Review Fix Exclusive: Arms Akimbo’s Peter Schrupp Talks ‘The Wrong Kind Of Dance Party’ And More

Review Fix chats with Arms Akimbo’s Peter Schrupp, who details the band’s origin, creative process, goals and new EP, “The Wrong Kind Of Dance Party.”

About Arms Akimbo:

Arms Akimbo is a 4-piece indie rock outfit based in Los Angeles. After meeting in college, Peter Schrupp, Chris Kalil, Colin Boppell and Matthew Sutton decided to form a band inspired by artists like Local Natives, Portugal. The Man and Hippo Campus. Their debut EP, Vignettes found immediate success and the band soon opened for WALK THE MOON, The Muffs, and Colleen Green, at various high profile venues. Arms Akimbo soon paired with producer, Stephen Gomez (The Summer Set) and recorded a barrage of singles, including ‘Michigan’ which broke close to a million plays and landed on Spotify’s Global.

Recently, their raucous live show has been showcased opening for The Animals and playing with Said the Whale, Field Medic and IRONTOM. They have since hit the studio with a new EP entitled, The Wrong Kind Of Dance Party (the name was pulled from a playlist they used in college to wrap up their parties). Leading single “None of My Business” fuses infectious guitar riffs with an anthemic chorus and driving powerful drums.  The song profiles a yearning love affair and the complications that accompany it. While “Seven Mirrors” highlights Schrupp’s warm yet husky vocals with soaring harmonies and intricate songwriting.

Review Fix: How did the band get together?

Peter Schrupp: We met in college. Chris was producing a few songs of mine for his senior thesis. Colin was my drummer at the time and Matt was studying abroad in Spain so we snatched him up when he got back. Fun fact – Matt used to be our bassist and he and Colin switched instruments about a year and a half into the project.

Review Fix: What’s your creative process like?

Schrupp: It’s kind of a case by case basis depending on the song. We usually write the skeleton of a track on our own, then bounce it off of one other band member to work out some kinks before showing it to everyone.

Review Fix: What’s the standout song on this EP?

Schrupp: Complete honesty – it changes up for everyone. I think that’s why we’re so proud of it. We get tons of positive feedback from people and they always come to us with a different favorite. “Parachute” has gotten a ton of love but we also hear some good stuff about the smaller, folkier tracks like “Rearrange” and “Velleity”.

Review Fix: What’s the story behind it?

Schrupp: The record is kind of a stamp on our college years. It’s a transitional marker for us, almost like a graduation. That’s why the music we’ve been releasing lately is so much more focused on Los Angeles and our digital relationships. That’s kind of what matters to us more now in terms of commentary, whereas with The Wrong Kind of Dance Party, we were focused on ideas like growing up.

Review Fix: What inspires you?

Schrupp: Stand-up comedy, murder mysteries, hip hop and memes.

Review Fix: Why does folk music still matter?

Schrupp: It’s the best way to tell a good story. Hip Hop is the most influential genre of music today. It can cause a movement, just like folk music did in the 60s. Now rock and folk teeter into a pretty vapid territory on occasion…but folk music is spurned from the need to tell a story and twist it a bit with each verse. We hope we can use it as a vehicle to catch people’s ears with the music and tell a good folk story with our lyrics.

Review Fix: How would you describe your sound to someone who has never heard you?

Schrupp: We recently got described at a show as Taking Back Sunday, the boyband. Not sure if totally agree, but I really love it.

Review Fix: How are your live shows different from your studio work?

Schrupp: We’re a lot more rock n’ roll live. Our records tend to be subdued a good amount. We like to play around with sounds in the box and spend our studio time sounding really tight and controlled. When we play live, all of that tends to go out the window. We play our songs faster, more brash and distort everything a lot more heavily. Also our live show is filled with love. We love each other a lot and goof around on stage. The studio is fun but tedious. The stage is the best place to remember how much we love our job.

Review Fix: What are your goals for the rest of 2018?

Schrupp: We just dropped a single called “Devil.” It’s about Los Angeles. This week we’re dropping another single called “Virtual” and playing a hometown release show with it. We’ve been writing some new music we would love to record and release before the years end, and hit some more shows out of town for crowds we haven’t met in person yet.

Review Fix: What’s next?

Schrupp: Who knows…we’ve been loving our conceptual writing style as of late. Since we have two primary songwriters (myself and Chris) it’s been fun to write about similar topics and seeing how different each of our tracks come out. It’s also been amazing seeing how our rhythm section (Colin and Matt) shape each track. We want to keep playing with this dichotomy while it still interests us.

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PS05CNdvPs[/embedyt]

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About Patrick Hickey Jr. 14230 Articles
Patrick Hickey Jr. is a full-time Assistant Professor of Communication & Performing Arts and Director of the Journalism program at Kingsborough Community College and is the chairman of the City University of New York Journalism Council. He is the Founder and Editor-In-Chief of ReviewFix.com. He's also a former News Editor at NBC Local Integrated Media and National Video Games Writer at Examiner.com where his work was mentioned in National Ad campaigns by Disney, Nintendo and EA Sports. Hickey was also the Editor-In-Chief of two College Newspapers before he received his BA in Journalism from Brooklyn College. Hickey's work has been published in The New York Daily News, The New York Times, Complex, The Hockey Writers, Yahoo!, Broadway World, Examiner, NYSportScene Magazine, ProHockeyNews.com, GothamBaseball.com, The Syracuse Post-Standard, Scout.com and the official sites of the Brooklyn Aces and New York Islanders. His first book, The Minds Behind the Games: Interviews With Cult And Classic Video Game Developers was released in April 2018 and is chock full of interviews with legendary developers. His second book in the series, The Minds Behind Adventures Games, was released in December 2019. His third book, The Minds Behind Sports Games, was released in September 2020. His fourth book, The Minds Behind Shooter Games, was released in March 2021. The Minds Behind Sega Genesis Games and The Minds Behind PlayStation Games were released in 2022 and The Minds Behind PlayStation 2 was published in January 2023. Hickey is also a contracted comic book writer, currently penning his original series, "Condrey," as well as "The Job," "Brooklyn Bleeds" "Dem Gulls" and "KROOM" for Legacy Comix, where he serves as founder, owner and Editor-in-Chief. Hickey Jr. is also a voice actor, having starred in the 2018 indie hit and 2019 Switch, PS4 and Xbox One release, The Padre (also serving as English language Story Editor), from Shotgun With Glitters. The sequel, The Padre: One Shell Straight to Hell was released in February 2021- Hickey also served as a Story Editor and Lead Voiceover performer. He has also done narration and trailers for several other titles including The Kaiju Offensive, Relentless Rex and Roniu’s Tale. Hickey is also the lead voiceover performer on Mega Cat Studios’ upcoming title WrestleQuest, responsible for nearly 90 characters in the game, as well as Skybound's Renfield: Bring Your Own Blood, where he voices both Dracula and Renfield, as well as several other characters. He also stars in Ziggurat Interactive’s World Championship Boxing Manager 2, where he performs the VO of nearly every male character in the game. He also worked on the Atari VCS’s BPM Boy.

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