War Tapes interview

Not only are Neil and Becca Popkin both siblings and bandmates, they’re not even the only members of War Tapes who are related to each other. While that might position them as “the new Partridge Family” as Becca jokingly put it when I chatted with the siblings, but their breed of “heart quaking doom pop” is anything but Partridge-like.



How did the four of you come together as a band?



Neil: Me and Becca moved out here around the same time and started playing music together, along with the drummer, William. And so we got together and we started playing. It wasn’t really planned. I had these songs lying around that I had made demos of, and that a friend at the time asked me if I wanted to open for their band. And I was really into it, but I didn’t have anyone to play with, so I asked my sister and her boyfriend, now husband, William if he wanted to play with me. So we just started playing. And William played drums, and he’d never played them before. He was actually a trained bass player, and Becca is a piano player turned acoustic guitar player, and now she’s playing bass. So she had never played bass before, and I had never sung in a band before, either. So it was all new to us. We had fun doing it for a couple of years, just goofing around. And then we started to get more serious as time went on, and we decided we wanted to add more elements to the band, so we brought in our guitar player Matt, who’s a friend of mine through mutual friends that I had in Hawaii.



You’ve said you feel like outsiders in LA. What gives you that feeling?


Neil: I feel like we’ve always been not really pinpointed in any one scene in LA. You’ve got your Silverlake indie rock that’s a little bit more mellow. We don’t really feel like we’ve ever fit in there, even though we play clubs like Spaceland and The Echo and we love those clubs.



Becca: We always seem to stand out on every bill we’ve played. We’re kind of like the odd man out. So we always feel like we were not really fitting in.



I didn’t really understand the “doom pop” reference until I heard the music, but I think I get it now because it’s got that dark and ominous vibe, and yet at the same time I want to take the record and go driving with it. Is that something you strive for, to be dark and yet be accessible at the same time?


Becca: Yeah, I think we have such different backgrounds musically, but at the end of the day we all really love a good pop song when it comes down to it, whether it’s a Beatles song or whatever. I think it’s the combination of all of our different roots and wanting to bring the intensity of so much of the music we love, mixed with the song craftsmanship too.



Neil: I definitely think you hit it on the head when you said that it’s music for driving down the freeway. That to me sounds precisely what we’ve been trying to achieve, definitely music that makes you stop and think about your life and what you’re doing and where you want to be going.



You’ve had a song on The Hills, you’re going to guest star on another TV show. How has that out of the box promotional stuff been working for you?


Neil: I think it’s working, in a sense. We want as many people to hear our music as possible, so any sort of outlet that’s given to us, we’ll take it. It’s a different world we’re living in, and we don’t necessarily have the means to go at it with an old school mentality. We’re definitely picking up on the new world of online marketing. We’re not necessarily pros as it, but we’ll take any chance we get to get our music out to the masses.



So you’ve got a brother/sister dynamic and a husband/wife dynamic in the band. Sometimes bandmates say they’re together so much that it seems like they’re family, but you guys are family.


Becca: We’re like the new Partridge Family for this generation.



Neil: We also all share a hotel room on the road, too, so it gets intense.



Becca: It gets intense, but I think the best thing about actually being family is no matter what, they’re still gonna be there. You can push family pretty damn far, so it’s good in that sense. It’s like no matter what, me and Neil’s mom is gonna get a phone call.



Neil: The final result ends up being better in a sense, because we tend to be more honest with each other, and we don’t really keep things in. We don’t get anything really bottled up. We’ve had a lot of emotional breakthroughs as a band recently, and I think we’re all getting better at communicating what we’re feeling in a timely manner, and in a cooperative, constructive manner as well.



Matt’s the only one in the band who’s not related to anyone in any way. Does that get weird for him?


Becca: I think he definitely feels like an adopted brother.



Neil: And he’s my roommate, too.



Becca: Really, this band together like ninety-nine percent of our days.


When I saw you guys perform live, Neil, you were just a ball of energy the whole time, throwing your microphone all around the stage. And Becca, you were like the quintessential bass player, steady and stoic. Is that reflective of your personalities off the stage too?


Neil: Pretty much.



Becca: I’ve gotten hit so many times on stage during one of those moments that I don’t even flinch now. I beat up Neil my whole life, so now it’s his turn, I guess.

iProng Magazine #43: Paul van Dyk, Phil Rossi, Burn Halo, War Tapes and more

iProng Magazine #43: Paul van Dyk interview and more

iProng Magazine has released its 43rd issue featuring a cover story interview with Paul van Dyk, podiobook author Phil Rossi talks Crescent, and reviews of Documents To Go and Bed Bugs. Also interviewed: Burn Halo, War Tapes, Daniel Brusilovsky, Jamie Lynn Noon and much more.

Tap here to read this issue