In a vibrant showcase of uplifting pop-punk, SWMRS recently brought their electrifying live show to Toronto’s Adelaide Hall on October 18th, celebrating the release of their highly anticipated album Becker. This new project marks a transformative chapter for the California-based band of brothers—Max, Cole, and Cade Becker—who have always been known for their infectious sound and dynamic performances. With standout singles like “SURE AS SH*T!”, “DELONGESONG,” and “EMO KIDS” making waves, Becker encapsulates their powerful family bond and musical evolution. We sat down with the brothers the day before their Toronto show to explore how Cade’s addition has reshaped their dynamic, the influences that fueled this latest project, and insights into their creative process.
Jeromme Graham: Hey guys, thanks for fitting me in for a quick chat today.
Max Becker: Of course. We’re excited to be coming back to Canada.
Jeromme Graham: That’s awesome. Congrats on the release of your new album Becker. With the addition of Cade to the band, how has your dynamic changed both creatively and personally?
Max Becker: I think it’s made us feel a lot more comfortable. I said to somebody the other day that every time we start a new era with the band, it seems like we’re chipping away at like a sculpture or something, getting closer and closer to who we’ve been the whole time. And Cade took us that much closer.
Cole Becker: He’s great. It’s cool because, you know, when you’re in a band, it’s really important to respect each other and respect each other’s opinions and things like that. And when you’re brothers with the people you’re making stuff with, there’s no ego getting in the way of telling someone how you really feel about a song. Cade’s really good about that. You know, it was actually kind of surprising because he’s not been playing music for very long. And so when he came in and he started telling us what he thought about certain things, we’re like, “Oh, shit, dude, come on.”
Cade Becker: I was very opinionated very early on. I would say it took a while for them to enjoy that. But because my music age is so much younger than theirs, I think it was necessary.
Cole Becker: It was necessary. It’s cool too, because he came in as someone who had been a lifelong fan of our music. So, he has an outside perspective on it. And then bringing that to the inside. He just loves SWMRS, so that’s awesome.
Jeromme Graham: So the new album, Becker, celebrates your bond as brothers. What are some themes or messages in the album that really kind of get that point across?
Max Becker: I think the lyrics in “The Unraveling,” which is the second or last song on the record, say it all. The chorus is, “it all works out in the end, my brother.” That right there is the theme in that it doesn’t really matter what you’re going through. If you have a connection with your family, you can weather anything.
Cole Becker: And like for us, we’re lucky because that’s our blood family but also our chosen family, too. We were out here with our road dogs that we’ve been riding with for however long, they’re our brothers, too. It all works out in the end. Yeah.
Jeromme Graham: What are some of the specific influences or artists that shaped the sound of the new album?
Max Becker: That’s a great question. I think there were days when it was one thing and then there were days when it was another thing. But I feel like we’re mostly influenced by The Clash. Not that we were trying to sound like The Clash, but we were just trying to embody whatever The Clash was doing where they were taking bits of their favorite genres and making their own sound. I think we’ve always been like that.
Cole Becker: We love classic hooky choruses. And so more and more our taste has veered more towards Tom Petty and dad rock stuff, just because it’s inspiring to hear the craft in all those songs. But like Max said, you know, one day we would watch a YouTube video of “Concrete Jungle” by Bob Marley. And then the next we’d watch The Offspring in the ‘90s and Lenny Kravitz. All sorts of stuff.
Jeromme Graham: Totally. Yeah, there’s definitely a punk feel to a lot of it, but listening to it, you can tell that you guys pulled from a lot of different genres and styles. It’s cool hearing The Clash was a big influence.
Max Becker: Well, that, that’s awesome that it’s coming across. That’s what we want.
Jeromme Graham: I know live shows and audience interaction are kind of super important to the SWMRS live experience. How are you going to translate the energy of the new album into your performances and what can fans expect from this tour?
Max Becker: When we were making the record, we were thinking about how these songs are going to fit into our show because the show is the most important thing to what we’re doing. And as we write songs, we’re always trying to one-up or see if we can make a song that takes this place in the set or this place in the set. This one’s going to be for jumping. This one’s going to be for a mosh pit. This one’s going to be for a wall of death. This one’s going to be for a sing-along. And then we get to test them out live. So we ended up fitting the album to the live show. And now at this point, we’re just testing it all out.
Jeromme Graham: So are you excited to see how the new music will resonate with live audiences?
Cole Becker: You know, we’ve been playing some of the new songs as we’ve been traveling around, and certain songs kind of unexpectedly sound good live or feel really good when we play them live. I think when we made “EMO KIDS,” we had no idea. There are a few songs on that album that we were kind of more just like, alright, let’s just go where the song takes us and we’ll figure out the live thing later. And “EMO KIDS” is one of those where we’re like, alright, we just know that this is a good recording. But as we’ve been playing it, we were right, this feels good when we play it live. It’s in a different tempo than most of our songs, so it just occupies a nice space.
Cade Becker: It’s an easy singalong, too.
Jeromme Graham: Right. There are a lot of really great hooks on the album. Can you walk us through the songwriting process for Becker?
Cole Becker: Yeah. It actually started a few years ago. Max and I both moved to the East Coast because our wives are professional women who just are way more impressive than us.
Max Becker: Like, in every way.
Cole Becker: We’d take the train to each other’s apartments and we’d show each other the songs we were working on. I’d have maybe a whole song or Max would have a whole song. And usually it was maybe 60 to 80 percent where it needed to go. But Max and I are really good at editing each other’s work where we hear what is really catchy about a song or what’s memorable about a song that the other wrote. It goes back to you can’t really have an ego when you work with people and it helps us in the end because Max will tell me, “Hey, that part, I know you’re attached to it, but it doesn’t need to be there” And like vice versa, I’ll tell him the same thing. So it develops from there. And then, you know, we went into the studio and things got even weirder in there.
Max Becker: It’s hard to explain the writing process. I think the best way to put it is like, we’re just going to kind of try everything until we feel that it’s right. It’s almost like being in a different dimension when you’re in the studio when everyone’s locked in and you don’t know what time it is. You haven’t seen the light of day, but this thing happened and, oh my God, this idea happened and whatever. All of a sudden, a song comes out and I think you can attribute what ended up being “California Wintertime” to that because we had done that song for different reasons. It’s like all of a sudden at midnight, we get the right bassline. And then it just kind of takes the rest of the song there.
Cole Becker: Where the hooks come from is the most inexplicable part. Sometimes you’ll be about to fall asleep and a whole chorus will just jump into your head out of nowhere. And you’re like, how do I get out of bed and write this down? And most of the time you don’t, but then you do sometimes. That’s where the hooks come from.
Max Becker: The process is that there’s no process. We just stick to what’s good and we hope we can ride it out and finish it off. Keep trying different things until something sticks.
Cade Becker: Until it’s right. We did a lot of different songs like three or four times.
Jeromme Graham: The process is definitely working! As you launch the new album and embark on this North American tour, what are your hopes for the new album, and how will listeners receive it? How do you see it shaping the future of SWMRS?
Cole Becker: It’s cool when we play shows. You know, seeing that these songs that we made in our late teens and early 20s mean so much to people. And anytime you make an album, your hope is that you can one-up yourself. And I hope that this album shines because I feel like it’s some of our best work and I hope that people hear it that way.
Max Becker: I’m a little nuts in that I care about what people think about the music 10 years from now. We’re putting all this vinyl out, these different vinyl copies of this record. And I hope that the people that buy this record. For example, we have 200 copies of a specific shade of green of this record on vinyl. And my hope is that 10 years from now, people who bought the record right now are like, fuck, yes, I got this. This is so awesome. This is so cool that I got this at this time.
Cole Becker: Yeah. And I think we went for so long without playing shows and it took us a long time to kind of reform and find our center of gravity again as a band. Now that we’re doing it again, the sheer fact that we get to play shows and connect with people who love our music is like we’re just living the dream every day. We’re so grateful. It’s so cool. No matter who shows up. If even one person shows up and they have a good time, that is my goal. It’s the dream to keep doing that.
Max Becker: We just hope that the art just connects with people and it makes it so we can get to keep doing this because it’s literally the dream.
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