Portland, Oregon’s Pure Bathing Culture are longtime phriends of PHILTHY (We first met them in September of 2014, while they were on tour with Tennis.), but I’m pretty sure they haven’t headlined the City of Brotherly Love and Sisterly Affection in close to a decade… and I haven’t gotten the chance to chat with the indie pop duo – comprised of Sarah Versprille and Daniel Hindman – since March of 2016, when they were on the road supporting Lucius. However, this coming Thursday, August 22nd, they will be headlining MilkBoy, and last week I got a chance to chat with Sarah and Daniel via email, who told me about their memories of Philadelphia, their forth and latest full-length (2023’s Chalice, which the band released themselves), and how they’ve evolved in the nearly-decade since we last spoke.
Izzy Cihak: You’ve played a lot of shows in Philadelphia over the years, from opening Underground Arts for Tennis, a headlining show at Boot & Saddle, playing Union Transfer with Lucius and American Football, a Free at Noon at World Café Live, and maybe even a few others. What are your thoughts on the city?
Pure Bathing Culture: We love playing Philadelphia so much! What a soulful city with so much music history… we’ve had so many great experiences playing live there. Always love playing smaller venues like Johnny Brenda’s and Underground Arts and we’re super excited to play MilkBoy for the first time. WXPN has always been so supportive of our music and that’s something we’re truly grateful for as well.
IC: The last time we spoke was actually shortly after you released Pray for Rain, which I’m realizing is quite some time ago. This is a huge question, but what have been some of the personal highlights of the band in the past almost ten years?
PBC: Wow, yes, soon will be 10 years, crazy how time flies! Thanks for asking this, it’s not something we have the opportunity to think about a lot. We tend to just be focused on what we’re working on at the moment but ruminating a bit now… from collaborating with Ben Gibbard on our full record cover of Hats by The Blue Nile to being able to spend time in the studio with producers like Richard Swift, John Congleton, and Tucker Martine on our earlier records, it feels like there has been a long path developmentally to now. We’ve had a chance to experience a lot and to continue to find ourselves through our music over the years.
IC: And you released Chalice late last year, which I know had you leaving Portland to record, produce, and mix in Cottage Grove, Oregon. How do you feel like that impacted your process of making the album?
PBC: Writing for Chalice began at the end of 2019 and the rest was written across 2020, so heading to Cottage Grove to make the album was our first time out of our home in Portland since the pandemic began. We recorded from late spring into and through the summer solstice of 2021. Thematically the music on Chalice is all about the ritual of creativity, progress and transformation, the search for transcendence and joy, and the ability to overcome the things that haunt us. Being back in the studio where we made our first recordings while being in a small western town that was also opening up for the first time was really magical.
IC: How do you feel like the sounds and themes on the album compare to previous releases, or did it feel like more or less an organic evolution?
PBC: It felt like a pretty organic evolution for us. We wanted Sarah’s voice to feel like a guiding immersive spirit that leads you across the record, but we also didn’t want to overly layer it. We would use a lot of timed delays just on single words and then pan them around to create mysterious otherworldly reverbs and echoes. In addition to our beloved palette of clean electric guitars and drum machines we wanted to explore some more acoustic textures, so we recorded Daniel’s J45 with a single ribbon mic and we referred to this sound and its place on the album as “Alligator Man,” the rolling arpeggiated acoustic guitar parts on songs like “The Sun,” “The Heron,” “The Chalice,” etc. were a new thing for us. Texturally we had this idea not to use any synth on the record at all, only Mellotron strings and plucks (though to be fully transparent a DX7 pad did manage to sneak its way onto “The Fountain”… 😉 ). We used lots of percussion, tambourines and shakers, different sized floor toms with mallets, recorded bells, rain sticks and wind chimes. We even recorded seagulls. We would refer to these sounds as the “environmental” layer. We wanted it all to sound like it was being played by groups of children or monks or maybe a church congregation, or even a cult.
IC: Have you had any favorite responses to the album, whether things that were written about it or things that fans have told you, either in person at a show or via social media?
PBC: Honestly, we’ve been really fortunate because our fans have always been willing to go with us wherever we’ve taken them. In a lot of ways this record felt like it wrote itself and we’re so grateful to PBC fans for giving us a chance to continue to explore this sacred and expansive thing we have between us.
IC: I really dig the whole album, but “The Child” especially stands out as just being like epically whimsical. How did that particular track come about?
PBC: Wow, thanks so much! Yes, “The Child” is probably the most fun song on what honestly ended up being a pretty serious thematically toned album. Originally that song was titled “Vivida” before the song tilting became more serial and archetypically based. It was one of the later songs we wrote for the album and really is just all about taking chances and the wheel of fate and your destiny, accepting how that plays out no matter what and almost being turned on by the peril of it all regardless… The little guitar solo is very indebted to and in ways a reimagining of the guitar solo in the 10,000 Maniac’s song “Like The Weather.” We’ll be playing that one at Milkboy actually! 🙂
IC: Speaking of that, you have a couple upcoming headlining shows, including the one at MilkBoy. It’s been quite some time since I’ve seen the band live, so I’m curious what we can expect of this upcoming date, in terms of setlist, production, and just the general vibe of the night?
PBC: We’re playing some songs from pretty much all of our records. What we do in the studio is its own thing and we’ve never tried to recreate our records track for track in a live context, so the live show is quite different sounding from the records and generally luckily people seem to love it, ha! It’s more dynamic, looser, there are places where we improvise, we’ll have two wonderful musicians with us to fill out the band, Chris Icasiano playing acoustic and electronic drums and Justin Chase playing synth bass and keyboards. We love playing live so much. The time we spend together and the process of writing and recording the records is so specific and personal to the two of us that it has really allowed playing live to become its own separate thing with its own identity. It’s something we get to do with other musicians and super importantly it’s something we get to do with fans so it’s really fun for us…
IC: You play a lot of pretty varied venues, between your headlining shows, support shows, and festival dates. How do you like playing these super intimate, sweaty, standing room barrooms like MilkBoy? They’re definitely my favorite kinds of place to see shows.
PBC: Oh, we love that! Headlining smaller venues is the most fun for us by far.
IC: Not to detract from your own music, but you’re going to be playing Bumbershoot, which always seems like such a cool festival and there are tons of amazing artists playing. Are there any acts that you’re especially excited to get a chance to check out or catch up with? K. Flay, Hurray For The Riff Raff, Pom Pom Squad, Squirrel Flower, and Chastity Belt are some of my favorite people in music, and I’m a huge fan of Courtney Barnett, Kim Gordon, All Them Witches, Lauren Mayberry, Lol Tolhurst x Budgie, and Automatic.
PBC: Oh yeah, really into all of the above you mentioned. Some other artists would maybe be James Blake, Cypress Hill, yeah, so many great bands, we’re really looking forward to it!
IC: Considering that we’re quickly nearing the end of summer, I’m curious what have been some of the highlights of your summer, whether relating to the band or just life in general?
PBC: Summer has been cool for us, it’s been good to play some shows. We’ve both been finding a bit of time to do some reading all while staying pretty busy in the studio. We’ve been working on and writing new things for a while now…
IC: Finally, what’s next for you? How are you hoping and planning to spend the remainder of 2024?
PBC: Working on new music! We’re hoping to finish a couple of things up by the end of the year, one being an A side/B side single release and the other being another Roxi’s Dream project. Really excited to share both when the time is right! 🙂
*Get your tickets here.
