HOLIDAY SHORES

19 August 2011

 

Holiday Shores are a five piece from Florida who make music that sounds like someone put Vampire Weekend, Talking Heads and Fleet Foxes in a giant mixing pot, with some extra chill thrown in for good measure. They've got their second album coming out on 17th October and we chatted to lead vocalist Nathan Pemberton about it.

 

Beat: How would you describe your sound?

Nathan: Our sound probably sits somewhere within the soft-prog realm. The King Crimson seems to be a faily influential factor for us. I recall a story where Roland and Curt from Tears for Fears attended the debut performance of Crimson (lineup 4 with Belew, Bruford, and Levin) in Bath at the Moles Club in 1981. There were right up on the front row. Probably watching the performance and dreaming up what would become there first record (The Hurting, 1983). This situation, to me, sums up probably everything I like about music. The passing on of the sound without ever imitating the sound. I would say hopefully our sound will fall one day into this spectrum. And then hopefully, it will be passed down to whomever feels like taking the good pieces from it and to make something new and unique.

 

 

Beat: How does New Masses For Squaw Peak differ from Columbus’d The Whim?

Nathan: This record was recorded with a full band. We went up to Philadelphia with a scant amount of ideas (i.e. hardly any) with a group we'd been playing with for a month and proceeded to spend 8 weeks tracking every idea that came into our head. Whereas the first record was a largely solo recording project with assistance from Josh Martin (the guitarist), this record saw myself and Josh taking direction of a band and trying to navigate through to a new sound. I would say beyond this Squaw Peak is a conceptual whole. It's a record that needs to be listened to in total because it breaths and takes these deep ragged sighs and groans and it's rarely shaved. The face of the earth is an unkempt beautiful thing.

 

Beat: Do you prefer writing and recording your music or performing it to an audience?

Nathan: At this point, I prefer writing and recording. It's the most pure thing of whole musical process. It's isolating however. But it's pure creativity. There are shows were magical things happened, where a connection is made, where you feel like someone really got it. But often it feels like that scene in Back to the Future where the pinheads play a ten second set and get asked, politely, by Huey Lewis to stop because they're too loud.

 

 

Beat: What’s been the highlight of 2011 for you so far?

Nathan: July 4th on the beach in St. Teresa, Florida walking up and down a half lit beach community while the late night tide went out. We ran across a group of Krishnas and their children singing a simple melody and dancing in a small circle. Through fate or some cosmic pull we ended up joining their circle and the feeling that came from singing that simple melody and clapping my hands, which felt so rudimentary and so clean hasn't left my mind since.

 

Beat: Where is the ideal place for a listener to hear your music?

Nathan: Somewhere dark, stoned and on shag carpet.

 

Beat: What’s on your iPod at the moment?

Nathan: Miles Davis: On The Corner, Miles Davis: Get Up With It, Sade: Diamond Life, Sly and the Family Stone: There's a Riot Goin On, Weather Report: Sweetnighter and Talk Talk: It's My Life.

 

Beat: If you weren’t making music, what would you be doing?

Nathan: I'd be thinking of ways to make music most likely.

 

And because we're good to you like that, here's a track off New Masses for Squaw Peak, called Spells. There's handclapping at the start, and it just gets even better from there. Hit play: