Boston alternative-rock band unleash the feel-bad hit of the summer with an exuberant new single soundtracking our life choices out Friday, June 26
Every year around this time, music blogs and social media posts are flooded with open-ended queries about the “song of the summer.” There seem to be fewer and fewer obvious entries as we entrench ourselves in a dark period of American fascism, but perhaps a pop star will throw down an infectious bop to soundtrack our trips to the beach, or maybe a rock band will provide some much-needed levity with a surface-level power ballad that takes our minds away from the horrors of the real world.
TELL doesn’t pay much attention to these things, but the outspoken and opinionated Boston alternative rock band may find themselves in the middle of the conversation with “Hate Yourself in the Morning,” an immediate contender for the feel-bad hit of the summer that crashes the streams on Friday, June 26.
Because especially in this difficult and stressful 2026, even something like the usually superficial song of the summer sweepstakes needs to have a dose of cruel reality injected into it.
And that’s where “Hate Yourself in the Morning” truly shines, taking TELL’s gritty and gravelly resistance rock ethos and applying a slick modern rock and power-pop polish to it that shapes one of the most infectious earworms to come out of the Boston scene in a hot minute.
It retains TELL’s penchant for confident, confrontational rock and roll bangers, but adds a jovial bounce fit for trips both to the beach and the local protest down the street, all while we’re busy reflecting on the life choices we made along the way.
“Lyrically I was just having fun with imagery, although I tend towards the dark side!” says TELL frontman David Wildman. “It tells the story of a relationship where one member chooses the nasty with someone who has a bad reputation, and the other realizes this and warns them that what they are getting themselves into will end things. And then it does.”
“Hate Yourself in the Morning” is the follow-up to the band’s brazen, politically-charged fall release “Things To Do When It’s Dark,” a brooding anti-I.C.E. anthem that received the Rick Berlin-directed video treatment earlier this year, where the band was tracked, followed, and apprehended by I.C.E. agents through Lowell neighborhoods. And it’s part of a wave of new material that will deliver a new single in September, and an album, the follow-up to 2024’s Life in Reverse, by year’s end.
TELL, with Wildman (guitar, lead vocals, keyboards) rounded out by Jim Foster (lead guitar, backing vocals); Jason Raffi (bass); and Pat Crann (drums), are excited to play this new one live across a series of upcoming summer shows, including the single release party on June 26 at Warp & Weft in Lowell, and then July 2 at O’Brien’s Pub in Allston, and August 8 at The Midway Cafe in Jamaica Plain.
Attending any of those rock shows won’t make a person hate themselves in the morning, but TELL understand that what happens during the overnight usually shapes how we feel when the sun rises, even though the band is eager to allow anyone to apply their own interpretation to the song.
“The song can also, of course, be a metaphor for anything you do that you know you are going to regret the next day,” Wildman adds, “from doomscrolling all night to eating whoopie pies at 3 a.m. I’ve done both of these.”
Recorded by Benny Grotto at Mad Oak Studio in Allston, Massachusetts and produced by Wildman, “Hate Yourself in the Morning” does not carry the social activist extremism of “Things To Do When It’s Dark,” which was released at the height of I.C.E. surges across American communities.
But it does pack the same type of sonic punch, and there is a connective tissue of a world-view seen through the TELL lens. It finds the foursome having more fun than before, as a relentless melody is buoyed by a taunting “na-na-na”, jittery handclaps, slashing dual guitars, and wobbly basslines.
“We wanted to follow up ‘Things to Do When It’s Dark’ with something a little less abrasive and fraught,” adds Foster. “This one’s more straightforward and listener-friendly – although admittedly the mildly hostile title might lead one to quite naturally suspect otherwise. ‘Dark’ was, due to the subject matter, extremely downbeat — but this new one’s fun!”
“Hate Yourself in the Morning” began with a simple riff Wildman brought to the band one day, and from there the band completed the arrangements – Crann’s Keith Moon-inspired drumming; Foster’s Neil Young-fueled guitarwork in tandem with Wildman’s; and Raffi “borrowing” from Television’s “Marquee Moon,” but shifting the guitar parts into basslines. Harmonies in the chorus give it stadium-sized rock and roll ambition, Wildman’s world-weariness vocals adding some cautious concern, and the whole thing feels like several different songs at once.
And because of that, it sounds precisely like TELL, which since pandemic-era debut EP Stir Crazy, have been slowly cultivating a sound that blends the dark with the light, tackling grim topics of our daily life with an upbeat sonic force that overwhelms.
Raffi calls it “upbeatitude,” and the band credits the harder edge and more aggressive attitude coming through as a result of a band now fully-formed while they together watch the world burn around them. Foster and Crann joined the band around the release of Life in Reverse, and these new songs are the first to feature all members as contributors.
“For me, it’s our strongest song out of the new batch,” Raffi adds. “‘Things To Do When It’s Dark’ is also a great song, but that definitely had current events bumping it up to the top of the release queue. This was a song that had been kicking around for a while as an idea before we finally fleshed it out. It’s a new creative input pool with Jim and Patrick in the mix.”
And that makes for one potent sonic cocktail, even as the band explores some new musical territory.
“This song is more riff-based than our prior releases, which means that structurally it’s designed to relentlessly batter the brain of the listener with a simple repeated pattern until you think it’s cool,” Foster says with a laugh. “The song does incorporate some sonic embellishments that take it in a somewhat different direction for us. In addition to our standard racket we’ve got handclaps, a chanting nonsense syllable chorale, call and response vocals on the chorus, etc.”
He adds: “These are elements that could potentially be considered ‘poppy’ in the hands of a less frantic outfit, but with us it still sounds like TELL… but maybe a little more danceable.”
“Hate Yourself in the Morning” may or may not become the song of the summer, but it catches the frayed social zeitgeist quite perfectly – a loud and noisy racket that sounds better the louder it plays, surveying a wasteland of society and how all that we do in one moment helps shape how we feel in the next.
Song of the summer? Who knows. The feel-bad hit of the summer? That feels more appropriate.
But in the end, it’s just TELL doing TELL things, one cutting riff, one bellowing melody, one blast of social commentary at a time.
“Each song has its own distinct vibe and tonal color, and they all showcase the sound of the current band, which is starting to jell into something powerful, more experimental and maniacal,” Wildman concludes. “There’s a looseness that has been developing, where the whole thing has the sense that it could fall apart at any moment, and yet it rushes forward like a tank where the driver has had one too many.”
And how we feel about it in the morning is distinctly up to the listener.
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TELL is:
Jim Foster: Lead guitar, backing vocals
David Wildman: Guitar, lead vocals, keyboards
Jason Raffi: Bass
Pat Crann: Drums
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‘Hate Yourself in the Morning’ production credits:
Written by David Wildman
Performed by TELL
Produced by David Wildman
Recorded with Benny Grotto at Mad Oak Studio in Allston, MA
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