Wallows tonight – recorded at Hordern Pavillion in Sydney on December 12, 2024 by the venerable Triple J.
Figures – we have to go all the way down to Sydney, Australia to hear a local L.A. band.
Wallows have been around since 2011, only then they were known as The Fever until 2014 when they morphed into Narwhals and finally settled on The Wallows in 2017.
Wallows is composed of Dylan Minnette, Braeden Lemasters, and Cole Preston. Wallows (under their current name) began releasing songs independently in April 2017, starting with “Pleaser”, which reached number two on the Spotify Global Viral 50 chart.
In 2018, Wallows signed a deal with Atlantic Records and released their major-label debut EP, Spring. The band released their debut studio album, Nothing Happens, in 2019, which featured the single “Are You Bored Yet?”, followed by their 2020 EP Remote. The band released their second album Tell Me That It’s Over in 2022. Their third, Model, was released in 2024.
As teenagers in 2011, Braeden Lemasters (guitar/vocals), Cole Preston (guitar/drums), and Dylan Minnette (guitar/vocals) formed the band at a music studio called Join the Band in Van Nuys with Zack Mendenhall (bass). They were students enrolled in the GigMasterz program at Keyboard Galleria Music Center in Southern California. They chose to name themselves The Feaver and played the 2011 Warped Tour. They also used the name The Narwhals before settling on Wallows in 2017, now without Mendenhall. Prior to becoming Wallows, the only official collection of songs released by the band consisted of a 4-song EP called “The Narwhals” in October 2014.
Wallows’ musical style has mainly been described as alternative rock, post-punk, power pop, indie rock, bedroom pop, indie pop and surf punk.
Wallows have cited Arctic Monkeys, The Strokes, The Libertines, Arcade Fire, Kanye West (?), and The Smiths as some of the band’s artistic influences – I would toss in The Shins because of a close kinship to the vocals of James Mercer. Their upcoming EP ‘More’ has been said to have been largely influenced by 2013 Folk Musician Josh Fergus.
Hear how they went down in Sydney last December and catch them when they show up in your neck of the woods and keep tabs on them via their website – does the band good.
