Listening to Moon Tides, Pure Bathing Culture’s debut album, felt like spending 37 minutes floating face-up in gentle ocean surf. Sarah Versprille’s vocals were bright and slightly mannered. Drum machine rhythms skipped like stones across the surface. Daniel Hindman kept up a steady wash of guitar. On songs like “Scotty” the reverb was thick enough that I made the mistake of mentally slotting the album alongside Washed Out’s theme for Portlandia as part of some sort of notional Pacific Northwest “chillwave” movement. (PBC is based out of Portland, OR. Washed Out, on the other hand, is from Georgia.)
If you read an on-paper description of the band’s sophomore record, Pray For Rain, it would seem like nothing had changed: Tremolo-drenched guitar lines still make up much of the atmosphere. The lyrics still trade in prophetic symbols, like tarot trumps, onyx bracelets and four-leaf clovers. The word “dreamy” could still safely be applied, especially to a upbeat pop number like “She Shakes”, which might bring to mind the Cocteau Twins.
But from the first moments of the album’s title track it’s clear that not much has changed and everything has changed. Tight snare and cymbal hits lead off. Muscular synthesizer moves in like a stormfront, before mutating into a bassline with unexpected heft. Most striking of all is the evolution in Versprille’s vocals. Now, instead of interweaving neatly with the skittering guitar, her voice plows through the other instruments. Over the course of the choruses it moves from a taut contralto to an animal yelp. A repeated question becomes a statement: “Are you cut in two? Cut all the way through.” It’s a raw and intense and still manages to feel like a pop anthem.
The band is currently knee-deep in a nationwide tour supporting Pray For Rain, playing with bands such as Lucius, Wild Ones, and Death Cab For Cutie. I caught up with Daniel Hindman to talk about evolving songs, water imagery and the directness of their new album.
SP: Do you feel like the songs from Pray For Rain have evolved, as you’ve played them more live?
Daniel Hindman: Yeah, definitely. It’s been really fun figuring out how to play them live. I think the songs on Pray For Rain are a lot more visceral, in some ways, than the songs on our first record. So that actually does lend itself to playing live.
SP: Why do you think they had that more visceral feel?
Hindman: I think it just happened to be for this record. I think the songs are just a little more simple and strongly driven, from the drums and bass. Also, working with John Congleton on the record, he was definitely leaning more in that direction. I think he really wanted to make a record that had a much more direct presentation of the musicality, as opposed to something that was a lot more layered and ambient, which I think our first record was. I like both of those things. It just worked out to have the second record be that way.
SP: Since it was more stripped down, was recording it a faster process, or was that more complicated in some ways?
Hindman: It was fast and really simple and really honest. The tracking was minimal, and the whole record was recorded and mixed in about eleven or twelve days total. Our first record was a scenario like that as well. That’s cool, but I think our next record we need to slow down and, maybe, take more time with it.
SP: Do you feel like that tone, that directness you were talking about, influences your live shows?
Hindman: I think that with this record, as a band, as a live band, we’ve really hit our stride. We’ve had an opportunity to finally flesh some things out, and tour enough to really understand what the potentiality of our presentation is as a live band. That didn’t really happen till after this record was made, so it’ll be interesting to see how that influences things moving forward for us.
SP: Are you looking ahead to making the next record when you wrap up this tour?
Hindman: Yeah, we’ve just sort of started the whole process of the next record. Really the first process is writing. So Sarah [Versprille] and I have been writing, but we’ve just begun that. I would say we’re about a quarter of the way to writing the record. If we don’t tour a lot this summer, I would have a goal of maybe recording another record… next fall, something like that. We’ll see.
SP: I was listening to song “Palest Pearl”, and I was trying to figure out if main riff guitar or synthesizer.
Hindman: The bass riff is played on a Moog synthesizer, and the melodic riff is played on a guitar. That’s one of my favorite tracks on the record. I like the way that one came out a lot.
SP: With a lot of the songs on this album, I feel like there’s a sense of duality, a contrast between the musical sense of lightness and the darkness in the lyrics.
Hindman: Totally, and that seems to happen a lot with us. It’s not a goal, I guess it’s just how it works. It’s tough to talk about that. Not because it’s a secret or something, just because I genuinely don’t know why that happens. It just does when we write. It’s like there’s a muse of … sun-shiney dread or something. The songs, they sound very poppy but they’re about mortality in some strange way.
It’s tough, you know. I used to try harder to talk to people about what the songs are about, but I think sometimes it just ruins it. I think the songs can represent what they represent to the people who hear them, and they come out of us as a band because it feels good for them to come out. And then they go out into the universe and they mean whatever they mean. But, it is true, if you read a lot of the lyrics, actually, they’re not super-happy necessarily.
SP: Are there other musicians working right now who have inspired you stylistically?
Hindman: One easy one to say is Lucius, because we’re touring with them. Genuinely they have inspired us. We played a show with them two years ago, maybe three years ago now, before it all really happened for them and they experienced the degree of success they’re experiencing now. I remember at that time realizing how impactful the way they had presented their music was. That really influenced us a lot, to try to think more singularly about sound and how large sounds can be. So Lucius is a no-brainer.
We’ve all been super in awe of that new Joanna Newsom record, Divers. The new Tame Impala record is really cool, I really love the drum and bass sounds, particularly, on that record. Sometimes I’ll listen to a record just for a specific reason like that, and I’ll become really interested in a certain aspect.
SP: How did the album art for Pray For Rain come about?
Hindman: That was the work of a really talented guy who lives in California, Nick Steinhardt. He’s a great designer. We wanted something really simple, but that was also compelling in an aesthetic way. Nick came up with the sort of semi-circle representation of “PBC “, but where it was kinda vague, where you couldn’t see the whole P or the whole B. It’s really cool, he’s a really brilliant guy. He did that with very little direction.
SP: I feel it captures a lightness, and a clarity. And I guess water imagery too, which feels like a thing for you guys.
Hindman: Absolutely, yeah, that’s another one of those things where the water theme, it means something greater, and it just kinda keeps, no pun intended, flowing through the music really getting into some stuff there, but yeah, I’m really glad you like the art, I like the art a lot too.
SP: I don’t think I realized that it says “PBC”, even implicitly.
Hindman: Rad.
SP: Has anything crazy or wild happened to you on the current tour?
Hindman: (Asking the rest of the band) Has anything crazy or wild happened to us on this tour? Anyone?
We’re just not that crazy. We just drive, we just chase Lucius’ bus. We drive like three hours after each show, and then another five hours in the morning from the motel. We literally are in the van. Maybe… that we listened to the first seven Alabama records. You know that country band Alabama? They have like 27 records, so maybe we’re just going crazy in the van. That’s the craziest thing. I dunno.
Pure Bathing Culture play at Mike N Molly’s 8 p.m. on Thursday, April 7th as part of the Pygmalion Show Series. Tickets are $10.
About Nathaniel Forsythe: Nathaniel is a writer living in Champaign. Despite any rumors you may have heard, he does bathe regularly, even behind the ears.