[Interview] Locals Only Band White Arrows Safisfy With All-Embracing Indie-Rock

“ It's definitely spontaneous and in the moment. It's too hard to have foresight when you're writing music and it's coming together with different people.
” When it comes to taking the road less traveled, White Arrows front man Mickey Church could lead the discussion.  Born with a crippled eyesight, Church developed an early dependency and relationship with his auditory faculties.  He didn’t attain full visual normalcy until he was eleven.  Here’s where it gets weird.  Church and White Arrows bassist JP Caballero, who thought of each other as childhood friends, recently discovered they are in fact brothers, “When we got older our parents dropped that ball on us, so we started hanging out more.  It’s just a technicality I guess.  They went, ‘Just so you know, you’re actually related technically speaking.’  It was really pretty strange,” reflect Church.

You can bet White Arrow’s unique and unconventional past has spilled over into their music.  So far, pinning a genre for the Los Angeles natives has been as shifty and difficult as solving a rubik’s cube.  You may have heard White Arrows on Locals Only with Kat Corbett, turning your car into a dance party with their single “Get Gone.”  There’s a bit of everything in their music.  The most obvious is a sharp and jaunty arrangement of indie-pop.  But there’s also some transcontinental influences as well.  Hence, why one reviewer called them “Psycho Tropical.”

We recently interviewed White Arrows lead singer Mickey Church, and discussed all things past, present, and future.  From their formation and familial ties, to riding mechanical bulls with another KROQ favorite in The Naked and Famous, we’ve caught you up to speed on one of LA’s hottest up-and-comers.

Born in Southern California, Mickey Church grew up unsure if he’d ever be able to look at the world through a reliable pair of eyes.  However, whatever he lacked in vision was made up for in his sense for hearing.  As a result, he formed an early bond with music.  Church explained how his life went from dark to light, “I didn’t just magically regain sight, but my sight kept progressing from when I was born.  By the time I was eleven, my eyes were good to see with glasses.”

“Get Gone”

Church would eventually move across the country to attend NYU, where he focused his studies on the uncommon practice of ritualistic shamanism.  It was in The Big Apple where the rudimentary stages of White Arrows began, “We recorded the original 5 songs while I was living in a one-bedroom apartment in New York, and it wasn’t until I moved back to LA that I formed a band with my half-brother and my full brother that I really think the genesis of the band started.”  Church added, “The songs existed online, but we had never played live.  Like our first show was in LA, I had never played in New York.  So we’ve been a band for about a year-and-a-half, coming up on two years, even though the original demos have existed for a little bit longer than that.”