Edgar and I exchanged numbers a few days before the show, just to make the day feel less like chance. He kept calling me “bb,” casual, disarming, the kind of shorthand that drops the walls immediately, the same way I tend to move with people until they give me a reason not to. I got to Elsewhere around 2 p.m., gear already making its way onto the stage. I found Emily first, the only familiar face, and we talked for a bit until I spotted Edgar up on stage getting ready for soundcheck. He came down, introduced himself properly, and from there the day just started to unfold.
At some point, this girl Lexi ended up backstage, talking to Sam and then started telling me about knowing them from small town college parties, watching it all click into place now. It felt almost parental, like pride without ownership, just witnessing the scale shift in real time. That energy carries into everything, the show, the conversations, even this interview. Nothing overly polished, nothing forced, just a continuation of being around them, asking questions the same way you would in a room where everyone already feels let in.
Backstage, right before everything tipped into motion, Edgar lifted his shirt, just casually, like it was already understood, and Sam followed without a word. No explanation, just instinct. Edgar looked at me and said come on, and it didn’t feel optional or weird, just part of whatever this was. So I did. All of us standing there, touching stomachs like it meant something, or maybe like it didn’t need to mean anything at all, just a small, absurd ritual before stepping into something louder.
I remember joking that their walk out song should be something by Riff Raff, half serious, half not expecting anything to come of it. But when it was time, they actually came out to “Tip Toe Wing in My Jawwdinz’, and it caught me off guard in the best way. It felt aligned with everything else, loose, unfiltered, a little chaotic but intentional underneath it.
When you think back to the earliest version of what you’re doing now, not the refined or intentional version, but the really scrappy, uncertain one, what did it feel like you were chasing at that point, and do you feel like that impulse has stayed the same or shifted into something else over time?
[Sam] All we wanted to do is make music that means something to someone, ourselves included. That hasn’t changed one bit.
There’s that gap between being seen and actually being understood, and I’m wondering which of those feels closer to what you’re experiencing right now, and when people come up to you and point to specific songs that hit them in a real way, what is that moment like for you, especially when their reading of it either lines up with what you were going through or drifts somewhere completely different
[Edgar] I think we experience both of those sides fairly evenly. It truly feels awesome when someone clocks the lyrical meaning of our songs and comes up to us to talk about their similar experiences. On the other hand, we’re fully aware that our music sits in a lane where it often gets misconstrued as breakup music.
In a way, we do write our lyrics in a more open ended fashion so that there is more room for interpretation. I’m firmly in the camp that I’m fine with our music resonating with people in different ways.
I was side stage watching Lexi during your set in NYC, knowing she’s been there since the early basement shows, it made me curious what it feels like for you to look out and see someone who’s witnessed that whole arc, from small rooms to a space like Elsewhere, does it still feel surreal in those moments?
[Sam] It’s one of the best feelings in the world to share those moments with old friends. Surreal isn’t a bad word to use but I’d compare it more to a feeling of accomplishment. A full circle kind of feeling.
And when you think about that progression, does it feel like the full stretch of time it actually took to get here, or does it collapse into something that feels a lot faster in retrospect?
[Sam] Retrospect almost always feels faster in these instances. I feel like it was just yesterday we were scrambling to play whatever bar show came our way.
There’s this push and pull across the record where things feel both really immediate and also kind of distant at the same time, like you’re inside the moment but also watching it happen, how did you approach balancing that feeling when you were writing
[Edgar] To be completely honest, I think the push and pull was just a natural product of the overall album’s creation. I’d like to think Wisher is a window into how we were living our lives at that time. We basically sat down and wrote a collection of songs that captured this chapter of our lives. Maybe it’s an age thing that makes us want to reflect on the past but also seize the opportunity to live in the moment.
In All Your Luck, the repeated promise “Leave all the details up to me” sounds like a coping mechanism as much as devotion. When you wrote that, did it feel comforting, controlling, or both and who is the “me” speaking?
[Sam] Funny enough, I think it was actually Edgar who had written that part of the chorus. Edgar and I write a majority of the lyrics together as he has a lot of little melodies floating around in his head while he writes his guitar parts. I had the first half of the chorus down and he came up with those tag lines at the end. It’s all just meant to be symbolic of devotion and the willingness to help take any kind of weight off of your partner.
Classic Case of Guy on the Ground repeats “Are we having fun” like an anxious chant. Did you intend that as crowd-participation, self-interrogation, or social commentary and what did you not want it to be read as?
[Sam] When writing it, it definitely had more of a condescending tone if I’m being honest. This song was meant to be a “told you so” moment. My favorite part about music is that it can be read in anyway. This song is pretty straight forward too. As long as it’s not played at an RNC, you’re fine interpreting it anyway you want.
A tour can hinge on the people behind the scenes, whether it’s the driver, the merch person, or the tour manager. Bringing someone like Emily into the fold, who can handle all of those roles and still keep things calm, feels like a rare win. Do you remember what it was like the first time they got in the van with you, how that initial dynamic clicked or took shape?
[Edgar] The first time we met Em was actually last year the night before our tour with Free Throw started. She’s goofy and awkward like us so she fit in pretty much immediately with our camp. Super early on, she was already going above and beyond her role without us even asking. E.g. she learned to drive with a trailer at the beginning of that tour and has taken the bulk of the driving duties since then. Having someone like her on the team makes things so much more fun and easy and we’re so, so grateful to have her on.
You’ve described a workflow where many lyrics came together rapidly during early tracking on Wisher, which songs had complete lyric drafts and which were still being written right up to final takes?
[Sam] The only two songs that were fully written before we traveled to the studio were Painless and Classic Case, and It’s Just a Title was almost done by then. Once we got to the studio we spent the first two weeks writing lyrics while drums and guitar were being recorded. The only song not done by final takes was Very Big in Sheboygan, which we wrote a good amount of on that last day. We were stuck on it the whole time and it took that fire under us to get it done. Funny how that works, as it’s now one of my favorites from the album.
You recorded in New Jersey with a producer you hadn’t previously made a full-length with; what was the single most consequential choice that changed a song’s arrangement (instrument swap, amp choice, synth decision)?
[Edgar] Like Sam brought up before though, Sheboygan was the last song that really came together on the record. The initial draft started out very pop punk-coded (in fact, don’t tell them but the working title for the song was “Koyo”). I remember that was the song we were workshopping the most as a group with Jon.
We just had so much fun adding sugary hooks and weird little synth layers all along the song. Jon has such an amazing ear for that kind of stuff. I think it really took a life of its own on those last two days. Everything from the synths to the lyrics and vocal cadences was a product of the studio.
