Conducted by Michael Guarino and Charles Craighill

On June 1, the indie pop band Moxie released their second studio album, Flow of Color. Last week we were able to get an exclusive interview with all of the members of the band:

Moxie is:

Rei Kimura: vocals, guitar

Leander Holzapfel: guitar

Daniel Snyder: drums

David Cohen: bass

How did you guys know each other and decide to form the band? How long have you been working together?

Rei Kimura: We live in Bradford, Vermont. It’s a pretty small community, but we all grew up playing music together in different combinations. Eventually, in the winter of 2016 or 2017, Daniel and I were looking to start up a band. He knew Leander and I knew David, and we all came together.

David told me he just graduated high school. Are you all in college, or high school?

Leander Holzapfel: I also just graduated high school, and Daniel and Rei are gonna be seniors [in high school] this upcoming year.

That’s insane. Congrats to you guys for making it so far. Who are your biggest musical inspirations, and how have they influenced your latest work?

LH: We consider The Strokes to be the biggest influential common denominator between the four of us, but for the most part our influences and tastes are pretty different from one another. For myself, I’d consider Hippo Campus and the Arctic Monkeys to be big influences. 

RK: Definitely. To echo Leander, The Strokes is definitely a common denominator, but for me, I really like the band Lake Street Dive, Amy Winehouse, Maggie Rogers. [My style] extends from those very rich vocal groups and artists who do indie pop stuff.

How does Flow of Color advance the group’s overall sound?

David Cohen: I think before we dive into songwriting at all, we should acknowledge that production’s a huge part of it, which is something that we barely even considered when we put out our first album. Diving into that spans a whole fifth instrument that I think we were really unaware of.

RK: Also, from my perspective -- the songwriting -- from The Fall LP to now, Flow of Color, it’s really changed what we were able to experience -- a lot more complex things in terms of rhythms and structures, and diving into the sophisticated side of songwriting.

What is the overall lyrical message of Flow of Color?

RK: This is the same for The Fall LP, too. It’s interesting, because we’ve gotten a lot of questions about this, but for Flow of Color, a lot of the songs off of it were written before The Fall LP was released [in 2018], so they all come from the same time range. It ranges from a lot of youth topics, like finding identity, getting more confidence, understanding what it’s like to be in a relationship, first loves, loss of innocence, nostalgia, and all those topics. When writing the songs, I like to dive into my own personal experiences. It’s been interesting to listen through the album and be reminded of little specific things from my past relationships and experiences. 

Do you have any specific memories or experiences behind particular lyrics?

RK: I’ve written the lyrics for both of the past albums. For example, “Hard to Be” really reminds me of a past relationship I was in and losing touch with your significant other, the person you’re in a relationship with, and coming to terms with understanding how to let go and cope with that. Definitely, there’s a lot of specific things in there from different relationships.

What were some of the challenges you encountered in getting this album out to the world at this time? Was your recording affected by the pandemic or had you already finished with your studio time by the time quarantine went into effect?

LH: We had recorded pretty much everything before the pandemic really became a problem here. However, this time, a good friend of ours, Gabe Bradshaw, mixed the album and helped with producing it, which was different from the previous albums, which we entirely did ourselves. Having that element of another person to communicate with and figure out logistics with, on top of maybe not being able to see him because of the pandemic, that definitely created a bit of complication. 

How do you guys come up with the musical ideas for your songs? Is one of you in charge with coming up with ideas, or do you play around with ideas when you get together? 

Daniel Snyder: We’ll usually be rehearsing, and one of us, usually Leander or Rei, will have a guitar riff, or sometimes David will have a bass line that he’s written. A lot of the time, it just happens. “Blues Skies,” I’m pretty sure Leander just came up with on the spot. There’s a bunch of other songs [where] one of us has written [it] and sent a voice memo to the group chat, and then we’ll expand it in person together. But no one really has the role of writing melodies, we all contribute to that a lot.

Given the time between your album releases, would it be safe to say that you are a band that thrives in live performances? If that’s the case, how has the global situation altered your relationship with music? Was it the impetus toward the newest album or was that already on the docket? 

DC: We undeniably love performing live. It’s just like no other. I think we discovered another side of our music in the fact that we couldn’t play live. Dynamics, ideas, all these things that come from a performing environment, we tried to develop independently, through email chains, and rough mix after rough mix. In a sense, we got some of the power that we derive from live performances through some of the production choices that we made on the album. 

What types of gigs do you guys normally play? Since you all are in high school, are you able to play clubs?

DS: There have been times where we weren’t allowed to get into a club because they serve alcohol, so they only let in people who are 21 and over, so we had to have a parent come with us. We had to say we were all her children or something like that. It really ranges -- we’ve had some pretty devastatingly small shows and some really fun, pretty decently sized ones. They’re kind of all over the place.

RK: It’s been funny, too, trying to get into clubs, because someone we work with got us a show in a club 21 and over. We were like, “Is it okay if we go?” He was like, “If they ask about your age, just don’t say anything.” So it’s been really interesting trying to work around that.

What’s next for the group? Where do you see yourselves headed post-quarantine?

LH: I think I can definitely speak on behalf of all four of us that we’re gonna do our best to play the most bangin’ gigs possible when we get back. It’s really hard to know when that’s gonna be, but we're trying to be patient and adapt to the current circumstances. Staying in touch with the people who listen to our music has been a bit difficult, because Instagram is not the same as playing an actual gig, so that’s been tough. 

RK: Now that this album is released, the next step for us is getting back out there and playing once things are safe. We’ll keep making music and growing our fanbase, not only in numbers, but geographically. There was talk this summer of trying to do a mini-tour on the East Coast or even trying to go to the West Coast. Hopefully next year or in the near future, we’ll be able to tour more and expand our fanbase.

Some of you are [high school] seniors. Do you plan on going to college, and if so, how might that affect your performances and your songwriting?

LH: At the moment, David and I, who just graduated, are sticking around here. We feel like Moxie is really important to us, and it’s going places we never really imagined it could. While this opportunity is here and available to us, we might as well go at it with as much passion and time as we can.