Surfer Blood: Heard, but not scene

27 July 2010

by Nathan Jolly

Surfer Blood are riding the wave of success, but will they wipe out once the next musical fad comes along?

In 2010, the sonic distance between studio and bedroom recordings is often less about technical limitation and more a result of deliberate aesthetic choices.

In the past few years, the surf culture of the ‘60s has been filtered through a deliberately lo-fi aesthetic and resulted in a string of sun and reverb-drenched home recordings popping up across America. Indie-leaning blogs like Pitchfork and Gorilla vs Bear have championed the new sound, and attempted to herd all purveyors into clunky catch-all genres like chillwave, glo-wave, surf-pop and neo-psychedelia.

Surfer Blood have copped many of those tags. Frontman John Paul Pitts admits he hears the similarities between a lot of the bands around, but denies the existence of anything as easily defined as a ‘scene’.

“The funny thing about that is it doesn’t seem to be coming from any one place. There are bands from California, Florida, Brooklyn, even landlocked areas making that kind of music. I don’t think any of the bands sound the same as each other, but there is a general, not lo-fi, but home recorded, small studio feel to a lot of the music coming out. Which is great.”

As for Surfer Blood being given the lo-fi tag, Pitts doesn’t feel it was either deliberately sought, or entirely accurate.

“I have been making recordings since high school, so lo-fi was less a deliberate choice for me, then just the best I could do with whatever shitty recording programs I could download and whatever mics I had access to,” he explains. “In any case, I don’t think our album sounds very lo-fi. It’s pretty ‘produced’, and I took my time recording it. It was over a year’s work, recording and writing it, so I made sure everything sounded how I wanted it to before letting it get out.”

A wise decision, considering the almost immediate impact Surfer Blood had when their first track Swim was released online. According to Pitts, the media’s easy acceptance didn’t throw him.

“Even though it [interest in the band] happened really quickly, it happened naturally, so it never felt too weird,” Pitts explains. “A few blogs were interested in us, then Pitchfork got interested. Swim was spread around a lot, and suddenly we were asked to do bigger shows and there was a lot of interest.”

That recognition has stretched to Australia where they are heading for Splendour In The Grass and the usual sideshows. Pitts is more than aware that interest in his band has spread down under.

“We have a pretty good idea what to expect. We have been told that we have a decent sized amount of interest there. A popular national radio station played us a lot, and the label seem to be very proactive, so we have been lucky in that we haven’t really had to do a lot and we are coming over with a bit of a name. We were just happy that a label wanted to put out the record there.”

The national station is of course Triple J, who added Astro Coast as feature album first week of February, and subsequently gave Swim a flogging. A few weeks out from Splendour, EMI have reserviced the track to commercial radio. The single’s over-abundance of hooks filtered through a flood of reverb gives Swim an outside chance of breaking commercially. So far no commercial stations have picked up on the track, but in the lead-up to Splendour it could receive a few additions. At any rate, the album is performing well, especially in a market that Pitts admits hasn’t yet been fully focused on by the group.

And with Surfer Blood’s quick-rise, Pitts admits he has also given lots of thought to the possibility of the hype falling away as quickly as it came on.

“I was worried. And I think it is still in my mind. But I learnt early that you can’t really do anything either way. I am just going to make the music I want to, and I can’t really worry too much or control what happens with it. I have already done way more with this band then I thought I ever would.”