Gold Soundz

Modest Auckland band Surf City snag a previous Pavement cover artist for their first release, change their name and amble down the path to success.

Kill Surf City was a popular live band, prolific in their infancy and gigging every other weekend; they quickly became a staple. Then, as things picked up for the slacker-rock inspired quartet, they set their sights further than the local dive and the obligatory name change beckoned. Drummer Logan Collins says it was an impending conflict they wanted to avoid.

“It’s one of those things where overseas there’s like three or four bands in the states and London [with the name Kill Surf City]. So I guess we just sorta had to do it now or… get in a whole lot of shit. So we just decided for the first EP we might as well do it now, and everyone was happy with it.” He laments, “It was stink because yeah, we did like that name.”

Dropping the ‘Kill’ was an obvious choice, as “just coming up with a name in the first place took us like six months, so to come up with a second name would’ve taken another six months. People probably think we’re a sixties cover pop band or something, but it’s alright,” he laughs.

Their peppy fusionist rock, with elements of the Clean, the Chills and Pavement burns with the sombre intensity of Animal Collective and the seasonal blitz of the Beach Boys; despite derivative qualities their delivery is faultless.

First single ‘Records of a Flagpole Skater’ also references the “usual indie shit”, but boasts a video. Shot by rising local underground film artist Sam Muirhead and featuring eccentric actor Stuart Devenie fawning over model trains, it portrays the band as miniature ‘guess-who’ cutouts, riding atop trains at 5am.

“It came out totally different to what we thought and he did a fuckin’ real good job on it,” Collins says.

‘Records…’ is on the self titled EP, with five other songs old and new. Their first release on Arch Hill and under the new name, it’s also their first release ever. Collins says, “we’re pretty stoked.”

Mastered by local pop prodigy Murray Fisher [of Goodshirt], it “was done over quite a long time, pretty much everywhere. We only used two mics… apart from one song; Jamie and Davin just sorta figured things out. A lot of our songs are quite old, so took quite a few goes to get right. We’d recorded a few of the songs before but they were pretty… they were just kind of shit, pretty much. But we figured it out and got it right!”

Nonchalance will get you everywhere. The band that appears to care so little about people’s perceptions has recently pulled a manager, a label and an internationally acclaimed artist for their first release.

“Oh that’s a pretty good story,” Logan says amusedly. “It [was done by] a guy called Steve Keene, a New York artist. He’s done albums like Pavement Wowee Zowee, Blondie, Dave Matthews Band and stuff like that. Davin just emailed him and was like ‘Dude, do you wanna do our cover art?’ and he sent back going ‘Yep sweet, what are some ideas?’ and we just said ‘chickens… with guns’. Then he painted like twelve original paintings and sent them over and we just chose! He didn’t charge us a cent, so that was pretty cool.”

Currently rehearsing for their upcoming dates as well as a support slot for Battles, the band hope to tour Australia later this year, funds permitting. “Until anything’s finalised or on paper it’s all up in the air,” Logan says. But fortunately the only direction Surf City seems to be going is up.