The Des Moines punk rock band Greg Wheeler and the Poly Mall Cops have been playing together and recording for several years now, but my first time hearing them perform wasn’t until this year. Specifically, it was at Gabe’s in Iowa City, at the Mission Creek Festival in April. I had the opportunity to speak to the band earlier in the day, and asked what I should expect.
“It’s intense, and it’s fun,” said bassist Jill McLain. “It leaves us exhausted every time, but that’s how we want it. We want to put it all out.”
“We try not to give the audience time to applaud,” said vocalist and guitarist Greg Wheeler. “We want to fit as many songs into the set as we can. It’s a punk rock show. If you go to the bathroom, or have a beer, you’re going to miss four to five songs.”
“A Greg Wheeler and the Poly Mall Cops show is…sweaty,” said drummer Eric “Hutch” Hutchison. “I get really sweaty.”
Having seen the band twice now, including a performance on IPR’s All Access Live from the 80/35 festival, Greg Wheeler and the Poly Mall Cops are as advertised: loud, fast and sweaty, with plenty of attitude. Even for the band, it’s a lot. There was a moment at Gabe's where Wheeler said “I need to catch my breath” after a song, followed immediately by McLain saying “Alright that’s good, let’s go!”
A small moment, but it illustrates a truth that the band wants to make very clear: being good at punk rock is hard work.
“You still have to put in some effort if you want it to be good,” said Wheeler. “A band like Nirvana became as big as The Beatles for a minute in the early ‘90s, and they’re a punk band. As good as those songs are, that is a punk band that wrote really catchy songs. I don’t think you should equate punk to ‘not trying.’”
It’s been a busy year for The Poly Mall Cops, who finally released their full-length album, Manic Fever, about three years after they’d originally planned to. As with all things, music-related or otherwise, the pandemic changed the band’s plans. It was also an opportunity for the band to re-evaluate the record and change their approach.
“The original intent was ‘we're going to record this album real fast, we’ll have it out in summer of 2020, and we’ll play a bunch of shows.’ And then the pandemic happened,” said Wheeler. “The time we would have spent practicing or playing shows became time to do more overdubs on guitars, or maybe a little more thoughtful vocal takes than we would have initially. The initial takes were just us playing in a room, and that’s how it was going to be.”
“The record’s a little bigger sounding than it would have been,” said Wheeler. “I think the aggression and feelings we were feeling over the pandemic materialized in the recordings in that manner.”
All of those feelings and all of the hard work culminated in a sold-out album release show at xBk Live in Des Moines at the end of March, which Wheeler described as both “awesome” and “humbling.”
“We thought we were going to have 50 of our homies from the old Vaudeville Mews/4th Street ‘scum scene’ come out, but instead we played for a packed house of people we don’t know,” said Wheeler. “It’s nice to have (the album) cross the finish line, and people get it and are responding well to it.”
“It was surreal to see all of those friends, but also all of those strangers at the same time,” said Hutch. “People that I’d never seen at a Cops show were showing up wearing one of our shirts! Des Moines showed up.”
Greg Wheeler and the Poly Mall Cops spent the spring and summer playing shows, including the stops at Mission Creek and 80/35. They’ve also recorded some new songs, two of which are scheduled to be on a split 7-inch release with Penny Peach: they hope to release it before the end of 2023. The band are looking forward to showing what they can do now since they recorded Manic Fever.
“We recorded it over three years ago, and I love how it turned out, but I’m always like ‘I am so much better at my instrument now!’” said McLain, with a laugh. “We need to keep going and record again, because I’m far more skilled than I was three years ago.”
“It was really hard to listen to Manic Fever, because we’d heard those songs so many times,” said Hutch. “So when it came to final mixes, and the master, and the test pressing, we were like, ‘I don’t know! It’s fine!’ Being better at our instruments brings a new energy and a new ferocity. We can play faster, longer and harder. Even though we might be sick of listening to them, we can play them with a new intensity that’s really fun”
“There’s a lot of feeling in it.” said McLain. “They’re not the most technically-driven songs, but they’re still emotionally meaningful, and a lot of fun.”
Greg Wheeler and the Poly Mall Cops are IPR’s Artists of the Month for August. Manic Fever is available directly from the band’s label, High Dive Records, as well as Bandcamp and streaming services. Learn more about the Artist of the Month series, including how to apply, right here.
