motel void

MOTEL VOID: You’re based in Brooklyn, NY. How would you describe the current music scene there? Do you feel that you’re part of it?

SURF PARTY, USA: There are lots of scenes in Brooklyn these days. It feels like a large music community made up of various esoteric scenes stratified by genre. There’s really so much music. Which is wonderful for us, we listen to everything. And we’ve got friends making music all across the genre-map. From avant-garde to zydeco. We’re never bored. Everything is here.

As for ourselves, we fall into the pseudo-wave and/or art-pop scenes, depending on how you classify us. I tend to think of us more as a pseudo-wave band. If you don’t know about pseudo-wave, by the way – it’s kind of in its fetal stage at the moment – it’s characterized by an intentional disconnect between lyrical and musical content. Those Led Zeppelin songs about Lord of the Rings? That’s pseudo-wave. The Offspring would be a pseudo-wave band. “Weird” Al Yankovic is certainly pseudo-wave. Most of our lyrics are vaguely about surfing, while we lean more indie-folk/art-punk with our music. We’ve honestly never written a proper surf rock song. That’s what makes us pseudo-wave.
And the pseudo-wave scene is fantastic: communal, mythical, and challenging. I honestly think these pseudo-wave bands represent some of the best music NYC has ever produced. We’re honored to be part of it.

MOTEL VOID: You grew up in California, why and when did you decide to move to New York? How would you compare local scenes in CA/NY?

SURF PARTY, USA: In the States, it seems like representation of surfing in pop culture is ephemeral. In the fifties, you know, American rock music was all about surfing. Now it’s not. These days, California is less interested in surfing-themed music/pseudo-wave bands than NYC. So, it was hard for us to get gigs in LA.

When we were living in Los Angeles, we were writing about more contemporary themes just to book shows. But it didn’t fit our ethos and we both became quite depressed. Then, we got a letter from a band in NYC asking us to play Knitting Factory with them. So we moved. That’s how we got roped into the New York underground, and the pseudo-wave scene.

That show didn’t end up happening due to some legal trouble the other band got into. We never got the full story there. Then the old Knitting Factory closed. But we liked the weather and the people in New York. So we stayed. We didn’t realize it was going to get colder. That was tough. We’re still pretty naïve in most ways.

In general, the scene in NYC has been very accepting of us. And the surfing songs feel a bit less on-the-nose here. A bit more escapist, maybe. People in NY get the whole pseudo-wave thing too. If we were writing about rats and pizza and the Yankees, maybe we’d have had a huge following in LA. But we write about surfing, so we have to live in New York.

MOTEL VOID: You’ve just released a new single ‘Barrel’. Will it be part of your new record?

SURF PARTY, USA: We’re still figuring out the exact track-listing. We ended up recording sixty songs and would like the album to be no longer than eight tracks. I’d say “Barrel” is likely to make the final album… though we like to do a bit of trial-by-fire for our studio albums.

We’re still deciding how many surfing songs we want on the album, too. Nothing wrong with the surfing songs, of course – all great bands should have one – we’ve just written a few hundred at this point and want to save space for our more experimental work. Hopefully, if “Barrel” doesn’t end up on the album, it gets picked up for a car commercial.

MOTEL VOID: Could you tell us more about the recording and writing process of your upcoming album?

SURF PARTY, USA: It started as a musical, actually. We’d gotten an offer from a small theater in LA to do an adaption of Psycho Beach Party – the Charles Busch play. They wanted to use some of our songs; we said we’d rather write new ones. We were listening to a lot of Phish and Björk at the time – the songs were sounding like the demon child of those two. Really catchy stuff.

Sadly, there were some legal snafus and the theater closed – turned out the funding wasn’t all above board. You know how it goes. Bit of a hassle. But at least we ended up with forty-ish mostly finished songs. A few of those pieces became “Barrel.”

Then we moved to NY. We recorded a full album in a church in Flatbush over the next two years. The reverend was this ex-punk who recorded bands during the week to make some money. It was cheap and we had no budget. Neither of us had ever been in a church before, but the acoustics were great and the price was right. So we went for it.

We did the best work we’ve ever done in those sessions. But we got too drunk one night after recording and Nate kind of stumbled and dropped the hard drive with all the files onto the subway tracks. Ben was about to jump onto the tracks to retrieve the hard drive when the train came. That was a tough night. We re-recorded the album in Ben’s bedroom over the next few months. I’m sure our neighbors loved that.

MOTEL VOID: Your plans for 2024?

SURF PARTY, USA: Spend time with family. We’re both married. Nate’s got a child on the way. Obviously, we’ll be playing a few shows here and there. We would love to play in Europe. We’re in preliminary talks with a new Sub Pop band that we can’t legally disclose the name of – some friends of ours. We’re hopefully opening for them on the East Coast leg of their tour. And we do have the beginnings of our next album written – it’s a rock opera loosely based on Gravity’s Rainbow. We’re hoping to record that in North Carolina in the fall if we can pull the money together.

We’re also planning to take a band vacation this summer for a month or so – the John Muir trail, actually. We both love Into the Wild. We grew up camping together; and it’s a really nice way to get a break from the city.

We’ll be shooting a few music videos, too. One of them up north with a Canadian film director friend of ours… we won’t give his name as it’s still up in the air and we don’t want to jinx anything, but we’ll disclose his initials… “D.C.” for friends of ours in the know.

That’ll be in May. Honestly, we’ll be on the road most of this year trying to get ears on this record. But the most important thing for both of us is spending time with family.