Surfer Blood looks for a comeback with a new label and album
The last few years have been rough for Surfer Blood. In March 2012, frontman John Paul Pitts was arrested for domestic battery, and though he was cleared of all charges, the incident hung over the release of the band’s second album and major-label debut, Pythons. Sales were disappointing, and Warner Bros. Records dropped the band.
Surfer Blood regrouped, and now comes a new full-length, 1000 Palms, released earlier this month on Joyful Noise. Three years have done nothing to tarnish Surfer Blood’s sunny riffs and shiny hooks, of which 1000 Palms has plenty. But Pitts’ lyrics, washed in frustration and doubt, don’t always align with this sound.
Ahead of Wednesday night’s show at the Riot Room, The Pitch caught up with Pitts about the band’s recent struggles and the necessity of taking one day at a time.
The Pitch: You guys went home to Florida to record 1000 Palms, and it sounds very DIY. I get a back-to-the-basics feeling from the recording process for this record.
Pitts: Yeah, absolutely. We’ve pretty much done all sides of the recording process. Our first record [Astro Coast] was recorded in an apartment with instruments that we borrowed from friends, and our second record was recorded with a major label in a classy studio with a high-end producer [Gil Norton]. We’re not on Warner Bros. anymore, so if we wanted to make this album, we knew we were going to have to do it ourselves.
For us, that’s not a bad thing. We’re all kind of dorks about recording, and we just decided we were going to do this ourselves and record without thinking about it too much. We recorded this in our living room. We decided to trust our instincts and just have fun with it. It was a good feeling, and I think, hopefully, you can hear that in the songs.
It’s interesting you say that because some of these songs make me sad. More often than not, your lyrics are at odds with the tempo and the shine of what you guys are doing.
Well, I’m a big fan of the Smiths and Morrissey stuff, how lyrics can be sung over a really poppy, catchy hook, but it could still be a sad lyric. I’ve always been a sucker for songs like that, songs that are more than meets the eye. And I do think that our music is not just supposed to be one thing. We’re not just a pop band. We’re supposed to be more than that, and that means that not every song has an extremely happy or uplifting message.
So much of the album feels really confessional — particularly “Feast/Famine” and the line I feel so out of touch with who I am, which feels sort of chilling. How do you get past performing such personal songs for an audience of strangers?
I think at first, it feels strange, but you get used to it. After a while, I don’t even think about the lyrics when I sing the songs live. I think some songs should be confessional. I think there’s a nice balance between songs that are not all open-ended poetry and songs that are straightforward. As far as the crowd, I think sometimes when you’re onstage and the crowd isn’t enjoying themselves, it can feel like pulling teeth, but when they are enjoying themselves it’s the best feeling there is, and different crowds have different energies.
1000 Palms is out on Joyful Noise. In some ways, it would be easy for a band to view being dropped from a label as a setback. How did that affect the band?
It all depends on what your idea of success is. People assume that being on a major label is success, that going from indie to being on the radio is the only way things should go. Honestly, with Joyful Noise, we get a lot of attention. Our music is on every format possible, from cassette to online. They’re not just throwing money at it and hoping something happens. They’re being responsive and strategic.
To me, no matter how big a label is, as long as they’re responding to your e-mails and helping you, that’s what’s supposed to happen. Warner Bros. wasn’t proactive [with us]. We were low on their list of priorities, and it was frustrating sometimes. Being able to do this, to put out records and tour — whether or not our song gets on commercials for iPods or whatever — being able to do this for another five years and continuing to put out records, that’s what I consider success.
Thomas Fekete isn’t touring with you. He’s at home, going through treatments for cancer. He has been your guitarist for six years. How are you all coping with that?
Thom’s like a brother to us all. He’s more than a friend at this point. We’ve seen the best and worst of each other, and we understand each other on such a deep level. His personality has been so important to our band over the years, and it has taken some adjusting to figure out how to do the live show without him. We’re lucky to have our friend Mikey [McCleary], who we’ve known since high school, stepping up and taking on the role, but we think about Thom every day and miss him onstage.
This isn’t something any of us were expecting, and it’s made us realize how fragile this whole thing is, this whole dynamic, and we’ll see what happens in the future. It’s pretty unclear. But we know that he’s gonna pull through this.
It seems like Surfer Blood has seen so many ups and downs over the last few years — your arrest, your move from Warner Bros., and now Thom’s cancer — but you guys seem to be soldiering on. How do you stay positive?
I just tell myself there are no guarantees, especially in music. There’s not a clear path to success or wealth or happiness. You can have one or the other, but there’s no guarantees you’ll have any of this, in life and especially in music. But the fact is that this is what I love doing. If I got a 9-to-5 job tomorrow, I would still come home and work on music. And the fact that I get to do that as my job, that’s what I’ve always wanted since I was 13 years old and picked up a guitar.
Doing interviews with people that are critical of you, being on the road for 50 or 60 days when you’re exhausted, even then, it’s still amazing. At the end of the day, none of us want to go home or go back or stop. And you have to take the good with the bad, just like anything else.
