Getting Down with the Get Up Kids
by Ryan Pangilinan

I can’t lie about this: everyone involved with Totally Crushed Out loves the Get Up Kids.  Despite varied regional upbringing, we all spent our formative rocking out to “Four Minute Mile” and “Something to Write Home About.”  As young adults, we found solace in the darker themes behind “On a Wire” and “Guilt Show.”  Following a three year breakup, the Get Up Kids resurfaced in 2008 and, this last year, release the “Simple Science EP” and “There Are Rules,” the latter of which is the first release on their independent label, Quality Hill.

Along with our sister site, Redefine, guitarists and singers, Jim Suptic and Matt Pryor sat down with TCO to talk about their new record, why they followed “On a Wire” with “Guilt Show,” and life outside the Get Up Kids umbrella.

Totally Crushed Out: Listening to “There Are Rules” it’s a huge departure from what most people would consider your “signature” sound and to me, a long time listener, it seems like it’s just a natural progression for the band to find a sound that is outside the box of the last proper full-length. Does it ever drive you guys crazy whenever someone says, “Oh it doesn’t sound like this old record or that old record?”

Matt Pryor: We’ve always made it a point to never really make the same record twice and I think that we’ve accomplished that.  Our records are always evolving and to do it any other way would be untrue to ourselves.  It doesn’t drive me crazy but it does get a bit old having to defend your creative decisions all the time.

Jim Suptic: To us, every album we have ever made sounds different. When people say our “signature” sound, they are usually talking about “Something To Write Home About”. Probably because it was our most successful album. We wrote some of those songs when we were teenagers. I’m 33 now.  I love that record but seriously, it was over a decade ago.  We wouldn’t even know how to write an album like that again. Especially not lyrically. Things that were important to me then seem quite trivial now.

Obviously along with age, the band finds new things to tackle about topically. What was sort of the lyrical drive (if there was any) behind the new album?

MP: Lyrically it wasn’t so much what it WAS going to be about as much as what it WASN’T going to be about.  There are no love songs on the record.  There isn’t any teenage longing.  I really wanted to challenge myself to write things outside of my comfort zone.

JS: We have always wrote what was around us or influencing us at the time. One of the songs I sing is about a street fight that happened in England. The song “Widow Paris” is about a voodoo priestess. Not so much “tour is hard, I miss you” lyrics.

Will Quality Hill be releasing records by other bands, as you’ve done in the past with Heroes and Villains, or will this be strictly a Get Up Kids label?

JS: I would never say never but as of right now just Get Up Kid stuff.

I’ve always felt that the Get Up Kids is one of the earliest bands whose popularity was steered by the internet in addition to touring heavily. I remember seeing the band in 2000 on a tour sponsored by Napster, though this was also during a time when people still purchased physical media for music. As a band that I would consider early adopters (even if it was inadvertent), how do you feel about the way that kids are using the internet to consume music a little over a decade later?

MP: I think that the internet is as useful or as irritating as you make it out to be.  On the one hand there are more opportunities to communicate with your fans and to grow the band.  On the other hand, everyone has an opinion and the comments section of any given review / article can either really inflate or hurt your self worth.

JS: I really think the new generation believes music should be free. They don’t want to pay for it. No one is going to change that. It is only going to get worse for record sales. So I think you just have to embrace it and become more creative in the way you run a band. I like twitter and facebook because it allows us to interact with our fans. I don’t like the fact that it makes me feel narcissistic, always having to talk about myself.

These days, individual members of the band has commitments elsewhere whether it’s family, business or other bands, but it still seems to work well on some capacity, though slightly limited. Is it weird to walk back into a situation where you were touring for a good chunk of the year to being able to tour when it works for everyone?

MP: I like it better.  It allows us to have other lives, which means we’re not so dependent upon this band and that takes a lot of the pressure off.  It’s a pain in the ass to schedule stuff but we get along better because of it.

JS: It is what it is. It can be a little annoying trying to make it all work but we find a way.

One of the things that people have commented on is the sonic departure between “Something to Write Home About” to “On a Wire,” it’s something that is chronicled in Andy Greenwald’s book “Nothing Feels Good” and is something that comes up in interviews often to this day. Personally, I loved “On a Wire” and I always felt that “Guilt Show” was the Jedi mind trick album. Upon an initial spin, it’s easy to peg it as a pop-punk record along the lines of the “Something to Write Home” but when you really listen to it, it’s seems that, lyrically, it’s a very reactionary album. Was that the intention that you guys had when writing that record or was it more along the lines of making an upbeat pop record that scratches the surface of the uglier parts of life?

MP: I’ve always been interested in upbeat songs with dark subject matter.  I think that’s been pretty present in all of our work.  If Guilt Show was particularly dark it’s because I was in a really negative headspace at the time.  We made Wire kinda quiet because we were sick of being loud all the time.  We made Guilt Show louder than Wire because we missed being a “rock” band.  It works out well now; we can do a primarily rocking live show with moments of quiet, which is nice.

JS: Lyrically “Something To Write Home About” was about love and relationships while trying to be in a young rock band. “Guilt Show” was about divorce and the crumbling of those relationships. Ugly truths are easier to swallow with an upbeat melody behind it.

When the band first got back together, I recall Jim doing an interview where he said something akin to “If this is what emo bands are like, then I’m sorry,” and even on the anniversary tour, you guys echoed those sentiments on stage. Naturally, I wouldn’t expect anyone who grew up getting their records from Crank or Initial’s distro to necessarily like some of the trash that’s out there, but what contemporary bands that you might have a direct influence on do you think stands out from the paint-by-numbers bands that are out there?

MP: I don’t listen to a lot of what people would call modern “emo” so I can’t really comment to the fact.  The one band that gets lumped into that genre that consistently impresses me is Brand New.  I think they are setting the creative bar these days in the genre.

JS: I really don’t know. When bands say we influenced them most of the time I don’t hear it. As far as that quote goes, it was really supposed to be a joke. The internet likes to find something and run with it.

Following this album’s release and its touring cycle, what other plans is on the horizon for the Get Up Kids?

MP: No plans as of yet.  Probably get away from each other for a while and work on other projects once this cycle is finished.  Get lots of sleep.  Ha.

JS: My second child is due in a week. That is going to be my focus. After that, a little more touring. Maybe we will write some more. Who knows?

Stomacher Interview
By Ryan Pangilinan

Hailing from the Bay Area, Stomacher is a five-piece rock band that takes all the best elements of Britpop, shoegaze and new wave. The group’s long-in-the-making debut album, “Sentimental Education” has recently been made as a free download and they are gearing up to release a new remix recording, followed by a new full-length. Stomacher’s frontman, Jarrod took some time out to talk to Totally Crushed Out about the group’s gut-punching sound.

Totally Crushed Out: How did the band form?

Three of us went to high school together and were very close friends and we obviously had an interest in music and started playing together and cherry picked members until we got to the five of us that are here today.

Are you guys operating independently right now?

Pretty much.

Are there any plans to release any music through a label?

No. Don’t necessarily care to. Any conversations that we’ve had with labels either dissolved or been something that we’re just not interested in doing. It’s definitely been nice to have the admiration of people who work at different labels and know that you’re doing good work because people are taking notice…. But any kind of structure that’s going to bastardize what we do, we tend to avoid. Not to mention that to do whatever we want to, whenever we want to, is thrilling. It’s exciting. We’re releasing a remix record on Christmas, I think, or in a few weeks and we needed no one’s permission for that. It was completely our own doing.

Did you guys remix your own songs, or do you have other names behind it?

We had other people do it. Well, Greg, our guitar player, did one. A friend named Danny, a session player, a musical prodigy from the area, did one and we had Popnoname from Germany, Von Spar from Germany and Tropics, he’s from the UK. It’s really fantastic.

The thing I find interesting about you mentioning that, is that back in the day, it wasn’t that far off for rock bands to do remixes. Like The Cure had remixes for their songs. Bands aren’t really doing that nowadays. Why do you think that more bands aren’t into reinventing the structure of the rock song?

I don’t know. I guess I don’t typically run into it in my musical life. I don’t listen to a ton of rock [bands] and those that I do listen to are pretty open to electronic. Sometimes it doesn’t work. I’ve heard some great remixes from Queens of the Stone Age. UNKLE’s done some crazy, crazy remixes of Queens of the Stone Age and you’d think it’d be tricky to remix a band that’s just so full-on rock, you know.

A band like us, we do a little bit of the work for you, because we have ambient sound and you could do more than just cut up the vocal.

I don’t know if this is something I got from listening to your record, but there were two distinct influences that I sensed. It’s part shoegaze and part Britpop. Would you say that that’s a fair assessment?

Yeah, I think we tend to – not everyone in the band, but me and a few of the other guys – lean towards British rock, from the Beatles on to the Arctic Monkeys and stuff like that. Blur and Pulp…and I definitely tend to lean in that direction. I do like the shoegaze-y stuff just because full-on onslaught of that stuff.

But writing the record, we were influenced by a ton of stuff, like Nick Cave and Radiohead. It’s kind of hard to say because writing it took so many years. From the start to the finish, there were hundreds of things we were into, whether it was books, music or film, so it was kind of different from day to day. And everyone brings in a different perspective of music.

One of the other things I liked about Sentimental Education, and you don’t really hear this in a lot of records, is that there’s a lot of space. The feeling and the aesthetic of the record isn’t from what you’re saying, lyrically, but what’s popping out, sonically. Was that part of the process once you found the benchmark of “this is what we’re going to sound like”?

Well, I guess it wasn’t so much what we were going to sound like, but how we approached the production. We approached the production the same way that we approach our instruments. So even mixing the tracks brought a new idea of what we could sound like. The big thing was clarity. We wanted every minute detail to be clear…. Just to find an ambiance.

I know that you guys aren’t actively touring right now, but do you think that will change once the new record is finished?

I hope. When we were younger, we did a lot of DIY tours and it was rough. We’ve got this nice balance where we’re giggin’ a lot and we’ve got gigs this weekend, but nothing to crazy. I think one of things that I’d like to mention is that we want to go to LA because we haven’t been there in about a year. We’re also considering the possibility of doing the UK next year or the year after. That’s definitely high on the list. Plus, if people want to hear the music, we’ll go to those places. In fact, our booking out of town is based solely on that. If we get a hundred emails from Los Angeles, we’ll probably go to Los Angeles; if we get a lot of emails from the UK, we’ll probably go to the UK. Wherever people want us to be, we’ll definitely be there, because I’m getting old and the winning-people-over is getting fucking difficult.

Stomacher’s full-length, “Sentimental Education,” is available for free through their website. They’re also active on almost every social network outlet including Tumblr, Facebook, Youtube and Vimeo.

Sects-y Times: Totally Crushed Out vs. Joel Heng Hartse
By Ryan Pangilinan

Joel Heng Hartse is a musician turned blogger turned Ph.D student turned author, but unlike people who have been given book deals on the popularity of their Twitter accounts, he also has years of experience under his belt writing for actual printed publications in addition to his personal musings, The Un-scene. For his first book, Heng Hartse has written “Sects, Love and Rock and Roll: My Life on Record” (Wipf and Stock Publishers), a collection of essays that oversee his history with popular music.

Totally Crushed Out: For as long as I’ve known of your writing, you’ve found a way to openly (and unabashedly) write about both Christian and secular music without boundaries. Was that the impetus behind “Sects, Love and Rock and Roll?”

I’m glad to hear that’s how you see it. That kind of was the point, I think. Basically, when I first got into pop music, I was in a time and place where I got super-obsessed with Christian rock. I just loved it. Then I got a little bit older and started to feel like if I loved pop music so much, it was insane to limit myself to listening to whatever a few “Christian” entertainment companies were selling, so I just started listening to everything. But I kept listening to that stuff I first fell in love with – to this day, Sixpence None the Richer is my all-time favorite band, and I will defend them to the death. So when I started writing about music I wanted to just write about stuff I really liked, whatever it was. My first two music-writing gigs were Paste magazine, which is sort of this pseudo-Christiany thing that doesn’t really cover Christian music, so that was a great fit for me, and at the same time Tablet, which was a really low-budget Seattle paper that was run by basically irreligious punks, as far as I could tell. I guess I’ve just wanted to write about stuff that is awesome, for whoever will publish or read it. Lately I’ve been focusing on more Christian or religious outlets, just because I’ve wanted to help push things forward in that realm, writing about more obscure bands that aren’t associated with any kind of religiously-themed moneymaking industry.

Now you are one of the few Christians I know who’ve been successful at maintaining a balance of faith and a semblance of (what society would deem as) normality. Do you think that the book will break down any preconceived notions about people of faith?

Well, I think all people are normal. Most people now and in the entirety of human history have been religious, so I don’t have a lot of patience for like “oh, Christian fundamentalists are psychotic and irrational” (even when they are), because we’re all just people trying to live. I guess on kind of a superficial subcultural level, it would be great if somebody who wasn’t an Evangelical Christian read the book and was like “hey, Christians aren’t psychotic,” but that’s not really the point. I told one of my friends that the reason I didn’t think it was self-indulgent to write this book is that the kind of stuff I wrote about is a common experience that tons of people have had.

I find the Facebook page for “Sects” pretty interesting because the bands whose videos and songs you’ve been posting are a mixed bag, some aren’t as expected as others. Have you gotten any responses from people who’ve looked at the page and were surprised that maybe they weren’t the only ones who would remember an obscure band like The Cootees?

I haven’t gotten a whole lot of responses. My goal with the songs I’m posting is just to turn people on to stuff that I think is really good and it usually has some kind of resonance with faith or religion or just the Evangelical subculture. I was bummed that nobody commented on the live version of “Holy Are You” by the Electric Prunes with Richard Aschcroft singing, but I was really happy that people had a positive reaction to “Goldie’s Last Day” by PFR. Greatest pop song about a dog ever.

In the last few years, I feel like there’s been a surge of bands that have either started in Christian rock or have songs about God that have entered the mainstream consciousness and are rather popular (Manchester Orchestra, Eisley, Brand New and Paramore come to mind). Typically, indie rock culture has shied away from these kinds of bands. What do you think has changed in the last five to ten years?

I don’t know much about those bands, but I do think that Christian rock culture has kind of disappeared, or at least it’s not the same as it used to be. I can’t think of a Christian indie label that has started up in the last 5 years, because there’s just no money in it anymore. I’m glad though, because hopefully that means fewer people are drawing lines in the sand about what kids can or can’t listen to. Although if you’re a teenager who still isn’t allowed to listen to ‘secular’ music, you have a lot fewer options now, it looks like.

As a kid who listened to Tooth and Nail bands, I always thought it was funny that many of those specialized labels pushed the Christian version of a popular band. With that in mind (and in a tongue in cheek sort of way), would you say that you’re the Christian version of Chuck Klosterman?

Even though it goes against everything I believe about music and art and religion, I would have to say yes, if it will help me sell more books. Actually, hopefully no one will call me that, because there are swears in my book, so according to the gatekeepers of that culture, it could not possibly be a Christian book. Thank God!

Joel Heng Hartse will be embarking on a tour promoting “Sects, Love and Rock and Roll.” Details can be found at his blog, The Un-Scene and the book’s Facebook page.

On the Tilt-a-Whirl: A Chat with Whirl
By Ryan Pangilinan

The Bay Area’s been a haven for some great bands for many, many years. Whether it’s the hardcore frenetic sounds of Comadre or the lexicon-bending rhymes of E-40, the Bay’s been spawning a variety of sounds that have made the rest of the world’s ears perk with interest.

Whirl is a continuation of this region’s tradition of bringing the brightest talent to the forefront of pop culture. Made up of six individuals, Whirl is a mixed bag, taking cues from bands like My Bloody Valentine, Morcheeba and, at times, a hint of The Cure, as evidenced on their self-released EP, Distressor.

Band member, Nick, recently sat down to chat with Totally Crushed Out about what makes this group spin right round.

In short, how did Whirl get together?

We’ve been close friends over the past couple of years and we all love playing music so we decided to try it together.

What was the impetus of using Eyes Wide Shut as thematic introduction (as well as the artwork) for the album?

I had the idea to do Stanley Kubrick stills as artwork for Whirl as sort of an homage to The Smiths because they chose Andy Warhol’s “Flesh” as the artwork for their self titled album.

To me, Distressor is very much a continuation of albums like “You Made Me Realize” and “Mezcal Head.” What would you say are the band’s influences?

Our influences are all over the place from Slowdive, Chapterhouse and My Bloody Valentine to The Smiths, Dinosaur Jr. and Portishead. Tons of others as well.

What was the experience like recording with Jack Shirley?

We really liked recording with Jack he knew what we we’re going for and helped us achieve the exact production we wanted.

Are there any plans to tour outside of California?

We hope to tour outside California but there isn’t currently anything set.

Distressor is available through Whirl’s Bandcamp page. Their current tour dates can be found at their Myspace.

Collapsible, but not Portable: Totally Crushed Out v. I Build Collapsible Mountains
By Ryan Pangilinan

Ever quite the mouthful of a name, I Build Collapsible Mountains is the brainchild of Luke Joyce, former member of post-punk band The Gothenburg Address. For his latest project, Joyce has stripped it to the basics, playing tunes are emotive and thematic. Next week, I Build Collapsible Mountains’ debut, “A Month of Lost Memories” will be released and Joyce sat down to discuss his songwriting style, the narrative of the album and whether he feels (figuratively) naked on this new record.

What was the impetus of starting I Build Collapsible Mountains following your time with The Gothenburg Address?

After making huge amounts of noise for a while, often relying on that to grab a crowds attention, I was excited about stripping the process back. With TGA you had no choice but to listen to us because we were too loud to talk over. Now, I’m in a situation where I have no comfort zone and my songwriting determines a crowd’s interest. Not to say TGA weren’t worth watching, I still believe we were top of the game as a live band, but now there is the added component of lyrics which I’m hoping will enthrall the listeners as much as the music would.

I had a chance to listen to some of the songs prior to your announcement of its release. There’s very much a narrative that surrounds the record. Was this an idea that you wanted to have when you began working on this project?

Yes, very much so. The first song I wrote was ‘Red Bleeds the Skyline’. This was inspired by the first of many small moments through out a month that shook things up in my life and made any foundations I had unsteady. I had already started dabbling with writing some new material acoustically but this began a new direction with regard lyrical content, and I just ran with it. As these small moments fed into my daily routine, I began writing more and more until I had— if anything— too much material. So I decided to make a momentary cut in the process and put this record out. I think the small amount of time that inspired this record will continue to have influence on the next few releases. However, I do think I’m saying all I want to say on ‘A Month Of Lost Memories.’
 
In addition to the overall cohesiveness of the album, the one thing that I did notice is that there’s a certain level of vulnerability that you’re showing through the songs that gets lost when you’re playing with a full, up-tempo rock band. Was this a difficult transition to face during the writing or recording process?

The writing aspect was similar on some levels— I was responsible for writing all the music in TGA. It was still a case of sitting in my spare room, with my acoustic guitar (the majority of TGA songs began life on an acoustic), being in a certain frame of mind, and seeing what came of it. Recording the TGA album was a stressful experience— I am a different animal in the studio. I cannot help but be completely controlling. I have this idea in my head of how I want things to sound, and if they don’t go in that direction then frustration sets in. So, that said, recording AMOLM was a much less stressful experience. There was no one to blame for the mistakes but myself. I was recording it all at home, so there were no time restrictions. Often I would record, record, and re-record until everything sat right with my initial idea. The only thing I miss about having a band is the support you have onstage… the reassurance in a quick glance when you fuck up, it’s still ok. Being a solo artist is quite intimidating when you realize there’s no back up on stage. But then again, I’m finding the experience a whole lot more refreshing— having the nerves back again is sadistically pleasurable.

There was a certain amount of mystique with who/what was behind I Build Collapsible Mountains. Why play coy in the months leading up to the record’s release?

I can’t really remember how it got to the point where the whole ‘mystery’ of the project was a talking point. I remember the first few songs I recorded I sent to some friends and asked them not to share them with anyone. At the time, I was still unsure if the whole project was even viable. I have an ongoing struggle with being able to tell whether a song is listenable or not. It’s hard to explain, but when you’re on the other side of the song; you know the bare bones of how it was formed… it’s hard to separate those memories while listening to it, so it’s like trying to find the ‘plans’ attractive rather than the finished product. So as time went on, my friend Lloyd ‘Peenko’ Meredith became interested in my new music and suggested we release the record together. He was aware of the lack of self promotion on my part, and it was decided that we should just keep any info about my identity to a minimum and let the songs gain people’s interest. In fact, I think maybe that’s the answer in some ways— I just want people to love the songs.

With the album coming out next week, how has the reception been to your shows and appearances?

The reception has been really good. People are attentive and seem to enjoy the songs. A lot of people who know me from TGA have been quite intrigued to see how I pull off the whole singing side of the project. I think so far the response has been positive.

Outside of the previously announced shows, are you planning extensive touring anywhere else? The U.S, perhaps?

There are no solid plans as of yet. I am hoping to release a U.S. only single in the near future which will come in a limited collectible format. I would love to be able to release the CD version of AMOLM over there so hopefully I’ll find someway to make that happen. Next year the plan is to come stateside for an undetermined number of shows. It’s just me and my guitar, so touring isn’t really a huge logistical nightmare. I’m happy to travel where ever people want to hear me play.

What are your thoughts on playing the Northwest?

I would love to do a Northwest tour! I have heard amazing things about the PNW with its vibrant music community and support and KEXP. Also, one of my all time favorite artists, Tiny Vipers, is based in Seattle. Scotland is great, but no one only wants to just play here. Everyone dreams of escape at some point. The music scene here is so incestuous that I almost yearn to go where no one know my name .. kinda like the ‘anti-cheers.’

Do you envision I Build Collapsible Mountains as a singular project for “A Month of Lost Memories,” and changing the name every time you write and record something new, or do you see it continuing on as part of a larger story?

Even though AMOLM is now a finished record, the songs influenced by its content are still being written so I see this project continuing for some time yet. The next record is already finished at demo stage, and there is much more that I would like to see released. I would very much like to keep ICBM around for the long term.

The band’s debut is available here. Check their website for additional information and tour dates.

Giving up the Ghost: Totally Crushed Out vs. Seahaven
By Ryan Pangilinan

Southern California’s Seahaven is a relatively new band that has garnered a lot of attention in a short amount of time with their debut EP, “Ghost” (Creator-Destructor). Not to say that it’s unwarranted. Seahaven’s dark-tinged brand of post-hardcore recalls the best parts of bands like Brand New, Hot Water Music and Thursday.

Unlike some of their peers, Seahaven isn’t beginning their journey with an awkward growing period, but instead have offered a cohesive and well thought out ideas for their record.

Recently, vocalist/guitarist, Kyle Soto, sat down with Totally Crushed Out to discuss the finer points of being a new indie rock sensation. 

In brief, how did Seahaven form?

My friend I hadn’t seen in years (Michael) and I had met up one day to catch up on life and we ended up finishing a song. We then got my good friend Eric involved on bass and the narc at our high school on drums (James Ex-Final Fight). Everything progressed fairly quickly from there.

“Ghost” has a consistent thematic narrative, which you don’t really hear in many debut recordings. Was this something that was conscious when you were writing songs?

It wasn’t a conscious decision at all. It all just fell into place. When you write a group of songs during a certain period of time, it all just finds a way to come together cohesively.

You guys are on Creator-Destructor, which has primarily been the home for metal bands. How did you decide on working with Ben Murray?

While in the studio for ‘Ghost’ we got an email from Ben saying he wanted to put out our stuff. Which was quite coincidental because two days prior we had seen our now friends/labelmates Troubled Coast’s ‘100 Miles from Home’ at Amoeba in Berkley. We had talked about how cool it would be if we could work with Ben/Creator-Destructor for our debut release. So all worked out well.

When I got the press material for “Ghost,” I was reading a lot of reviews that compares you guys to Manchester Orchestra, Brand New, and Crime In Stereo, but I hear a lot more of latter-era Hot Water Music and bands of that ilk. From your perspective as the band, what bands/media has influenced your songwriting?

Honestly it’s all across the board. All of us come from pretty diverse musical backgrounds, so it all just kind of meshed together.

The dates for your West Coast tour have just been announced; do you have any additional touring plans that you can allude to?

For now we have a “Creator-Destructor Weekend” planned Oct.15-17 (SF, Sac, Fresno). Other than that this winter we will hopefully be embarking on our first full U.S. tour, until then we’ll have sporadic weekend trips here and there.

Are there any plans to follow up “Ghost” soon?

Hopefully we’ll get into the studio around March/April and hopefully have an LP ready for Summer.

Sehaven’s debut, “Ghost” is available on Creator-Destructor Records. More info on the band can be found at their Myspace.

Now it’s Time to Show You that the West Coast Rocks: Totally Crushed Out vs. Best Coast
By Ryan Pangilinan

SoCal indie pop sensation, Best Coast, have seemingly come out of nowhere. After releasing some raw garage punk DIY demos, the band – comprised of singer/guitarist Bethany Cosentino, multi-instrumentalist Bobb Bruno and the newest Coaster, drummer Ali Koehler (formerly of the Vivian Girls) – dropped their debut long-player, “Crazy for You” (Mexican Summer), an homage to all things Californian.

Best Coast’s sound, a mishmash of surf, garage and good ol’ pop-punk, has afforded the band a sizable audience in a short amount of time, and their album has been a favorite at the Totally Crushed Out offices (and by offices, I mean mine and Michelle’s apartments) for a while now.

Recently, Cosentino talked to Totally Crushed Out about moving from the tin-can Beastie Boys-esque sound on their demo, as well as whether they get hassled about singing about ganja and love all the time.

Totally Crushed Out: Let’s start with the first question, which you might be a little tired of, but you were in Pocahaunted for a bit. How did you shift from that band to this project?

Cosentino: It’s started when I moved back from New York to LA, where I’m from, and I had this idea to start a band that was very surf/beach/sixties-inspired. I knew Bobb because we had worked together in a previous band, and knew him from just being this guy around town that everyone used to record and everyone had him play. He’s toured with crazy bands and opened for crazy bands. I just knew him as this awesome music dude and he was the only person I thought I could ask to get involved with me in this project because I knew I couldn’t do the entire solo project on my own, I don’t have the instrumental capability and Bobb is really good at that kind of stuff, so I just wrote to him…I emailed [songs] to him and we started recording and putting out stuff. It pretty much just all happened on its own and it was very strange. It was just an idea and it’s turned into something much bigger than I ever thought it would.

The band’s earlier material had a very raw sound and it relied heavily on vocal distortion, versus the new album, which has a clean sound. Was that a conscious decision when you went in to record the full-length?

Yeah, you know, we recorded the early stuff in Bobb’s bedroom. He had a studio in his house and we would churn out three or four songs a day. I’ve never really been a big fan of my own voice and my own vocals, so I said, “Let’s just put a lot of effects so you can’t tell what I sound like.” That’s the way I wanted to sound at that time. When we went into record “When I’m With You,” it was the first time we went into a real studio, it was the first time we had live drums, everything was sort of different. We had a producer, we had someone behind the editing board, as opposed to us being behind the editing board. We were there to just play the music and listen to it and give our ideas to the person actually recording. Louis, our producer, was like, “I really think your song is amazing and I really think you should tone down some of the effects because it’ll bring out the songwriting more or your voice.” I was like, “Eh, I don’t really know” and we tried it and it sounded great and I was like, “You’re right, I actually like this.”

We had only been a band for a year and a half, so we were still figuring out what we sounded like. I just don’t see the point in going into a studio and spending time and money in making a record and making it sound like you just recorded it in your bedroom. We wanted to have a record that sounded polished, but not too polished.

The songs definitely have a theme of romance, romance lost, which are padded by your personal interest in weed. Have you ever been hassled by anyone because of the content of your songs?

People talk, people say that it’s boring, “I don’t understand why she’s so sad.” It’s not to be taken as literal as people have taken it. Yes, I write a lot of the songs based on emotions that I’m feeling or emotions I’ve felt in the past, but it’s not 100 percent true. A lot of it is inspired by bands that inspire me. If you listen to a Beach Boys record or a Beatles record, a lot of them are about love. I think because I’m a woman in a band, people assume that I’m needy or I’m weird. I wanted the first record to be about one thing. The name of the record, the title, sums it up: Crazy for You. It’s a record about a person who was going crazy – not every song is about one person, not every song is 100 percent factual about my real life. I took emotions that I was feeling and emotions that I felt and put them into songs. I think that they’re very relatable. I think anyone can listen to a song about being dumped or a song about wishing the person you like likes you back… I’m a very big believer in telling it like it is.

It seems that there is a double standard because it’s not like anyone from Dance Hall Crashers ever got hassled for having songs with very similar lyrical content.

…I think it’s because I am the frontwoman of my band and I am very vocal about my opinions and I talk like a Valley Girl and I’m into things like Paramore and bad reality shows, people think “Oh, that girl is stupid” but it’s not like I’m hiding behind anything, I’m completely being myself and if people want to talk shit about my music because they don’t like me as a person, then that’s completely irrelevant. It doesn’t matter to me, anyways. I don’t pay attention to the negative things that people say. I don’t let them affect me.

“Crazy for You” has taken off. I couldn’t find the record here in stores the first few weeks that it was out. How have the shows been for the last few tours?

We haven’t played a proper show in the States, with our record being out, yet. We played a show in Chicago before Pitchfork, a pre-Pitchfork show, or whatever and the record wasn’t out yet, but it had leaked and every kid at the show was singing along. I didn’t fucking care that the record leaked, it’s gonna leak, that’s what happens. People download them and people buy them, it doesn’t matter.

But now that we have a record out, I can only imagine that this tour is going to be a lot of fun. People might be more engaging and will sing along more. When we did an East Coast-only tour, we were like “Oh this is from the record,” but we didn’t know when it was coming out, we didn’t even have a label yet. It was like this mysterious thing…we didn’t know what the fuck what was going on. But now we have a proper label, a proper record and merchandise to sell on tour, I can imagine it’ll be a lot of fun and a lot easier on all of us. It sucked when we were touring and all we had were seven inches and they were all sold out. “Sorry all we have are mix CDs that we burned to sell at our shows.” (Laughs) It was just very strange. The tour will feel a little bit more professional, I guess, I don’t know. It’ll just be a lot of fun and I’m looking forward to seeing how people react to the record and you can always tell by the people that go to the shows, so we’ll see how that goes.

“Crazy for You” is out now on Mexican Summer Records; the band’s US tour begins on September 4th in LA. Keep abreast of all things Best Coast on their blog.

The Not-So Secret History
By Ryan Pangilinan (interview by Ryan and Michelle)

Tagline of the year: an epic epic of epicness. It’s currently for a popular film that’s out right now, but it can also be used to describe New York-based indie pop outfit, The Secret History. The brainchild of songwriter Michael Grace, Jr., the band’s debut album, “The World that Was Never” (Le Grand Magestry) is a dark narrative that is complimented with singer Lisa Ronson’s angelic vocals and the varied talents of vocalist Erin Dermody, bassist Gil Abad, guitarist Darrin Amadlo, keyboardist Kurt Brondo, and drummer Tod Karaslk.

Recently, Grace and Ronson sat down with Totally Crushed Out to discuss how the band was fashioned and how they stay so fashionable themselves.

Totally Crushed Out: In short, how did you get together?

Grace: The guys in this band have been playing together for a while, at the turn of the century. And when that band ran its course, we knew we wanted to do something again and do something different. I always wanted a female singer and the way that I write, I wanted to have that duality and be able to tell different stories with different voices…. Eventually we were blessed by Ms. Ronson’s presence and it came together quite nicely.

The album is interesting because it’s a pop-rock record, but I can hear a lot of Stereolab and Portishead as influences.

G: I think it’s more that we have a similar interest in what those bands were doing also. I know those artists and I like them, particularly Stereolab. I think there’s some older, kind of surf and dub stuff that we listen to that went into the production.

I listened to it and I heard a poppy Joy Division-meets-David Bowie…. A lot of the songs come from the male perspective or the female perspective and I kinda got that vibe.

G: Bowie was a guy who was comfortable changing styles and sounds frequently. [He] created a sense that the songs were going to have a point of view, but you weren’t sure from where. There’s a lot of bands now that are doing it – over and over again – but that’s something that we didn’t want to do.

There’s a lot of consistency throughout the album that I noticed. Is there an overall narrative or was there a collection of songs that fit together?

G: At the end of the previous band, I had this grotesque, grandiose idea to do a pulp record about vampires, zombies and dead creatures. This is going back four or five years, so there wasn’t the current interest that teenagers have in vampires. I had that idea and a lot of sketches. I did want “The World that Never Was” to be this hallucination of this twilight – oh wait, I can’t use that word anymore!

I did want to a kind of surreal record where the characters were vaguely here or not. And make a metaphor with the famous monsters of film land, versus a person living in a city feeling a bit monstrous. But the next record we’re going to make is going to be realistic.

Do you and Lisa collaborate on the lyrics?

G: No. Well, yeah. We do. Listen, they say that Frank Sinatra was the greatest reader of a lyric – the greatest interpreter of a lyric ever – but obviously, never wrote a lyric. Lisa and I collaborate in the sense of ‘Yeah, I wrote these words,’ but how to interpret them, how to voice them, the lyrics don’t exist until the singer sings them. She does a good job in giving it life.

Is it fun to try and sing something crazy to what I write?

Ronson: Absolutely. Your lyrics are decorative and can be interpreted in many different ways, so they never get old.

Another thing I find interesting about your band is that you guys have a stylistic aesthetic, which a lot of bands do, but you still look like you came off the street. There’s still a raw feel to it.

G: I’ve been torn between two worlds for a long time. My previous band came from a DIY pop scene, but I grew up in Long Island, which is known for hardcore punk. Even though I was listening to the Smiths and Joy Division as a teenager, the places that I was going to hang out really influenced me. I always want to be a bit rough.

I want it to be beautiful, but a little off-putting, a little dangerous.

So the record came out in March and you’re already planning the next record…

G: You gotta keep writing. We play one new song a night. We’ve been playing shows all year, and that’s great, but at some point, you have to invest some time into new songs and get your head wrapped around a new direction. In September, we’re going to try and do that.

You’re wrapping up a tour right now, but do you have anything planned for the rest of the year?

G: We have a show in New York at the end of the summer, in August, and we might try to do some New England shows, too.

You guys are a very fashionable band…how do you end up in a band and try and be fashionable and look good?

G: My brother gave me a suitcase that unzips and becomes like a hanger.

R: I found this dress at a Chelsea flea market and I can literally roll it up in a bag, stuff it for two days and it comes out like this.

G: You get a shower and run it really hot. No one really notices that you’re not looking as good as you think you do. If you look really closely, you’re barely keeping it together.

The Secret History’s album “The World that Was Never” is out now. Keep abreast of their plans on their website.

“God Save the Runaways”