The Bombpops: To live and (almost) die in L.A.

Photo by Alexia Carroll

I’ve always written band bios, but I started doing more of them after I left The A.V. Club in 2018. They all begin with interviews, but I always have a lot of leftovers that don’t make it into the final draft. So I figured I’d post the stuff that didn’t make it in as interviews.

There’s never been any doubt where The Bombpops come from. Listening to their albums—2017′s Fear of Missing Out and a trio of EPs beginning with 2010′s Like I Care—the sound is irrefutably SoCal punk: highly melodic and briskly paced, with big guitars, vocal harmonies, and a good amount of attitude. Co-founders Jen Razavi (vocals/guitar) and Poli van Dam (vocals/guitar) grew up in San Diego listening to bands on Epitaph and Fat Wreck Chords, and the music they created together—along with bassist Neil Wayne and drummer Josh Lewis—unmistakably reflected those roots. When they shot a video for “CA in July” at a skatepark, it was like, “Well, yeah, obviously.” 

Fast, hooky, and sunny, “CA in July” serves as an encapsulation of Fear of Missing Out’s straightforward skate punk, what van Dam likens to a party album. But the new Death in Venice Beach takes a different path. The title announces it before the music does; a reference to Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice, it speaks to the darkness lurking in the album’s 12 tracks. Substance abuse, diabetes, near-death experiences, bad relationships, intraband strife, and family issues course through Death in Venice Beach, sometimes figuratively and other times quite literally. (Check out the secretly recorded band fight that opens “Can’t Come Clean.”) Despite the darker subject matter, The Bombpops’ sound remains as punchy as ever, just more layered and lived-in. The album has a bevy of good songs, like the maddeningly catchy “Double Arrows Down” and “Can’t Come Clean,” the evocative “Notre Dame,” and “Radio Silence,” which coasts on a guitar lead that nods to classic ’90s pop punk. There’s a lot to unpack on Death in Venice—Jen had notes going into our conversation—so I talked to her and Poli about it. 

Your first full-length famously took 10 years to come to fruition. This one took three. Was there anything you want to do differently this time around?

Jen Razavi: With the first record, we had matured and kind of defined our sound. One of the things that we did with that record, that I think both Poli and I were really focused on and proud of, was being able to tell a story rather than just shooting out feelings. We both paid attention to some of our favorite songwriters, lyricists, authors and that kind of thing to get that across. Even more this time around, we wanted to play around with writing the lyrics differently and expanding on that, as well as the sound of the band maturing. That was intentional, to not just write a straightforward skate-punk album. 

Poli van Dam: Some of these songs we've been working on for a long time, but they definitely pertain to that dark kind of self-destruction. 

That darkness seemed to start on 2018′s Dear Beer EP. The song “Dear Beer” is an ominous look at what looks like budding alcoholism.

Poli: I didn't really think about that. It's kind of cool because we have FOMO, and then we have that EP. "Dear Beer" is kind of foreshadowing, I guess in a sense of like, "What's coming next?”

You were in rehab while the album was being mixed?

Poli: Yeah. They were like letting me use my phone sometimes, because you could do it for work. So I was able to listen to some mixes while I was in there, but I was going through so much. It was such a weird time when I think back, even to that. It's just a weird blur of, like, shit.

Were you in LA for that?

Poli: Yeah, I was in LA. I went to a detox house for a week, and then they moved me to a residential house, and I was there for two weeks. I should have been there for three weeks, but I had to get out to go on tour, which was the ultimate test. So I had to get out a little early so I could get home and have a couple days to pack and do my shit. The tour was great—everyone was super supportive. It wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. I felt good. Knowing that this record was coming out while I was there was super motivating. I'm super excited about this record, and I know it's going to be a great thing, so that was nice to have like a little distraction while I was there. 

Listening to the mixes once you were sober, did anything stand out?

Poli: No, just kind of chuckling almost at some of the lyrics, like, "I'm not an alcoholic. I just play one on the weekend" [“13 Stories Down”]. Shit like that. It was just kind of like, “Okay, yeah, I've been going through some shit” and realizing now that this band is my life. This is what I do, and this is what keeps me focused and grounded. Playing music and being a touring musician since I was super young probably led me to the state that I was in, but at the same time, it's my saving grace.

Jen: This was a complete cathartic experience that we didn't even know that we were doing at the time. I just put myself in dark places and situations that I didn't necessarily need to be in, and she went to rehab right after this record. And she's a diabetic. She almost died last year on tour. Her and I have had a strained relationship, I think, the last two years as her alcoholism got intense. Her alcoholism has been something that's driven a stake between us, and she realized it. You can't make anyone go to rehab if they don't want to. Poli just came one day after recording. She's like, "I don't have control over my life. I'm gonna go." I've never been more singularly proud of one person and her success. I have my best friend back.

How has it gone so far?

Poli: I feel really good. I have a 7-year-old son, and I feel like way more... not that I wasn't present before—I think that I'm a great mom and I do a lot of fun stuff with my kid all the time—but I just feel so much more present. I feel good. The best is just waking up in the morning and feeling good, not having to puke and shit. 

Talk about the “almost dying on tour.”

Poli: I'm a type 1 diabetic, so I had a seizure on tour last October. I went to a gas station, and I took a shit, and then it crept up on me so fast. I don't know what happened. In the mornings, I take an insulin shot that's supposed to be long-lasting, so it like drips throughout 24 hours, and then I have short-acting insulin, which I take if my blood is high, or if I'm about to eat a meal. So I think what I might have done was take that short-acting insulin instead of the long-acting in the morning. I went up to my tour manager, and I could barely see him. I was throwing up. They were trying to get liquids in me, sugar. The last thing I remember, he was sitting me down on this bench, and then I woke up with paramedics all around me. This was somewhere in Utah. I'm seriously so lucky there was a hospital. We were in the middle of nowhere, and the paramedics got there in a few minutes, and there was a hospital right down the street.

But this wasn’t related to your drinking?

Poli: It wasn't anything to do with that. I was drunk the night before, but in the morning, I was probably just tired, or I did too much insulin for the breakfast I had. But it wasn't like I was sloppy drunk and didn't realize what was going on. I was sober, but it all led up to me just not caring, not taking care of myself. 

Jen, you said you wanted to approach the lyrics differently. How so?

Jen: Before this record really started going, I was reading a lot, and I think that had a lot to do with it. I was born in LA county, then I grew up basically in San Diego, and as an adult lived most of the last 10 years in LA. I recently had to move back to my dad's house in San Diego and regroup and do a career change—a little bit of a restart and just put my head to the ground and do some things I wanted to change in my life. In that time, I fell in love with Los Angeles as a city. It's more than a city; it's like a being to me, and I know Poli feels the same way. We've talked about this a lot. So I've been obsessed with LA, just only wanting to watch movies that take place in LA, only read a lot of like books at that take place in LA or have LA culture throughout, from like the early 1900s up until the ’70s, ’80s, even till now. It's just a fascinating place. With my lyrics, I think I wanted to really approach disguising what I was going through and also people and situations in songs. I had a lot of fun with being influenced by movies and books, and taking imagery or specific lines, and then spiraling off from there.

What movies or books?

Jen: I was reading John Fante's Ask the Dust, and Neil was like, "Dude, James Ellroy LA quartet. Get on it." Now it's always been on my list of stuff to do, but I have a stack of books, and I just start them and don't finish them. So he told me that he loved the audio because I've never done audio books. They kind of put me to sleep and I prefer to read them, but you know what? I was obsessed with them. It's the grit and the dark. I think I said this about one of our other songs on our last EP, “Polluted Skies,” but it pulls off that as well in terms of it's a love letter to Los Angeles, but it's a love letter to the dark side of Los Angeles. It's so weird because reading these Ellroy books, a lot of it takes place in my neighborhood, which is on the northeast side of LA. I go outside like, "Oh, it's so beautiful!" But in reality it's like, "That's where they found the body!" It's a weird way to fall in love with something. 

Then, of course, the movie LA Confidential, on the same theme of James Ellroy, and then True Romance. Mulholland Drive is one of my favorite movies. Another one is Natural Born Killers. I mean, that movie was so ahead of its time too. I remember seeing it when I was younger and being like "This is over the top." As much as they have this crazy love story, it's about the media frenzy, and how we romanticize the absolute worst of humanity and society, and they're superstars. Then there's this beautiful, fucked up love story in it. 

I watched that movie because I started to write “Blood Pact,” and it was something that happened to me and somebody that I wanted to write about, but I didn't want to write it so literal. It was just an incredible time in a car driving all over California for two days with a person that I happened to like, and I was like, "How do I spin it?" That movie came to my mind, and I wanted to rewatch it. There's just so many awesome lines in there. I pieced them together. The second verse is "Vengeance straight outta the Bible / Tore up the countryside, now we're on trial." Robert Downey Jr. actually says some of those things.

How did you settle on the title Death in Venice Beach? 

Jen: My dad had told me to read Death in Venice when I was younger, and when I read it, I was like, "Oh, this is creepy. Why is my dad telling me to read this?" I started rereading this book after the record was done. It's a story about the artist and the nature of art, and it's kind of like a cautionary tale to those that want to become an artist. But it's also a really comforting companion—that's what I felt when I read it—to artists, who can't help or necessarily contain being who you are and like what you're drawn to.

We were going to call [the album] something else, and none of us were stoked on the title. We were gonna call it Drop Dead. Then I read this book, and I wanted to have an LA-themed title. So I sat down one day and I was like, "What could it be?" Then I turned to the book that I was reading at the time, and I was like, “Death in Venice Beach.”

What’s the story behind the band fight at the start of “Can’t Come Clean”? 

Jen: We played with the Interrupters in April of last year, and we were driving to go to stay at [Fat Wreck co-owner] Erin Burkett's house, and Josh was just hammered. It was such a nice night, and we didn't fight, and it was great. Then Josh is hammered. We had to wrangle him in the van, and he was pissed that we were telling him it was time to go. We're all working on ourselves, but alcohol is always the problem... Neil's in the backseat with me, Josh and Poli, like, screaming at each other. Neil had his phone recording the whole time. 

When we were sequencing, Fat Mike was like, "You guys need to give people a break between all these songs. They're great. Do you have anything you could find to put in there?" I remembered that and showed that to Mike. He loved the part that we ended up picking, and I was like, "I actually have to ask Josh if we could put this in there, because he doesn't even know we were recorded it." [Laughs.] 

We fight. I mean, every band does. Poli and I are best friends, like sisters. Josh and Neil grew up together since they were like in kindergarten. They have that thing, so we're fucking nuts when we fight. There's no worse fight. I could fight with anyone in the world—a boyfriend or my parents or anybody—and it's not as devastating as when Poli and I can't decide artwork or something. It's, like, devastating.