New West began as a band without a plan. The Toronto quartet prefers to think of itself as a collaborative collective that fuses myriad inspirations—whether alt-rock, modern R&B, or soulful piano balladry—into pristine pop songs. But to many listeners, they became known first and foremost as the folky troubadours behind the 2019 hit “Those Eyes,” a tender acoustic serenade that imagined Chris Martin curled up in Bon Iver’s cabin. Certainly, that song’s viral success could’ve provided this open-ended project with a proven formula to replicate. But when it came time to produce their debut full-length, Based on a True Story…, New West weren’t about to let millions of streams, major festival bookings, and Jimmy Kimmel appearances disrupt their free-flowing chemistry. “You don’t want to keep chasing what has already worked,” multi-instrumentalist Ben Key tells Apple Music. “You want to still be able to make music the way that allowed it to work in the first place.” Or as bandmate Kala Wita puts it: “Our ambitions lie in finding the next most exciting thing.” So, instead of trying to stoke the campfire embers of “Those Eyes,” Based on a True Story… refashions New West as the last Britpop band standing, complete with Wembley-sized sing-alongs, bittersweet-symphonic soundscapes, and overt “Live Forever” shout-outs. But given their backgrounds in pop and R&B production, New West filter their ’90s influences through a distinctly 2023 lens. “We’re all super inspired by the music that was coming out of Britain back in the day, be it Oasis, Travis, Keane, Coldplay, or Blur,” Key admits. “But if something feels classic, we try to bring in a more contemporary sound. And if a song feels contemporary in its lyricism, then maybe we try to go less contemporary with the production, so we’re always walking that line between classic and fresh.” Here, Key and Wita provide their track-by-track guide to getting the balance right. “Main Character” Kala Wita: “Everyone kept telling us, ‘Your music made me feel like I’m the main character in a movie.’ None of our songs have actually been in a movie. So, now we’re just like, ‘OK, how more obvious can we get here? This is supposed to be in a movie, so put it in a fucking movie!’ The whole idea of this album was kind of like, we’ve been holding the camera, and now we’re turning it onto ourselves, so this song really sets the scene for that. At the end, we thought it’d be cool to have, like, a David Attenborough-style voiceover. If we’re like the animals in this documentary, we definitely want the right voice to set the tone and narrate the story for us.” “Cold Tea” KW: “There’s that line: ‘You say you miss the old me.’ After listening to that, someone said to me, ‘Do you feel like you can’t relate to your friends anymore?’ But it doesn’t really mean that to me personally; it wasn’t written in direct reference to the medium-sized success that we’ve had. It was more about the petty bullshit that happens in relationships.” “Based on a True Story” KW: “A lot of our songs take months to take shape. And this song was very different when it started—we tried all these different versions. We had just finished this one, and we were driving around LA, and we gave it the ol’ car test. And with the sun and the hills and the people and the scenery all around us, we were just like, ‘This is the one!’” “Death Proof” KW: “The four of us are going through similar transitions in the relationships that we have or have had during this process, and obviously, the trite thing to say is that you lose a lot of people along the way, just in terms of paths changing and whatnot. But it is true: It’s a very real thing. People that you really thought were gonna stick around, they somehow feel like they don’t fit in anymore, or they’ve just changed, or you’ve changed. It’s interesting to see who’s still around, and it’s usually not who you’d expect, and it’s usually not who you started with. That’s what ‘Death Proof’ summed up at the beginning of this takeoff process.” “Homecoming” and “In My City” Ben Key: “Even though ‘Homecoming’ and ‘In My City’ weren’t written to be back to back, they did become this perfect marriage. ‘Homecoming’ is about being away and constantly going through these changes, and obviously, everyone gets homesick. And then, we go right into ‘In My City,’ which is this anthem that says there’s nothing like being home with your friends and your family in your city.” “Movie for No Reason” BK: “This is a really good follow-up to ‘In My City.’ You miss home, you come home…and then you go party with your friends!” “How You Been Lately” KW: “This song predates a lot of the other songs on this album. I think it came out of 2021-2022—that later stage of COVID. And it was kind of a letter to all of our friends that we weren’t seeing at the time. The common theme among all these interactions or semi-interactions during that time were like, ‘Dude, how you been?’ There’s a line in the song that goes, ‘It’s been a minute since we’ve been dancing/And the radio ain’t playing your song no more.’ At the time, we were really trying to get radio play, because they stopped playing one of our songs. And we were just like, ‘We need radio play!’” “IYKYK” BK: “This was another one that we really figured out in LA. It was initially a beautiful piano ballad—it didn’t have the energy that it has now. But we were just like, ‘Oh, we already have the piano ballad of this album with “Retrograde,”’ and we wanted to find a home for this. So, we kind of caught a vibe in LA, made the record, and then did the car-bump on the way to the studio the next day, and we were like, ‘Oh, shit—this is what this song needs to be!’” “Retrograde” BK: “I think ending with a ballad is always a really nice way to go out. I find it just really allows you to take in what you just listened to.” KW: “We struggled with this a bit, because it could have become super grandiose at the end. We tried putting drums and all different things in there to make it sound a little bit bigger, but the song really had to speak for itself and needed room to breathe, and for that reason, it really suited the end of the album. It’s a chance to exhale.”