Interview: “Grop” Darlings Smothered Talk New Music, Their Creative Process, And Much More

By Grace Forrestor

Before the start of a string of shows all across the DFW this month, Denton grunge-pop band Smothered took the time to chat with us about their upcoming song (and music video) Splinter. Smothered, consisting of Taylor Watt, Zach Palmer, Raegan Smythe, and Mal Frenza, explain the creative process of their new music, evolving with their local music scene, and share some of their favorite stories from their live shows in and outside of the band.

First thing’s first, I wanted y’all to go ahead and introduce yourselves! What instrument do you play and what is your role in the band for those who are new to Smothered?

Zach: I’ll go first, I’m Zach! I play guitar and I do back-up vocals and I like it. All of the Smothered stuff is recorded and mixed and mastered by me.

Raegan: My name is Raegan! I am Smothered’s new-ish drummer and I do occasional back-up vocals as well. I am, which is crazy, on month six with y’all. It feels like it hasn’t been that long though and I’m having a blast!

Taylor: Hi, I'm Taylor! I do vocals and guitar and write da music and play da instruments. That’s what I do!

Zach: There’s also a fourth member who's not here.

Taylor: Yes, Miss Mal Frenza! She plays bass and does backing vocals and she’s adorable and she just didn’t want to be driving in Deep Ellum just yet.

Very understandable with the sleet right now! What would you describe your sound to someone who’s never heard of you before who hasn’t listened to y’alls genre in general.

T: Oh I have an answer! So the Black Ends, one of my favorite bands from Seattle, they got called “gunk-pop” by the Seattle Times, so when I heard “gunk-pop” I was like that’s actually a really good description for what I think we fall into.

Z: Yeah “gunk-pop” or “gunk-rock”. (Jestering to Taylor) But if you're trying to describe it to someone who doesn’t know what the hell that means?

T: Gru-sty.

R: Gru-nch.

Like grunge mixed with crunchy?

R: Yeah!

T: Grop?

“Grop”? What’s grop?

T: For those who don’t know what that means, it's grunge-pop!

R Yeah, grop is good!

Because y’all have these hard guitars in your music, but y’all also do..one of your songs has these strings in your album “Digest” right? They sound so beautiful!

T: Yeah, I’m so glad we got actual strings for it too, it's crazy! It’s very much, I wanted to have an older, southern vibe that you can tell it was from Texas. There's a pro fiddle player on the album so you can tell it’s from Texas. So yeah, I’d say grop, grunch…grunky. That’s all I got!

Definitely using “grop” from now on! I know y’all started in Denton, so what’s it been like being in the music scene for awhile, especially since the pandemic? What’s all changed? What’s it been like navigating it all?

Z: Well, I have the most experience in Denton specifically, I’ve been in the Denton scene for eight years. When I first started in Denton, it was very much a close-knit affair. There were a lot of house venues and the only real “venue-venues” were Dan’s Silverleaf, Rubber Gloves, and J&J’s Pizza, but the rest of it was very DIY. Then a lot of those started shutting down like Gatsby’s Mansion, that was a big one, Macaroni Island was a big one…

Macaroni Island? That must have been before my time!

Z: Yeah, Macaroni Island was…do you know Michael Briggs? He records a lot of bands, he runs Civil Audio?

T: God bless Michael Briggs, he mastered the album [Digest]!

Z: Yeah, he mastered Digest. Besides that though, COVID changed everything. We learned to adapt by doing a lot of live stream shows where people would pre-record stuff and post it. Those went well, but you know it's not the same thing. After COVID, so many things changed. 

Have y’all noticed a decent-sized shift on what it was like when you first started versus what it’s like now?

Z: Stylistically, yes!

T: I felt like there was a lot of emo when I first came in.

Really? For me it was a lot of math rock when I was a freshman.

T: Yes, those go hand-in-hand! Those suck and fuck in the bathroom. Those are very like…the sixty-nining of music genres.

Z: She’s only spitting truth!

T: Yeah, that’s what I feel like because I moved to Denton in the fall of 2019. I’m from Texas, I was born in Denton, raised in Houston, and I lived in Oregon for a couple of years and then I came back down. I liked a couple bands, I liked Thin Skin a lot, but I listened to them when I lived in Portland before I moved out here. I really liked the heavier, noisier bands, but a lot of the other ones were very much like emo/math rock kind of stuff. 

I remember thinking in the back of my mind, I came from a place that was very overly saturated with stuff that I kind of tangentially sounded like so if I came to Denton I thought I can either pop off here because it was an under-saturated market or people could be like, what the fuck are you doing? I told myself I'll just take this shot at it because there’s a good chance that I will be the only one amongst the others that is doing this kind of stuff versus being in a place where everyone was trying to be a Riot Girl all the time. So that really helped!

I was only in Denton for a couple of months before shit got shut down, and the band’s first iteration was a two-piece. Me and my old drummer played one show live in person, February 2020. Then March hit, and we had already had shows booked up until April. We were like, fuck well I don’t what we’re going to do. Then we did two live streams, and we wrote the album [Digest] over that break. 

Well, speaking of writing songs, I know you guys have a new one coming out, Splinter this February! Are y’all excited?

Z: Yeah! We’ve been sitting on this one for awhile.

Also, the teasers that y’all have been dropping…like the photo that you posted with the little sock puppet guy? What should we be expecting to see versus your other visualizers for songs like My Lover TV and My Southern Girl? What’s different that you’re trying this time around?

Z: We’re keeping it within the visual theme of the album. Laundry is a big part of it.

T: Like, clothes, that’s where we got the sock puppet. I also think…we were just talking about this earlier because I like to find things that are really exciting or fun about really mundane things. I think that’s part of life, it’s finding stuff that's really pretty or interesting about stuff that’s otherwise extremely boring.

With doing laundry, like in the music video, it’s like you can create this entire make-believe world inside of a laundromat if you're just sitting there and paying attention. You can hear the sound of the machines, and the humming of everything, and the environment and the people around you, so I think that’s going to be a big part of the music video. Then by association, the album art and anything like that, the album lyrically too! 

Our first album was like “I’m a mess, I'm a freak, and I have so many problems!” and “This is one big masochistic display of wah-boo life’s so hard for me!” and then the second album was more like “Okay, I’m an adult, so I got to get my shit together, and I got to stop whining about my problems because no one gives a shit. I’ve got to fix myself.” So now I'm doing all the boring, adult, mundane things. Well, how can I still have fun? How can I still be an interesting person, or contribute to society in any way while I'm doing all of this boring shit that I don’t want to do? I really think the lyrics in Splinter kinda reflect that. It’s a three year old song, but I think that’s when I started to take that turn because you know, all of this stuff happens in year-long phases.

I know after tonight’s show y’all still have a couple more coming up, I really wanted to know what venues do you see yourselves coming back to and what is your dream venue for this year?

All: Trees, Dallas!

Yes! Trees would be dope!

Z: Mohawk in Austin…

T: Yeah I think we could play Mohawk, that’s not out of the realm of possibility!

Z: Cheer Up Charlies would be great!

T: Definitely Trees I think, anything in Fort Worth. I think a big goal would be playing out of the state. That’s a good goal for me personally because I’m used to playing out of state in other bands when I lived in a smaller state where “playing out of state” meant driving thirty minutes.

Not like Texas where you can be driving for like, four hours and you’ve barely gone anywhere?

T: Yeah, being a twenty-something adult in Texas and wanting to play out of state is a little bit more complicated, so in an ideal world I’d like to do some kind of tour of some type and have the time to take off work. So other than Trees, that’s my goal.

What about any festivals?

R: (singing) SXSW! That would be cool.

T: We are hoping for that to work out!

Did you apply for it?

All: Yeah!

Oh, okay! I am manifesting that so hard for you! I’m sure during your shows you’ve seen a fair share of interesting people, what’s the biggest one that sticks out to you?

R: I have one before I was in the band! So this was when I was in the crowd, Taylor is my friend and I’ve been friends with her before I joined, so you could say I’m a nepotism baby I suppose.

T: Yeah, you’ve been sourced!

R: It’s true, I was sourced! So this when I was still just going to see Smothered play live and I was there with my boyfriend, a bunch of our friends. There was this guy, who I’ve coined “Windmill Guy”. It was a totally inappropriate attempt at a mosh pit. So, Taylor's girlfriend-now-fiance is five-foot-one. My boyfriend and a couple of our friends were standing in front of her, and the other guy was just…doing his arm around just like a windmill! She got elbowed! So that’s what sticks out for me, other than that I would say people are totally into it and really chill and great.

T: I have a good one, and not to steal your thunder, but this one was a good show for me. We went on a little Texas run last year and we played in Austin at Pearl Street Co-Op. It’s always poppin’ over there because everyone’s just wanting to drink and have fun and the shows go on until three in the morning. We were playing that night in the mess hall of the co-op and the whole place was just packed with about a hundred to two-hundred kids, being crazy. I was in a little Buc-ees onesie, sweating my ass off. I was drinking so many beers but I was sweating them off so much, I didn’t even get drunk, it wasn’t even worth it. The whole time though, there’s this kid in the front that you could just tell was in a k-hole. He was standing in the front, he’s got his legs squared to me and his eyes just have this Kubrick stare. He was just so locked in, his eyes were in my eyes and his mouth was wide open. No matter what anybody did he just squared his stance.

R: I got a video of it! (she then shows use a paused video of said kid)

T: Isn’t that haunting? The whole show I had to play to that face! It was also so sweaty in there, there wasn’t enough AC that the floor was wet. There’s been plenty of weird shit.

Z: There were a bunch of kids landing on my pedal board at that show too, I only had three working pedals by the end of the night.

T: Oh, and plenty of beer being spilled on me!

Z: I have one! I was playing a show in Tulsa with my old band and while we were playing, the cops showed up and they arrested a guy in the crowd who had just shot someone earlier that day. That person had died.

All: What!

R: Well, I got nothing on that, no I don’t! I just remember at the “Windmill Guy” show Abby Drake, my sweet-angel roommate at the time…shows were just not her scene and she pretty much just only goes to see us/them at the time. This was probably the first time she was at a rock concert. She would go to a stadium or seated situation, but she was looking at the guy and his friends and was like “Is this a thing? Is this natural?” and I was just like “Yeah, it just happens!”

T: The first house show I ever played, how I got paid was them passing around a bucket for tips and when we got the bucket back there was a nug of weed, an expired bus ticket, two quarters, a pebble, a pre roll, and I think a lone chip.

Truly sounds like that one episode of Spongebob with the penny, the chip, and the napkin!

T: Yeah! I was like this is great! You know, I’ve always said if it’s enough money to afford a box of tampons, I think it's good. Like, if every woman in the band can afford a box of tampons a month, I think that's fine.

Actually valid! Other than the release of Splinter and the rest of the shows you got coming up, what else can we expect to see this year that you're able to talk about?

Z: Well, we're gonna release an album.

R: A music video!

T: We still have recording to do, we're recording as we go. We have that privilege, we don’t have to go into a studio!

R: We got you know, your [Taylor] in school, I’m in school, a couple of us are students in varying situations of work and degrees.

T: But yeah, it's a full album, thirteen songs. It’s a lot of stuff we haven’t played live, even though we’ve been playing new songs for awhile. And then I'll probably get on to writing the third album at some point and then I'll make everyone start playing those songs before we’ve even probably put out this album! But all in all, I think the album is the biggest thing for us. A Grammy maybe…

R: Yeah a Grammy would be nice!

T: A Netflix show?

Z: Clown school…

R: But, yeah! Big things!

Those are some big aspirations - I’m wishing Smothered the best of luck!

You can support Smothered by checking out their music and socials here. Make sure to check out their new song and music video “Splinter” releasing February 1st!