easterlin: Pie Shop, Nov. 4

On November 4, I sat down with easterlin, a Miami four-piece that mixes layered alt-rock with shoegaze and noise music, over a shared slice of apple pie. As part of the Erasure tour with Sap and Sludge Mother, easterlin brought a hazy, stratified sound to Pie Shop. I interviewed them twice that night, first in the empty venue before the show’s start, then again right after their set, as the next artist began setting up behind us.

Sasha: Real quick, does everyone want to introduce themselves for the recording? 

Tommy: Yes. I'm Tommy, I play bass. 

David: I'm David, I play guitar. 

D’angelo: I'm D'angelo, I play drums. 

Ambar: I'm Ambar and I play guitar and sing. 

So, what should people know about easterlin? Give us the bare bones, the elevator pitch. 

Ambar: It's just like memories and sound, frequencies, all the sorts. 

Tell me about how you started? 

Ambar: I really wanted to make a band when I was really young and I found D’angelo on Instagram. 

D’angelo: I had like 15, drummer on the Instagram bio. 

Ambar: Yeah. And then I'm like, “Yo, you wanna jam?” And then he's like, who are you? And I'm like, bro, we go on the same bus. And so, we spoke after school and then we ended up jamming. He enjoyed it, and then we decided we would really like to, you know, start a band. We found some other people for our first group and made an indie type band. That kind of didn't last too long, so we had David come in. Then, we became a very metal band, playing some covers, you know. I eventually met Tommy while skating, and we were talking about music. He was releasing his own music at that time, but at that time he didn't play bass. He was just on guitar, but I asked him to come jam with us. 

Tommy: Around that time, I remember I just walked up [to my dad], and I said, “Let me pay you back, let me get a bass. And he was like, you know what? I remember I came into the first rehearsal, and then we just jammed. It just clicked so well. 

David: The chemistry was there from the first moment, on both a friendship and musical level.

Tell me about your songwriting process. 

Tommy: Mainly it's Ambar that comes up with a lot of ideas. David also brings a lot of songs into the table. D’angelo and I play rhythm sections, so sometimes a little harder, however we do, uh bring some ideas sometimes. For the most part, though, I do say it's David and Ambar writing most of the bones and then we jam it out together, filling the song out. A lot of the songs have come from jamming sessions as well. 

Ambar: It definitely fluctuates.

David: It’s a group effort, for sure. Ambar and I work together with the guitar parts sometimes, and then Tommy and D really build it up with the bass and drums.

You guys are from Miami? Would you say that your environment has inspired your sound at all? 

David: I feel like Miami has a musical landscape, there's no specific sounds. People know about New York Screamo or Boston Hardcore, so I think the beauty in us being from Miami is that we have no set path that was assigned for us. 

Tommy: We’re not entirely from Miami, but I do feel like the look of the city is slightly transposed into the songs. Just by living there, I feel like you see things, you feel things, you speak with people that have experienced certain things, that also leads you into liking some things more than others. 

David: And like, Miami as a whole, it's just such a dystopian city. It's a mess. There's so much concrete, but the nature tries to escape it all. But I enjoy it. It kind of sucks to live in, but I enjoy the beauty and the mess. 

D’angelo: I didn’t grow up in Miami, but I did have relatives there growing up and I visited it sometimes. But going back to the question, the people I was surrounded with, especially while switching schools and meeting new people, it definitely changed my personality in a huge way. 

[BREAK FOR easterlin SET]

Okay. Well, I usually ask this before the show, but still, what's your ideal show like? 

David: For me, an ideal show soundwise would just be like amps at front of house. We like to keep it [the music] loud so it's like, vibrational... and then have the vocals cut through. I feel like with most noise or shoegaze bands, it tends to be that there’s no vocals. We like having a good vocal mix. With the show vibe, crowd engagement’s cool.

Tommy: I love when the crowd is upbeat, and you feel the energy. 

David: It makes us better on those shows because we also get that energy and feel it back. 

Ambar: I think I really enjoy it when I can honestly grasp what I'm doing on stage. With some people, I can't really hear myself at all. But rarely, when I can't hear myself, I really get into it. It's like I just get in a trance and just feel everything. That's like my ideal, I think. It's just being able to feel everything that you've written is, that you’ve spoken about. It's beautiful. 

What's the Erasure tour been like so far for you guys? 

Ambar: Hectic!

David: With the bands, it’s been so fun.

D’angelo: It's been a very new experience because we haven't done a tour like this where it’s a longer run. We usually do runs around Florida or New York, three or four days max. So, two weeks is stepping into new territory, but we really like it. We love seeing a bunch of new people and all the different venues that we get to play at. 

Tommy: Playing every day is also a weird thing. Personally, the way I feel is that playing the same songs every day has been kind of a fun feeling. We’ve been rediscovering certain aspects of songs and just really dialing into the energy of each part. 

Ambar: I feel like on this tour, we have achieved better tones every time we play; we understand what we want and what we don't want every time. It’s definitely a learning experience. We get to see and understand what makes people move, what makes people think. We get to learn what the atmosphere we create is.

You guys are more of a smaller underground band; What would you say it's like being an underground band in today's music industry? 

David: So in the whole scheme of things, with the major industry, I think being a DIY band is honestly one of the best things I think anyone can do. A DIY band to me means having full control on every aspect creatively and visually, and not just giving in to the man in a way. Having ownership of your own music and intellectual property is always amazing. I feel like a lot of DIY bands that end up turning professional, they struggle with certain aspects of that. Being independent is one of the best things you can do. 

Tommy: I think it's tricky, though, for sure. We all have jobs, we all have stuff that we have to do. 

David: It’s like a tightrope.

Tommy: But it's very gratifying. The ups definitely outweigh the downs.

Ambar: It’s rough being independent, for sure. I really appreciate having control over every direction we might want to go. But it’s rough managing it all. I'm currently doing school and an internship, so a lot of things kind of pile up, and it's difficult to keep up sometimes. But honestly, it's so worth it, just working for what you truly are passionate for. I don’t see it as a job, more as a pleasure we get to do. 

All right, what's next for easterlin? What should we look out for? 

D’angelo: We have more stuff to release, and soon. Right now, we have no shows lined up, at least for the end of this year. But we will be active and more present... 

Any parting words of wisdom for the readers? 

D’angelo: Listen to “pry”, it's one of our new singles that came out around October. 

Tommy: Come to shows, it doesn't matter if it's ours, just show up. You'll find a lot of people here that share the same mentalities. You find a lot of good energy. Just come out and enjoy music

David: In South Florida, there's a really cool band called Ember [?] that I've been enjoying, so I feel like everyone should go give them a listen. 

Ambar I would say do whatever you think drives your life in a complete way. Don't settle with what’s the easiest or what you've fallen into, just follow what you truly want. 

David: Don’t be scared to do things that seem impossible. You can do it. 

By the time we wrapped up, Sludge Mother’s set had begun, and the room that was empty before the doors to the venue opened was now filled with people. It was a fitting end to the conversation. Although we swapped our earlier pie for later cigarettes, the band’s easy, amicable energy never changed. For a band whose sound undeniably fills a room and your eardrums with fuzz, easterlin seems perfectly comfortable in the quiet moments outside of the music. Whether sharing apple pie or a musical experience, easterlin is a band you won’t regret arriving early to meet.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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Sasha Jayne is the current Creative Director of the INDY. Their true loves and passions are metal and punk music, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and wearing excessive amounts of black clothing.