Marrying pop energy and punk ethos, Chris Comstock and Jake Torrey of Underbrook sit down with Atwood Magazine to explore subculture, authenticity, and their debut EP, ‘Was Happiness Too Boring For You?’
Stream: ‘Was Happiness Too Boring for You?’ – Underbrook
Some of the best things are less byproducts of premeditation and polish, and more guided intuition and initiative.
Underbrook, the band on the tips of everyone’s tongues in the contemporary pop punk scene, certainly found this to be the case in more ways than one.
It’s a sunny morning in Southern California as Chris Comstock dials in from the airport and Jake Torrey gets his day started with a cup of coffee. Underbrook’s frontman and guitarist join our call just over a week following their band’s intimate debut show at Whisky a Go Go in Los Angeles — a show that I had the pleasure of attending, and a core moment in the band’s journey I was honoured to be a part of. We exchange light banter about the shoddy miniature golf course at the airport Comstock casually finds himself in, before diving into Underbrook’s early triumphs and where they currently find themselves in their creative partnership.
Comstock pauses to reflect on the band’s debut show. “I think I underestimated how exhilarating the whole thing would be, to be honest,” he admits. “Maybe we all kind of, for lack of a better word, underestimated how real it was… To come out and see a very strong response to all the stuff we’ve been working on for so long was amazing.”
Underbrook are no strangers to the pop punk world, much less, are they strangers to the music industry. Composed of six seasoned musicians — lauded songwriters, instrumentalists, and producers — with distinguished projects, acts, and collaborations under each of their belts, the band works deliberately and with urgency, yet they remain unpretentious in their dynamic and method. This was made clear in the final iteration of Was Happiness Too Boring For You?, Underbrook’s vibrant and concise, yet powerful and expertly arranged debut EP.
“We took eight days to write this EP. We used seven of the songs from those eight days,” Comstock discusses tight timelines and artistic outcomes. “Not to brag or anything, but there wasn’t much turmoil or challenges… Once we found that rhythm between the band, between all of us, which was the main challenge, we figured out how to deal with [obstacles].”
Starting and finishing a full-fledged debut project in just over a week is nothing short of impressive, even for the most experienced and established artists. Yet, despite being a well-recognized and acclaimed songwriter, Torrey still finds himself returning to the DIY approach and welcoming imperfections with open arms. “I’ve always thought it’s really cool when you listen back to a band’s first EP or release, and you can hear how DIY it sounds. Then, when you go through their catalogue over the band’s existence, you hear the sonic evolution; you hear it getting more polished over time… I think we talked about not wanting to sound too polished, so we… [weren’t] too picky about the things we should or shouldn’t fix.”
It’s easy to become jaded and reach a lull when you do creative work for a living, but that’s not the case for Underbrook. “You know how you always have room for dessert? That’s kind of what Underbrook is!” Comstock analogizes, juxtaposing the project with previous musical ventures. “We can go write all these pop songs and country songs, whatever it is, but there’s always room for dessert when it comes to Underbrook.”
Deep diving into Underbrook’s process, teamwork, and tentative roadmap over a late morning call with Atwood Magazine, Chris Comstock and Jake Torrey prove the importance of putting authenticity and having fun above all else — it doesn’t get more pop punk than that.
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:: stream/purchase Was Happiness Too Boring for You? here ::
:: connect with Underbrook here ::
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A CONVERSATION WITH UNDERBROOK
ATWOOD MAGAZINE: I WAS AT THE WHISKY A GO GO SHOW THE OTHER WEEK, AND I THOUGHT THE ENERGY WAS AMAZING! YOU GUYS ARE CREATING SOMETHING SPECIAL.
Chris Comstock: Wow, thank you!
DESCRIBE THE FEELINGS YOU HAD ON THAT STAGE AND SEEING LIVE REACTIONS TO THE EP FOR THE FIRST TIME.
Chris Comstock: Jake and I talked about it after the show, I think? How do I say this? I think I underestimated how exhilarating the whole thing would be, to be honest. Maybe we all kind of, for lack of a better word, underestimated how real it was.
Jake Torrey: I think we were all trying to keep low expectations for ourselves, and then when we saw everybody singing along and moshing, we were like, “Oh this is this is a real thing! This is sick.”
Chris Comstock: The turnout was also awesome! We were all just kind of having fun with this, you know? To come out and see a very strong response to all the stuff we’ve been working on for so long was amazing.
CHRIS, WHAT INFORMED YOUR FORAY INTO THIS SPACE OF ALTERNATIVE, POP PUNK MUSIC?
Chris Comstock: Well, that’s how I started everything. That’s how I started in music. That is the music that I currently listen to. It was always in the back of my mind to start some sort of band in some capacity – any kind of band. But, my singing voice has always lended towards pop punk, so it just made a lot of sense to take one step in that direction. Funny enough, the first step in that direction was our song “Heads Up.” Once that was kind of finished and we all heard it after making it in one day, we were all just like, “Oh yeah, I think this is something that we should pursue,” and then we wrote the EP!
YOU MENTIONED THAT THIS HAS ALWAYS BEEN A PART OF YOU; IT’S THE MUSIC YOU GREW UP LISTENING TO, AND IT’S WHY YOU STARTED IN THE FIRST PLACE, BUT WITH UNDERBROOK SPECIFICALLY, DID YOU FEEL LIKE THERE WAS A TRANSITIONAL PERIOD, OR DID EVERYTHING AND EVERYONE NATURALLY COME TOGETHER?
Chris Comstock: I think the natural coming togetherness was what pushed all of us to really be stoked on it. It wasn’t, “Come on guys, let’s make this work!” It wasn’t three sessions to get one song done; we wrote the song all at once, and I think collectively, we were all just like, “Oh yeah, this is something worth pursuing.”
IN “THE TRUTH ABOUT UNDERBROOK,” YOUR GUYS’ YOUTUBE VIDEO, YOU MENTIONED THAT THERE ARE ONLY FOUR DAYS OUT OF THE ENTIRE YEAR THAT YOU’RE AVAILABLE ALL AT ONCE. WHAT DID THE MAKING OF EVERYTHING LOOK LIKE IF SCHEDULING AND TIME WERE OBSTACLES?
Chris Comstock: *laughs* It’s really funny, because Jake and I see each other constantly, and Danny and KJ see each other all the time. They work out together and stuff like that! Jake and James sometimes see each other more than I see James.
Jake Torrey: We’re neighbours!
Chris Comstock: Exactly! It’s like, everybody sees each other a lot, if that makes sense, but we never see all of us at the same time often.
Jake Torrey: I think there were only two songs on the EP that we were all in the same room for. “Heads Up” was the first one, and then “Headlights” was the second.
WHAT DO YOU THINK IT WAS ABOUT THIS SONG THAT MADE IT A WORTHY OFFICIAL UNDERBROOK DEBUT?
Chris Comstock: Well, this isn’t the most deep answer, but it’s all we had!
Jake Torrey: *laughs*
Chris Comstock: After “Heads Up,” we wrote “Headlights” — literally the next session — and then we were just like, “This is all we have,” so we just shot the music videos. There was never a master plan situation with Underbrook, or any of these songs. It was always: this is fun, let’s do whatever! You know what I mean? We have fun, and that’s it.
FOR YOU, JAKE, YOU’RE USUALLY WORKING MORE BEHIND THE SCENES AS A SONGWRITER. HOW DO YOU FEEL ON THE OTHER SIDE OF IT, PERFORMING AND PROMOTING?
Jake Torrey: I mean, honestly, it’s not too different. I feel like when I’m writing for other people, I’m just trying to make something truthful and relatable; I’m trying to make it fit the style of whatever project I’m working on, so in that sense, I’m doing the same thing, but just with our style and our sound. The only difference is really just having to take a lot more pictures!
Chris Comstock: Yeah, having to take a lot more pictures! *laughs* You know what it also feels like writing for Underbrook? You know how you always have room for dessert? That’s kind of what Underbrook is! We can go write all these pop songs and country songs, whatever it is, but there’s always room for dessert when it comes to Underbrook.
Jake Torrey: It goes, “Do you want to slide into a night session and write an Underbrook song?” Like, yeah!
Chris Comstock: We write songs very, very quick.
DID YOU EXPERIENCE ANY WRITER’S BLOCK DURING THE CREATION OF EVERYTHING?
Chris Comstock: We wrote one song that we didn’t use. Every other session has a song included on the EP.
WHICH SONG DIDN’T MAKE IT?
Chris Comstock: It’s all called “Grapevine,” and it just got a little too poppy.
Jake Torrey: Was it called “Grapevine” or “Stateline?”
Chris Comstock: It was either one of those. We went really Bloc Party with the demo, and we already had “Headlights.” We then realized that “Headlights” was about as poppy as we wanted to go.
Jake Torrey: The song that didn’t make it felt a little too referential to the source material. With a lot of these songs on the EP, you start with like a song that you like today, and you’re like, “Man, I want to make something that’s really cool,” and then when you bring it into the rest of the guys, everybody else’s taste pulls it away from the source material.
ON THE TOPIC OF SOURCE MATERIAL AND BEING REFERENTIAL, I KNOW YOU GUYS TALKED ABOUT A LOT OF DIFFERENT INFLUENCES. YOU MENTIONED BLINK, SAOSIN, THE STORY SO FAR, STROKES, TWO DOOR CINEMA CLUB, AND EVEN SOME MOVEMENTS AND NECK DEEP, WHO I HAVE SOFT SPOTS FOR. WITH ALL THESE INFLUENCES, HOW DO YOU STRIVE TOWARDS ORIGINALITY WITH YOUR MUSIC?
Chris Comstock: You kind of acquire that from working in music for so long. When you’re first starting, you say, “Oh, I want to make a song just like that.” You make mistakes by making a song exactly like the song you want to, because you’ll never be able to beat that song. Over time, you learn that you like certain elements of a song, like Jake says, and so you just start with that. Then, because of who you are as an artist, and who we are as a band, once KJ and Danny get a hold of it, it just becomes this monster that you didn’t even see coming. That’s a really great part about having so many talented people in one group; you could bounce it around everywhere like a pinball, and everybody kind of adds their little swag on it. That’s when it becomes interesting.
Jake Torrey: Some songs started off on an acoustic, then Danny and KJ would turn the chords into this emo monstrous thing! Chords you didn’t even know existed. KJ will play a chord he didn’t even know was playable, but because he’s just a mastermind, he figures it out.
I THINK SOMETHING THAT MADE YOU GUYS UNIQUE FOR ME WAS THAT YOU HAVE SIX MEMBERS INSTEAD OF THE USUAL THREE OR FOUR, FIVE MAX, IN BANDS LIKE THIS. WHAT’S IT LIKE HAVING MORE HANDS ON DECK, AND DO YOU THINK THAT AFFECTS HOW YOU WORK?
Chris Comstock: I love having more hands on deck, but we are musicians. We’ve all been doing music for a long time. We have three guitarists who can write these crazy parts that layer on top of each other, and I think, especially after going into rehearsal for this show, we really saw the benefit of all the different guitar parts and the wall of sound they create. I saw The Story So Far live, and they have three live guitars. I was like, “You know what? I really like how this sounds. I think three guitars would be great!”
Jake Torrey: Also, I personally love having three guitar players, because I can have Danny and KJ do the hard parts, then I can do the easy parts and sing background.
YOU’VE ALL MADE IT PRETTY CLEAR THAT THIS ISN’T A NOSTALGIA PLAY – WE CAN GET INTO THE STATE OF POP PUNK MUSIC’S OVERSATURATION RIGHT NOW AND THAT WHOLE DISCOURSE, BUT THAT’S NOT THE POINT. I FEEL LIKE THAT AUTHENTICITY COMES THROUGH CLEARLY IN YOUR MUSIC. THERE’S A VERY GRITTY, DIY UNDERCURRENT TO IT ALL, WHICH I FIND DOESN’T REALLY MANIFEST IN A LOT OF MODERN STUFF. WHAT DO YOU THINK WAS THE MOST INSTRUMENTAL TO ACHIEVING THIS?
Jake Torrey: I’ve always thought it’s really cool when you listen back to a band’s first EP or release, and you can hear how DIY it sounds. Then, when you go through their catalogue over the band’s existence, you hear the sonic evolution; you hear it getting more polished over time, you hear the mixes getting better, and you hear the sounds getting more dialed. I think we talked about not wanting to sound too polished, so we just would get tone dialed and then let that exist, not being too picky about the things we should or shouldn’t fix.
Chris Comstock: Exactly! You know what? I wouldn’t be surprised if you saw Underbrook get a little bit more DIY than it already is.
THAT’S REALLY COOL. WAS THERE A COHESIVE OR COLLECTIVE VISION?
Chris Comstock: It actually was disputed in the beginning. Hayden was like, “We should just record the whole EP all at once, and then just edit that live.” Obviously, KJ is a really big producer, so we had his take. Over the few months of writing the project, we realized that there’s a medium that we could find, and that’s what the EP is right now.
REGARDING THE THEME OF EVERYTHING, I GUESS, IT CAN BE REALLY EASY TO GET COMFORTABLE WITH YOUR MELANCHOLY, BUT IT’S USUALLY NOT THE CASE THAT PEOPLE PREFER THAT OVER HAPPINESS OR JOY. WITH THE TITLE OF THE EP BEING WHAT IT IS, IS HAPPINESS TOO BORING FOR YOU?
Jake Torrey: *laughs* No!
Chris Comstock: No, but it is for some people, clearly, if you listen to our songs! It is definitely too boring for some people that I’ve known and that Jake has known.
Jake Torrey: The title of the EP comes from the line in “OTWD.”
Chris Comstock: Funny enough, the song wasn’t about the person in mind until the second verse. Things happen, and stories happen in real life, so then I was like, “Oh, I know we’re writing the second verse about so-and-so.”
Jake Torrey: We wrote the second verse on a different day!
Chris Comstock: When we started the song, it was just generally about shitty people, and then the second verse was when I knew it had to be specific.
Jake Torrey: Not even necessarily shitty people, it’s self-sabotaging people. Happiness is too boring for people who feel like they need to cause drama or do something in order to spice up the good situation they’re in to make it more entertaining. They end up ruining that because of it. I feel like when we were all younger, we’ve done that, so it’s kind of a song to the person that it’s about, but also recognizing we’ve done this before too.
Chris Comstock: I also think it’s a good testament to the whole theme of the EP. All the songs that Jake and I wrote are from this perspective of saying, “Do you not see what you’re doing to yourself or to the people around you?” I think every song generally, if you pull it back, starts from that point or some sort of angle from that point of view.
SO BASICALLY, YOU’RE COMMENTING ON THE PEOPLE WHO CAUSE CHAOS AND DISTURB THEIR OWN/OTHERS’ PEACE JUST FOR THE HECK OF IT?
Jake Torrey: Damn! You put that better than we could! Do you want to write with us?
I’M TOTALLY DOWN.
Underbrook: *laughs*
REALLY, WHAT WERE SOME OF THE CHALLENGES THAT YOU HAD THROUGHOUT THE CREATION OF THIS EP?
Jake Torrey: Finding time to meet up, honestly.
Chris Comstock: We had eight sessions to write this. We took eight days to write this EP. We used seven of the songs from those eight days. Not to brag or anything, but there wasn’t much turmoil or challenges. I think the challenges in the beginning were finding time to get together, but once Jake and I found out that we were the main essence of all the songs, we would just meet up and write. We don’t have KJ swag, so he and I would just write on the acoustic guitar or whatever it is — relatively simple chords. Then, we shoot it over to KJ, and KJ and Danny go crazy. Once we found that rhythm between the band, between all of us, which was the main challenge, we figured out how to deal with that.
Jake Torrey: Thinking about this question a little bit more, the biggest challenge for me on the EP was “Headlights,” because that one took a while before we liked it. When we wrote it, we really liked it. We wrote it on acoustic guitar, and we really liked it, and then when we got in the studio to bring it to life, we just felt like it wasn’t that tight anymore. Then, it went through a lot of different versions; there used to be a different lead guitar riff in the intro, post-chorus, and then we thought it sounded too referential. KJ and Danny came up with a new riff that went through it, just reimagined the thing, then we got a bounce one day and I was like, “Oh, I like this song now!”
Chris Comstock: Mixed into all this is Zach Jones, the producer. He sits on a throne of his own, as far as crafting sounds for the EP. He was very helpful, especially in that “Headlights” situation where we couldn’t really figure out what we didn’t like, what was too pop, or whatever it was. Zach is just a monster for sure.
MY NEXT QUESTION WAS ACTUALLY ABOUT “HEADLIGHTS,” SINCE I THOUGHT THE TWO DOOR CINEMA CLUB-ISH RIFF IN THE BEGINNING AND HEAVIER BREAKDOWN TOWARDS THE LATTER HALF WAS INTERESTING, BUT YOU GUYS COVERED THAT BASE PRETTY WELL, SO WE CAN JUST CLOSE! WHAT ARE YOU MOST LOOKING FORWARD TO IN THE FUTURE OF UNDERBROOK?
Chris Comstock: Playing more shows!
Jake Torrey: Doing the Whisky show really reawakened the part of me that used to love doing shows, because I used to be in bands in college and stuff. It’s been a long time for me, and playing that show just made me remember why I love doing that.
Chris Comstock: Something really important is the bands that we’re going to align with. That is already in the works, and we haven’t announced anything yet, so we won’t talk about it here. Basically, the bands and scene that we want to align with are just gonna bring the passion — that indie, pop punk scene, or whatever it is.
I think the scene is so passionate and everything, and I’m really excited to try to break into that world or become a part, for us to show that we’re really about this, and that we’re not just trying to be a nostalgia play. We all really love this music, and I think through writing all of this stuff, we’re also getting more educated on everything as well. Philly, where I grew up, has a massive hardcore and pop punk scene, so showing the band old Turnover and Title Fight is really fun. I think I’m just really excited to get into all that and craft our sound more honestly!
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:: stream/purchase Was Happiness Too Boring for You? here ::
:: connect with Underbrook here ::
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“Stand Down” – Underbrook
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