current tour, and we played all the UK shows. We got some really nice feedback, considering that we were there at the end of last year with Holding Absence, and it was nice to see some familiar faces and to play with some new people. Then we played our first European show in Belgium, and the next day, we had a positive COVID case."

That's not to say they didn't take that time for granted. It gave the band that much-needed practice and renewed, energy from the dormant time they spent at home over the past two years: "Every time we played, I felt like it was good for us to play that many shows in that amount of time, because I felt like it really helped us, after spending a lot of time not being able to play live. When you're playing in front of crowds, it's so different from just practicing in a studio. It's a completely different vibe."

While a Yours Truly tour on home soil has been scarce this year and overrun with cancellations more than anything, the band are well and truly making up for lost time with the next chapter of their blossoming career. Their latest EP, is this what i look like? (our review here) marks a promising new milestone and step up from their 2020 full-length debut, Self Care:

"Originally, it was supposed to be like a companion piece to Self Care. We were gonna call it Self-Sabotage. It was going to be like the darker side of Self Care and it was only supposed to be three tracks. But I guess as we started writing, we didn't want to put any pressure on ourselves to create something that was meant to be an album or singles or anything like that."

"We tried things that we wouldn't have tried before because we had no expectations, and it kind of worked out really well for us. It just sounded quite natural to us, and it feels good doing something like this. I think after those two years, not being able to do anything, and putting out Self Care, that was the pop punk record that we wanted to put out. But then we were like, let's not do that thing that I think that every band is told to do, and gradually move up in the world and change a little bit every time. Let's just do what we want to do. Let's just be the band that we want to be and not follow any kind of standards that a band should follow. Let's just be us."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IZEVp7Htz0

On is this what i look like?, Yours Truly didn't let the early pressures of being in a band get to them. Flipping off the expectations, Mikaila, Teddie Haron, Brad Cronan and Lachlan Cronin set themselves free and allowed more self-expression in the studio than ever before. Diving deeper into rockier, heavier pastures with the help of Stray From the Path's Drew York and last year's hit track 'Walk Over My Grave', this Sydney alternative/rock quartet found themselves on the verge of something bigger:

"'Bruises' was the first song that we wrote post Self Care. It's kind of about my struggle with self-sabotage. I'm a big self-sabotager. I like to destroy things when I feel uncomfortable, when I don't feel right about things or I'm scared about something, I tend to just want to ruin them. Even with things like, our upcoming tour. I keep telling myself that I'm gonna get sick, and then I do get sick. It's this whole thing. I also think it's a nice closing song from Self Care with the whole "bruises like wine, heal better with time" line saying, there are things that you know can hurt you in life. But you know there's nothing that time can't heal. It's got quite a few different meanings, but the main one is self-sabotage.

When I sent Drew the song, we were expecting him to kind of like, give us back something like that was as aggressive as his stuff in Stray. Then he sent us back something of him singing and I absolutely loved it. It fit the song better than anything that I imagined. For someone that is in quite a heavy band, to be doing something completely different on this record, I think that was really special."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzDLW8WAwrU

While it made for quite the progression for a band who wear pop punk on their sleeves, it also saw Mikaila dig deeper into her own vulnerabilities and struggles through anxieties — something many listeners of the band's last release wholeheartedly related to. is this what i look like? celebrates what it means to be an anxious mess. Some days we're up, other days we're down. For the Yours Truly vocalist, processing these raw emotions helped her find something more to love about herself:

"I feel like when I write songs, it almost helps me accept them and almost love that side of myself a little more because I've been able to create something out of it. I've always struggled a lot with social anxiety, and just general anxiety. I have a lot of health anxiety because I've always struggled with my health. It's always been something that from the minute I was born has been a problem for me. There's parts of these songs that kind of address different aspects of my anxiety. That's what 'Careless Kind' is about, that it would be really nice to not have this kind of anxiety, doubt and these feelings that come over me that I can't control. But when I listen to it, it's one of the most fun songs on the EP as well. It makes me feel like you know, there's always a way to spin the negative, to make something positive out of them."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_4Cb1BRKwg

With their newest release (albeit a short one) now out in the open and Mikaila back on the mend following health complications, Yours Truly are gearing up to take their newest collection of songs on the road, kicking off with a short stint of acoustic sets up and down the east coast next month. Following that, they'll be jetsetting Stateside in September to entertain US fans alongside I Prevail, Pierce the Veil and Fit For a King before bunking down in the New Year to put all their focus and newfound self-expressions into album number two.

However, if there's any message Yours Truly want you to take from their latest release, it's that it's time to cut the hallucinations and shed the fakeness out of social media, and get people talking about the stuff that matters:

"Honesty is really nice because it allows people to relate and not feel so ashamed about the things that they might not like about themselves. I think it's time we all stop pretending to use social media as this outlet to create a life where people paint a fabricated version of themselves that isn't real. I mean, if that's what makes people feel good about themselves, then that's absolutely awesome. But I feel like it's time that we start getting a little bit more real and talk about the real important things."

Interview By Tamara May @citylightstam

Yours Truly's new EP, is this what i look like? is out now through UNFD.
Grab it here

Yours Truly – is this what i look like? tracklisting:

1. Walk Over My Grave
2. Bruises (Feat. Drew York)
3. Careless Kind
4. is this what i look like?
5. Hallucinate (Feat. Josh Franceschi)
6. If You’re Drowning (I’ll Learn How To Hold My Breath)
7. Lights On

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZS-H4vI7VM