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.

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