Creativity Quote by Stephan Jenkins

It’s a line that sounds casual, but it’s really a boundary marker: yes, Jenkins is attracted to the texture of an older aesthetic, but he refuses the job title of Nostalgia Act. In rock culture, “retro” isn’t just a genre tag; it’s a career fate. It implies tribute-band safety, a curated past where the audience already knows when to clap. Jenkins is insisting on the opposite: using familiar sonic DNA without letting it calcify into costume.

The subtext is about legitimacy and risk. Liking “that sound” admits influence, even dependence - a confession that the palette is borrowed. The second clause pivots hard into authorship: influence is allowed, reenactment is not. That tension has been central to alt-rock since the ’90s, when bands were constantly negotiating between classic-rock lineage and the era’s fetish for authenticity. For a frontman often associated with big, radio-polished hooks, this is also a defensive move: he’s preempting the critique that sheen equals throwback, that craft equals conservatism.

The phrasing matters. “Not interested” is cooler than “opposed”; it frames retro as boring rather than immoral. It’s taste, not dogma. And “that sound” stays vague on purpose, letting him claim the emotional payoff of vintage tones (warm guitars, analog grit, big choruses) while keeping the present tense intact. He’s selling forward motion with a rearview mirror in the frame, and daring you to call it recycling.