Fortune favors the bold guitar tones of Jawdropped

Jawdropped are very LA. At a time when indie rock lacks some of the regional specificity it once had and most bands sound like they could be from anywhere, this four-piece aims to rep the City of Angels with their debut album. Guitarist and co-lead vocalist Roman Zangari describes Jawdropped’s sound as having a “surface-level sunniness” juxtaposed with “a slightly seedier, grimier underbelly.” That rough-but-sweet, playfight-y-grunge-pop recalls records like X’s Los Angeles and Hole’s Celebrity Skin. Jawdropped’s forthcoming debut, Secret To Spare, is a collection of bittersweet power pop vignettes about thrills, failures, and dashed dreams in a city built on all three.

Zangari and drummer Cook Lee-Chobanian both grew up in LA and came of age in the city’s vibrant but decentralized DIY scene. “Unfortunately, a lot of the really cool community-centered all-ages DIY places closed during COVID, especially places that maybe were not, uh, legal,” says Zangari. Thankfully, not all of these DIY hubs have been wiped out just yet—Zangari shouts out DTLA venue The Smell in particular as “one of those places where a lot of kids who were interested in punk or DIY or garage rock saw their first show.”

Bassist Sean Edwards describes the post-pandemic Los Angeles DIY scene as a “small town in a big city situation.” Lee-Chobanian says that interconnectedness is “three or four bands all kinda intertwined and then there’s like a group of another few bands that all kinda rock with each other, but everyone’s supportive of each other.” Jawdropped are eager to shout out their peers, from labelmates Rocket to other LA-based artists like Semi Trucks and fish narc, who they’re psyched to share a scene with.

It’s a scene rife with inspiration for Jawdropped songs, which Zangari says are populated with “different characters that move to LA with the idea of ‘making it.’” The successes and, more likely, failures of these characters are never depicted in a way that feels exploitative or even pitying. Instead, the band writes from a place of familiarity: they know what it means to struggle to make ends meet in an increasingly expensive city, to take risks for their art that don’t always pay off. “You meet so many of these characters just going out and hanging out at bars and hanging out at shows,” Zangari says. “It’s really fascinating to me what brings people out to LA and why they decided to stick around when their fantasy doesn’t pan out the way they expected it to.” 

Co-guitarist and vocalist Kyra Morling broadens the reach of Jawdropped’s songs beyond their home city, encapsulating the struggles inherent in almost any contemporary creative ecosystem. “What we’re experiencing and what we’re putting into our songs is very apropos of what it means to be a creative person in this modern age,” she says. In these songs are stories of making time and resources where there are none and living between shining moments of getting what you want, often at the expense of getting what you need. There’s a desperation to music like this, lending it an air of levity and vulnerability. On the chorus of “Split Lip,” Zangari and Morling harmonize, “Lay your cards on the table / Sign your soul to a major label.” Between sweet guitar licks and “yeah yeah”s, the two sigh, “It doesn’t always work out.” 

“It’s like you’re on the list for the party at the Chateau Marmont, but you can’t afford a drink,” Edwards jokes, articulating the try-hard vibe of a song like “Split Lip.” Most of the time, devoting yourself to your art is more humiliating than it is glamorous, and that’s the heart of Jawdropped’s sonic adventures in the perpetual audition that is the life of a working artist. “We’re all there together,” Edwards adds as a humorous and half-hearted consolation. “And it’s nice outside.” 

Secret To Spare doesn’t come out until September, but it’s an album full of stories colored by nostalgia and sun-stained dog days. Morling even tries to will an endless summer into an existence on the mellow and wistful “Cellulite” when she sings about a “forever feeling.” Zangari adds that, with this record, he was specifically trying to capture the feeling of “summer as a kid, when it means so much more than as an adult.” During childhood, summer vacation is a given: two and a half months of unstructured time built into the school year. But it’s almost more precious as an adult, when it’s up to you to carve out your own season of fun and freedom within the confines of year-round responsibilities. 

“Weirdly, as a band, you kinda get summer break back a little bit,” Edwards says, remarking that at its best, touring can feel like summer vacation: “You’re cruising and doing your thing, and it feels kinda like being a kid again. You’re just like, loose in the world, y’know?” The way he describes going on tour makes it sound as freeing as a Jawdropped song, primed to pour out of rolled-down windows as the sun melts into the highway. That’s the setting in which Jawdropped absorb some of their biggest musical influences. Lucinda Williams’ Car Wheels On A Gravel Road stays in heavy rotation in their tour van. “That’s always gonna influence us, I think,” says Morling. 

Another major touchpoint for Secret To Spare in particular is the Lemonheads’ It’s A Shame About Ray, which Zangari and Morling love for its “sunny melancholy” and “the way they balance out acoustic guitars and more dirty electric guitars.” Funnily enough, “sunny melancholy” is a pretty spot-on descriptor for Secret To Spare. Encoded into the record’s DNA are other titans of indie rock and power pop that the members of Jawdropped rattle off as inspirations: Yuck, Yo La Tengo, Teenage Fanclub, The Replacements (as well as Paul Westerberg’s solo work). Like these forebears, Jawdropped favor bright guitar tones and a certain flavor of punk romanticism, gold glimmering through grit—a sonic sensibility refined with engineering from Colin Knight (who engineered Agriculture’s black metal breakout album The Spiritual Sound) and mixing from Alex Farrar (whose work with the likes of Wednesday and MJ Lenderman has made him one of the most sought-after producers in rock music today).

Jawdropped cut their teeth supporting indie rock lifers like Real Estate and new-gen stars Momma, and their goal after years of touring was to capture the spry kinetic energy of their live shows in the studio. A lot of the songs from their 2025 Just Fantasy EP began as demos from Zangari’s old band, given a second life by Morling and Edwards, who put “finishing touches on them.” Between recording Just Fantasy and Secret To Spare, Lee-Chobanian joined Jawdropped on drums and they signed to Transgressive Records’ Canvasback imprint, but not much changed about their writing and recording process. Morling describes combining both releases as a constant flow state: “We were recording it whether or not someone else was gonna put it out. That sense of urgency was there with both of them.”

In an attempt to translate the immediacy of their live performances into a studio LP, the band recorded without a metronome and, in Albini-esque fashion, tried to take as few takes as possible. The band chose to record live, all in the same room, with a studio setup that allowed them to make eye contact while playing. The resulting debut album is a jumble of songs that went through years of road tests at live shows and, according to Lee-Chobanian, “like one or two that we decided to do like the day before.” 

“There’s some stuff that pushes and pulls; it’s not exactly perfect, but I think the feel is correct on every song, which is the most important thing to us,” Edwards says. Secret To Spare’s tense little knots and jagged edges are what keep it exciting and unpredictable, just like the circumstances that birthed it. The guitar melody on “Smoglight” hits crooked, a spear of blinding sun cutting through the haze that hangs above LA’s glowing hills. Morling and Zangari’s voices crash into one another in a moment of glorious combustion, sharing something between a scream and a sigh: “God it’s so romantic.” It sure is. 

Grace Robins-Somerville is a writer from Brooklyn. Her work has appeared in Pitchfork, Stereogum, The Alternative, ANTICS, Marvin, Swim Into The Sound, and her “mostly about music” newsletter, Our Band Could Be Your Wife.

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