Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs Is Now Just TEED & His Gorgeous New Album Is an Apology

It’s a rainy afternoon in Los Angeles, and listening to the new TEED album during a crosstown drive shapes the grey into a moody ambience, like melancholy laced with longing and a beat, with the cumulative effect making even the stop/start traffic feel vibey.

“To me, it’s romantic,” TEED himself says upon sitting down at a Hollywood lunch spot, where he orders a turkey club and black tea. Dressed for the weather in jeans and a brown leather jacket, he looks like a colder-climate version of the character he’s been channeling in the promo materials for his third album, Always With Me — out Friday (Dec. 5) via The Orchard and his own label, Nice Age.

In these music videos and IG posts, he plays a sort of serious man on vacation, with imagery finding him in beachy locations gazing seriously towards the sea. The aesthetic is a sort of adult take on the summer vacations the Los Angeles-based, U.K.-born artist, whose real name is Orlando Higginbottom, took as a child, when his big family piled in the car and drove to France, where his mother is from.

“We’d take two days to get there, and I’d have my headphones on for two days, and it would be like my own little hero’s journey, this sort of transformation,” he says. “I’d be in the mountains for a month, and my imagination would go off… Lots of dreaming happened on holiday.” Years later and thousands of miles away, he’s tried weaving the afterglow of these memories into the album’s 11 tracks and, through them, passing the feeling forward: “I hope that it’s dreamy for people,” he says, “and that it makes them daydream.”

The music is transportive, and in a more practical sense it’s also helped deliver Higginbottom’s project to its latest incarnation, with the artist long known as Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs now just going by TEED. The way he tells it the decision was both natural — a lot of people have always just called him TEED anyways — and a function of a more adult hero’s journey that’s brought him through the mad success of his 2012 debut, Trouble, through the strange wilderness of the music industry and his subsequent rejection of it, with a decade passing between Trouble and its 2022 followup, When The Lights Go. Amid it all there were “some real low points,” sobriety achieved during the pandemic, and now, a new body of work.

Always With Me comes at moment when the music industry is distinctly different from the era in which TEED started releasing music. “I think strategy has become as much of a conversation, if not more of a conversation, than the actual art,” he says. “Everyone is a marketing expert. We’re watching the marketing as art now, which is really funny. It’s really strange. I don’t like it. We’re clapping for people’s strategy. Can we just listen to the song and applaud that?”

But now older and wiser — and settled into nice working relationships with The Orchard, through which he releases music, and his team at Jet Management (a place he calls “calm”) — one gets the sense that TEED is watching it all now with a sort of distanced amusement that’s created the space for him to make the stylish and thoughtful songs that make up his new album. While he confesses he’s “failed completely” at making a club record, he’s making it work on the road, with his current headlining tour taking him across the U.S. until Dec. 20 and picking up in Australia around the new year.

Below, he talks about it all.

Your new album is really gorgeous. What is it about?

It’s a less self-involved record than the last one. There’s a bit of course-correction, in a way. I often wonder if we all just make records to apologize for the last one we put out. I feel like that’s partly what’s going on here. I wanted to make something lighter, warmer, less heavy, a more enjoyable listen. I realized that actually, what I asked from people listening to the last one was like, “Do you want to come down to my murky, sad little cabin with me and listen to my sadness?”

Is that what you’re apologizing for?

Kind of. I wanted to do something that was a nicer listen, basically, so you start from that point of view. It was less self-involved in my present — I was thinking about long-gone past things… You explore ideas, but it’s how those ideas make you feel. So I was thinking about a thing, then about how that thing makes me feel. Then I made the music. So it’s not like I put the actual idea I was thinking about directly into the music, it’s the secondary feeling.

Break that down a bit for me.

One of the things I’ve been slightly obsessing about is the tone of an emotion. My version of the blues is different from your version of the blues. We both had a first experience with the romantic blues at some point in our lives, and a pin got set in the ground and in our emotional map. For me, the color of that first experience has resonated all the way through my life. And it’s so bizarre, because your first experience of the blues might be so different, or it might be the same. I just don’t know.

But a lot of these big first romantic feelings and awakenings, I realized, happened during summer holidays. So this is the through line. Once I started thinking about it, I was like, “This is the world I’m going to build, and I’m going think about this, and I’m going angle things that are a bit over here a bit more towards this.” So some theme appears slowly, and then I go, “That’s what I’m gonna do.” So there’s, like, 60% of a record that looks a bit like that, and then I push everything else in that direction.

I was wondering where this kind of “sad guy on vacation” aesthetic that’s present in the rollout materials came from.

[Laughs.] If I could present as happy, believe me, I would, but it is almost impossible for me. I mean, like, I’m smiling at the moment — because this is a nice natural thing for me to do — but if you put a camera in front of me, I can’t do it.

Why?

I don’t know. Because I’m British? I just present as disappointed. I think I have resting disappointment face.

There were 10 years between your first two albums, then three years between this one and the last one. Tell me about that timeline, and if there was anything to that longer gap and then this shorter one.

Well, the longer gap is difficult for me to talk about, because it was just s–tty. I guess I lost my way, got pretty depressed for a bit, couldn’t figure out the music industry, was very confused by my first experience with my first album and the success of that. I didn’t have the means to understand that it was successful and how far it had gone. I didn’t have any perspective on it.

Why?

I was either unable to hear what people were saying to me, or no one said the right things to me. I was just like, “F–k this. I want to disappear for a bit.” I’d had a weird time releasing with Universal, like everyone does. Then I sort of spiraled for a long time. I was having a reasonable time, but it was also very hard, and there were some real low points. I found my way out, basically, thanks to the pandemic and thanks to a stubbornness and sort of “f–k it” attitude, which I managed to pick back up again. I’d always had that when I was growing up, then suddenly it was knocked out of me somehow.

What did the “f–k it” attitude turn into caring too much?

You just lose it. You lose the sparkiness. You lose the silliness. You have to be goofy to survive this thing. There has to be a little bit of “Well, who cares?” But it all became too serious, and too big and too heavy. I went round and met all the managers at one point when I didn’t have management. I knew enough about the music industry to know that everyone was lying to me at a certain point in the conversation. Nice people, but they all bulls–tted me. So I was like, “Well, I’m not gonna work with any of you guys. This is depressing.” There’s a sort of learning curve in the game.

So what did you do?

It definitely helped that I sobered up in 2020 or 2021. I got that album out, self-released it, worked with The Orchard, which actually changed my whole thing, because I was the record label. They were super supportive. They gave me the marketing money I needed to do everything. So actually, I found a version of the music industry that made me feel safe, and it was [The Orchard]. I love them; I’m working with them again on this record. They love me, it’s great. They haven’t made any money out of me, but they’re supportive, and they know they will one day, or they think they will one day.

Can you give me an example of a lie someone told you, in all those conversations with potential management?

Who their clients are, who they manage. They lie about what kind of deals they’ve gotten for people. They’ll lie about the people they know. They’ll say, “Oh, I’m best friends with this person.” It’s like, “I know that person very well.” I’d call them afterwards like “Do know this manager?” “No, met him once four years ago.” Where I’m at now, I see it very clearly, and I can kind of find my way through it. But at the time, because I was in a very vulnerable place, I was like, “No, I can’t be around this thing.”

So you kind of rejected the whole thing.

I kind of rejected the whole thing. I could go on about that whole thing for a long time. It was lost years, in a way. There were definitely albums I made that never came out. I was always making music. It wasn’t a creative block. It was like the final action of putting music out was the hard thing.

Was there a turning point?

I had a birthday in 2018, and a friend texted me that day and said, “Do something for yourself today.” I was like, “I’m going to put some music out.” I’d been into every room I wanted to go into with these two unreleased songs I had. Everyone wanted to hear them, and I just put one of them up on SoundCloud that day. The artwork was me eating a banana in the mirror.

That was a huge release for me, personally — because I’d been holding on, and I put it out, and people loved it. I went out that day and partied with my friends, and I got home and realized that I’d released music again, after not putting anything out for five years. I just burst into tears for hours. It was great. It was just like, “Oh, here we are. That’s what I that’s what I’m supposed to do. I’m supposed to put stuff out, whether I’m sure of it or not.”

So the actual like time spent making the music for this new album, set that scene for me. Was there a typical sort of day?

My ideal day is that I get up, immediately go and listen to what I did the day before, have a coffee, then go do some exercise and spend the rest of the day making music. I love that, and it doesn’t go unappreciated. I’m so grateful that that’s what I get to do a lot of the time. Because of the relative success of the project, I can afford to do that and take time. That’s a big factor in this industry now: How do you afford to take the time to develop a piece of work? Because everyone is pushing you to put something out. The game is content, content, content, so things are really rushed.

So this was a year or so of making music while I was touring and running around and producing other people’s records, then maybe six months of being very focused on this album. Obviously I’m still traveling and playing at the same time. So maybe three days a week I can do that… And now I’m working on the next one, apologizing for this one. [Laughs.]

What do you think you have to say “sorry” for now?

I don’t know if I should say, but I think it could be cooler. My big revelation about my creative process over the last two weeks is that I have an inner contrarian against my own taste… There is a part of me that goes [gestures towards water glass] “That glass is absolutely perfect. It’s beautiful. That’s exactly how we like a glass.” Then this other part of me goes, “Yeah, but you can’t just do what you like like. Let’s f–k it up a bit. Let’s ruin it 15%”

I think that’s probably what I’m going to be thinking about — can I actually make a record that’s entirely to my taste, without letting contrarian saboteur come in and spoil the elements?

So you’ve been able to identify this voice as a saboteur, versus someone who’s like, nudging you in a particular creative direction?

It’s a saboteur. It’s bad.

That’s great to know, because we all have so many voices in our heads that it can be hard to ascertain what’s true.

I’ve had a Greek chorus of critics for a long time. You know, my enemies. They’re up there, and they’re like, “Haha, this is s–t. You’re an idiot.” I think everyone has that. This one is much closer to me. This is very personal. When I was a kid, my friends would say I was a contrarian, and I think this is where that’s ended up.

I can see how it could be confusing, because the idea it’s giving you isn’t necessarily bad.

Yeah, it’s like, “If it sounds a bit s–t, maybe that’s how it should sound”. And it’s like, “Well, actually, I have a big intellectual, technical part of me that knows I can make that sound better, even closer to perfect.” I’m always trying to get somewhere near that thing. I know how to do that, and I know what it is. Then the saboteur, the contrarian, goes, “Nah, f–k it. F–k it. F–k it!!”

Kind of like a nihilist.

Totally. It’s a defense thing. Like, “Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs.” That was a defense.

Right, so you’ve officially changed your name to TEED. I read in an interview from awhile ago that you chose that first name in an attempt to be outside trends. But it sounds like maybe you have a different perspective now?

No, no, no. That was it, but like, what is that? What is an attempt to be outside of trends? Really, it’s an attempt to not be pinned down, to have an ironic shield against the world. I’m actually pretty grateful for it. I think maybe I wouldn’t be here without it. If I’d been an entirely self-serious artist without humor and without a little silliness, I never would have put anything out. It helps to have a thing where you’re a bit like, “Here’s this thing I really love, but I don’t really mean it.”

So if someone else hates it, it doesn’t hurt you.

Yeah, less so. It’s less harmful. But also, on the trends and the what’s cool/what’s not cool thing, it was nice not to really be part of that, because that’s such a silly, fickle world, and it’s run by about 100 people. I don’t want to give them the keys to my career. And actually, that worked really well. A lot of people just completely ignored me. They didn’t say good things or bad things about me, and that was nice, but I found my audience anyway.

So along with the maturity, I think, comes the feeling that times have changed. Having an ironic outward brand no longer works, because people don’t spend more than half a second assessing your outer brand, as it were… I think within the music and within me, there’s still humor and subversion, but on the surface of it, it’s just TEED, so think whatever you like. It doesn’t mean anything.

Also Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs is a mouthful. Did you ever run into difficulty of it just being like, a lot to get out?

Radio DJs hated it. But actually most of all, I feel bad for fans, because, phonetically it’s horrible to say. As it comes out of your mouth, it is a nasty experience. People who are like, out there telling their friends about my music and that they love it, and I’m putting them through this thing of them wanting to feel cool, telling their friends about cool music, but then I make them say this insanely uncool thing, which… I feel bad about that. So, sorry about that.

Apologizing still!

Always.

You worked on the last SG Lewis album and his Heat EP with Tove Lo, which makes sense as there’s a lot of connective tissue between those projects and your new album. What sonic world do you think you guys are inhabiting?

A lot of people I work with, myself included, I think we’re all trying to do a very similar thing, which is try and merge the body, the physicality of electronic music, with songwriting and the emotional depth of songwriting. Obviously some people have managed to do it very well over the last 40 years. Depeche Mode, or Michael Jackson, or lots of the ’80s U.K. synth wave people. Then you have classic house records from the ’90s and 2000s that really sit in that place where there’s a great song with great lyrics and you can ignite a dance floor. I think there’s certainly an itch there that loads of us are trying to scratch and figure it out. I still haven’t managed to do it.

Do you think you’re getting close?

I don’t know. I enjoy the journey, because then I end up with completely different things and it’s fine… It’s a kind of timeless problem to be staring at.