At first glance, Oakland trio Bare Wires looks like the grungier cousin to Philadelphia’s Free Energy. Both pull from the same pot of 1970s influences to create a sugary soft punk sound. But whereas Free Energy sound like they should be playing on the boardwalk at Coney Island, Bare Wires is better suited for the basement of the beach house a few blocks down. There’s a lack of polish in their production and an immediacy in their live show that destroys any illusion of “safety” in their sound. Furthermore, their live show last night at Comet Ping Pong definitely had a modern feel — there was no question as to what decade these songs were written. DCist had a moment to talk to Bare Wires singer/guitarist Matthew Melton about what’s next for the Bay Area band.

Had you toured the East Coast before this year or is this relatively new territory for you guys?

We’ve done it twice, so this will be like our third go-round. But the first time, I just booked it myself and it was pretty seat of the pants, and now we’ve actually got a crew that’s pretty good. But yeah, we’ve played D.C. once and we’ve played New York and Brooklyn and all that twice. So, still relatively new.

Are you still doing most of the songwriting? It sounds like you wrote most of the songs before getting the band together.

Yeah, I’m still doing the songwriting. I just went through some lineup changes until I found some buddies that I really liked. We’re kind of like a gang of best friends. We just travel as a trio and have a blast. It’s been pretty cool so far.

That “gang of best friends” mentality definitely comes through on the “Don’t Ever Change” video. Who came up with the concept for that?

I sort of came up with it. I just kind of wanted to rip off a rock and roll high school video, so we asked around and a buddy of ours was a teacher and got us into the school.

You were in another Bay Area band previously. Did Bare Wires overlap Snake Flower 2 at all?

Kind of. It’s all my brain child, but I’ve always wanted to write songs and tour off of them. I created Snake Flower 2 as kind of a psychedelic punk band and I just couldn’t get the right lineup. Bare Wires just clicked better and I found the right touring lineup and was able to get it out there and get it around the country. But Snake Flower 2 was cool. It was fun because I had just come to San Francisco from Memphis and then just came up with the first thing off my head, we recorded an album with these people I ran into and it was just a cool way to do it. It was like, New Guy In Town-style.

Whereas, you’ve actually known your Bare Wires bandmates for awhile.

Yeah, everybody was hanging out at this place called the Fuzz Plugs in Oakland and the Fuzz Plugs is like this house in a pretty dicey neighborhood and there’s all kinds of people. There’s this guy named Billy that lives there who’s in a band called Nectarine Pie. And I met Fletch…Fletch was living there and needed a place to live because those guys couldn’t keep the damn electricity on, so I moved him into my house and the guy Nathan lives next store. So all of us were living in the same two block radius in Oakland, and we would always see each other at parties. Nathan and I both work together at a vintage store in Berkeley, a thrift store and we were all like, “let’s just get out of here.” So we quit our jobs and went on tour.

Is the house show scene good out in Oakland?

I’d say that the only decent place for a band to play in Oakland is at a free house party. It’s mostly kids. It’s kind of like the Brooklyn of San Francisco, and most of us don’t have a bunch of money to pay an expensive cover charge. This way, we can just come out drinking to little house parties and that’s where everything cool is really going on and that’s where there’s a bunch of houses and warehouses — there’s a place called Ghost Town that used to be a really good spot for that type of thing and a lot of good spots having house shows. There are a couple of clubs. There’s a club called the Stuart Club, but it’s a couple of ex-meth head crazy people who are running the place and it’s a big rip-off. Nobody likes to go out to the place because the drinks are overpriced. There’s this other place uptown, but there’s really not a cool place to play in Oakland venue-wise, so everyone just goes “hey man, let’s just get a PA and go over to my house.”

So, that’s where the cool stuff is going on. What is the cool stuff?

Well, it seems to be where most of the decent garage bands and other types of acts in the Bay Area are cropping up simply because it is a rougher, more run-down neighborhood. That’s where all the artists and musicians seem to pop up. A lot of growth [and] more music is popping up around there. It’s pretty cool. We’re down the street from Berkeley and right across the bridge from San Francisco. I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t play music because I couldn’t stay in Oakland twelve months out of a year.

What’s next for you guys?

We had a single that just came out on a U.K. record label, and we’re going over to Europe and Australia this winter.

I know there’s a full length LP in the works, do you have a release date yet for that?

We finished recording the last tracks on it the day we left for tour. So it’s not really completely finished. We have it ready to go, but we don’t know who’s putting it out and I still have to remix some stuff and finalize it. We were literally running out the door when we finished that up.