Interview: Them Airs, Authenticity, and DIY Brutalism

By Contributor – Rebecca Coyne

“Particulates…The National Anthem….COWS!!” Them Airs‘ vocalist Cade Williams’ voice distorts into unintelligible fuzz as he screams over splashing cymbals and disjointed, heavily-processed bass riffs on “Arther,” one of the more experimental interlude-type tracks on the band’s first album of 2020, Union Suit XL.

Based in New Haven, Connecticut, Them Airs is an active member of Connecticut’s distinctive musical subculture. Though some aesthetic and musical through lines are identifiable, DIY in Connecticut is generally defined by self-production in recording and performance methods rather than by common stylistic traits. Adam Cohen, Them Airs bassist, adds that in the New Haven area, DIY music is mainly comprised of “adjacent genres” such as “post-punk, math rock, and noise rock,” which he describes as distinct but in the same general “phylum” of music.

Cohen further observes that suburbia is an important source for fomenting DIY ideologies, laughing, “Suburbs produce a lot of disaffected college-age youth from which the DIY population springs, especially if they have a lot of issues with ‘society.’” Williams and Evan Nork, Them Airs drummer, confirm that, though there is some racial and gender diversity in the scene, the average DIY musician (and audience member) is white, college-age, and male.

Cohen says, “DIY is very low-brow, like ethically and explicitly it’s not high-brow—it’s something that’s supposed to be accessible to everybody.” However, Them Airs expressed some appreciation as well as scorn for institutions like Yale; for instance, Williams muses about the “artsy pretentiousness” that Yale adds to the New Haven area, saying, “Yale is weird, because New Haven wouldn’t be nearly as nice without Yale as it is, however also New Haven wouldn’t be as quote unquote ‘nice’ without Yale.” Regardless, CT DIY operates in a cultural and demographic space that is very much separate from elite institutions of Connecticut such as Yale and Wesleyan. 

All three members of Them Airs described DIY live performance as a matchless, exhilarating, and quasi-spiritual experience, marked by an intense spirit of collective revery. These elements are of course shaped by the volatile, extreme nature of the music, but they are also heavily influenced by the architecture of DIY performance spaces themselves.

Williams explains that, while wide-open spaces allow a performer to distinguish the instruments from each other and to hear the particular sounds of their instrument as distinct from all the rest, “when you’re in like a 10 by 10 underground room with unfinished walls, everything blends together into this incredible sonic mass that just destroys your ears.” “It’s so good,” he adds. “When you’re on the floor with everybody, it feels very communal.”

Them Airs drummer Evan Nork argues that a healthy level of sonic chaos helps him feel more relaxed in live, communal settings: “It’s easier to get lost in it and be less self-conscious…That’s the difference [between] being part of that big sweaty mass as opposed to like recording vocals isolated and having to have everybody leave the room because they’re going to be judging every syllable.” The obscuring and muddying effects of this sonic landscape helps to eliminate individual anxieties about specific parts of the music “sounding good” or being absolutely precise, because a clean, defined sound would be impossible to achieve regardless.

The band’s first album of 2020, Union Suit XL, was released in January 2020. On their website, Nork describes the album as “the first to be recorded in a proper studio environment rather than assorted attics, basements, and college dorm laundry rooms, leading to such benefits as audible kick drum and a piano which has been tuned in less than 15 years”.

As mentioned, the studio provides greater artistic control, allowing separate musical elements to be isolated and manipulated, but its use also begs the question: at some point do increased levels of musical production distance the recorded product from “authentic” DIY? Williams conveys indignation about anyone’s ability to police the boundaries of “authenticity” or to determine what is or is not DIY: “Authenticity is just a fucking meme from generation X back when Nirvana was a thing. Authenticity is just an aesthetic, in the same way that, like, blue is an aesthetic. Like, fuck, who’s to say that Nickelback isn’t more authentic than Them Airs?”

Accordingly, Williams and Nork didn’t see their usage of the studio as any sort of departure from DIY; nevertheless, they were eager to point out the fact that they didn’t have to pay for the space. Nork also defends the continued prominence of their personal roles in the recording process, explaining, “A lot of it is also about marketing and releasing music and we’re still sort of mixing everything ourselves.”

Them Airs’ processes for composition itself, plus the eclectic combinations of musical objects they use, are reflective of an experimental quirkiness found elsewhere in the DIY scene. Them Airs often display an interestingly self-deprecating rhetoric about their music, constantly referring to it as “dumb,” or “inept,” or “dicking around” even as they pour time and energy into its creation and care deeply about its artistic value.

Them Airs – Doped Runner Verse (2020)

A focus on silliness that leads Them Airs’ websites and social media pages to describe the music they supposedly promote as, for instance, “clump-like” or “having been known to kill small dogs” preserves room for the forces of playfulness and absurdity and signals that the band does not take itself too seriously. These playful, impulsive dynamics also saturate the composition process. Williams says, “we spontaneously write riffs, and then we string them together haphazardly in the weirdest ways possible” and Nork adds that even when a band member presents a “fully-formed” idea, “it just becomes like distorted and recycled and digested through our ineptitude.”

Them Airs also includes found sounds, less common instruments, and any other objects that they think sound interesting on their records. For instance, on their Bandcamp page, Cohen’s roles for Union Suit XL are listed as: “bass, toys, croc, accordion, small vocals, modulation nipple on rollin’ bord, vibraslap, sturdy chips, bag fries”. Whereas Nork’s attitude toward musical objects is very nostalgic, Williams’ is more transitory (Cohen attests that “Cade acquires and jettisons gear at insane rates”). He explains that cycling through different types of guitars and other instruments “keeps me on my toes,” inspiring him to write in new ways. Indeed, when asked to pinpoint one instrument he was excited to use, Williams mentions a ring modulator pedal, enthusiastically “It’s the shit, I love it, I’m gonna sell it in six months, but I love it.” In contrast, Nork points to a synthesizer that he inherited when he was seven and only recently wrangled into working condition.

Them Airs – Tiger Blood (2018)

Them Airs draw inspiration from the built environment of New Haven, particularly its brutalist architecture, in their aesthetic as well as musical representations. The cover art for their 2018 album “Tiger Blood” displays a photograph of the George W. Crawford manor, and Cohen noted that other iconic buildings such as the Beinecke Library also influenced the geometric patterns in the cover art for 2019’s “Echo Park Bomb City”.  He further expounds that the “stark lines” of brutalism “looks like some of the stuff that we make sounds—like angular and harsh.” In this way, brutalism as a visual style has influenced the mathematic rhythms as well as pointed tambours of the band’s sound. 

The Beinecke Library, New Haven, CT

On some level, these influences tie Connecticut DIY identity to local landscapes, despite Nork’s description of the scene as occupying an awkwardly “liminal space” between the more established and concentrated musical cultures of Boston and New York. Williams also points out that a feature that differentiates DIY in Connecticut from DIY in other states is the distance travelled and effort taken to participate in live shows, where “you’ll see people from literally an hour away in each direction.”

However, in the DIY scene, this unfocused, decentralized structure has necessitated a greater degree of effort on the part of both performers and audience members to cultivate and maintain their community, resulting in an even closer-knit network. Cohen even postulates that, in contrast to Connecticut, the New York scene lacks the space for “homegrown” music to grow and develop on its own artistic terms: bands only move there once they’ve already “gotten big” elsewhere. Ultimately, Cohen positions the uniqueness and camaraderie of DIY culture in direct opposition to this cultural criticism of Connecticut, arguing, “People rag on it, you know, but at the end of the day most people deep down have some level of pride—[the CT DIY scene] is something that people have a personal stake in, and put work into, and appreciate.”

Listen to Them Airs’ New Album “Doped Runner Verse” on Bandcamp and Spotify below:

Interview: Mandala Find Their Groove on Damsel in Defense

By Sabrina Cofer – Contact Writer

At a split-level home snug in UConn Territory, Waterbury-based Mandala sit with me outside on the strangest makeshift porch I’ve ever seen. There’s a sagging brown couch with green-tinted pillows, a couple of wooden dining room chairs, a faux-leather seated kitchen stool, and an old coffee table in the middle of us. We’re under the second story deck, which gives ceiling space to hang the white Christmas lights, currently unlit.

For the members of Mandala, I’m sure this house-show décor is nothing new. Morgan Fasanelli, vocalist of the group, met Abe Azab, guitarist and vocalist, in high school and hit it off, playing music ever since. “For my whole life, I always just loved singing,” Morgan explains, her neon pink hair and highlighted cheeks acting as bright spots against the graying couch. “I met Abe through musical theater and some other clubs, and we started writing from there.”

Mandala at UCONN Scrabble House in 2017

The two of them began playing as Mandala in 2015, and after several switch-ups in members they currently play as a five-piece with Morgan, Abe, Sean Connelly (drummer), Matt Rosano (bass), and Pat Mulholland (guitar).

Despite the turnover, their current lineup feels solid. “I joined Mandala as a fan,” Sean recounts, leaning forward, his eye contact steady, silver chain peeking out beneath his WHUS t-shirt. “It was the music that I’ve always wanted to play.”

Mandala’s sound is wholeheartedly their own. Self-proclaimed “sad music you can dance to,” they’re labeled as indie-rock with a penchant for guitar solos. Their latest project, Damsel in Defense, is a tight, six-song EP full of hooks, breakdowns, and enough tempo changes to keep you on your toes. 

They’ve always leaned toward catchy songs, but some of their older tracks off Valley People and Cash for Smiles featured more fuzz and sounded a little more “Connecticut emo,” which makes sense, since Morgan and Abe’s original goal with Mandala wasn’t as light as it is now.

“We wanted to be indie,” Abe confesses, sharing a look with Morgan. Morgan shakes her head, laughing. “We wanted to be the indie-est kids you could’ve imagined,” she says. “We grew up in the same time as everybody else, but we’re from a city and went to a pretty diverse public school. We didn’t even know there were other kids playing in bands in Connecticut towns over from us.”

When they learned that the Connecticut scene existed, it broke open their idea of what kind of music they could make. “Whenever people ask me what my influences are, I always say Connecticut music,” Abe explains, his hands folded in front of him, the cross around his neck glinting in the late afternoon light. “My outlook on ‘indie music’ changed completely when I joined this scene. I got to learn that indie music is what you want it to be. It’s an original sound that you’ve created with people who are just trying to do the same thing as you.”

Mandala. Photo Credit: Melinda Nanassy

The sliding porch door suddenly opens, and the guy putting on the show later tonight steps out, freshly baked pizza in hand. They all gasp—this level of hospitality is usually unheard of at a house show—and quickly grab a slice.

As everyone chews, happy with the scent of basil and mozzarella, Morgan clears her throat and speaks: “I still have songs that I listen to on the daily by bands that aren’t together anymore from Connecticut. I was sixteen and listening, and now I’m twenty-one and listening and still am inspired by kids that live a town over from me. From other, normie-ass kids. But I loved their minds. I love what they create.”

Even as staunch supporters of Connecticut music, it’s hard not to notice how different they sound when compared to other CT bands. While most of these bands use distortion or heavier tones, Mandala tends to go brighter, often being told that they have more of a west coast sound. Though their lyrics have themes of heartbreak, regret, or self-doubt, their music is deceptively danceable. Most indie songs coming out of Connecticut encourage plenty of head-nodding, but Mandala wants you to dance. Choosing clean sounds over distorted, full-fledged guitar solos over quick riffs, do they feel different from other bands in their home state?

“We think about it a lot. We’re from Connecticut, we’ve been in Connecticut this whole time and still I wouldn’t say that a lot of bands playing now sound compatible with us,” Morgan says. “Which isn’t a bad thing, all the bands in Connecticut right now are dope. Abe and I just come from a unique background. If you asked a few kids from Waterbury to make a band, and maybe a few kids from Cheshire to make a band, they’d sound like us. But there’s not a lot of kids making music in Waterbury, besides hip hop music.”

Their distinct sound may have also been influenced by how they record. Damsel in Defense was their first time recording in a studio, at Silver Bullet Studios in Burlington, Connecticut. “I think the clean sound came from honing in our tones,” Matt explains, scratching his beard as he speaks. “Sean was able to test out different snare drums, and we had access to new recording gear. We were definitely more true to ourselves on this record, and they blend together when we play it live. Even if one might be grittier than the other, the energy runs together nicely.”

They also may have felt some pressure to step up their production game. Sean confesses that they are notoriously picky when it comes to production; they had three different people mix Damsel before they were satisfied.

“Modern music in 2019 inevitably bleeds into your ears. I think the standards of the music industry are changing in ways that adds a lot of weight to really good, really clean production,” Pat explains, scrunching up his t-shirt sleeves, revealing a tattoo on his forearm. “For this latest record, it was definitely a rough road. You have to be very honest with yourself, like is this the right person to do this? Whether or not you’re friends with that person, you can’t take things personally at that level. Because outside of our ears, everyone else is gonna hear this music.”

Mandala – Damsel in Defense EP (2019)

When I bring up the EP’s title, Damsel in Defense, Abe presses Morgan to speak on it. She shifts her position on the couch. “I first didn’t like it because I’m the only girl in this band, so I always try to not be that stereotype of anything that goes along with girls in the scene, which we know, there are many.” She adjusts her sunglasses, her eyes hidden from view.

“I didn’t want it to be like ‘oh just another chick having to defend herself.’ A lot of people have been like, ‘does this relate to how you feel in the scene?’ And it’s really not that to me at all. It more pairs with the title ‘She Don’t Mind.’ It’s more of an independence thing.”

The EP’s cover has only Morgan, with various objects behind her held up by string. “There’s guns hanging, there’s knives, and then there’s more internal things like a mirror and cellphone,” Sean explains. “It’s like the world is a dangerous place, everybody’s self-conscious, so you have to battle those things internally. It’s not only about a damsel in defense, being a strong woman, it’s about being a strong individual.”

Morgan Fasanelli at The Space Ballroom

Abe nods, looking over at Morgan. “All of us, being men in the band, we want to protect her. We want to keep her safe from all that crap, ‘cause she’s our girl and we love her. And there’s a lot of crap out there.”

Here, I hesitate. I can’t count the number of shows I’ve gone to where every person that had walked onstage that night was a guy. Watching that as an audience member is one thing, but being a performer must be a whole other feeling.

“I never, ever used to think of it that way,” Morgan says. “I never went into somewhere feeling out of place. Because I wasn’t going in there as me, I was going in there as Mandala.” She pauses, speaking slowly. “I never really worry if there’s only dudes there; it’s disappointing, 100 percent, and sometimes I think that people rule us out of being as hard as we are because I’m a female vocalist and because some things, if you had a male singing the songs, would come across differently. But I don’t think that should affect it at all.”

Mandala. Photo by Sabrina Cofer

The house show guy, who we all agree at this point is an angel among us, reappears with coffee, half-and-half, a pot of sugar, and enough mugs for us all. I grab a cup (It’s a paintball thing, you wouldn’t understand written on the side) and fill up while Matt scoops the largest spoonful of sugar I’ve ever seen into his mug.

The guy who runs this house, and countless other diy promoters, bloggers, and other bands have helped them grow over the years, which can be the difference between reaching 50 people or 1,000. “That’s what you need, you just need a little bump from a playlist or some sort of promotion,” Sean explains. “If you took every person in the whole world and you played them our band, there would maybe be a decent enough percentage where it could be a thing I could do for the rest of my life. But I live in Connecticut and I can only do so much.”

As we talk, all five of them pass around a camera to record themselves answering questions, presumably for their YouTube series “The Mandala Effect.” Most videos are of them on tour, meeting fans and hanging out in different cities. When I ask about it, all hands point to Abe. He claps his hands together and smiles. “It’s something we can always look back on. It’s like a scrapbook, a tour documentary series. I get to capture the fans, our friends who pull up to all these shows.”

They explain to me they have an army of sorts in every city, the same faces in the same spots. They warn me that tonight, right before they go on, their crowd will shuffle in, usually a bit rowdier than the others. Abe explains that he wanted to offer them the band’s thanks. “It’s like a salute to them,” he says. “Because we’re not afraid to show that. Because if they’re gonna go hard and sing the words, I’m gonna show them doing that, because that’s awesome.”

Mandala at The Telegraph Record Store in New London

A core piece of their band is playing live. They play shows almost every week, usually only taking off a month each year to write and record. And their music, dancey, groovy, and chockfull of guitar solos allows for an invigorating live show, a bit different from the typical stagnant, barely bobbing heads audience. For them, they can’t imagine being a band that doesn’t play live.

“I never really got that, only being in the studio or never playing a live show,” Matt says. “I have a good friend who’s a great songwriter, but he’s in a band that never plays live. They just record music. He can find people on blogs and stuff, and he’s part of music circles online, but if you never play live, how do they get to know you?”

Sean chimes in: “We enjoy playing live because we enjoy playing live. I like to entertain people. I like to go out there and put a good show on. It’s a whole vibe toss-and-throw-back. I could play shows every day for the rest of my life.”

Between the five of them, there’s a healthy balance of personalities. Abe and Morgan, the primary writers, are the most outwardly artistic. “These two are definitely the creative minds,” Sean says. “Me and Matt are strictly here to lay down the groove and to bring the energy, and Pat is there to bring the soul and the solos.” Besides musically, Matt and Pat are the quietest of the group, only speaking when necessary; Abe and Morgan have a magnetic pull between them, sharing glances and finishing each other’s sentences. Sean is the most eager, always smiling, consistently proud of the music he gets to write and play.

Even as friends, they can still get on each other’s nerves, especially on tour when close proximity can easily turn tense. But they always work through it, most similar to siblings arguing than anything else. “You can never be mad at them to the point where you’re like ‘I don’t wanna be here,’ or ‘I quit,’” Abe says, all nodding in agreement.

While they’ve toured up and down the east coast, the Northeast is their familiar domain, and in the future they’re itching to get out of their self-contained bubble.

“I want to be able to just to get the van and book the show and take the time off and really go for it,” Sean explains. “We play and hang out with bands who go on tour for fucking two and a half months straight and I would love to do that, but it’s obviously harder than it looks.”

Besides paying for the van, food, and gas, there’s the whole other headache of finding the spots, contacting the bookers, and just making it happen. This hurdle is what makes most bands remain in their own circles: it’s too damn hard to get out.

“It’s a step that’s really hard to take for a local band. There’s a lot less record labels that are gonna give you that 10 grand for a van and a couple thousand to make a record. That shit just doesn’t really happen anymore,” Sean says, shrugging. “It’s really hard to do it all on your own. We’re doing our thing for as long as we can, but there’s a bigger market somewhere else and that’s what you gotta think about. You have to think about the reality of the business.”

While they eventually want to break out and move somewhere with a larger market—Morgan cites LA, Nashville, and Philly as her dream spots—they speak of moving as something far off down the line. For now, tonight, they have a show to put on.

Photo by Sabrina Cofer

Around 11 PM, just like they told me, fans begin to clump together in the garage, securing their spots, phones out and ready. Mandala open with “Bowery and Bleaker,” the opener off Damsel, and the crowd wastes no time, immediately dancing and singing along. By the second song, everybody is covered in sweat as one half of the room does some form of Moshing-Lite.

They play confident and tight, like they know the songs inside and out, feeding off the words shouted back at them and Vans-covered feet constantly moving. As it nears midnight, the guy who had brought us the coffee and pizza runs in with a bottle of champagne (apparently it’s his birthday), and in a suspiciously cinematic moment, pops it open, the cool foam dousing us, leaving our skin sticky and sweet.

When someone stands on an amp to bang a tambourine against the ceiling, the string lights hung up fall down around the band, but they continue to play, fans holding up the lights above them. Sean takes a moment to speak to the crowd: “Grab somebody and get grooving. Ain’t nothing wrong with that.” The crowd, profusely sweating and smiling, cheers. Nothing wrong indeed.

Listen to Damsel in Defense by Mandala on Bandcamp and Spotify below:

Interview: The Synergy of Similar Kind

Similar Kind in “Over There”

By Dan Osto – Contact Writer

Every year for the past few years, myself and many other frequenters of the CT music scene look forward to the annual “Live From the Lawn” at the University of Hartford. Managed and curated by UHart’s WSAM Radio, it’s pretty much a labor of love for all parties involved, featuring an indie music showcase for musical talent around The Nutmeg State, with every year bringing both noteworthy local talent and touring acts to play on UHart’s Village Lawn.

This year’s lineup included many beloved Connecticut acts such as Zanders, Waveform*, Ice Cream Orphan, Glambat, and Standby, as well as Boston’s Horse Jumper of Love and New York’s Adult Mom and Charlie Bliss.

Similar Kind at UHart’s Live From The Lawn 2019

Among these acts, I had the opportunity to sit with one of Connecticut’s newest bands, Similar Kind. Hailing from Norwalk, Connecticut, the band is made up of Ben McNamara on guitar, Finn Mangan on bass, Evan Murphy on keys, Miles Dominici on drums, and Julia Breen singing lead vocals. Sitting together on the side of the village lawn, with Ice Cream Orphan’s cacophonic sampler set emanating in the background, we discussed the origins of the band, the creative process of their new music video, and plans for the future.

Similar Kind, like many other up-and-comers, can give the sense of ‘coming out of nowhere’. With their particular brand of angular, danceable alt-pop that can appeal to both fans of post-punk and general pop rock, the band has quickly found their way onto diverse local gigs and the Spotify playlists of CT show-goers.

Similar Kind

Perhaps, as surprised as I was to hear about a cool new band from Fairfield County, a sometimes more NYC than Central CT oriented hub for indie rock bands, the band was just as surprised to hear about the Central Connecticut music scene at large. After the band dropped their debut EP, Faces & Places, they started receiving requests for shows from new connections all over the state. Julia comments, “We had no idea. After the EP came out, it just blossomed. We’ve played sets in Hartford, New Haven, Torrington… all those DIY places? …I wish we knew about it before.”

Like the formation of many other bands, Similar Kind formed out of the ashes of previous projects. Miles comments “Ben and I used a do a ‘School of Rock’ kind of thing in Redding, Connecticut called The Music Shed, and that was how we met. It was basically just a guy organizes that a bunch of high schoolers together to make bands. We used to have a band together called The Queen of Late, which I was the drummer with Ben and Evan. Then that band broke up… due to bass players (laughs). After that Ben and Evan started the Similar Kind project. Evan came up with the name. We somehow got Julia. Julia somehow got Finn involved. Before we knew it we were all together. It was happily ever after.”

Considering the eclectic assembly of talents, the band also manages to be a pretty effective ‘chameleon’ of sorts, with the ability to draw from their influences without necessarily making those inspirations apparent in their own music. There is an appeal in trying to play ‘spot the influence’ when listening to Similar Kind, but ultimately the band uses them to create their own aesthetics.

Some are a little more apparent, such as Ben’s penchant for 80s college rock and their revivalists Talking Heads and LCD Soundsystem, while Miles unexpectedly pulls from a prog rock aesthetic: “Rush, Prog. I love all of the new styled trap beats and hip hop styles that are cool right now, but I try to bring in the prog rock drumming of Rush and Dream Theatre and put it under a pop sound.”

I was initially surprised at the prog-rock connection, but after witnessing the five-piece’s energetic live show, the syncopated technical prowess of the drumming becomes more apparent. Evan culls from outlaw rocker Shooter Jennings, while, as a singer, Julia is more indecisive: “I don’t know. I’ve actually never heard a song before (laughs). Come back to me.”

Similar Kind – Faces & Places EP (2019)

As a result of this array of complementary and oppositional forces, the band’s creative process embraces a multifaceted synergy. While the band has performed their songs in acoustic settings, they don’t necessarily start through a traditional singer-songwriter approach with an acoustic to just add drums and distortion later.

Evan speaks on the process: “The first part is usually just all jamming, with maybe Ben starting alone with a cool riff. We typically figure out what’s going to be the verse or chorus structure before we send them to Julia.” Because the songs are formed on the basis of jams, the music has a more apparent ‘live energy’ about them, allowing Julia’s creative input to weave in and around the open spaces rather than alongside a basic chord progression.

The Factory Underground in Norwalk, CT

The band recorded Faces & Places at The Factory Underground in Norwalk. Which, according to Ben, “ is one of those places that people don’t know about that people should definitely know about. Yes, it’s a recording studio, but it’s also an everything space or one of those creative hubs. Bands can record, practice–people can rent it out for general art space. The guys who run it and own the space, Kenny and Ethan, are super cool to work with. Kenny produced our EP.”

We also talked a little bit about the band’s new music video for Faces & Places sole slow-burner, “Over There.” Featuring the band performing around the song in a prom setting among friends with the occasional surreal distortion, it clearly comes off as a labor of love from the group. Evan comments on its creation, “We planned it about two months ago, and executed it one month ago. We upped our budget, and got Gloriana Restrepo, who is really the creative mind behind the whole thing. She’s also from Norwalk.”

Beyond its standard, joyous prom imagery, there are a few surreal juxtapositions of Julia floating in the water, amorphous in the blackness of her dress. The band laughs at it’s inclusion, “Yeah, that was in Finn’s pool… it came off as very surreal.” Julia, laughing, seems a little more wary: “We took like fifteen shots of me jumping in the pool and I almost drowned because I was dressed in a garbage bag and it wasn’t even used in the video…”, with Evan adding “We definitely set the bar for our next video.”

Julia in the “Over There” music video

Despite all going their separate ways for the upcoming fall semester (Julia and Miles are heading to college in NYC, while Ben attends a university in Nashville), the band has plenty of plans to keep them occupied, including a new EP and multiple music videos.

As for the new material, the band is balancing their formula with some new spontaneity. Ben comments “it definitely has elements of our last new EP, but more expanded. One of the new songs started as a jam in the studio. We were playing in the studio and Kenny ran in asking ‘what are you doing? What is that?”, and hit record (laughs). We had no idea what we were doing. It was a very strange experience. But it ended up being very cool.” 

Listen to Faces & Places by Similar Kind on Bandcamp and Spotify below:

Interview: Waveform* Find Balance On Shooting Star

By Sabrina Cofer – Contact Contributor

It’s almost 90 degrees in late July, but Dan Poppa and Jarett Denner of Waveform* are dressed in true diy fashion: long pants (cuffed or cut at the bottom), high socks, and t-shirts (BlueClaws and Life is Good). We meet at a park in Monroe, Connecticut, surrounded by families grilling, people playing basketball, and kids squealing at the blistering heat of metal slides at midday. Settling in a shaded, grassy area near the playground, Dan and Jarett sit beside each other, passing a half-finished water bottle between them.

“I DM’d him and asked if he wanted to start a band,” Dan says, pulling up grass until a pile of brown roots surround his feet. “I think I saw him on his sister’s Snapchat story playing guitar and singing, and that’s how I figured it out.”

Waveform* at Hive Skate Park in New London

They both had experience playing music—both on guitar and drums—but even after meeting up several times, it took awhile for them to learn how to write songs. “We were trying to make, I don’t know, Citizen-type heavy rock music, which you can’t really make by yourself in your bedroom,” Jarett explains. Once they heard the music of (Sandy) Alex G and other “bedroom-pop” artists, they learned what was possible from the comfort of your own home.

They put their music on Bandcamp, their earliest stuff now gone from the internet, except for two eps that remain, fishing songs and drawing, released in August and October of 2017. Their first full-length, library, came out in February 2018, and gained a devoted following, with plenty of downloads on Bandcamp and thousands of plays on Spotify.

Part of what drew fans to their sound on library was their blend of acoustic guitars, vocal effects, and trippy, fuzzy lyrics. Jarett wrote all the lyrics for the project until Dan joined him for their split with Melaina Kol, Sckrpnch, in 2018, and their most recent album, Shooting Star, in 2019.

“It just feels unfulfilling to make music and not be singing over it,” Dan explains. “There’s ideas and stuff that I want to get out; there’s no other way to do it. I started sending demos of me singing to people and they would say that it’s good, whether they were lying or not I don’t know. But I started doing it and now making music is a lot more fun and meaningful.”

Waveform – Shooting Star (2019)

You can hear Dan’s influence on Shooting Star—his lyrics are more specific and counter well to Jarett’s ambiguity. When asked about their differing styles, Jarett says, “I think Dan’s lyrics are more literal and more personal.” Dan responds, “I think yours are more poetic.” There’s balance.

That might be the best way to describe this band: balanced. Teetering between punk and folk, acoustic and electric, distorted and polished, they manage to make a two-person effort sound whole.

Dan and Jarett claim that because it is just the two of them, they can let their differences coexist. “It is two people doing it fifty-fifty, so there can’t be any imbalance,” Dan explains. Jarett nods, adding: “There’s juxtapositions that come into play because of us writing songs in different rooms. I’ll make something and think it should sound a certain way and then I’ll send it to you and you’ll add parts to it that I wouldn’t have expected. A lot of stuff comes from that.”

It’s true; almost all the songs they make are written separately in different spaces. “It used to be that Dan wouldn’t sing, so he would write an instrumental and send it to me and I would write vocals. Or he would have a melody for it, but he wouldn’t sing. Or I would just write the whole thing myself. Now we both write and sing, but we almost never write a song in the same room,” Jarett says. “We never collaborate,” Dan adds, laughing. “If we’re recording we email them to each other even though we live like five minutes from each other’s houses.”

It even goes so far as their set lists, which they split equally, playing three songs each that are their own. When choosing which songs, they admit that it can be tough since Jarett has a backlist of almost 30 songs while Dan has around five or six to choose from. Even so, they enjoy the shows, usually playing as a three-piece with a drummer and switching mid-set between guitar and bass.

While they usually have a few songs they always try to play, their intent is to do something different each time. Even the way they perform their songs deviates from the recorded versions. Songs like “easy” or “Hazel” that have added layers or effects on the albums are treated to much more straightforward renditions. “When there’s a song with a ton happening at once, we figure out what guitar parts to play and we know it will sound different, which is the goal,” Dan says. “We want it to be like you’ll see us live, and if you’ll listen to the record it’s gonna sound entirely different.” He looks to Jarett and shrugs, “Or louder, with more distortion.”

While now seen as a staple in the Connecticut scene, it wasn’t always that way. It took months of sending out their music to finally book their first show, gradually playing more and more from there. “I feel grateful that we get to play a lot of shows ‘cause I know there are a lot of people that wish that they could,” Jarett explains.

Waveform* in Boston. Photo by Ben Stas

While some still see Connecticut as a pit stop between Boston and New York, they’re grateful for the scene. “I feel like it could be taken for granted because when you play shows it’s not like there’s always a ton of people there, but compared to other areas in the US this is probably considered to be pretty big. And we’re really lucky to be able to play as many shows as we do,” Dan says.

Sitting in this sprawling, grassy haven of a park, they reflect on how Connecticut hasn’t just given them a platform, but also an influence on their writing. “It’s funny to talk about because Connecticut seems like such a not-inspiring place. I didn’t realize that could have an influence on us until I talked to people in other states. I have a friend who moved out to California and they think it’s so sick that we live in this woodsy town,” Jarett says.

Dan agrees, citing nature and changing seasons as a draw for writing and recording. “It’s a small town, and when people listen to our music it has this kind of isolated thing to it. When I listen to library it sounds wintery and cold, while Shooting Star is more summery to me.”

Waveform* – Library (2018)

While on library they had a focused acoustic sound, the titling was somewhat random. “We called it library because we like libraries. We don’t read books a lot or anything, we just like libraries aesthetically. For one of the songs we went into our local library and recorded us flipping through pages of books,” Dan says.

Their next effort, Shooting Star had a more molded and particular goal. It has a mystical, fairytale vibe—song titles like “Hazel,” “Crystal,” and “Spell”; woods and animal imagery; and of course, the album title and cover art, spooky and mysterious (made by Rebbeca Wnuk). Song titles were important to them and were something they texted about during the writing process. “I had a note in my phone of names that I would think of that had a similar theme,” Dan explains. “For songs that I was singing on I would take that, title the song, and write lyrics not based off of that, but include it purposefully into the lyrics somehow.”

But it wasn’t exactly based off of folklore. “Those are fairytale type things, but I feel like they’re also really inspired by Minecraft,” Jarett says. Besides spending time building block-y castles and hiding from zombie villagers, they had been listening to a bunch of Animal Collective, Vashti Bunyan, and Spencer Radcliffe at the time of recording last summer. When I mention (Sandy) Alex G’s song “Gretel,” they laugh.

“I feel like the way that song sounds is something we were trying to implement, even though we hadn’t heard it yet, obviously,” Dan says. “We had the leak of it,” Jarett shrugs.

What they like about Alex G, his blend between catchy and experimental, is what they try to incorporate into their songs. While they have been described as anything from shoegaze to slowcore to simply indie, their main influence will always be pop. “People ask me this and I don’t really know how to answer. I just say for a genre, it’s indie pop,” Dan says. “Because half the time it’s pop songs, verse-chorus-verse-chorus, but it’s indie music. It has guitar and shit on it.”

They look at each other, shrugging. Jarett tries to help out: “Realistically our effort with it is to make it pop music, but we want it to have interesting elements, and we’re obviously inspired by indie music.” Dan nods and adds: “We try to make these crazy songs that are also still pop songs, that are catchy.”

When looking to what’s next for the band, they say they’re taking a break before recording their next album. First off, they have to get jobs—something they keep putting off until after touring—plus recording takes a lot of time, money, and effort, and they want to do it right. Shooting Star was the first time they had someone else mix and master the album (Corey Coffman), which they thought made the songs sound a lot bigger and fuller, and they only want their sound to get better from there.

While they remain open to better mixing, fresh sounds, and different themes, they’re both hesitant to ever bring someone else into actually writing their music with them. “I don’t think I would ever want to do that, at least with this project,” Dan says. “It would add way too much. We’ve had people add little parts, like on one of our songs on Shooting Star our friend has a guitar solo, but as far as adding someone onto write, I don’t think that would ever happen.” Jarett agrees: “I would never want that.”

While this may appear close-minded, they seem to know what they’re doing. They already bring enough opposing elements to the recording process—Jarett listens to more pop, “I’m always really influenced by super pop stuff; The Beatles, and me and my girlfriend listen to a lot of One Direction and Five Seconds of Summer.” His lyrics are more figurative, and even the way he carries himself differs from Dan; his posture is relaxed, his walk slow and loping.

Dan’s lyrics are more literal; he listens to “Wicca Phase a lot, Lil Peep, Goth Boy Clique, and 90s guitar shit”; and he looks to the ground as he speaks, doubling back on his words before he finds what he wants to say. Basically, they complement each other.

At the end of the interview, I ask if this is something they want to do for a long time. They seem to be in agreement about that. “Just writing songs is something I’m probably gonna do forever,” Dan says. “Because that’s the only thing I do in general. Even if I had a full time job I’d still do that.” Jarett nods, looking past me to the fence guarding the community pool. “My goal would be to make it something I could do exclusively, rather than have to work on the side. I’ll always do it, I just don’t know how exclusively.”

Dan glances at him, nodding, his arms circling his knees. “I think that it’s possible in a certain extent, if we keep doing things a certain way it could happen. Or something could happen.” He pauses as some kid knocks the swinging metal hand-holds together on the jungle gym. We all wait for the loud pings to end. “It’s constantly going to be more beneficial than it was yesterday,” Dan continues. “But who’s to say how, to what extent that’s gonna be yet? Just the way we make music is the thing we like to do.”

Listen to Shooting Star by Waveform* on Bandcamp and Spotify below: