Written by Shea Roney

With a sound that is fortified in pop facets, experimental awareness, and sweet undertones, Combat Naps, the project of Neal Jochmann, is fully demonstrative of the boldness and sheer joy that comes with making and performing music. With preparation leading towards the release of his new album, Tap In, Jochmann took the time to talk to me about being a home grown musician, reimagining Combat Naps live, and the freedom that comes with writing music.

Naming the project Combat Naps in 2016, Jochmann had a deep love for music while growing up. With a creative emphasis in his household (and a mom who spent the 80s singing in bands), the desire to make music came early and it came with energy. Notably, “I was really excited about the Frank Ocean album [Blonde] that came out that year [2016],” Jochmann shares. “I remember just feeling really overwhelmed with excitement because there were so many possibilities that it opened up. It’s just a very freeing piece of music”. 

Unlike Frank Ocean though, Combat Naps became a musical factory, pushing out pop song after pop song, all to a degree of musical exploration and focus. Starting in the Chicago scene, Combat Naps released a string of EPs and LPs that embraced a lo-fi sound, but kept this undeniable sense of maximal lightness to it. On top of that, Jochmann spent time balancing a side project called Hippie Johnny with friends, Guatama and Connor, putting out a handful of releases. But as of 2018, Jochmann relocated to Madison, Wisconsin, quickly becoming a hometown staple and a familiar face to many. Finding a large and supportive outlet for Combat Naps to thrive, as Madison goes, “it’s a nice little test tube scene, you know”, Jochmann tells me as we share our mutual love for the city and its musical caricatures. 

With help from friends and local Madison musicians Tim Anderson (of Able Baker), Marley Van Raalte (of Loveblaster), Ivette Colon (of Field Guide, Original Citrus, and others), and Madison guitar mainstay Ilych Meza, the band takes Jochmann’s sweet and offbeat recordings and interprets a new potential of what Combat Naps can reach when performing live. Hearing the effect to which Colon’s and Jochmann’s harmonies envelop a sense of pop-elegance is only a mere extension to what the full band brings to the shows. Unbeknownst to Jochmann, with an outpour of assurance and borderline feral attitude towards performing, the band revealed a punk nature to the live shows that wasn’t heard before on the recorded material. Telling me about an idea for a future project that would contain both live and studio recordings, Jochmann excitedly shares, “it will be a jump, and there will be just a big sonic difference in what the songs sound like”. But with Jochmann’s knack for manipulating sound, he continues, “that imbalance kind of makes it take an interesting form, like a novel with an incongruous kind of introduction by some other person”. 

Tap In, the newest release by Combat Naps, is a harmonious plunge into Jochmann’s versatile and vividly scenic world. With songs about your typical themes of heartbreak, redemption, satisfaction, and even some heroic bravery, Tap In is as ridiculous as it is personally heartfelt and creatively moving. But where Jochmann’s typical songs of dire love or painstaking heartbreak goes, there is always a curveball to the story. “There are so many songwriting tropes”, Jochmann explains, “and then there’s like songwriting anti-tropes that you then learn about, after having learned the initial tropes that are just as traditional as the tropes you were trying to avoid” he laughs as he tries to push out the sentence.

When it comes to his lyricism though, Jochmann sees it as a collage, mad libbing fiction into the real stories of feel-good sadsacks, misfortunate heartbreakers, and eccentric hobbyists. “This approach is really attractive to me. It allows [me] to write stuff that is 100% meaningful because it has images from my life”, Jochmann states. “But it also has gaps of unspoken things and mysteries for the listeners, which can be potentially very impactful as well”. 

For instance, take the track “Up To The Task” off of the new release Tap In. A story about an ex-girlfriend starting an indie-pop band with low budget-film dreamboat, Michael Cera. Jochmann’s lyrical approach brands his extensive imagination by portraying commonly felt emotions into a story that forces you to consider the whole spectrum of things you may be feeling. “You occasionally get slapped on the wrist by yourself though, by asking, ‘what the hell is this about?’ Or a friend saying ‘that’s really weird’, what’s that about? And you’re like, ‘yeah, of course this is just nonsense’” Jochmann laughs. “But then you’ll rein it in and go back to, you know, ‘Peggy Sue, oh how my heart yearns for you? Oh, Peggy Sue’. It’s just kind of a rinse and repeat thing”.

As Combat Naps go though, with his extensive collection of bandcamp releases, there is a lot of ground to cover. Whether or not that means that Jochmann has a hard time sitting still with a project, it is indisputable that he has a work habit like no other. Being fully self produced and home recorded, Combat Naps holds a very grand and melodramatic sound that is hard to come by in most DIY recordings. “I have aspirations in composition and in performance,” Jochmann says with an emphasis on polyphony. There might be a fear of writing and producing something that is perceived to be boring. But, looking past that, there is a much stronger drive to make something as exciting and fresh as possible. 

With these grand productions and nonstop sonic experimentations, it seems almost inappropriate to try to box this band into a specific genre. “That’s just kind of part of the musical project,” Jochmann discusses. “It’s more than any specific sound. Just be honest and do whatever it is you feel moved to do”. What Jochmann’s music envelopes is this sense of freedom to any predetermined structure or rule to songwriting, genre, or DIY production. It’s prevalent in live shows, it’s there in the home studio, and it’s very clear in any Combat Naps release. “I have so many corny, sappy and sweet little things in my songs” Jochmann expresses. “But this is like a punk music experiment you know, like, make it sweet. Make it obvious. Make it do that. Don’t shut that out. It might lead to an impression of, you know, a nice impression of versatility”. 

Combat Naps is a clear and animated response to Jochmann’s creative spirit and a passion to fill in the gaps of undesirable silence. With more releases already planned for the future, “It’s like the modern equivalent of some sort of religious devotion” , Jochmann says as the conversation takes a contemplative pause. “It’s like a religious devotion basically to what that process can reveal. Cataloging it, dealing with it. just reckoning with it. It’s really cool”.

Support Combat Naps at bandcamp