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They talk about New York like it’s a person they all grew up with.
“Um, mad long. We went to high school together. Shout out high school. Shout out New York. Shout out the train. Shout out public school. Shout out Metro cards. Shout out the green student Metro cards. Y'all don't even know about that. You only know the yellow ones. We had the green joints because we were students and we got free subway rides. And that was awesome. And we've known each other for over a decade. Swag. YOLO. Swag.”
It’s half a joke, half a thesis statement. This is not a band that met in some polished rehearsal room — it’s kids who “spent lots of time together on the train.” One of them remembers it super specifically: “Me and Elijah would link up in the same cart at the same time every morning. It's true.”
They keep insisting they’re not special, and that’s kind of the point.
“We are very, regular people. And I feel that comes through in the music."
"And we don't try and fake anything and try and be things where we aren't. And I feel that comes through and the honesty and vulnerability and the fun parts of the music and the serious parts of the music. And I feel it's a little bit everything, a little bit everything for everyone. And it that comes through because we are a little bit of everything from everyone.”
Part of that “everything” is the way their lives overlap. “We all have mad different unique stories, I feel I'm just like, where we come from, and how we came together also, and I feel, literally we kind of do, we don't represent everything. But we are a lot of different parts of New York, we all come from different parts of New York, we all have different, you know, cultural backgrounds, everything. So I feel that 100% is in the music. And talked about just like in our daily lives as friends, you know, we're always putting each other on to so many different things, just from our childhood.”
That friendship isn’t some romanticized backstory either — it’s the whole engine of how they work. One of them puts it plainly:
“Because we've been friends for so long, and we were friends before we were a band, being vulnerable is a lot easier.
And we are all very honest with each other about what we think is good and what we think is not good.” There’s no sacred idea, no ego-proof demo. “In the early stages of making music, nothing's off limits, everything gets recorded, everything gets put there. And then we assess afterwards. And we're all very honest about how we feel about those things. And it just makes us stronger. You know, I don't think we're really afraid. But yeah.”
The process usually starts stupidly simple: one idea on the table, everybody else orbiting it. “I mean, Elijah said, it always starts with, someone puts an idea down. And, you know, we add on to it.” Because they’ve known each other for so long, it doesn’t get passive-aggressive; it just gets busy. “It's definitely seamless, because of what Elijah said, we have our own dynamic, we've known each other for so long. So we can be honest with each other. So it's not like nothing's passive or, you know, we put all our ideas down and figure it out after. So making the music is definitely, it's definitely pretty seamless. Yeah, we're creative with it.”
WHATMORE pose on concrete steps in a dim outdoor corridor, styled in hoodies, wide-leg jeans, and sneakers, with one member seated in front wearing a walking boot.
Of course they fight about songs — there are five of them. They just use time and Google Drive instead of blowing up the group chat. “We have disagreements… But I think that they kind of work themselves out because we sat with things for a while and had a few different versions of things. And eventually, there ended up being an answer that we were all like, okay with, you know what I mean? Like, it starts out as a disagreement, but then, we have the untitled link, we can all listen to the music. And then, somebody comes around and they're like, you know what, you're not wrong. You know, I mean, and then it kind of works out.”
Having five people in the room turns every idea into a kind of informal stress test. “Also, in the music creation process, because there is five people, you kind of have to lock in and everyone's kind of watching. And it's kind of a good, it's either a good thing, or you know, it's like this pressure.” If the idea survives that first half hour, it stays. “I feel like, honestly, there weren't so many, if you're 30 minutes in, everyone's kind of killing it, you feel that it doesn't even become necessarily a disagreement, just kind of a, alright, next, you know, and it's healthy. Because it keeps the good ideas kind of flowing.”
Underneath all that process talk is the same anchor: New York. They’re explicit about it. “The shuffle button, like Jackson was saying, we all make different types of music, we each have our own sound.
"Something we all share is New York City, that's our identity. So at the end of the day, we wanted to feel like New York, everything we do visually, it's got to feel like New York."
"And because that's all we know, really. So definitely, that's what we all share for sure.”
Even when they’re not physically in the city, their heads are still on the subway, at the deli, in the chaos. One of them remembers a stretch where they weren’t even listening to music outside: “There was like, three months where I lost my earbuds, but I didn't feel like spending $20 and getting a new pair. So whenever I was outside, I just raw dogged life and didn’t listen to music. So I feel a lot of the stuff I made for a minute was just inspired by the first bite of a bacon, egg and cheese or, the scene someone wilding out on the street, like someone fighting on the street, you know, that's what I'm inspired by the first bite of a bacon, egg and cheese.”
Ironically, the album that’s supposed to feel like the city wasn’t even made there. “We talked about this feeling actually a lot like we made the album in Pennsylvania. In my family's home, in the sticks and a super small town called Holly. And we all said that we felt we channeled New York more because we were away from it.” Distance just made the obsession sharper.
They know they’re stepping into a crowded lineage of New York acts, but the ambition is still huge. “I think, I mean, I think obviously we looked up to so many groups that have come in New York, and so many groups that we're friends with that are in New York in the scene, and they're all super inspiring. And I don't know, I just feel
"Something we talked about a lot is being synonymous with New York. And how can we really make a stamp on the city in a way that hasn't been done in a really long time?"
I think that would be the pinnacle of WHATMORE being a success in my head if we are just synonymous with the city.”
Kids from different corners of the five boroughs, “very, like regular people,” became friends before they were a “band” put every idea on the table, argue it out over untitled links, and then try to make it all “feel like New York.” That’s the whole project.
