We’re Getting Candid in our interview with senses.
We chatted with Madison and Nick about how the band stuck together through the pandemic after releasing their first songs in early 2020, how they escape the idea of competition among female-fronted bands, and how social media has given power to back to fans to be the tastemakers of their generation.
Senses are a pop rock band based in Los Angeles who originally met on Craigslist. Their first EP released in 2023 sees the band bringing influences from Evanescence and No Doubt into their rock sound. This year they’ve toured with Leah Kate and Boys Like Girls.
You can find a transcribed excerpt of our interview with senses below!
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Excerpt From Our Interview With senses
Your music is very reminiscent of mid-2000s pop punk era, but your music is more referred to as pop rock in a lot of the interviews you’ve done. And in your marketing, you refer to yourselves as music for people who are punk curious and emo friendly, which I love. Do you feel like you have to distance yourselves from pop punk because the genre has never really been welcoming for anybody who’s not just like a cis-het, white man? Because I feel like that kind of has been happening with pop punk where, people are afraid of the genre a little bit because of all the skeletons that have been falling out of the closet.
We make a joke and we say we’re emo passing. Like we just try to make a joke out of it because I feel like now, especially with everyone kind of like Taylor Swift and even Paramore, their genre from where they started to where they are now, it’s just everything’s different. Especially Taylor Swift, I think she was kind of the trailblazer with going from country to full on pop. She said she wanted to be all the genres. So I feel like now just being like, I’m a punk band or I’m a pop punk or pop rock. It’s like, we’re just making fun of it. It’s just like, you know what? We love that music and we love pop music and we love all of it. I don’t think we make a conscious effort to stay away from anything, but it kind of happens naturally because when we were writing the songs and when we’re in the sessions with the producers, we always are striving to kind of push the envelope forward, you know, and do something that’s different, in terms of like, a more futuristic sound. And so I think that always kind of naturally distances us.
You guys have also cited influences like Evanescence and No Doubt, which are two bands that have really powerful female singers. And I feel like so many people, when they think of rock or alternative music, they’re just like, oh, it’s all men, always men, you know. And for many years, it felt like there was only space for one female fronted, which like feels like a dirty word to even say. But female fronted band to shine. And there was always kind of, especially in the Warped Horse scene, like the Haley Williams kind of shadow to look out for. But do you feel like we’ve moved on from that narrative, since the Evanescence, No Doubt, Paramore being pop punk kind of days?
I mean, I think yes and no. In this giant community that is LA, we know of a ton of bands that are female fronted, which is really, really cool. But also at the same time, why I would say no is that a lot of the shows we play, the only person I get is Haley Williams or Paramore, you know, because she was, you know, someone who really broke out and was, like you said, the one female fronted person. So I think people still get stuck in that mindset of like, oh my God, it reminds me of Haley Williams, which is, you know, no diss. Like it’s an incredible compliment. And my head blows up every time I hear it. It’s amazing. But at the same time, I’m like, do you think? Like, is it being compared to that because you don’t have another thing to compare to, you know what I mean? So I think those walls are definitely being broken down. But there’s definitely a lot of that still for sure.
I saw an interview where you all were listing like wildly different kind of musical influences and you guys each have been playing instruments for like a very long time since you were growing up as teenagers and now finding each other and coming together as a band. What was the process of combining your music taste and evolving into the sounds that you have now?
I think it naturally evolved because at first, when we were forming the band, we were just using songs that I had written and were playing to get to know each other and jam and see if we vibed. And I think because of that, you’d add your own personal twist to it. I was always very like, okay, this is a band, everyone has to add their flavor, add their tone, switch it up to how you want. And I think because we started there, we kind of evolved naturally, it just, you know, the vibe, the vibe was vibin. For lack of a better term, I guess. I mean, because when you go in and you write, you don’t sit there and say, okay, what are your influences today? Like you kind of just go in and you’re like, what are we feeling? It all starts with the feeling, right? So, once you do that, you put your twist on it based on your influences naturally, because that’s what you do. And so that’s what you regurgitate.