The night before the Exies released their new EP, Closure, frontman Scott Stevens walked the Loudwire Nights audience through it, track-by-track.
“These are six songs that all have meaning to them,” Stevens told host Chuck Armstrong on Thursday night (June 27). “It’s just crazy. I mean, I’m talking to the guys [in the band] and everybody’s just kind of scratching their head a little bit. How did we get here?”
The Exies haven’t released a collection of new songs since 2007’s full-length, A Modern Way of Living With the Truth, their fourth album. Since then, Stevens has remained busy as a songwriter, collaborator and producer, but a few years ago, something surprised him as he was writing a song that would eventually become the EP’s third track, “s.A.D.”
“Everything being turned on its head and wanting change was the thing of that song,” Stevens said as he reflected on being inspired by the global pandemic from a few years ago.
“There’s a line that says ‘dreaming of a future that I’ll never have,’ you know? But the days are getting brighter.”
Stevens admitted that writing that song led to him writing the first official Exies song that was released in nearly 15 years, 2023’s “Spirits High.”
“Without that song,” he said about “s.A.D.,” ‘Spirits High’ would not exist.”
In addition to “Spirits High” and “s.A.D.,” Closure features four more new songs from the Exies, each telling a story of the last several years and each tying together this theme of confronting the darkness of the world while longing for some sense of hope.
“We all look for things to lift us,” Stevens said. “It’s a balance. Not everything is glory all the time. Sometimes you gotta face up to that and I think that the songs don’t try to sugarcoat it.”
Stevens calls these new songs “good medicine.”
“It lets you know that I’m feeling what you feel and I hope you’re feeling what I feel.”
As for the future of the Exies, Stevens is focusing solely on the moment, because he never thought he’d be here talking about new music from the band he founded in Los Angeles in 1997.
“I have a wishlist in my head that I’m trying to manifest by putting it out there,” he admitted. “I am talking to my management team — we’re trying to put it together. We’re trying to make sense of how do we play more shows, how do we do this cost effectively … We’re trying to figure it out.”
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There’s no question that Closure is a welcomed starting point for whatever the future holds for the Exies. These six songs will no doubt remind fans of the music they fell in love with in the late-’90s and mid-’00s while giving them a fresh, hopeful sense of what’s to come.
As Stevens and Chuck wrapped their conversation, he confessed he’s still not sure how he feels about being in a place celebrating new music from the Exies.
“This is all so surreal to me. I can’t believe that I’m here. The band was the thing that I loved so much and it was so hard to say goodbye to it or just stop — we never broke up. We just stopped … I hope you find yourself in [this new EP] somehow and can relate to this. From the dark to the light — try to find the hope.”
What Else Did the Exies’ Scott Stevens Discuss on Loudwire Nights?
How imagining Lzzy Hale singing helped him finish the EP’s title track, “Closure”Why he wanted Closure to loosely follow the five stages of griefWhat it felt like to play the Exies’ recent reunion show at the Viper Room in Los Angeles
Listen to the Full Interview in the Podcast Player Below
Scott Stevens joined Loudwire Nights on Thursday, June 27; the show replays online here, and you can tune in live every weeknight at 7PM ET or on the Loudwire app; you can also see if the show is available on your local radio station and listen to interviews on-demand.
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