In Talk with… Pacific Waves.
By: Paulo Menezes
Tags: Music, Interview, Indie, Sweden, Rock

In Talk with… Pacific Waves.

The drummer Sebastian spoke about influences that are being introduced on the further release, how the band emerged and the passion for Brazil. Paulo Menezes Mar 5, 2019·4 min read

Sweden is responsible for export many of the greatest things in the world. I’m not referring to IKEA, but musicians. A quick list can include Abba, Avicii, The Hives, Roxette, Yngwie Malmsteen, Peter Bjorn and John, The Hellacopters, Opeth. In a world that phonographic industry is the USA and UK since the last century (and lately South Korea), the underrated Scandinavian country should be considered as the third power of the music.

Maybe, the same world that would agree with my quick list someday includes Pacific Waves in that. The prolific quartet based in Gothenburg, it’s been walking through their full-length debut against the traditional ways: writing, recording, producing, mixing all by themselves without a label behind of it, that outcome the latest single Backward / Forward released on 11 January, accompanied with a video directed by Mattias Larson.

In a year of high expectations, the drummer Sebastian spoke about influences that are being introduced on the further release, how the band emerged and the passion for Brazil.

On 10 June of 2016, the single debut Everlasting Morning came out to the public. But, when did the band started? And, would you like to present yourselves?

Actually, myself, Johan (vocals & guitar) and Simon (guitar) played together in another band. And sometimes we jammed on some ideas that we’ve had.

We talked about doing something else with those ideas because they didn’t really fit into the sound of the band that we were playing in at the time.

When that band split up we decided to form a new band with those ideas as a starting point.

Then we found Henrik who plays the bass guitar, and Pacific Waves was formed. That was at the end of 2015.

Can you tell us your main influences?

Our main influences right now are mainly older music. Mainly what we find in our parents' record collections. A lot of 60’s pop such as The Kinks, and The Beatles of course.

But we also like some modern acts, for example, Mac DeMarco and Twin Peaks.

The single Backward / Forward recalls the old city past memories. Is that a real life experience from you guys? What is the lyrics influence?

That is correct, all four of us come from small cities here in Sweden. Three of us are actually from the same city in the northern part of Sweden, Luleå. The song is about moving away from a small city to try to outrun your problems.

And since none of us still lives in a small city it’s a personal experience to some degree. Everyone can use a fresh start sometime!

How is the Swedish music scene? Do you feel that they embrace your music purposes and ambitions or it’s challenging?

I guess the Swedish music scene is alright, we produce a lot of good artists and songs for being a small country. And a lot of cities have an interesting underground/indie scene.

I guess that we consider ourselves as a group of loners in the sense that we do our thing in the periphery.

We record our music in our rehearsal space, we are not signed to a label and we don’t go to parties with other musicians and so on.

But I guess that it could be nice to be more involved in the music scene, it’s always fun to collaborate with others and meet new people.

What countries, places would you like to play someday?

We would love to come to Brazil and play! I’ve been to Brazil once and I loved it. I went to the northeastern part (Fortaleza, Jericoacoara, Pipa, Salvador, Morro de Sao Paulo) and it was beautiful. I would love to go back!

What is the purpose of Pacific Waves?

The purpose is to write songs that we would like to listen to ourselves. I think that if you try to write to please others, you can’t reach your full potential, you have to like it yourself.

Of course, we want a lot of people to listen to and enjoy our music, but we don’t do this to make a lot of money.

I would probably go crazy if I didn’t play music, it’s a great way to collaborate with others and to express yourself.

Can you talk about the plans for the future? Do you have any detail of the new record to share with us?

We will release another single called “Bagel Boy” soon, probably in a few weeks. Right now we are writing and recordings songs to our album which we hope to release later this year.

We have recorded almost 4 songs right now, so it’s pretty hard to predict what the album is gonna sound like.

But it will have a 60’s vibe to it if you compare it to our older songs!

Pacific Waves can be found on Instagram and Facebook.