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Surfer Blood: Swimming Without Sharks

SurferBlood

Delighted to be dropped, Surfer Blood rides the intergalactic wave to independence

Surfer Blood started as a demo project in the dorm room of singer/guitarist John Paul Pitts. “I’d been in bands before college, but I was writing the songs that became our first album in secret,” he says. “Tom (Fekete, guitar) and Kevin (Williams, bass) heard little bits and pieces and wanted to help out. We went from a dorm-room project to a band pretty fast.”

West Palm Beach, Fla., has a small musical community, so after adding drummer Tyler Schwarz, the fledgling band began taking any gig it could find. “The first shows were out of tune and too loud, but we learned fast,” says Pitts. “I dropped out of college and Tyler quit a good day job, but when you’re in a dive bar in South Carolina playing to eight people, you sometimes wonder if you made the right decision.”

Surfer Blood’s mix of surf guitars, ’60s vocal harmonies and ’90s-flavored indie rock produced a pleasing balance of sweet pop and propulsive rhythms. In less than two years, the guys put out Astro Coast, their well-received debut album, and went from booking and managing themselves to a contract with Warner Music.

“Things were going too fast, and we had a classic major-label experience,” says Pitts. “The A&R guy that signed us left the company, they tried to get us to tweak our sound, and we weren’t the best team players.” Warner put out Pythons, a well-received second effort, but they felt like they were in limbo. They weren’t unhappy when the label dropped them, and continued touring and making preparations for third album 1,000 Palms.

This time out, SB used more synthesizer effects, bringing an intergalactic edge to its bright harmonies and powerful rhythmic approach. “We rented a house in Portland and wrote for a month, getting the basic tracks together,” says Pitts. “We all contributed to the arrangements and trusted our instincts. We limited our palette and didn’t try to pack too much into the songs. Then we took six months to tweak and polish what we had and try out different overdubs. At a major, someone else may have great ideas about making the record sound amazing, but that doesn’t mean they’re on the same page with you musically. We wanted to make an album with a lot of left turns and not worry about pleasing anyone but ourselves. I took my computer and outboard gear with me when I moved to Los Angeles, and wrote the lyrics and added all the vocal harmonies.”

Pitts says they named the album 1,000 Palms as a tribute to their ability to thrive in the sometimes unfavorable environment of major-label indifference. “After I moved to L.A., I spent a lot of time hiking in Joshua Tree,” he says. “The desert fascinated me. Joshua trees are palms that grow on the border between tectonic plates. They can find water in any circumstance, so they were a good metaphor for leaving a major to return to the friendly waters of recording ourselves.”

—j. poet