Three Stars: Last Tide

Is he second guitar?

Misha: Yeah. We went awhile without one.

Nate: We had one initially...

The one that made the whale orgasm noises?

Nate: That was when we had three. We had three very briefly. That didn't last very long.

Rob: That was before I was in the band.

Nate: There were a lot of lineup iterations initially. But such is the danger of trying to find a lineup on Craigslist. Or not on Craigslist. What's funny is he wasn't somebody I knew on Craigslist, Melissa from True Womanhood actually recommended him. But he's in law school and he decided that he needed to keep his GPA up through second year until he had some kind of offer going.

Misha: We're pretty known for bringing down the GPA.

Nate: So have we effectively not answered your question?

About how you met each other? Well, I'll ask again, then. How did you meet each other?

Rob: I’m sticking with the Swedish underground bondage party. Kind of like that scene in The Matrix where everyone's wearing the skintight leather.

Nate: So much like it that we've never discussed it before. This idea came up totally spontaneously right now.

Misha: But planned half an hour in advance.

Nate, I hear you have roots in Philly?

Nate: Yes, I grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia. And then after college I lived there for like, a month, and then decided that I was not doing Americorps and got a job in D.C.

Did you follow any of the Philly bands?

Nate: They have some good bands, definitely. I mean, Kurt Vile right now has blown up. But he’s in The War on Drugs, too, which is how I first heard of him. But there’s a couple of bands I really like. (The Sounds of) Kaleidoscope, Matt’s brother’s band, they’re really good. We’re playing next month with a band called Music for Headphones that seems really promising. I guess they’ve played with Screen Vinyl Image and some other D.C. bands before.

Rob, when did you move here from Chicago?

Rob: I've been here for two years. I grew up in Chicago, then I went to school in Atlanta. Then I was in Chicago for like, three months before I moved here.

Misha, where are you from?


Misha: I'm from the north of England, in York and then I grew up there and Oman in the Middle East. My mom is from California but she’s completely lost her accent and my Dad is from Nice so I’d never lived in America before. I only moved here a year ago.

How’d you end up in D.C.?

Misha: No idea. I finished university, I went to university on the south coast of England and I had no idea what I was going to do and I had a musician friend living around these areas. So I just kind of, bought my ticket.

You guys have only gotten together recently. February right?

Rob: I joined in mid-April.

Nate: Let’s see, there were two bassists, before Rob. We had one other guitarist for awhile. Then we had two other guitarists for awhile. Then we had one other guitarist that did not work out at all.

Well, for a band that’s only been together since February, that’s very impressive that you’ve already gotten a show at CMJ. How did that happen?

Nate: We back doored into that. Basically, that particular venue, Littlefield, just opened in June. And I think I saw something about their opening on Brooklyn Vegan and because they were really new, I’ve found in markets where it can be tricky getting the kind of show you want, new venues can be a good bet because their calendar is really empty because people don’t know about them yet. So I emailed them back in July, maybe. And I hear from this guy in early September being like, “So, I realize that the dates you were asking about were long past but are their any other dates you would want?” And I was just like, “Well, if you had something CMJ that would be awesome but I’m assuming you don’t. So if not, something at the end of November would be fine.” And he goes, “You know what? I think I can actually get you on one of the shows during CMJ.” So, that was awesome. That was one of the more awesome things anyone has done.

You’re in Detox Retox too, is that correct, Nate?

Nate: Thank you, Jon Fischer. Yes, I am.

Rob: You say that with such shame.

Nate: I only say it with shame because most people have only heard the EP. And I don’t like the EP. And I think we’re much better than we were when we did the EP. We sort of had not really figured out what we sounded like when we did that EP. We just had nothing recorded that sounded good at all and needed to do something. And we did something.

What do you sound like now?

Nate: It’s like spacey post-punk, basically.

Libby: It’s like dance music.

Nate: Usually anyone bringing them up are being condescending like [Fischer] was on Black Plastic Bag. Well, now the Arts Desk blog. They [the City Paper] now have one blog that covers all the arts which is good if only because it reminds me to read Justin [Moyer]’s posts. He engineered our record.

How’d you end up with him?

Nate: Pat from Ra Ra Rasputin was saying that “I hear he’s looking for work and he works pretty cheap so you should ask him.” So I did and it was by far the cheapest quote that I got and I was like, “Alright! His Edie records that he self-produces don’t sound bad. I’ll go for it. ”

I asked about Detox Retox because I’m wondering how you differentiate what you’re going for in each band?

Nate: I don’t do much of the writing in that band. Parker comes up with a lot of the ideas initially and I usually end up helping him flesh some of those ideas out. But it’s a very different process and thing overall in general. So, in my mind there’s not a lot of overlap there. We’re not trying to do the same thing with both bands.

What sound would you say you’re going for with Last Tide? I can tell you what I’m hearing but it might not be what you’re going for.

Libby: What are you hearing?

Poppier and more keyboard-oriented shoegaze.

Misha: Makes sense to me.

Nate: I guess on the fast songs it’s like Dinosaur Jr. meets Husker Du with keyboards.

Rob: The guitar solos are pretty J.

Nate: The guitar solos are supposed to be very J. In terms of other stuff, Slowdive on some of the slower songs.

Misha: I feel like, Red House Painters.

Libby: First of all, I answered based on bands that they listed in the Craigslist ad.

Misha: What ad? We met in a club!

Rob: He was wearing a Pixies T-shirt at the Swedish underground bondage club.

Libby: Oh yeah that’s right. Well, he mentioned a bunch of bands like the Pixies and other bands that are really accessible to me. Any of the bands they’re mentioning right now, I didn’t know who half of them were. Pixies, Built to Spill, Dinosaur Jr. But Red House Painters? That’s what you bring.

Misha: Did you only email back to me because I mentioned Red House Painters?

Nate: I got three drummer emails and a) you were the only one who wasn’t way old or way young and b) you mentioned Red House Painters and I’m like, “And...I’m sold.”

Misha: And Modest Mouse!

Nate: Absolutely. Even though we sound nothing like that. Although we did cover Modest Mouse for a BYT party once.

Which song?

Misha: "Edit the Sad Parts." I think nearly every sound check before the show Rob begins the bass line and I begin the drum parts and Nate just turns around and shakes his head.

Nate: At the beginning of summer when BYT did their Sonic Youth pool party or something like that.

Misha: It was called Summer Camp. A bunch of people with ironic swimsuits.

Nate: The second edition of it was '90s rock themed in celebration of Sonic Youth. But we did it, Fffever did it. US Royalty did it. Laughing Man. But everybody did these covers. We had our Low song that I later realized was not released in the '90s. It was '01.

Misha: We were the only one doing a Sonic Youth song.

Which one did you do?


Misha: "Disappear." Which we need to do again, I feel.

Nate: Once we learn it right. So we did that, "Edit the Sad Parts" and the Low song. Then I think we played “Traitor.” Because somebody shouted up, “Play other songs.” And we were like “We don’t know any other covers.”

Misha: It was “Play your radio hit!”

You guys have gotten a decent amount of shows out of town already. Could you tell me about some of those?

Misha: It’s been fun. It certainly has been fun.

Nate: We played a show out in Oxford, PA once which is out by Lancaster. It’s a place that Screen Vinyl Image played once and they recommended it. It was really absurdly loud.

Libby: I couldn’t walk when the show was done. I had sounds still in between my head. It was the weirdest experience.

Nate: My ears were ringing when I took my earplugs out. It was that loud.

Any places you particularly enjoyed playing?


Rob: Worcester, MA.

Nate: We were looking for someplace around Boston and I found this hookah cafe in Worcester.

Libby: It was called Spiritual Haze.

Misha: It was just beanbags and Calvin & Hobbes books everywhere.

Libby: Tons of different kinds of people there.

Nate: Hippies mostly.

Libby: And preppy kids too. And they talked to us a lot which was great. A lot of people just stand there.

Well, that's the D.C. crowd.

Misha: And the Brooklyn crowd. Same as the D.C. crowd. But in Massachussetts they actually danced to us. There was a group of girls that tried to dance.

Libby: And they asked us questions and they were smoking hookah. “Where are you guys from?”

Nate: “What are you guys doing here?” I love playing in random places.