Photos by Monty Hamm and Dutch Doscher.
“We don’t play, we work.”
Jim Morrison’s infamous declaration to Eve Babitz came to mind while speaking with Jackson Hamm, the magnetic and mercurial frontman of Telescreens. Hamm’s own musical commitment is no less rigorous — deliberate in its construction, yet unflinchingly sincere.
“Let me feel something new, please God.”
This was Hamm’s impassioned reply to Kareem Rahma on “Subway Takes” this past September, when asked whether he cared about the long-awaited Oasis reunion. (He doesn’t.) But the question lingers: when was the last time he felt something new?
It depends.
His lyrics hint at a restless imagination in full flight — crowded beds, stylish deaths, a refusal to tire — images that flirt with euphoria. But beneath the shimmering synths and racing tempos lies something darker: the sensation of bleeding out, storms of psychic torment, a long fall through the sky. The result is a body of work that plays like a paradox — part playground, part battleground.
Most recently, it was Wunderhorse’s “Midas” that caught his ear. “I just listened to their new album yesterday,” Jackson told me, “and I was fucking blown away.”
We meet one gray February afternoon — luckily, too, as he’d accidentally double-booked. With a leather jacket zipped over a Beatles tee, there’s an unstudied, just-rolled-out-of-bed ease about him. His tangle of curls further evokes Morrison; his gait, Liam Gallagher. At times, his speech even flares with a Gallagher-esque drawl — elongated vowels, “sunshiiiine”-style intonations. But even in the moments that feel off-the-cuff, there’s a clarity of intent. Jackson is nothing if not deliberate — or, as he puts it: “massively” spiritual.
“I really do fundamentally believe in the collective unconscious,” he said. “This new album I’m writing is called ‘Why the Lights Flicker.’ The lights used to flicker in my house whenever I’d write a song — and I mean it. Whenever a song would come to me, you feel like a tsunami is coming and all the energy in the room rushes away and silence is suddenly upon you, and you pick up a guitar, press [record on] the voice memos, and suddenly a song appears out of thin air — with rhyme schemes, ideas, and messages that you don’t even know…”
He went on: “Music, in my opinion, all comes from the well of human energy. An artist is just a vessel for this well. Everything is about God or this collective unconscious, and a journey — through hardship or love — to find purity. Everything is fleeting, and all of my songs are about the desire of achieving peace.”
It was August 2016 when Hamm landed in New York, fresh from Los Angeles by way of London, to attend the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music at NYU. His arrival marked the beginning of what would become Telescreens, formed in 2018 alongside Josiah Valerius, Austin Brenner, and Oliver Graf. The band’s sound — a fusion of reverb-soaked nostalgia and forward-facing rock — is anachronistic by design. Ambient synths bleed into churning basslines; analog warmth is met with a digital edge. Their debut album, “The Return” (2020), established the band’s sonic DNA: brooding, expansive, slightly unhinged, but grounded by an undercurrent of melancholy and introspection.
“The Return” may have catapulted them from the NYU house show scene into the larger spotlight, but it was their stage presence that solidified their reputation. In the years since, they’ve played festival staples like Governor’s Ball, Austin City Limits, and Bonnaroo. Last fall, they sold out Irving Plaza.
Subsequent releases “Stare Wide” and “7” only deepened their signature. Jackson has tattoos for both — a mark of commitment, or maybe communion. Across their catalog, Telescreens toggles between poles: noise and stillness, doom and euphoria, the sacred and profane. Even their name is a study in subversion — borrowed from George Orwell’s “1984,” Hamm reimagines the telescreen, once a symbol of state surveillance, as a vessel for emotional release. What was once invasive becomes immersive.
At the time of our meeting, I had yet to see Telescreens live, and Jackson’s surprise at this is unforgiving. This wouldn’t do, so he invited me their upcoming set at Brooklyn Paramount, where they were opening for Franz Ferdinand. A Telescreens show is no passive affair — it’s a heady, high-volume twisting thrill of light, sound, and sweat. It’s also, perhaps, the clearest window into Hamm’s artistic world: unfiltered, unrelenting, and always reaching for something more.
What follows is our conversation, condensed and edited.
MONDAY, 1:00 PM, FEBRUARY 17, 2025, DOWNTOWN MANHATTAN
Charlotte: Where do you feel most at home?
Jackson: Honestly, I feel most at home on stage. I feel ridiculously comfortable the second I walk on stage, I feel so good. As long as I have the boys with me, yeah. At a live show, people are paying their hard earned money to see you play music, and something about that relinquishing of ‘whatever happens happens, and we just have to go for it,’ I love that. I love pressure.
Charlotte: Are you a risk-taker?
Jackson: Every single second of my life. I’m always all-in on myself. I always feel like I’m going to figure it out and I don’t know how… I go into something knowing I’m going to try my fucking best. I know that I’ll live with failure if I tried my best.
Charlotte: Would you ever put out a live album?
Jackson: I’d love to, we’re gonna. I think we’re going to record [our next show at] Irving Plaza.
Charlotte: When you’re on stage, do you feel like you play a character? Or are you even more yourself?
Jackson: The best shows I ever play, I don’t remember at all. I black out, fully. All I remember is how happy I am.
Charlotte: Do you remember your first lyric you were proud of?
Jackson: I was six years old and I wrote a song called “I Wanna Rock n’ Roll.” The chorus was: “I wanna rock rock rock n’ roll.” And I was stoked on that.
Charlotte: Why did you title your debut album “The Return”?
Jackson: It’s about a guy, the protagonist, who leaves Earth to go search for God and ask him the meaning of life. He finds God and asks him the sacred questions, and on his way back [to Earth], he dies. The whole album is about how he’s going on this cursed journey, and the mystical creatures are telling him he won’t return. And in the first song, he tells them, “I will return.”
Charlotte: Do you have a favorite recording memory?
Jackson: So many… We spend all of our time in the studio… We are studio junkies. The best memories of my life are between the stage and the studio. Just being with Josiah, Austin, and Oliver. What comes to mind is a recent thing in May when we recorded “Nothing,” which is our next single, and I felt like a 10-year-old kid running through a field. We [took] notes after every take, and the notes I had for one of these takes was: “Frolicking through a field.” In the end, that’s the take we ended up choosing. It made me feel like I was butt-ass naked frolicking through a field. That’s about as happy as you can get.
Charlotte: If a filmmaker were to make a montage of your creative process, what would it show?
Jackson: That’s a good question… Probably me playing guitar, playing somebody else’s song, starting to fuck it up, starting to change it, then something randomly happens, another thing happens, all of the sudden a riff happens, and then a song happens.
Charlotte: What’s the best piece of advice someone has offered you that you’ve used?
Jackson: That’s a tough one. Alex Tumay, our mixing engineer who’s kind of like my big brother, teaches me a lot about everything… The thing he’s always about is: ‘Don’t compare your shit to anything. You know what you like, and the only thing you should care about is if you like it.’ Which I don’t often listen to. I do step around in the paradox of comparisons a lot. Like, does “Nothing” sound as good as “Smells Like Teen Spirit”? If it doesn’t, it’s not done.
Charlotte: And advice you haven’t followed?
Jackson: There are a lot of people in the music industry who want you to make things digestible. I feel like if your destiny is to make things digestible, then you will. You can’t try to make anything [sound] like anything, it won’t work.
Charlotte: What’s something new you hope listeners feel from your music?
Jackson: I don’t know what I want anyone to feel. I am so baffled every time I receive a message [about what the album means to them]. Every single time I receive something like that, it just blows my mind. I’m like, ‘Wow, I can’t believe anyone else likes this.’ I guess, simply, if they feel a little bit better. That’s it. Or a lot better, but at least a little better. Then we’ve done our job. And if you come to the show, I hope you feel a lot better.
