Interview: Good Looks

on being part of a tradition

Tyler’s playlist tracks’ positions are matched to their order on their respective albums. This is the most interesting interpretation of my playlist prompt I’ve seen so far.

Good Looks was the first band I sought out to interview without a prior connection or a specific angle for Record Store, just because I liked their music so much. They put out some of my favorite singles of this year before I spoke with frontman Tyler Jordan in May, and have since released a truly excellent sophomore record, Lived Here For A While (2024).

Like many other people, I first heard about the band because of the many tragedies that befell them in 2022 around the release of their debut album Bummer Year: guitarist Jake Ames was hit by a car after their release show and their tour van went up in flames in the first days of their summer tour. So much of the coverage around the record shifted to discussion around Ames’ miraculous but difficult recovery, the crowdfunding campaign for the tour van, and the band’s bad, bad luck; Bummer Year was overshadowed by Good Looks’ bummer year. “In some ways, it doesn’t have anything to do with us except for the perseverance,” Tyler mused, when I asked him what he really wanted people to know about them, after their public introduction was commandeered by their challenges. “But I don’t know that I have another story I want to tell.”

Tyler is a measured, thoughtful person. His answers to my questions come after silent consideration, and on my little laptop screen I can see him thinking, thinking. Cursory searching indicates that he mostly takes the Good Looks interviews alone, and often acts as their sole PR representative. He seems to take this role seriously, indicating carefully when he speaks for himself and when he speaks for the band. He corrects me kindly when I bake incorrect assumptions into the questions, and is attentive to their specificity and scope, asking for clarification before he answers.

The straightforwardness with which he approaches the interview makes sense: “I’m reluctantly creative,” he tells me, “I’m more left-brained than right-brained, and songs are really structured; they have a formula to them.” I see this structure most clearly in the narrative songs, like “Broken Body”, in which Tyler tells a story with a clear beginning, middle, and end. “All my writing is really literal. I’m just talking about what’s around me.”

Good Looks’ lyrics have a strong dose of small-town Texas, in different shades of reality and nuance. Tyler tells me a bit about various regions: the Gulf Coast (where he’s from), Austin (“where the deep south meets the south west”), West Texas (the region that inspired the song “Balmorhea”)--“Texas is just so huge, there are so many cultural differences.” Whereas Bummer Year spoke directly to the political, cultural, and social landscape of Good Looks’ Texas, Lived Here For A While is more personal, delving deeper into individual relationships as well. Lead single “If It’s Gone” is especially interesting in this aspect, as it retains the sense of place present in all of Tyler’s writing while taking a more personal tone; it’s as if this physicality is inseparable from the relationship itself:

Say goodbye, it’s nice to meet you

Yes, I’ve lived here for a while

Tyler identifies as a socialist, and used to be a dues-paying member of the Trotskyist group that founded Haymarket Books. “With working a regular job and doing music, there’s very little time for political work,” he admitted, “So I resolved to write more political music.” Songs like “White Out” and “Vultures” address the political landscape directly, but the rest of the album reveals in glimpses details from his experiences. He promotes socialist causes online and on tour, and allows local DSA chapters to table at Good Looks shows. “Some of my favorite art describes the system in a poetic way,” he says, citing Steinbeck’s discussion of capitalism in The Grapes of Wrath, “I want to be a part of that tradition.”

The personal and political are intertwined for Tyler. “I write a lot of relationship songs,” he explains–songs about his ex-girlfriend, his current partner, his friends, his mom. These relationships have context and depth, which make the songs feel lived-in, but the stories are sometimes cleverly obscured by their specificity, secrets only he gleans from the lyrics. “This is really a pandemic record,” Tyler tells me. “The songs have a lot of space and time to think about all these different things.” He smiles when I ask about “Vaughn”, the record’s most upbeat track, and my personal favorite.

In a year when everything’s going wrong

I’m so glad that I met you, Vaughn

“I watched a Leonard Cohen documentary with my partner and got a classical guitar,” he remembers, “I feel like every instrument makes you write differently, and this guitar sounded better when I used bar chords. ‘Vaughn’ is poppier because it just sounded so nice to play like that.” He pauses. “I also haven’t historically written that many love songs. ‘Vaughn’ is pure joy of the moment, and being really happy to be where you are.”

zoom outtake

Listen to Lived Here For A While and catch the band on tour.