Music

Despite the name, Surfer Blood aren't part of the "Beach Scene"

by Melody Lau

How’s the tour been so far?

The tour’s been really good. It’s really cool because we can tour with a band like Turbo Fruits and touring with a band whose music you can stand for 60 days and whose personalities you can stand is super important. We haven’t had a bad experience yet but sometimes people tell you horror stories.

We chill out on long drives; today we watched Amadeus in the car because we have a VHS player and a TV!

Do you collect or own a lot of VHS?

It’s slim pickings, actually. On our last tour which as for 45 days, we brought a bunch of VHS there and we just had way too many in the van so now that we have a tour manager who has luggage and stuff to put in there we had to consolidate everything. So we had two bags of VHS – the bags of ones we liked and the bags of ones we didn’t like and I actually took the wrong one so we’re quickly running out! I think we have a bunch of Disney movies which is a bummer.

Do you feel that your music is reflective of your band name?

I feel like it could be, I’ve always loved reverby guitars and I realize more and more as people are pointing it out to me that there’s a lot of water imagery. For a long time I was trying to defend it but I don’t know; I wouldn’t call it surfer music. I think what makes me frustrated is not the fact that people are comparing us to that but people think that’s a way you can pigeonhole somebody. They’ll try to lumps us together in this ‘beach scene’ with bands like The Drums, Best Coast and Beach House. Well maybe it’s just a very convenient way for people to label us; it’s great because that way you don’t have to take time to listen to the music and call us something.

You’ve received lots of great reviews from the press for your album Astro Coast lately. Do you read any of your own press?

I don’t anymore but the Pitchfork one was really important one to me because I’ve been reading them since high school. I know the way it works is that they give you a good or bad review and every other publication in the world reacts and does it too. Honestly, a lot of publications don’t really have an original voice anymore, especially mainstream publications and that’s really lame. But I have to give them credit; they were with us from the very beginning.

Photos by Seb Cimpean