A Roadside Chat with Mallcops

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Eli Ehrlich: This is WRBB radio. We're here with Mall Cops. Please introduce yourselves.

Jimmy Del Ponte: Hi, I'm Jimmy Del Ponte, I'm the drummer.

Tyler Graham: Hi, I am Tyler Graham, and I play guitar.

Joey Del Ponte: I'm Joey Del Ponte, I play bass and I sing.

Daniel Donovan: I'm Dan Donovan, I play guitar and I do backup vocals.

Eli: Awesome. What would you like to tell our radio station about your band? Give us a quick introduction: How you guys met, what kind of music you like to play.

Jimmy: Well, Joey and I have been brothers since we were both born, and we've been playing music together our whole lives. That was a natural thing that you take it over we were in the middle of.

Joey: We were all fans of each other's bands back when we were like 17, and we all were in the same scene. We were playing shows together and it all worked out that we formed this version of Mallcops—the only version of Mallcops: the four of us.

Tyler: I met all of them on the same day because Joey booked my old band's first show at Cuisine en Locale on Highland Ave. I was like 17 or 18, and we just became best friends since then. We all just got really close together. It's been a long time.

Dan: Mallcops was my favorite band for like 3 years before I joined, and then they were like, “Hey, you want to be in the band?” And I was like, “Of course I do!” Like, “why wouldn't I want to be in the band?”

Eli: You guys have been around for more than a decade — how do you feel your influences have changed over the years?

Tyler: Back then, I feel like we were listening to a lot of emo music — just like the twinkly guitars and stuff that was happening in the mid-2010s. There were a couple of Facebook groups, one of them called Twinkle Daddies, and another one Nondenominational Emo, and it was this huge community of people that would just share a bunch of their DIY EPs. That's what kind of started the DIY motives. For us personally, we kind of lean more towards alternative rock now in our song selections. I don't know if you guys would agree with that.

Joey: I think we definitely started out trying to be a Midwest emo band inspired by American Football or newer emo bands like The Hotelier and Title Fight and Transit. I think we all hate the idea of having to sound a certain way, so we kind of just never said no to an idea and when we make music. If it sounds like Foo Fighters, that's fine. We try not to say no to any ideas.

Dan: Our new EP is kind of the sampler of all the different sounds we’ve got. It came out today!

Eli: I was going to say — Congratulations!

Dan: We recorded it last year in the summertime with Jack Shirley from the Atomic Garden. He flew out from the Bay Area to do a tour of different tape studios and he's made a bunch of records that I love: Jeff Rosenstock, Deafheaven, Gouge Away, Joyce Manor… Jeff Rosenstock put up on his Instagram: "Jack Shirley's coming to the East Coast, send him an email!” So, I immediately did. He got back to us and only a couple of other bands, but we recorded in Medford at Mystic Valley Studio with Alex Garcia Rivera—from many bands, but notably American Nightmare. He was the nicest guy. He's super cool.

Joey: And it was all analog.

Dan: Yeah, straight to tape! Over the years, in my experience, people have been like, “Your records sound really good, but you guys sound so good live,” blah blah blah. So we really wanted to just play in a room and capture that. I think we did.

Eli: What would you guys say are some bands that you're really into right now that’re currently making music besides you?

Tyler: The Counting Crows.

Jimmy: The OCs. Big fan.

Dan:I'm a big fan of Pile — Their latest record is amazing.

Tyler: There's a band with our friend Asher, who's working the festival. He's in a band called Nailed Shut MA, like the heaviest band I've ever heard in my life. They're amazing. And yeah, he likes our band. I don't know why.

Joey: I like this band, the Army, the Navy. They're very cool.

Dan: Also Cape Crush. We just toured with them — they put an album out in May and it's amazing. It's been on repeat in my head forever, and they're the nicest people. It was my first tour with the band, we’d done weekenders and stuff, but this was going 10,000 miles away, so not away, but in total. So it was a dream come true.

Eli: Do you guys find yourselves listening to the radio at all these days?

Jimmy: Yeah, it's just always playing. Usually radio stations are just playing the same five songs, so it's kind of driving me insane, but I'm not going to turn it off for some reason.

Joey: Me and Jimmy have a special connection to Boston radio because our father used to be an on-air personality on Matty in the Morning on Kiss 108, and then he went to Oldies 103, but he was on WBCN before that. Our whole childhood was immersed in Boston radio.

Jimmy: My middle name is Matthew after Matt Siegel. No one believes me.

Tyler: We believe you.

Dan: I used to run a radio show at UNH for a while, and that was amazing. The college radio scene is amazing. We got to take a personal tour of the MIT radio station last year.

They were going to have us play, but they haven't had live bands play in forever, so that didn't work out. But the idea was really cool, because the Pixies played there and Dinosaur Jr. played there — some of my biggest influences for sure.