Why These 4 Punk Musicians Could Be Your New Hair Color Heroes

SWMRS, the Oakland, California–bred band of four, are not the punk musicians you’d expect. Yes, the 20-somethings have destroyed their fair share of hotel rooms, but not through postshow bacchanalias or heaving burning furniture over the balcony. Their damage can usually be found on bathroom walls, where smears and splatters of neon mark the remnants of an off-the-cuff dye job. “It’s got to be super-random or it won’t happen,” says Max Becker of their frequent on-the-road hair color transformations that “almost every time [happen] in a hotel bathroom.”

Scrolls through their Instagram will find Max, 22, Cole Becker (Max’s brother), and Seb Mueller, 20, sporting various shades of platinum, blue, green, purple, and pink. As for the naturally chestnut Joey Armstrong, 21, he’s taken on the role of resident colorist. “I usually dye it. I burned Seb’s scalp three or four times,” he remembers, causing the band to burst into laughter and reflect on their favorite stories of botched dye jobs. “You suffer for fashion,” he jokes. Experience—however homegrown—has shown them that when it comes to drugstore hair color, going bottom shelf will almost certainly end in disaster. “When I tried to dye it purple, it was really cheap dye and started congealing on my head—getting all over my friend’s wall and dyeing my face and hands purple. It was the worst hair dye,” remembers Mueller. Since then, they’ve stuck to Splat, but have found that coughing up a few extra dollars for Rusk is worth the investment. “I have a grandma who is a hairstylist, and she dyed it the nicest shade of green it’s ever been. Shout-out to Rusk,” says Cole.

Chameleonic color has become such an integral part of the fabric of the band that it actually catapulted them to stardom—Hedi Slimane was so struck by the blue and green that Max and Cole sported for last spring’s Burgerama music festival that he immediately booked the brothers for the Saint Laurent Spring 2016 menswear runway, with instructions to change nothing about their hair. So, too, the chorus of one of their biggest hits, “Miley,” goes: “You bring the bleach/I’ll bring chlorine/We can dye our hair a color that nobody ever seen.” The song is an ode to Miley Cyrus, and though they acknowledge her hair transformations, they explain it’s more in praise of her DGAF attitude than her personal style. For that they turn to other icons.

“I really like the way Joe Strummer looked—the way he played guitar, everything about him was so fucking cool,” says Max, whose brother first picked up a bottle of Strummer-worthy bleach in eighth grade. “I was going to punk and hard-core shows,” remembers Cole. “I didn’t want to look like [the other people in my class], so I dyed my hair and wore a leather jacket. I had a straight-up baby face, but tried to look really tough even though I looked like I was 9.”

From Strummer to the Jam, their punk idols have offered them a few loose style precepts: keep their hair long, maintain an individual look (this, to the delight of their throngs of fans who strongly align themselves with a single member of the band), and never look too fashionable or slick, lest they get mistaken for “grunge chic” Angelenos. “We wouldn’t be doing ourselves any favors,” says Mueller of the band whose most recent album, Drive North, takes its name from the single that declares repeatedly as a chorus, “I hate Los Angeles (hate L.A!),” begging instead to “drive north” to the healthier mind-set and landscape of Northern California “where the water’s clean.”

Being healthy is something that comes with the Northern Californian territory. “We’re not granola, [but] we’re extremely healthy for a band,” says Cole, who explains that they take care to eat well and “respect ourselves,” even when they’re on daylong drives between gigs. “We’ll have oatmeal for two and a half meals a day before we’ll eat junk,” says Armstrong of their studied tricks for finding nutrients no matter where they are in the country—hacks also include skipping the rice and beans in their Chipotle orders. The metaphysical is dealt with in transit by reading aloud—currently L. Ron Hubbard’s Dianetics has lead to fruitful discussions—binging on Game of Thrones, and taking out pent-up energy onstage with stage dives and rafter swings. Back home, they’re liable to be found paddling into the local surf breaks. “We just like being in the water,” says Max of the therapeutic effects of the salt water that also just happens to “[make] your hair look cool.” No one will argue with that.

 

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