Last month on SWT, we first discussed Milwaukee, WI noise rockers IfIHadAHifi through an insightful artist essay by founding drummer/vocalist DJ Hostettler (aka DrAwkward). The band remains strong after 26 years together. Last month, the group released a new EP titled “Paws in the Bacon Grease.” They followed it up this month with another new EP entitled Night Vision Creeps, as well as a reissue of their 2012 EP Songs From Sexy Results: Cedar Block’s Dig for the Higgs and How the Quest Was Won. Yeah, you heard that right, two EPs in 2025. We’re excited too!
You can stream and purchase the releases below:
All three EPs were released by veteran Milwaukee musician, engineer, and producer Shane Hochstetler at his studio, Howl Street Recordings.
“The songs represent two different batches of songs written in two different spurts after Covid,” said Hostettler via press release. The group also features Chris Van Gompel (aka YaleDelay) on guitar and vocals, Josh Davis (aka MrAlarm) on bass/synth/vocals, and Michael Marchant (aka Rev.Ever on guitar and synth.
“The first EP’s songs came out sounding more guitar-based and ‘punk’ to our ears, whereas the second batch incorporates a moodier, synth-heavy tone, with slightly more depressing lyrical themes. Of course, once we started listening to the final mixes together, we realized that they probably could flow together as one cohesive piece, but by then we had already finalized art and titles for both EPs, so, ya know…the hell with it. Maximize the press cycles, you know? Two EPs clearly means twice as many blog posts!”
At SWT, we’re more than happy to oblige. Below is the wildly entertaining music video for their song “Everyone’s a Doctor” off Paws In The Bacon Grease to get you even more hyped on the band’s new music.
The video is directed by Ashley Altadonna of Tall Lady Productions, Vacancy Chain, and Red Quean, among other projects. The song and video pokes fun at “anti-medicine charlatans who encourage people to ‘do your own research’ on YouTube. Ironically, the video is hosted on YouTube. No ethical consumption under capitalism, etc.”
I caught up with Hostettler, Davis, and Michael Marchant to discuss the band’s new music and legacy.
The band has been together for 26 years. What does it mean to have that type of longevity?
DJ Hostettler: It means a lot to me. It’s really rewarding knowing that we haven’t gotten sick of each other after this whole time. Pretty crucial. It’s a miracle. Yeah, it’s great. I wrote the essay thing that I sent you. I feel like some of the stuff that we’re writing is some of the best stuff we’ve ever done, so it’s kind of great to feel like, even though it’s been all this time, we’re still trying new things and we’ve settled into our routine part.
Josh Davis: Well, there’s something interesting that actually came up in practice fairly recently. I talked about this song sounds like this or whatever, but it’s always been sort of a challenge to what the band sounds like, which I’m sure is hard for anybody in their own band to say exactly what it is. But there was a discussion with something like that, and it’s just, well, we just sound like us now. You’d like to think after 26 years, we just sound like us. Whatever parts we were synthesizing early on, it’s all just kind of melded into the sauce now.
DJ Hostettler: We’re a well-mixed slurry of things. We’ve been in the fridge overnight, and the flavors are married.
What originally led you to form the band?
DJ Hostettler: Well, that goes back to college days or just post-college days with our absent guitar player, Chris. We formed a previous band called the Pop Machine back in 1998.
Josh Davis: We started in my dorm room.
DJ Hostettler: That’s right. Yeah. Our first practice was in your dorm room. The three of us decided that we were going to try to do something new. The old band was a little bit more Sonic Youth-y, Post Punkish, and we at the time had decided that we wanted to move in a little more, I guess, more of a post-punk dance flavor direction at the time. I just remember using a lot of disco beats and a lot of those earlier songs.
Josh Davis: Part of the big thing was that Chris had joined the project, so we were actively bringing sense into it as well, and that definitely was something we had in the Pop Machine, but it was a different sort of thing. Wasn’t as focused on the synthesizer tones.
DJ Hostettler: Yeah. So yeah, we played our first show as IfIHadAHiFI in 2000 in April on Josh and Christian’s shared birthday, and after a few shows, as a three-piece, we realized that wasn’t quite cutting it in a live context. We needed someone else adding some stuff so that Chris wasn’t always trapped behind a keyboard and could hop around and go crazy. So, we recruited the first of our utility infielders, Noise Lesion Joy, and they were in the band for about a year. Sean was in the band for about five years after that, and we’ve had Michael here ever since 2007, so that’s been 18 years now. That’s some shit right there. We’re going to have to have another 20th anniversary show just for your 20th anniversary in the band.
We just love really noisy, weird stuff that a lot of people in the Fox Valley at the time, which was where we started, weren’t necessarily playing, so we were very much motivated to be the weird outlier, which kind of carried over into Milwaukee too a little bit.
Josh Davis: It got us shows. Being the one standout band in terms of what we sounded like.
What was the key to getting into the music scene in Milwaukee?
DJ Hostettler: Getting into the music scene in Milwaukee early was kind of a challenge. I think things were a little bit cliquey here back then than they are now.
Josh Davis: Then also the entirety of just about everybody we knew from up in the Fox Valley and Green Bay, there were a few people that stayed behind, but everybody also moved to Milwaukee, kind of within, I don’t know, a year or two.
DJ Hostettler: Yeah, that’s true. I think about how it took us a good three years to get a solid foothold at Cactus Club or something like that, but basically persistence helped us establish that once we managed to play with enough different people for them to get the idea of what we were trying to do, and as we slowly got better at it, I’m sure that helped too.
Josh Davis: Yeah. We just didn’t go away.
How do you think the band’s sound has evolved most over the years?
DJ Hostettler: Dynamics? I would say there’s a little more quiet for quiet’s sake and transitioning into the louder moments, I think from the earlier stuff, at least since I’ve been in the band.
Josh Davis: Yeah, we’re less afraid to be quiet and a little slower sometimes.
DJ Hostettler: We’ve also maybe settled into, I’m not sure what the right word is, but I feel like our last full length from 2019 we’re never going home is probably the most indie rock thing that we’ve done, probably as far as sounding the most like a traditional indie rock band whereas a lot of our earlier stuff was a lot more wall of noise kind of stuff, where the post-punk hooks and everything were buried a lot more.
I don’t want to say we’ve drifted into a more traditional standard indie rock kind of direction, because I don’t think we have, but we’ve gotten better at playing and we’ve layered all the soup a lot in the recordings, and it’s kind of, I think made things maybe a little more indie rock sounding than noise rock sometimes, probably.
Josh Davis: Yeah, we’re definitely better at making space for each other.
It sounds like everyone’s drawn to many of the same influences.
DJ Hostettler: Yeah, I’d say so. There’s definitely outliers to that that all of us pull in from outside, but there’s always been, I guess, a shared love of noisier, weirder stuff. I always drop Brainiac as a reference point.
Josh Davis: Things that don’t necessarily make it into the music all the time, but we have that kind of shared pool of influences there, which is just from kind of being Midwest nerds, same age.
With the band’s tight chemistry, it seems like everyone’s pretty comfortable taking chances with the sound.
Josh Davis: When one of us does do something that would be more out of the ordinary, we’re more excited about that, “Oh, we haven’t done that before”, or “What if we do try this,” or something that was in our song “Crash and Divide”. It was a joke when we were writing. It was like, “Okay, and here’s where the sixties girl group vocals come in”, and we didn’t back off of that.
The band is releasing a pair of new EPs with songs that you wrote during a couple of different periods after COVID. Can you talk a little bit about what led to those sessions? How did you decide to do the two eps rather than the full-length right away?
DJ Hostettler: We’re weirdos in that. I mean, I think any band probably perceives their music differently than people on the outside, and we’re reckoning with that now because during the process of recording, even Shane, who at Howl Street recorded everything, was like, “Guys, this totally all flows together as one thing. You could totally just make this one release.” But in our heads, the songs were from two different batches or bursts of songwriting. The first EP, which is coming out on streaming [in October], is Paws in the Bacon Grease. That was the first four songs we came up with coming out of COVID. Like a few of those, I want to say two of them were stuff that Chris demoed during COVID and sent around.
Then, when we were able to start practicing again, those were a couple of the ones that we started with. It was like, alright, well, we’ve got some ideas that Chris (Van Compel) came up with. Let’s get our sea legs back. “Everyone’s a Doctor” is actually an idea that we unearthed in our practice tapes from 2006, from before Michael (Marchant) was even in the band, which is pretty crazy. We’re just going through our practice tapes, trying to find stuff to kickstart the creative juices again, and I remember, I think I dug into that one and passed it around and was like, “Guys, this is almost a completed song if you really listen to it. What if we try to end something with this?” So, we first played it live at our delayed anniversary show in 2022, which would’ve marked 16 years since we had that as a practice tape.
Josh Davis: But that does speak to why it’s two EPs as well, though, because those were kind of that first writing burst and then something that we pulled from an old tape, whereas some of the songs on the second EP are we walked into practice and had it five, six done by the time we walked out that day. So, the songwriting really varies quite a bit in terms of how long things will cook.
We always write, I don’t know, three records forever. Every record we actually finish, and then a lot of that is worth going back to, but then it’s also really fun to be able to do that spontaneously, and I think that’s where, at least in our heads, and it’s still some of the riffs on the second EP stuff that Chris demoed as well, just not at the same time, but it just really fell into two separate times, and then luckily we stumbled across files that was done 10 years ago and had never really been mastered.
And the two EPs have a different sound as well?
DJ Hostettler: I think so. They’re connective tissue. I think a lot of the first EP that’s out right now, I think some of the songs are a little bit more snide and whimsical. Maybe everyone’s a doctor, I think has the classic Hi-Fi sarcastically poking fun at the world kind of thing with it being about kind of a tongue-in-cheek piss take on people who don’t trust their doctors and do their own research online and don’t take COVID vaccines.
But then by the last song on that EP, that one’s pretty bleak. The theme on that one, “Welcome to the Pale Blue,” is kind of how about we’re all doomed, basically, and that kind of, there’s a little bit more of moodiness to the second EP. I think with the additional, we’ve got a lot more sense on the second EP. It’s got a lot of almost gothier, moodier feel to a lot of the songs. Josh, the one that you wrote the lyrics to is it’s all about just being fucking exhausted with how everything is right now.
Josh Davis: Yeah, it’s still about being doomed, but in a much more weary sort of manner. I would say that the second EP in general is a little quiet or a little more laid back overall. The first EP is all the hyper zone.
Michael Marchant: The vibes are very distinct between the two.
Josh Davis: I think it’s just kind of the mood, really.
I imagine it’s exciting to get to jump between the two sound types.
DJ Hostettler: It makes building sets interesting because of the different instrumentation. Both Michael and Josh alternate between their stringed instruments and their keyed instruments, so whether or not Josh is playing bass on a traditional bass or on synth definitely changes up the feel of whatever song is playing at the time, and we’ve got to get more of the Michael keyboard songs back in the sets.
All the songs with guitars are really gnarly and aggressive-sounding, and then we’ve got some songs where both of these guys are on keys and they’ve got a little more of a dark flavor to them, so it’s cool having those different sonic palettes, speaking as the drummer who pretty much does the same shit every time.
What’s the story behind everyone having a nickname?
DJ Hostettler: Ooh, well, that’s ancient band lore. So, when the three of us were trying to figure out what the band name was going to be, the person I was dating at the time came back from their job at CD Warehouse with a long list of palindromes, and they were like, “Here’s a list of palindromes. You should name your band after one.” And that’s where we found IfIHadAHiFi. But then on that list we also found ones that sounded like proper names, so for whatever reason, whatever band mythology that we were concocting out of nowhere, that’s probably my fault, really. But yeah, Dr. Awkward was on that list. Mr. Alarm was on that list. Yale Delay was on that list. Noise Lesion was on that list. One of our first song titles was “Edison No Side”, which is another palindrome that was on that list.
Josh Davis: I feel like part of it too was just the scene we were in and everybody had nicknames, which were just their first name in the band they were in for the most part, but there’s true people like Andy Junk and John Hands on and all this and that, so it’s just like we took it one little sci-fi nerd step farther.
DJ Hostettler: There were a lot of punk names in Green Bay.
Josh Davis: There are people whose actual names I don’t know.
DJ Hostettler: I feel like by this point, we’ve been at it long enough that people know who we are. Either way, we’re not hiding behind them anymore necessarily.
How do you come up with the titles for the two EPs?
DJ Hostettler: They’re song lyrics from songs that are on the record, and I think I initially proposed both of them, if I remember correctly. I know I needed to explain to the guys why I felt they were appropriate titles, but yeah, Paws in the Bacon Grease. I put a little note on the Bandcamp that it’s kind of a reference to toxoplasmosis, which is what happens when cats don’t clean their paws after being in the litter box and then get into your food, and it causes brainworms. We all know, based on the country’s current health policy, what happens when you have brain worms.
The name of the second one is a line from the first song “You’re A Mess”, which is actually a song about getting through COVID by watching live animal cams on YouTube to stay sane. But I also, just with the second EP being darker and moodier, I thought Night Vision Creeps was a good, moody, evocative title for it, and no one pushed back.
With working with Shane at Howl Street most impact the songs?
Michael Marchant: I feel like the more we work with him, the better he gets at what he does, and the better things sound, and just his enthusiasm is great. He’s so much fun to work with and hang out with as a friend and a person.
Josh Davis: Also, we’ve been recording with him for at least a decade now, and so in terms of the shorthand is real easy, and we just go in working with different engineers, it eventually gets to a point where they kind of get what we’re doing where we say, “okay, now we want to overdub that a third time and run it backwards or do whatever”, and sometimes it takes them a minute to go like, “oh, okay, sure.” And just kind of go with it. We’re past all that with Shane. He comes up with weirder stuff than we do a lot of the time.
I’m blanking on which song it was. Oh, it’s “Anyway”, we were doing this kind of outro with various effects and running things through pedals and things, and tried to get just kind of a wash of sound and got it. That sounds good. And he just turns to me and he’s like, “Alright, let’s double track it immediately,” before I could even, and that happens a lot where it’s just like he knows what we’re for now, and that helps us in a lot of ways.
DJ Hostettler: I would also add to that that he’s not been afraid to push back on a little of that, though, and occasionally force us to edit ourselves. Something that I remember him trying to say a few times when recording the last record was, “Do you guys really need that many overdubs? Because if it turns into soup, it’s harder to mix, and individual things don’t stand out as much.” So yeah, he’s definitely on board with all the weird in studio ideas we have and tricks and whatnot, but he also has, I think, helped us focus those more where instead of just throwing the whole tray of silverware down the steps, it’s a more surgical, precise strike when we do something that weird now in the studio, I think.
When was the first time that you worked with him?
DJ Hostettler: He mixed the Nada Surf record in 2011, and then right after that, we did the Songs From Sexy Results: Cedar Block’s Dig for the Higgs and How the Quest Was Won in 2012, and I think that was the first time that he engineered one of our records. So yeah, it’s been about 14 to 15 years.
Speaking of the latter album, you’re also releasing a remastered version of that EP. Can you talk a little bit about the EP and why you felt it was time to revisit it?
Josh Davis: It’s the first thing we recorded with Shane. At the time, it was just for this one-off project. We hadn’t thought about putting it on physical media or anything, so it just kind of didn’t really get mastered. Shane just kind of turned it up louder in whatever software, and that was enough for that.
Actually, recently, when we were doing these EPs and kind of going through, I kind of take care of the archive of the band in terms of audio and things, and trying to make sure everything’s backed up and saving whatever, and I was digging through whatever hard drive and found the non-turned-up non-cloud versions of these songs. So, it just became a thing. It was like, “Oh, hey, look, we’re doing these new EPs, and we have this old EP that we can actually do master properly and bring it back, and it’s been long enough.” We sat and listened to it again, and I was like, “That was good.”
We got enough distance on it. Shane was like, “This was really good. Yeah, let’s get that back out in the world.” And a couple of those songs, we’ll still throw deep gets played in a lot of sets because it’s really fun to play and really easy to kind of spruce up. But yeah, it was really just kind of the happenstance of it, it was something we’d been talking about for a minute. We had somebody else take a pass at mastering, but all we thought all we had were the loud versions. It didn’t really sound correct, but now it does, because I was able to stumble across those files. So, it really was just, I found them is the easy answer.
The band is releasing a CD that includes the EP and the new tracks.
DJ Hostettler: We’re playing a show [last month] in Kenosha, a benefit for the White Lilac, and we will have them for sale there. It’s like a run of a hundred CDs. I think we’re all on board with the idea that for the two new EPs, we’ll figure out a vinyl version of those two soon and get while rolling on that once we figure out where we want to get it done. But yeah, the CD is, we’re taking orders for it on Bandcamp now.
Josh Davis: It was the idea that we had these EPs, it was kind of like bands do singles collections and things like that, and just to have the Sex Results on something physical, but I mean, they sound like us again, but you can hear the difference between how we used to write songs 15 years ago and how we would record them and layer things because the Sexy Results recording is a lot more chaotic, and it’s kind of the last time we did that, it’s where after that we started moved away from it. So actually, I suppose it’s a more interesting contrast than a similar thing.
It’s a full-circle moment to have the three EPs to showcase how far you’ve come working with Shane.
Josh Davis: Oh, yeah, definitely.
After releasing these EPs, what’s next for the band?
DJ Hostettler: Play as much as we can. We’re about three or four song ideas deep into another record. We’re really excited about those songs. There’s actually one of them we’re already playing live, which is probably putting the cart before the horse, but it’s really good. It’s really fun. We’ve got a weekend in Milwaukee and Green Bay coming up in November, and then I just get some more stuff scheduled, doing what we’re doing, which is just play shows when we can and when we want to, and right whenever we’re able to get together. It’s definitely a different vibe now that we’re older and not always able to get together every weekend. We’d like to, because we’ve got other things going on in our lives too, but we try to maximize the time that we do have. So yeah, I really have fun playing shows with these guys still, and I want to do that as much as possible.
Are you playing mostly in Wisconsin, or do you hope to get outside the state?
DJ Hostettler: We don’t own a van anymore, so that kind of makes things difficult, but I definitely would like to figure out how to get some longer weekends going again at some point. We got buddies in Louisville and Minneapolis and Cincinnati and Detroit and all these different places that I wouldn’t mind going out and playing again. The big question is whether or not we can make it work. We can figure out how to cram everything into a rented minivan and do that and not completely feel like death when we get home.
With everyone playing in other bands, I imagine that’s helped keep things fresh with this band.
DJ Hostettler: I feel like I’ve definitely. So I played drums and Body Futures with my wife, Dixie, and some other buddies of ours, and that band has been going for about 13 years now, and there are definitely occasional songwriting ideas that come up in that band that I maybe will try to import sometimes to add a little different flavor to something that we’re writing. I feel like I’ve been playing behind the beat a lot more in that band and been trying to be like, “Hmm, what if a Hi-Fi song actually grooved instead of was constantly derailing. Let’s see what that’s like.”
You can follow and listen to IFIHadAHiFi at the links below:
Instagram: Instagram/ifihadahifimke
Facebook: IfIHadAHiFi on Facebook
Spotify: IfIHadAHifi on Spotify
Bandcamp: Ifihadahifi.bandcamp.com
You can catch the band live at the following shows:
Friday 11/14 in Milwaukee at The Uptowner, w/Ghost Cuts & The Dire
Saturday 11/15 in Green Bay at the UFO Museum Gift Shop & Records, w/FishFood & Matt Nast
Joshua is co-founder of Scummy Water Tower. He’s freelanced for a variety of newspapers, magazines, and websites, including: Rolling Stone, The Boston Globe, Chicago Sun-Times, Guitar World, MTV News, Grammy.com, Chicago Magazine, Milwaukee Magazine, MKE Lifestyle, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, A.V. Club, SPIN, Alternative Press, Under the Radar, Paste, PopMatters, American Songwriter, and Relix. You can email him at josh@scummywatertower.com.
