If you ask newlyweds Kim and Jarod Weldin what kind of music to expect from their duo Tape Waves, their response might be kind of vague. “Any adjective in front of pop,” Kim responded nonchalantly, when I asked, during our phone conversation last week, I asked her to describe the group’s sound. “Surf pop, dream pop,” Kim ticked off. “Surfy pop with some reverb vocals on top.”
The most important thing to know about the band–who are from Charleston, South Carolina– is that listening to them sounds like being at the beach. Their songs evoke the rhythms of gentle waves almost visually–and the over-saturated blue of the sky, and the glare of sunshine bouncing off the sand. Kim and Jarod love the ocean, and they have plenty of inspiration in their backyard. Kim’s a native South Carolinian who moved to Charleston for college, but Jarod grew up in profoundly un-balmy Syracuse, and left upstate New York to find someplace sunnier. But even more than a result of that scenery change, it’s clear, once you begin talking to Jarod and Kim, that their music’s relaxed dreaminess is a happy byproduct of their relationship with each other.
To put some whimsy in your next beach day, we’re bringing you a slice of real talk with Tape Waves. We’ve been excited to check out their brand new album Let You Go, out July 28th via Bleeding Gold Records, and especially the first track on that album: the mellow and luscious “Slow Days,” which we’re thrilled to premiere right here at AudioFemme! “Slow Days” kicks off with a weightless guitar line that, though far from flashy, sucks you in and slows you down until you’re running on Tape Waves time. Read on to learn more about shyness, slow songs, and how the two members of this chilled-out Charleston outfit learned to wrangle their inner control freaks.
AudioFemme: What were your musical lives like before you met? How old were you when you started playing, and what were your first instruments?
Kim Weldin: I started playing the piano when I was young, but I started playing the guitar around twelve or thirteen.
Jarold Weldin: [fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][I started on] the guitar as well. I played in a bunch of bands in upstate New York before moving down here–I’m originally from right around Syracuse.
KW: I played, like, basic punk rock with my sister. Some Sonic Youth-type stuff by myself.
AF: How did you meet? Did you start dating first, or playing music together first?
KW: We met at work. It was your typical awful call center. We found out that we had both played in bands before, growing up, and we started sharing recordings with each other that we’d done, and we went from there. We had mutual admiration. I think we started dating first. He very slowly brought me out of my shell. I was really shy and hadn’t done it for a long time. We went to shows a lot together, and we talked about music all the time, and we both loved music. I guess I thought that phase of my life was over. Jarod went and saw..Surfer Blood? Or, Built To Spill, I think it was–and he was really inspired to start writing music. He did some recordings, and I was really impressed with them, so I jokingly said “Let me be in your band!” And then I think I said, “Well, no seriously, go ahead and teach them to me.” We sat down, and he was going to teach them to me on the bass. Eventually, I started recording vocal ideas on top. It was very slow and casual. We would make up band names as a joke.
AF: When did you officially start calling yourselves a band?
KW: I think after our first recording.
JW: We’d finished the music and I just assumed that, if we were going to do anything with it, we’d need to go back and record some drum tracks, but Kim was just like, “Okay, wanna put ‘em online now?” I said, “Okay, I guess we just need a name then.”
KW: The first few songs were done, and I was eager to share them. We had to pull the trigger on a name.
AF: How’d you settle on Tape Waves?
JW: I was pretty persistent about that one. We had a bunch of ideas, but just about everything’s taken these days, so it took forever to find something we both liked. We came up with a few and I really liked Tape Waves a lot, and I wore her down on it.
KW: It’s grown on me. I like it now. I think it represents the way we sound.
AF: Are you inspired by living near the beach?
JW: Definitely. That’s why I started writing the songs that Kim was talking about earlier [after seeing the Built To Spill show], because I was inspired by living by the beach and I like a lot of the newer bands that popped up that were doing a similar sound. It’s definitely conscious, but I think at this point it’s just what comes out when both of us play. Originally, the beach was definitely an influence.
KW: Growing up down here [in South Carolina], beach music has a bad connotation because it’s the Shag area. [My inspiration] comes more from just living here, and from imagery of the beach, being on the coast and things that represent that sound.
AF: You guys just got married (congrats!). What kind of music did you have at your wedding? Did you perform?
KW: We didn’t. I kept joking that I was going to serenade him. It was super low-budget, on a friend’s yard on some property out on an island here. We just put our favorite songs on an iPod and ran it through a PA system outside. Then we made mix CDs for our guests.
AF: Cute!
JW: A lot of eighties hits.
KW: With some contemporary favorites like Beach House and Real Estate.
AF: What’s it been like for you to be married and also creative partners?
JW: Awesome, but also frustrating at times.
KW: Our songwriting process has gotten so easy now. At first, it was hard, uncomfortable, to work with someone who you just don’t know. I didn’t know what to expect. And Jarod wrote a lot of the music at first, so I felt like they were his songs, I guess, and I was just adding vocals on top of something that was already written. I think now that we’ve written so many songs together it feels easy.
AF: How was recording this album different than recording your first?
JW: Um, it was pretty similar. When we recorded the first EP, we were just recording it, and we didn’t have much of a purpose with it. We didn’t know that a ton of people would hear it. We didn’t know if anybody would hear it. But we kept a pretty similar process. It’s really kind of unbelievably simple, the way we record. We use one microphone and we do it all in our living room. So we still did that with this record, but we focused on the details more, like cleaning up little noises and trying to get better at guitar tones. Things like that.
AF: Why did you make the decision not to record it in a studio?
JW: We–with our life schedule, it kind of just works best to be like, okay, we feel like recording now so let’s record now. There’s a lot of freedom that helps the record in the long run. It’s a lot more work that way, but it also–we have a little bit more control. Kim definitely likes doing her vocals at home, instead of in front of somebody else.
KW: Right now I’m only comfortable with Jarod recording my vocals, because they take a lot of work. I sing whispery because we like the way it sounds, but I run out of breath a lot, and he’s really good at manipulating them to sound flawless and flowing. I’m really shy.
JW: She’s really hard on herself.
AF: What would you like to do most after this album drops?
JW: We’re doing a release show here that should be fun, with a friend of ours that’s an artist. I think we’re going to try to work on booking some short tours and writing some new songs.
KW: I’d love to make a video. That’s a goal that I have. It’s a matter of finding someone to work with, and a budget, and things like that.
AF: Would you direct it?
KW: I think so. We’re both control freaks.
AF: We’re so excited to premiere “Slow Days,” the opener to Let You Go. I just listened to it this afternoon and it’s amazing. Can you tell me how you wrote that song specifically?
JW: Yeah, that one was–we wrote it really late. Towards the end of writing the record, we still didn’t have a song that felt like the opener to the album. That one kind of–well, I started layering guitars on a loop pedal and came up with the main skeleton for the music. Kim heard it and said that it sounded like it should be the opener. We tried to do some chord changes and things, but we felt like we should just keep it all one flowing piece with some elements brought in and out through the song. Kind of similar to that New Order song we covered. How it’s just one main chord progression, with all these elements coming in and out.
KW: Also, we had been listening to the latest Yo La Tengo album Fade a lot. Every time we tried to change a chord, we just kept thinking, what would Yo La Tengo do? Let’s just let it build, the vocal layers and the guitar layers.
AF: Why did you want that sound for the opener, specifically?
JW: It’s interesting because it’s not a typical opener, it’s got a slower vibe. I like the way it ends, and the way the second song comes in. Its an interesting contrast.
KW: I think it’s a good introduction to us, because it’s subtle, but it reminds me of the water. It sounds like waves to me, the guitar part that Jarod did.
And there you have it, folks. Let You Go will be out on 7/28/14 via Bleeding Gold Records. You can preorder it here, and get a first listen to the luscious and mellow opening track “Slow Days” right here at AudioFemme! And always remember to ask yourself–what would Yo La Tengo do?
Everyone’s had a broken heart. That’s why songs about love gone wrong are so ubiquitous; as listeners, we crave relatable lyrics telling tales of liars and cheats and unrequited crushes. We make playlists to deal with love’s letdowns, and as we sing along and we might have a good cry or hit the gym to take it out on a punch bag with our ex’s name on it. Either way, there’s no denying the catharsis inherent in woeful ballads and sassy bangers alike. Lovelorn listeners take heed: Emmy Wildwood has arrived with her debut EP Mean Love, a smoldering new crop of post-breakup jams. Over the course of four songs, she skewers toxic relationships, calls out distant lovers, and offers up a healthy dose of how to get over all that and move on.
Wildwood is a force to be reckoned with, and it goes way beyond her savvy, straight-for-the-throat anthems. She’s performed in a wide range of musical projects, fronting punk-rock outfit VELTA and alt-country band The Stone Lonesome and appearing regularly as “Lizzy Strandlin” in all-girl Guns N’ Roses cover band. And that’s just her sonic resume; she’s worked in fashion for years, both as a stylist and as proprietor of Tiger Blanket in Williamsburg. She also operates a record label of the same name, which will release Mean Love on June 24th. Not only did we chat with Wildwood about her EP, her songwriting process, Alfred Hitchcock, and the harsh realities of dysfuntional relationships, AudioFemme is pleased to present an exclusive streaming premiere of the record. Check it out below while you read Emmy Wildwood’s words of wisdom.
AUDIOFEMME: Congrats on the EP! We can’t wait to share it with the world; the songs have such irresistible hooks, and your voice is incredible. In your words, what describes the sound you’re going for on your solo project?
EMMY WILDWOOD: Well, I have a primarily punk background – I am from Tuscon, Arizona, and there’s not a lot of people, kids particularly, playing music. Except for boys, and boys played punk, where I was from. So I learned to play power chords and punk stuff early, so that I could be in bands because there was no one else playing in any other kind of band back then. So I’ve always played punk, and then I got into more distinguished music later, so there’s sort of an influence of pop singer-songwriters and things like that. But for me it always comes back to rock n’ roll and punk so I would say that that’s pretty prevalent in the voice. Even though there’s a pop sound it’s always pretty driven by a lot of nasty electric guitar sounds. I would say it’s electronic pop with a very punk feel.
AF: It definitely hearkens back to the era that produced great punk rock-inflected pop acts like Cyndi Lauper and Blondie. You use vintage drum machines to achieve that sound?
EW: We sure do. I had this idea that I wanted to just do electric guitar and electric drums, [/fusion_builder_column][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][particularly] LinnDrum, which is like a seventies big honkin’ horrible hugely heavy drum machine. Prince used it on his Dirty Mind album which is the one he made in his living room and it sounds really gnarly and grungy and I wanted to make something like that. LinnDrum is a big part of where this project started.
AF: So when you’re recording these songs, is it primarily you at home, alone? I know you’ve had some producers come in and work on it as well, but as far as the recording process, how do you go about that?
EW: I cut a bunch of demos on my own over the last couple of years, just electric guitar and voice. And I sent this new set of songs to my friends Zach Jones and Greg Mayo. Zach and I were in a three-piece garage rock trio called VELTA. He’s in this big pop band called Great Big World – they have that song “Say Something” with Christina Aguilera – and he got this huge drumming gig and has been touring a lot, and Greg plays with everybody in New York. They’re both amazing producers, they both play a bunch. They’re really good friends of mine. I’ve known them for a long time and they knew I wanted to do this and they’re huge Prince fans, huge pop fans, and I’ve played with them for so long I felt like they knew me so well so I called them up to help me make this particular sound happen cause I knew it wouldn’t take too much to make them understand what I was trying to do.
AF: So it made sense to approach them because you’d had so many prior conversations about how you wanted your solo stuff to sound?
EW: Yes. And just like, having been friends with them, we had common love of the same sort of stuff. It was one of those things where you don’t really have to have a conversation, somebody just knows you, and knows what you’re trying to get across, it was a lot of that cause they’re such good friends. And I respect them both musically so much. They both have amazing taste. I understand melody, and rhythm and ideas, and I’ve been doing this a long time, but they’re like really studied. They have all the stuff in the library, they can make anything I wanted to happen, happen. They’re really amazing musicians and they were incredibly important cause I definitely couldn’t have done that on my own. Especially some of the weirder, more creative stuff that’s on there that’s bizarre-sounding.
AF: Well how about the writing process? You mentioned that you had demoed the tracks before you even went to them, and I think there’s a lot of really interesting concepts and themes within the record, so can you tell me more about where you were as you were writing this and influenced the material?
EW: I had a lot of demos from sort of a tumultuous last two years. Definitely driven by breakups, I will say that. Also a lot of changes. I moved out on my own for the first time after a big breakup and I wrote probably 35 or 40 songs that weren’t being put to use. I had this sort of collection it was really hard to choose; I picked three of those songs that I wrote and I demoed those out. “RVR LVR” was the fourth one which I brought to the space. We were gonna do another, sort of heavy tune that I had written called “Rosewater,” and they were like, “Man, do you really want this EP to be like, this heavy? Don’t you want something like, super fun on the record?” And I was like, “Well… I have half of a super fun song.” I didn’t have a lot of “super fun songs” written, you know what I mean? I was dealing with some health stuff too. So it could’ve been this really really heavy EP but they sorta helped me put this more fun spin on the whole entire thing because they co-wrote this fourth song with me. Because of them of them I have an EP which made my life a little bit more fun that what was going on.
AF: I think lyrically, these songs are definitely dark and heavy in subject matter, but I feel like they’re written so poetically. That’s maybe too flowery a term, because there’s also a lot of anger and bite there, but its not like you’re calling anyone specific out. A lot of times you’re blaming yourself in these situations as much as you‘re blaming another party. And it’s so straightforward, so uncomplicated – just a collection of these charged phrases that feel very powerful as a whole.
EW: Lyrically, I’m always really honest. Some people worry about things coming off a certain way. I don’t like to be shocking on purpose, but if my honesty is shocking that’s cool to me. I like to say things in a way no one’s ever heard before, I like to play things in a way people haven’t heard before. I mean I guess that’s what we’re all trying to do. Lyrically I was just really honest and really proud about that and lyrics are something that I’ve always put a lot of time into. It’s something that’s really important to me because I listen to lyrics very intensely. The words make me feel much deeper about the music. I didn’t even know that I was blaming myself as much as I was blaming myself until you said that but that’s totally true.
AF: Well a lot of what you’re referencing on this record, particularly on the first two tracks “Mean Love” and “Stung,” are really relatable scenarios. We’ve all been in a dysfunctional, toxic situation, either with a lover or a friend or even in business relationships. There are a lot of sycophants out there. And if you spend enough time in those kinds of situations, you risk becoming a sycophant yourself. The lyrics to “Blondes” in particular kind of talk about that. It’s layered under poppy, rock-driven production but the words are very sinister and violent. Can you talk a little bit about the metaphors you’re using? Or should I call the cops?
EW: [laughs] You probably don’t need to do that! I read this article actually, on Alfred Hitchcock, his movies and how he always cast blonde girls because they looked “better in blood” on screen, cause the red stood out better. And it stuck with me for a long time but then it sort of became this thing, this imagined scenario, this song. This one I would say is less autobiographical, although it always becomes that, somehow, for me, relating it back to a personal situation. The song tells a story of a relationship where one partner is angry at somebody besides the person they’re taking their anger out on. I just used that metaphor of the blonde girl as the other girl. It’s a violent song because I’m comparing that to a horror film, but that’s where that metaphor came from. Don’t call the cops, it’s all good.
AF: I have read a little bit about Hitchcock’s relationship with Tippi Hedren, who starred in The Birds and some of his other movies and the reality of his behavior toward her is more terrifying than most of his actual movies I think. He was really obsessed with her, and did terrible things to her…
EW: Yeah, he pushed her. That’s the whole thing. I feel like we sort of do this to each other in relationships, it’s this recurring theme. He pushed her to get an emotion out of her that he needed to draw power from, that the movies maybe drew power from. Just to make it more passionate, more emotional, he pushed her to these extreme places to get something out of her, and was also totally obsessed and in love with her. I was totally fascinated by that whole concept of pushing somebody and all of that sort of obsession and craziness that follows love.
AF:Obviously it’s a painful thing to have a romantic falling out with someone or a separation, but especially having now channeled all of that into the EP, do you feel like that’s a thing that has pushed you and been transformative?
EW: It did push this EP. I had a really significant twelve-year breakup. I was with someone since I was a teenager. But “RVR LVR” is actually a happy song, and “Stung” is heavy but it’s a happy song too in the sense that it’s [about] falling in love again and learning to trust somebody again and somebody loving you even though you’re, sort of, to put it UN-poetically, screwed up, or not as strong as you feel like you were. It’s really hard to go into a new relationship when you had an idea of what your whole life was gonna be like, constantly evaluating every new thing, [thinking] is this hard because this is not right, or is this hard because I thought it was gonna be another way and it’s a different way? And someone being patient with you through that. “Stung” is definitely about being in love again and someone loving you through something hard like that.
AF: You mentioned “RVR LVR” – that’s a definite favorite of mine. It almost gives the whole EP a fairy-tale ending, not just for the mythical imagery of someone rising out of the mist so-to-speak, but it’s also a breath of fresh air after all the weightiness.
EW: Good! It wasn’t the last one we did, but it was the last written. I was so excited to have it because it just sort of rounded off the EP in a way. I hadn’t seen a close to where it was gonna finish off. I didn’t know if we should do five songs or six songs or three songs or a mixtape. And then we wrote “RVR LVR” and I was like “Oh! It’s these four. That’s it.” And the guys felt that too. It was just understood, and we all felt the same way. So it was sort of a breath of fresh air to the EP in general just sonically. “RVR LVR” is about the fun stuff. It’s about like, going out and getting someone and winning someone over, so there is happiness to it. There’s a lot of honest things about what it is to break up and fall in love again and evaluate yourself through it and evaluate your partner through it.
AF: So what ended up happening to these other songs? Will they go onto an album or is it time to put that phase of your life behind you and move on? I’m sure you’re still writing new things.
EW: Where do all the lost songs go? You know, a lot of people in their lives have concentrated on being like, the best guitarist in the world or being the best singer in the world. I wanna be a great singer and I’m always trying to get better at guitar, but for me it’s always been about writing the song. I wanna have the perfect ‘song moment.’ I write so much – that’s really what I spend my time doing, almost to the point that it doesn’t feel like a choice. I don’t sit down and practice, I sit down and write. [I have] a lot of songs that I just have never produced. They’re just floating somewhere in my hard drive. I don’t know if they’ll be significant to any particular project in the future, but you never know. Actually, [with] “Mean Love” I had the chorus for a long time, and it just shaped up two years ago. But there are a lot of songs that maybe will never be heard by anyone besides my pug, Pilot.
Pilot the Pug, Keeper of Lost Songs
AF: Then again, maybe you have something that’s rolling around in the ether that will be a huge hit.
EW: That would be great. You know, I feel like things like that are always surprises. There are songs that are still my favorites that I wrote, you know, seven years ago, that I think are cool songs that maybe I’ll use an idea from eventually. With the EP, to bring it back to the theme behind it… for me it’s like I’m only able to reflect on things once they’re processed. I’m like a lot of emotional human beings [in that] when things are really difficult I can’t even pay attention to them. I went through this breakup a while ago, like three years ago. I had trouble even talking about it for a really really long time. It’s something I will never forget because it has shaped a lot of these last few years for me but I’ve moved forward in a really great way. I like to reflect on the dark things and my innermost secrets and my weird feelings. I’ll always be a little dark in my writing but as far as that chapter being closed, it’s closed, and it’s cool to have this EP, listen to the songs, and be like “Holy cow, did I write that?!”
AF: Would you play these songs to your ex? Do you think he’s heard them?
EW: I have no idea. That’s pretty funny. What’s funny is these songs aren’t even particularly personally about him but more about what resulted because of him, and things that have happened since him. I don’t even know what he’s thinking. I don’t really care. I have a boyfriend now who is amazing. Actually, he co-wrote “Stung” with me. He’s a singer, too and a music writer, like you. He gets it.
AF: So I’m really interested in what you’re doing over at Tiger Blanket. It’s both a record label and a clothing store?
EW: Tiger Blanket is a label that I started a really long tome ago. It was just sort of a fantasy. Any record I made on my own or with friends we would put out under the Tiger Blanket label, but it really came into fruition a few years back with a country music project that I was in, believe it or not, called The Stone Lonesome, that we put out on vinyl. And then I realized that this label needed to be a vinyl label, because I love vinyl, and no one was buying CDs. People were collecting things in limited runs which were something that I liked in particular. Then when I opened my store in Williamsburg it all just came together. I’ve always worked in fashion to make money – cause we all know how profitable music is – so I’ve always worked on styling and [finding] vintage stuff. It became a lifestyle concept – you buy the outfit and you buy the record that you wanna listen to while you get ready to go out to see the show that you’re gonna go see. Unfortunately our landlord has followed the trend of this neighborhood and bumped it all up. So we have to find a new home, location TBD, so right now we’re focusing primarily online. But we’ll have a new release in August and out first piece of clothing specific to the brand that is our own in-house design in August as well.
AF: What records, other than your own, have you released so far?
EW: Last year we released Mother Feather, do you know that band?
AF: I actually do, we booked them for our Scene X Sound event! They’re playing June 26th in LIC on the roof of the Ravel Hotel.
EW: Oh, awesome! They’re kick ass. We also put out Erin Mary and the West Island, sort of a sixties-sounding vibe. She wrote the whole record from the voice of a dead little girl ghost.
AF: Ooooh, creepy.
EW: Yeah, it’s very creepy. I love these sort of conceptual groups and bands, and it has been all girls so far which was not necessarily my intention, but I just put out what I liked and what came in front of me, and what I created a bond with, music I fell in love with and I put it out. I have a few bands in the works, but we’re just seeing how those projects shape up right now and we’ll probably do another release in the Fall.
AF: I have no idea how you find the time to do all this! You’re also in a pretty cool cover band, I hear.
EW: Oh, right! Guns N’ Hoses! Yeah, we play a lot, our next show is June 28th at Bowery Ballroom. I joined two years ago, maybe more that that now. We started by playing all of Guns N’ Roses Appetite for Destruction album and now we’re doing Use Your Illusion as well. It’s wild, because I liked Guns N’ Roses… it was on the radio when I was a kid, I loved their performance, I loved Axl – I thought he was frickin’ bad ass. But joining this band made me get way deeper into their music and see how cool they really were and what they were doing was super innovative. I got way deeper in the catalogue and if anything it’s made me a way better guitar player. It’s harder stuff than I was used to playing – punk rock songs and Nirvana and Weezer – it’s not the same stuff. So it made me a better guitar player, that’s for sure.
AF: GNR, and that type of hair metal rock n’ roll in general, has been pegged from the get-go as both innately masculine but also sort of goofy. It’s macho but almost to such an extreme that it’s kind of a joke. As a group of women playing that music, how do you feel that changes it?
EW: We put on a show, we try and play our characters. We curse at the audience, we drink, we jack on stage, it’s all part of the show. It can be incredibly goofy. As far as us being girls doing it? I don’t know, maybe it sheds light on how ridiculous it really is. But really I think things always sort of come back to the spirit of that band. They were just nuts. They were crazy, they were living up what people really think is the insane rock n’ roll lifestyle and they fully embraced that and they were super proud to be gross and wild and addicted and promiscuous… I mean that’s what half the songs are about. It is a novelty because we’re all girls and they weren’t, but we hope that people come and they’re impressed by the playing, which they usually are. We do it because the songs kick ass, and we do it cause it’s funny and because people like it. We didn’t think it was gonna be as big of a deal when we started it as it turned out to be.
AF: People love their cover bands. Particularly with the era GNR came from, playing that genre… there aren’t a lot of modern bands that have that sound, and people who listened to bands like that in their heyday are barely interested in new bands doing that anyway. They want to hear those classic albums.
EW: Oh Yeah, I mean it’s fans of Guns N’ Roses coming. They don’t care… I mean, they think it’s cool we’re girls, but it’s fans that wanna hear the songs played live, that’s for sure.
AF: That sounds totally awesome. In terms of your solo project, though, what are your hopes for the EP? Where do you want to see it go, who do you want to hear it?
EW: This! These conversations are what I would like to have happen. Someone to hear something, think it’s cool, spend the time actually reading the lyrics and seeing that maybe it’s surprising compared to how it sounds sonically. If this happens like twenty times or ten times or five times, that would be really satisfying to me. And if the songs go somewhere else, sneak into a television show or a commercial, that would be wonderful too. I won’t make any big plans for them because I believe they will find their audience. I think we’ll be playing them [live] in July. That’s the first show.
AF: What will your live performances entail? Will you play with a full band or will it be a more stripped-down solo performance?
EW: It’s definitely me, Zach and Greg. Zach plays drums and synth stuff, Greg’s a guitar player and plays some synth stuff, and I’m gonna play a little electric guitar, some songs with and some without. But I will tell you that all three of us are fairly raucous performers and the live show is always fun when we get together. I like to lose myself a little bit on stage and get a little gnarly and eat my hair and sweat, all the good punk rock stuff.[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]
NEEDTOBREATHE’s forthcoming project Rivers In The Wasteland is Southern rock at its most handclappingly jubilant, and brand new track “Where The Money Is” stands out as one of the album’s catchiest. “Ain’t no gift like the present tense,” the song opens, with bubbling cheerfulness and an energy that grabs you from the get-go. With its epic hooks and smooth, buttery vocal harmony, this track will take you home to sunny Carolina in a pickup truck. But NEEDTOBREATHE have never settled for the easy-going party folk endemic to their genre–the pop is always balanced with complicated rhythms and swinging guitar lines that evoke love of a home and strong, introspective storytelling.
The group began as a brother duo between Bear and Bo Rinehart, who started playing together in their gloriously named hometown of Possum Kingdom, South Carolina before teaming up with bassist Seth Bolt in college at Furman University in 2002. NEEDTOBREATHE gained traction first in the Christian Southern rock circuit, and their 2006 label debut Daylight was seen mostly as a devotional album. In the four releases that followed, though, NEEDTOBREATHE began a shift beyond the Christian rock niche into the larger tradition of back porch power folk. To be sure, their blend is hybridized with indie pop, laced with choruses of oohs and whoas. But NEEDTOBREATHE have never dropped their music’s devotional slant, as Rivers In The Wasteland confirms in track after track. The shift isn’t a slackening of religious themes in the lyrics, but rather an incorporation of those themes into the larger experience of love for the south, for storytelling, and for feel-good music.
NEEDTOBREATHE is not a band composed of preachers brandishing guitars; in fact, the anthemic singing slyly disguises a lot of less in-your-face introspection. “Where The Money Is” is one of the album’s loudest, hardest rocking tracks, but still contains a glimmer of how ponderous the album can be. Rather than relegate them to niche status, the band’s complexity deepens their music, making Rivers In The Wasteland an album that will surprise you, bringing a new flavor to every track.
Rivers In The Wasteland dropped on April 15th. To order the album, and to take a listen to what else these smooth-harmonizing gentlemen have in store, go here, and check out “Where The Money Is” right here!
Ticket Giveaways
Each week Audiofemme gives away a set of tickets to our featured shows in NYC! Scroll down to enter for the following shindigs.
