Piss Off The Neighbors

Pop.Fang is the Los Angeles-based POP project of Henry Orendorf, Christian Renard, and Johnny Hall. They just released a new single, “Penny,” and have been listening to a lot of Black Eyed Peas. Charents talked with Henry and Christian about all of this and more…

What did you have for breakfast?

Henry Orendorf: Avocado toast.

Christian Renard: I had blueberries, strawberries, and coffee.

Henry: Christian’s very healthy.

I noticed you guys took your old singles down. Was there any intention behind that?

Henry: Yeah, just rebranding. We have six new songs that are mastered that are gonna be coming out shortly. Those first few singles were, our friend Johnny Hall, him and I wrote those a couple years back and now we have Christian, so it’s the three of us. We have kind of a new outlook on writing.

Christian: It’s a general band re-vamp.

How does it feel to have a clean slate?

Henry: Feels good. Endless possibilities, but then you gotta start again from square one.

So Christian joined the band recently?

Henry: We’ve been playing music together for a while, but writing together more in the past couple years.

Christian: I was in the live band and then we moved in together and started writing a lot. And Henry used to play drums in my old band. We’ve played in a lot of band and gigs for hire. We’ve been playing music together for years, so it just made sense.

Do you have a memory of when the two of you first started collaborating?

Henry: Christian would come over to Johnny’s and just…play. He comes over to hang out and just plays guitar on the couch.

Christian: We would just get drunk and play. We were in an apartment and we’d piss off the neighbors. They would bang on the ceiling trying to get us to be quiet.

Henry: I don’t think they appreciated the piano and drum set in the apartment.

Christian: Yeah, and then I would come over with a guitar and get rowdy. Rile you guys up.

Henry: And then I started playing drums for his band, too.

Of the two of you, who’s more Pop and who’s more Fang?

Christian: You go first.

Henry: I think that term is a whole. It’s the dichotomy of both. I wanna write pop songs that bite a little bit. Make it a little more distorted. A little darker, a little more moody. But at the end of the day I just wanna write pop songs. [confounded by the brilliant question] So who’s pop, who’s fang??

Christian: I would say we’re both pretty shamelessly pop.

Henry: We like writing pop songs.

Christian: We both like some obscure and avant-garde shit, for lack of better terms. But we like a ton of painfully mainstream radio music.

Henry: I listen to Ke$ha, like…you know what I mean?

Christian: We’ve been listening to Black Eyed Peas recently. What’s the album with like the proto-AI green face on it? It has like five or six hit singles.

Henry: I love pop.

Christian: I think we’re both pretty pop.

Maybe Johnny’s the Fang?

Henry: Maybe.

Christian: He actually is. He’s really into jazz. Amazing jazz piano player. He’s really into microtonal synths and stuff like that.

Henry: He’s into ambient music.

Christian: He’s definitely into the more intellectual stuff. Not that we don’t know it, but he’s more into it than we are.

Henry: He’s got that special input, always. When he touches something it’ll change. In a good way.

Christian: Yeah, he always adds a cool factor.

Do you still consider yourselves to be operating mainly in the pop genre?

Henry: We just write—

Christian: [pounds chest] from the heart, man! [laughs]

Henry: —what we wanna hear. I used to start off making songs in the DAW [digital-audio workstation] but recently it’s been, sitting on the couch, a couple guitars, piano, and just playing whatever. Whatever comes to mind, whatever I’m thinking about, whatever we’re thinking about. So, that’s been more fun and it feels more true, instead of just trying to force a pop sound out of the computer.

You guys played Destroyer Show no. 1 for Midcult* last year. I remember thinking, “Damn, when Henry’s on stage he has a different energy from when you’re just talking to him.” Is that a conscious decision?

Henry: I think I’m usually a pretty chill and normal guy when I’m just talking to people, but when you get up there, you know, the energy’s high, you some nerves going around. When we play live we’re a little faster a little louder, digging in a little more. So I feed off of that, definitely.

Christian, you play with a few other bands. What do you think Pop.fang has unlocked for you creatively? What do you think it offers you that other bands don’t?

Christian: A more direct line to songwriting. Being more involved in the process. Having more creative decisions with the songs. Just feels like it’s a little more me than some of the other bands. It’s more catered towards our collective taste.

Henry: It also wouldn’t work if I had just met him or Johnny. We’ve known each other for so long and I know, at least musically, what he’s thinking. But we also surprise each other.

Christian: When it comes to making the music, I feel like we can all kinda read each other’s minds.

Henry: And it’s fun to challenge those norms, too, and those predictions as well.

You all have different projects you’re involved in, but it sounds like this is something you all feel like you have ownership over.

Henry: It’s a home for everyone, definitely.

How do you plan to market or promote the band? Is that something that’s important right now?

Christian: Yes. I’m checking our TikTok right now.

Henry: We have two videos done. Today, after this, we’re gonna go chop up the first one and just spam Reels. We’re talking about working on a zine in the future.

Christian: We’ve been trying to pin down a visual aesthetic. Balancing that and making music. The reality is that you kinda have to post a couple TikToks a week, you have to have an Instagram, you have to do all this shit that I don’t think any of us wanna do. It’s just a necessity for independent artists.

Henry: We’re trying to think outside the box so that it’s not annoying but fun, for us and for anyone who’s seeing it.

What’s the song of the summer?

Christian: I think for a lot of people it’s been that Biebs song, “Daisies.” It’s not my song of the summer but it’s a song of the summer.

Henry: I love the new White Reaper song, honestly. That’s my song of the summer.

Christian: My song of the summer is probably “Safely” by Hot Rod Circuit.

Henry: You’ve been on a pop punk/emo kick.

If Pop.Fang had to time travel to another decade, which one would bring you the most commercial success?

Christian: I think we’re at the right place at the right time, but I would say the 2010s actually. We would slay that shit.

Henry: The cheesy, indie, Pitchfork era. That Naked and Famous song, MGMT. Definitely an interesting time, musically. It’s cool how it’s circling back in a kind of warped, interesting way.

How will you look back at the summer of ’25, from a creative and/or personal standpoint.

Henry: Definitely very productive. Knocked out a lot of songs, videos. Just getting ready for what’s next.

Christian: I think we’ll look back and, for the most part, be happy with what we did. There’s some relief that the songs are coming out now. One of them comes out tomorrow [“Penny”]. There’s relief that they’re not just sitting up in the air anymore.

What does Penny mean to you guys? Is it building on the past or is it moving towards the future?

Henry: We wrote it years ago.

Christian: I was still at my parents’ house and [Henry] was between places for, like, a week and came and stayed with me. We were writing a lot and partying a lot.

Henry: We had just found our place that we have now. He came up with the riff and I was playing drums to it and then I was like, what should this be about? And he said, “Have it be about getting a new house.” That kind of turned into a metaphor for change. Anything can happen. Endless possibilities.

Christian: The chorus and the verses we wrote in 2022. The ending we wrote last summer. Two years later we came back and finished the song. It is literally a moving song. Moving forward.

What else do you want people to know about Pop.Fang?

Christian: Grammy-bound.