After a brief hiatus from releasing music the last few years, Cincinnati-based indie pop / surf rock band Coastal Club, is relieved to finally have released their new EP All Of The Things You Said last Friday (July 19).
“I think we’re just really excited to be releasing music again and to be a band again,” says lead singer and guitarist Alexandre Hirlinger. “We’re super stoked to be releasing music, and I think hopefully people are excited that we are releasing music again. I think that the response has been really incredible, and we’ve been pretty overjoyed at how people are receiving these songs, and we’re super, super thankful.”
“There are so many options, so much great music out there, and the fact that somebody chooses to listen to our music and enjoys it just blows our minds away and we’re so thankful.”
The group also features drummer David McGuire and lead guitarist/vocalist Avery Benter.
Despite the hiatus, the band is picking back up where they left off and then some, continuing to grow their sound and lyrical depth.
The EP explores topics such as mental health, dissecting religion, and love lost, but the feel-good vibes of their previous material – which accumulated them 100,000 monthly listeners on Spotify and 10.8 million streams of their single “Honey” – is still readily present.
Scummy Water Tower recently caught up with Hirlinger to discuss the band’s new music, the band’s formation and what they’re most excited for in the months ahead.
The band started in 2017. Can you tell me a little bit about how the band formed?
Yeah, it was myself and the two other members. We were a previous band called Local Waves, and then we sort of rebranded and changed our name and started over around 2017 and released a self-titled project around then, which was a three-song EP, and then followed that after with another release in 2020 in the pandemic, and then this is our first release since then.
What made you want to start in a new chapter with this band? Why did you want to play with the other guys that joined?
It was kind of the reason that we decided to change the name was sort of, I guess two or threefold. One was the name. We had a good friend of ours, his name’s Isaac [Karns]. He plays in or played in a band called Pomegranates, which was an incredible band from Cincinnati. They kind of had a whole journey with changing their name. They changed their name to the Healing Power, and then I can’t remember what the issues were with it, but for some reason they had to change it back to Pomegranates, and they had this whole thing, and he explained to us that was one of the final nails in the coffin sort of that had to make them hang up the band. So, he kind of encouraged us to think about changing if we needed to change our name to do it at the start instead of getting a little ways into the van and having to change it. At that point, it’s just really hard to do.
So, he had suggested that we might want to consider changing our name because Local Waves is pretty similar to Local Natives, so we decided we were going to change it. We ended up changing it to Coastal Club, which isn’t that much better. There’s plenty of bands that sound a lot like coastal club culture, club coast modern, things like that. But we ended up changing it, and we really like it, obviously, but we changed our name, and it was also because it was around that time that the current team members joined. David McGuire, the drummer and Avery Benter, previous bassist, now guitarist. So, it just kind of felt like it was a moment when a lot of things were changing, and it felt like there was a new identity for the band. It felt like since we were having more members join the band, we should just call this something else. Now it’s a different thing entirely. We were only a band as Local Waves for less than a year, like six to eight months or something like that. So, the name change wasn’t a big deal at that point.
The name sounds a little bit tongue-and-cheek since you’re not on an actual coast.
Right. For a while we said that we were landlocked surf rock from Cincinnati, Ohio. We were obviously right in the middle of the country and there wasn’t a coast around it. But the idea was we still have a lot of surf rock elements in our songs, in our sound. I don’t think it’s characteristically defining our music, although those influences are definitely still present. But when we first started the band, it was definitely supposed to be a surf rock influenced band. So, even if you were landlocked in a place like Cincinnati, Ohio, it gave you the longing for the coast to transport you there, to make you feel like you’re on vacation, you’re having a good time, you’re living your best life, soaking up every moment in the sun and just enjoying summer. That kind of was the idea in the initial stages of the bands definitely still is a huge part of our identity, but I think we’ve kind of diversified a little bit in some other areas as well.
The band is based in Cincinnati. Can you talk about the importance of the city and your roots there?
All three of us in the band absolutely love Cincinnati. It’s where we grew up for the most part. It’s a great city. There’s an incredible music scene there. We feel like we cut our teeth in Cincinnati in many respects, with playing live shows there for so long, and just developed a really cool community. There are so many amazing local bands there that are incredible that all support each other. I feel like they hop on each other’s bills, come to each other’s shows, promote each other’s music, which is really cool. Some of our best friends in the world are just fellow musicians in Cincinnati. But even outside of that, there’s great venues like MOTR Pub. It’s just an amazing bar, sort of dive bar music venue that has a built-in crowd that people from the city come to who just want to hear great music on a Friday or Saturday night, who are just genuine music lovers who want to hear awesome acts and awesome bands.
They’ll just show up and expect something good and MOTR only books great acts, so they’re able to experience a great artist every time. And across the street, there’s Woodward Theater, which is an amazing, amazing venue that we love, and we’ve partnered with on a number of occasions, and we’ll do so very soon as well. But even outside of that, there’s an amazing music publication, Cincinnati Magazine, everybody’s just kind of supporting each other and doing a great job of lifting the community up. And then just, there’s so much fun stuff to do in Cincinnati too. There are always events going on. The city is really great with having festivals and stuff like that downtown, constantly. There’s an amazing food scene, so it’s just a great city to eat if you like, really good food. It’s just a lot happening, I think in Cincinnati, even in the last 10, 15 years. It’s really cool to see how the city is thriving and developing.
How would you describe the band’s sound now compared with when you first started?
It was a lot more overt with some of the surfy themes and a lot more that played a bigger role into our visuals as well as our sound. It was a lot more surf influenced, a lot of spring reverb, lots of modulated guitar sounds, which we definitely still do a lot of modulated guitar sounds. But yeah, sort of drenched in verbs, like Best Coast stuff, vaguely in that world. Definitely still keeping it in the indie rock world though. But now I think especially with what we’re releasing now, the sounds are a little bit more diversified. You’ve got some sort of more somber synth sounds mixed in and some sort of more ethereal soundscapes. I think our production styles have developed quite a bit, and so I’m really proud of a lot of the stuff we’re putting out now.
I’m still proud of our first releases, but I feel like we’re hitting our stride with our productions and songwriting, and we’re not afraid. For example, in “cigarettes,” which is the first single, the chorus is just straight up guitar power chords, which for a long time I steered away from because that’s one of the first things that I learned how to play on the guitar was playing songs in my room as a 13-year-old. So, it was one of the first things I learned, so I feel like I had an aversion to it. It just felt too simple. But now I feel like we’re leaning in and more confident in our sound. The chorus of that song is just straight up power chords, and I think it feels so good because it is simple, and it just hits you right in the chest in a really great way. I think we’re not afraid to just lean into some of those directions and go all out when we need to and not be afraid or ashamed if something does feel too simple, because a lot of times that simplicity is what feels so good. I think our songwriting is hitting some deeper topics than it was originally, though I think we still want to be a pretty good uplifting and feel-good band.
I don’t think we’re venturing into sad music territory, but there’s definitely some heavier themes and some stuff that deals with mental health, some stuff that deals with faith and love lost and some heavier topics.
What led to that more serious approach to songwriting topics?
I think it was just a lot of life circumstance stuff that I felt like the songs were just kind of coming out of that and couldn’t escape. For example, there’s what is coined a pandemic song on there, which is existential. I think it’s the third or fourth track on the release, and it stemmed out of the pandemic. It’s kind of about that time period, and it’s about the way that I felt around then, and it’s about the cultural context of the moment, and it’s about just all those feelings and emotions. A lot of these songs kind of came from similar situations where I was just kind of going through something or dealing with something in my life and felt like I had to write a song about it.
There are definitely some songs that I write that are not Coastal Club at all, so we steer clear of them, but then a lot of the stuff, even if it’s sort of on the fringe. Coastal Club’s kind of an outpouring of my songwriting process and my emotions as well as Avery. He’s a huge part of that too, but it was just like, yeah, they’re going to be coastal club songs, so let’s do it and let’s go for it. It’ll be different from what people kind of know about Coastal Club and what they have come to expect from Coastal Club, but I’m excited about it and I think it’ll be great.
So yeah, just dealing with some of those topics. There are some songs about mental health on there too. “Lost My Head,” which we just released, is definitely in that world. It kind of deals with the feeling of being made to feel like you’re going insane, even though you know that you have your head on your shoulders and you’re thinking through things in the correct and in the logical way. But it just feels like somebody else is telling you, “No, you’re wrong.” So that feeling of being gaslit in a lot of ways and just personal experiences that I had that led the songs to kind of come out of me in that sense.
With that almost journal approach of songwriting out, how did that help you with getting your thoughts across?
I think that type of songwriting is really healthy. I think that writing those types of songs is just really healthy and it gets those thoughts and ideas and emotions out onto a page where you feel like you can process. Obviously sometimes I feel like I write a song and still feel like there’s things in my head or thoughts slitting around, and I haven’t fully verbalized it, but I think that that just kind of helps. It’s very therapeutic and it feels like it helps you process and get through those emotions in a lot of ways. And it can kind of be the ending of a chapter…to write some of those songs. Like in “Lost my Head,” I feel like with that situation I can kind of put it behind me now that I’ve written a song about that situation and about those emotions and how I felt. I feel like I can now process.
I just think that having that experience and that thought process to get those songs out on the page helps me fully process and get on the other side of that feeling and that emotion so that I can feel like I have a better perspective on it now so that if that type of situation or emotion happens in the future, I can approach it and with some wisdom and some foresight and some knowledge to sort of move in healthier towards those situations. So
Why did you feel the EP’s title All The Things You Said was a fitting title for this collection?
The name of the project comes from our most recent single “Lost My Head,” which is kind of like I was saying about just that feeling of being gaslit almost, and that feeling of being made to feel like your perception of reality is distorted even though you know that you’re grounded and you are thinking through things rationally, but some external pressure or external forces are being put on you to make you feel like you’re going insane.
There’s that outro at the end of the song that a strings outro, and then it repeats that phrase, “all the things you said” over and over and over again, and it’s just recontextualizing, that experience that I had of being gaslit and it’s almost like that outro is me processing all of the things you said, almost being this recollection of me going through over and over and over again because it repeats that phrase, “all of the things you said” many times, and it is just me kind of mulling over all of those interactions and all of those experiences that I had.
And I think it ends sonically kind of triumphantly and it’s sort of saying, “okay, I feel like I’ve reached the other end of this experience. I feel like I’ve reached the other end of the depression and the anxiety and the overwhelming fear and just all of those mental health issues that I was struggling with.” I feel like within the context of that situation, I’ve reached the other side of it, and I feel like I can have some sense of freedom and liberation from it. It’s just kind of releasing myself to be free of those emotions and to be free of that experience.
Kind of older and wiser in a way.
Yeah, definitely. I think I have the experience now. I have the wisdom now to approach situations like that better in the future.
What were some of the biggest surprises making the EP?
The biggest surprise is probably how long it took. I think that we didn’t mean to, but we as a band kind of took an unintentional hiatus after our release in 2020. Life happened, the pandemic happened, things got in the way, so we weren’t able to make as much music as we would’ve liked and make it as frequently as we would’ve liked. I think we started the project in 2021, 2022, so there was a year or two where we just didn’t really do much of anything, and then we started it, but the process was crazy slow. It was just whenever we could work on it, we would, and the band wasn’t really a priority for any of us, but then that changed in the last year or so. I think that was probably the biggest surprise was just how long it took and how much attention to detail we had over the process and how much we developed those songs over a long period of time was probably the biggest surprise.
You learned how to play by ear. How has that helped with your songwriting process?
I had a guitar teacher and the process of him teaching me was basically he would ask me what song I wanted to learn or what song I was loving at the time, and it would be a lot of…Panic at the Disco because I was raised in the early 2000s and I was listening to those songs and he would just teach me how to play those songs by ear. I think it was the process of him teaching me how to learn in that way really helped me develop my ear as a tool to not only learn how to play music, but also develop my creativity. I feel like I can now hear an idea in my head and then pretty quickly verbalize that on a keyboard or on a guitar.
And so that is an extremely useful tool because it just allows for a shorter period of time between an idea in my head and getting it out via a guitar line or a keys line, or maybe just a vocal or whatever it is, or a drumbeat or whatever it is. I feel like I can hear it and then figure out quick ways of tangibly making that a real thing. So, if you can shorten the period of time between an idea and the elaboration of that idea onto the page, I think it just helps the creativity flow more regularly and more frequently. It’s really been a great tool to utilize.
What are you most looking forward to in the next few months or so?
I think obviously the release is huge. That’s probably the biggest thing. We’re going to have a pretty awesome release show in tandem with distributing this record. And we’ve got Soul Step Records partnering with us to do a vinyl release for it. So that will be really fun. And it’s getting put on by Inhaler Radio, which is an amazing Cincinnati online radio publication at Woodward Theater. We’re partnering with them as well. So that’s going to be huge. And then shortly after that, we’ve got a couple tours lined up, which I can’t say too much about right now because they’re not announced, but we’ve got a couple tours on the horizon, which we’re really, really excited about. I think those are going to be awesome shows…It’ll be in mostly the Midwest, northeast sort of area and a Canada show as well, heading down into Cincinnati around there, so it’ll be fun.
With the band mostly releasing EPs, what do you like about that format?
I think in modern music, in the landscape that most artists are operating in, there’s definitely still artists that are releasing albums. Even Billie Eilish just dropped her album without any singles, and that’s pretty wild. But if you’re a larger artist, I feel like you can do that because you know that there’s a guaranteed audience for it, and you know that people are going to listen to it regardless. I think as an independent musician, as an artist who is trying to emerge and gain listenership and gain followership, I think having more frequent releases in more digestible durations is better because it just captures listeners’ attention a little bit better.
I think that even with releasing the EPs, which we’re really excited to do, I think that there’s some awesome songs on there that probably won’t get the attention that maybe they deserve. Maybe if they were a single, they probably would’ve gotten a little bit more attention. So, I think more and more artists are moving towards just releasing singles, and I think we’re kind of doing that as well in a lot of respects, but at the same time, still want to be able to tell a story and a narrative through a project, which I think this project does. It’s kind of balancing these two realities and trying to figure out how to live in the space in between.
I imagine it’s exciting to see the attention that the band’s been able to get in the short time that you’ve been together.
Yeah, definitely. I think after our 2020 release, we weren’t expecting it to be as popular as it was, and I feel like that really gave us a platform and took us, whatever it is, 20 steps down the field in the right direction. I feel like it really projected us and moved us forward in our career as a band. None of us are expecting that. I think as musicians in our modern age, if you release music pretty much anytime I’m expecting it to do well, but I’m never expecting it to really blow up in a way. I think when our 2020 release happened and that went off really well, I think we were all really surprised, really elated, really excited for what that meant for the band and what that meant moving forward. So yeah, we weren’t expecting it at all.
You can follow Coastal Club on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter and check out their music at their Bandcamp page.
Joshua is co-founder of Scummy Water Tower. He’s freelanced for a variety of newspapers, magazines, and websites, including: Rolling Stone, The Boston Globe, Chicago Sun-Times, Guitar World, MTV News, Grammy.com, Chicago Magazine, Milwaukee Magazine, MKE Lifestyle, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, A.V. Club, SPIN, Alternative Press, Under the Radar, Paste, PopMatters, American Songwriter, and Relix. You can email him at josh@scummywatertower.com.
