Summer 2024 is the perfect time to get on the Magnolia Park bandwagon, so do it – hop on, join us. What are you waiting for?
Since the highly anticipated Summer School Tour is hitting NJ’s beloved Starland Ballroom this Saturday (and Philly’s Franklin Music Hall tomorrow), The Aquarian sat down with Josh Roberts, frontman for Magnolia Park (one of the headliners). We were stoked for this, because the band truly embodies the modern, 2020s-style of pop punk. From seeing them live over a year-and-a-half ago to the music they’re releasing right now, Magnolia Park is completely confident and has never been afraid to layer all sorts of genres underneath the hypnotic guitar music they’re becoming known for.
Hailing from Florida, Mag Park came onto the scene in 2021 with their Halloween Mixtape, a now signature for them. Soon after its release, the record exploded onto the scene and quickly seeped into the veins of fans. The track “10 for 10” was inescapable on both TikTok and Instagram.. They were one of the first new bands to prove that raw talent can, and will, push you forward on any social or streaming platform.
Only one short year later the band returned with their sophomore record, Baku’s Revenge. This LP showed the band honing in on their strengths; every chorus felt like an anthem and sounded ready for memorable live moments. The whole album was brimming with energy and bouncy riffs. It made many people remember why we listen to pop punk songs and come back to it.
Last October was when they dropped Halloween Mixtape II – what most fans call their magnum opus. Magnolia Park got surprisingly heavy, emulating a metalcore sound within the usually fun punk melodies. There were tracks that had deep synthesizer riffs, too. The whole album had no skips, and it helped catapult the band even further.
Magnolia Park’s new single, “Shallow,” is out now, and with all the exciting things happening for them, we are thrilled to have been able to check in with Josh and see how things are going.
Halloween Mixtape II is the latest record from Magnolia Park. I know it’s been out a few months, but how are you feeling now with the reception?
Doing pretty good! People are still listening to it so that’s a good sign [Laughs].
How’s the fan reaction been since playing these tracks live?
Yeah, dude! People go off especially to songs like “Do or Die” or “Animal.” They are all just having a good time, having a blast, singing every word. It’s pretty lit!
This is the heaviest Magnolia Park has been. Tell me about getting into that metalcore sound.
We all listen to heavier music already like Linkin Park, Slipknot, and all those guys. We’re like, “We love pop punk, don’t get us wrong, but we want to dabble in what else we can do. Let’s just try this heavier route.” It worked out really well!
Awesome! Did you know how to scream before this? Did you have to learn?
So I already knew how to scream beforehand, but I can say recording this record has definitely refined it. I haven’t done it in a while, so just going back into that headspace and that singing style was very challenging, but it was fun at the same time!
The first time you got behind the mic and did those heavy parts, was it tough to dust it off?
Oh, yeah! For sure! It was definitely not like riding a bike again. It was definitely like, “Oh, hold on… let me remember where I scream from and everything so I don’t damage my voice.” It went well, though! It went really well [Laughs].
I feel like on Halloween Mixtape II, you guys alternated between techno, pop punk, and screaming. You balanced all the genres you’re known for.
So Halloween Mixtape II is kind of our fun area to play with in the sense of musicality and what we can do with genres. It’s cool! We want to create something that’s really dope, but we also don’t want to limit ourselves. That’s really what the mixtapes are for: for us to kind of mix these genres and just see what works and what fits into our little world before we continue to press on with other styles of music.
I do have to ask – probably my favorite Magnolia Park song to date is “Emo Nite Rhapsody,” the album opener. Any insight you can give us on that number?
Man, that one actually started off being written by Vince and we really wanted to do this whole “Bohemian Rhapsody” style and flow. We thought it would be really cool, something to test the vocals especially. It’s kind of like a reoccurring thing, because on the first mixtape, we have “The End,” and on the second one we have “Emo Nite Rhapsody.” We kind of pay homage to The 1975 with that style.
I get it! The 1975 is a great way to phrase that! I do have to touch on this new single, too: “Shallow.” Tell me about that.
Man, I feel great. “Shallow” has been going off! Everyone has been loving it, especially live. [We’re] playing it live now. People love that song, man. We get a lot of crowd interaction in with it. Everyone’s hyped about it.
I know that Magnolia Park is very quick to drop albums and EPs. Is this part of something larger?
We don’t know yet! We’re still dabbling around with different things, different avenues we kind of want to go down. Right now we’re just testing the waters to see what it is.
That makes sense! You’ve been playing on the Summer School Tour, too, playing “Shallow” live like you said. What can you tell us about the tour?
The Summer School Tour is really fun! It’s been really cool getting to meet and hang out with the other artists; that has been really cool, especially since most of the other artists we’ve worked with or have played shows with before. It’s like a big friend reunion for us. Honestly, playing these shows… we’re playing another new song that’s not out yet while on Summer School and people are loving it. We’ve been very fortunate with everything we’ve been doing so far. Everyone here is a bunch of friends on tour just hanging out and playing songs.
If you could collaborate musically with any artists on this tour, who would you want to write with?
Um… [Pause]. We already did a feature with Honey Revenge. I would love to do a song with Letdown and The Home Team. I think the styles clashing would be really cool. Honestly, everyone on this tour I would love to do a different song with. I think that would be really cool!
I know you did Soul Eater and Moon Eater EPs before the albums. Some songs on those that went into Halloween Mixtape II. When you were writing those EPs, was the overall purpose leading into Halloween Mixtape?
It was totally planned to be what people liked. Whoever liked what most, that would end up being on Halloween Mixtape II. Our Eater series – that we like to call it – is basically just, “Ok, cool! If you like this style, we’re going to continue this one on this.” Every EP and mixtape that we do is something that’s going to lead to something bigger.
Now that we’ve had two Halloween Mixtapes, is it possible we could get a Baku’s Revenge 2?
A Baku’s Revenge 2 ,man! It’s been talked around a little bit, but we don’t know if we’re going to do a Baku’s Revenge 2. I can say that we are going to be doing something brand new… something to break off from the norm Mag Park thing for a little bit. We’ll get back to the norm and probably do a Halloween Mixtape 3 down the line or something like that.
I also feel like us being lifelong fans of the punk scene, Halloween is so associated with the genre. It’s extra exciting.
I 100% agree with that. Even growing up, if you watched Disney, you loved Halloweentown, you loved all these other Halloween aesthetic movies and shows like The Craft or Hocus Pocus or anything like that. Growing up with that and adding that into a genre like emo or pop punk, it just fits so well.
Do you have a favorite slasher film? I’m a huge horror fan myself.
Slasher! We all know slasher is different than horror! Slash is a subgenre! I would say Scream for sure just because it’s one of the easier ones to watch, but it’s also one of the more entertaining ones to watch – especially in the later ones because things break off from the norm of what Scream is. Scream is definitely one of my favorite slasher films of all time.
Just the first 10 minutes of Scream are better than some whole movies.
Yes, exactly!
I do want to talk about When We Were Young Festival. You played it in 2023 to a sea of people. Tell me about that.
Oh, that was surreal. We didn’t know what to expect or if people were even going to get in[side] in-time to watch our set because we opened the entire festival. We go out there and all of the sudden we see this giant sea of people and like “Oh, shit! People actually like our music! That’s crazy”! It was fun. It was a lot of fun. We got the chance to see a lot of artists on a typical day we wouldn’t be able to see like Blink-182, or even 30 Seconds to Mars and Green Day. Even hanging out with the homies in Pierce the Veil and Movements – it was just really cool to reconnect with everyone.
Was there anyone you saw backstage that maybe got 13-year-old you starstruck? I feel like that lineup had so many classics on it.
Oh, man, yeah for sure! Pierce the Veil, for sure, and Jared Leto. I thought it was really cool to see him. Finn Wolfhard, he was there. Avril [Lavigne]. Tony Hawk was there, which was sick! Lil Wayne, like what? There were a lot of people there that were just, “Holy… I never would have been able to meet you if it wasn’t for this festival”.
Now let’s talk about songwriting. In the beginning of this decade, Magnolia Park was one of the first bands to really start incorporating techno into pop punk and telling a story over all of that. Tell me about when you first started doing it versus doing it now.
So, the first song we ever did a little bit of that to the extent that we do now is called “Outside.” We were like, “Let’s create something new. Let’s create something different.” We all love different genres of music so we wanted to see what happens when we mixd it together. We didn’t expect for people to be like, “Oh my God, this is crazy! You should do more of this!” People actually like this genre-bending thing. A lot of our friends were like, “Either you listen to this style or you listen to this song – you don’t listen to both.” For us to incorporate both and have both sides be like, “This is incredible,” was a major step in our friend group, but then also for the genre itself. I’m glad that people liked it enough for us to keep continuing to do that style and experiment the way that we do. A lot of bands will stick in that niche they have, but for us, we’re like, “Yeah, we want to do something different,” because why not? We’re artists. We’re creatives. We’re not going to pigeonhole ourselves. We’re going to create whatever we want to create.
I also feel like it makes for a bigger soundscape, and 30 minutes of classic pop punk, while great, can get boring.
Yeah! We make music to keep the interest – that is for sure. Even the new stuff we’ve been working on now is completely different from what people heard.
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