It’s a fairly obvious statement that the Asbury Park music scene is absolutely on fire. Everywhere you look there’s a new national band rolling into a town, a festival being announced, or most importantly for the future of the scene — exciting new bands tearing it up.
Sonic Blume, who took home the “Best Young Band” award at the Asbury Park Music Awards this year (an award designated for bands under the age of 21), is one of those exciting bands. Taking inspirations from synth and shoegaze icons, this quartet has had one hell of a year — dropping new music and headlining the new Asbury Lanes to celebrate. We caught up with the band recently.
Sonic Blume is (Band Members & Instruments They Play): Max Connery – Vocals/Guitar/Synth, Danny Murray – Drums, Chase Landgrebe – Guitar, Andrew Phelan – Bass.
Year We Formed In: December 2015.
We’re Based Out Of: Asbury Park, NJ
The Story Behind The Band’s Name: For one of our first gigs, we needed a band name, but we weren’t ready to commit to anything. So as a joke we decided to use the last name of our good friend, Mike Blume. And we kept it for awhile. But as soon as we started writing original stuff and looked to record our first EP, we discovered that there was already another European band called Blume. We liked Sonic Blume because it gives people a lot of room for interpretation what it means. Also, Blume with a “U” is more ambiguous and we still honor our good friend Mike.
Our Sound Has Been Likened To: The Smiths, The Strokes, My Bloody Valentine, Joy Division, New Order, Wild Nothing.
Cool/Famous Bands We’ve Performed With: We opened The Starland Ballroom in February for Stranger Things star Gaten Matarazzo and his band Work in Progress and it sold out. We have also performed with Deal Casino, Tor Miller, The Revivalists and White Denim.
Let’s talk about how you guys came together as a band. What drew you guys together to form this band?
We initially all met at a music program at the Count Basie Theatre in Red Bank, NJ, where we primarily learned and performed classic rock songs. It was purely a classic rock focused program, and we all preferred indie rock like Tame Impala and MGMT, and ’80s bands like The Smiths and My Bloody Valentine.
While the program was a good basis for honing our musicianship, there was really no room for creativity or to experiment with other genres. So, we decided to start our own band, originally doing covers but eventually began writing our own stuff.
Shoegaze, and bands like MBV and Tame Impala seem to be the obvious inspirations for this band. What is it about this style of music that you guys dig?
The production of Tame Impala and My Bloody Valentine records are a big part of why we like them so much. Especially with My Bloody Valentine’s 1991 classic, Loveless. Nothing prepares you for it the first time you listen to it. The things Kevin Shields’s does with the guitar on this record are so genius and innovative and leave the listener in awe.
After listening to this record, you can never listen to or think about any other music the same. Loveless really just opens your eyes to a whole new side of music that you have never experienced before. Also the emotional impact that other bands like Slowdive, Alvvays, and DIIV have had on us really inspired us to be part of this particular music genre.
Your record Beach Karma just dropped this summer. Can you talk about the central themes of the record, both lyrically, and musically?
Musically, the parts we wrote for this album were definitely way more thought out, more complex than the parts on the first record. When we were writing our debut record, we focused a lot on going after a certain sound, and at sometimes on the record it can sound a little forced. B
ut with Beach Karma, we focused more on the writing aspect and the sound we were going for just came across more naturally. There is also a lot more synth on this record than the first one. That definitely had to do with taking some inspiration from bands such as M83, S U R V I V E, and New Order. Lyrically, the themes revolve around our everyday life and experiences as friends and teens. We had fun with the titles of songs though “Sunflower Bean” is named after the band of the same name who is another inspiration for us.
Erik Kase Romero, who worked with Gaslight Anthem, Bouncing Souls, Front Bottoms and Lorde (on ‘Yellow Flicker Beat’) produced the record. Talk about his impact on the entire recording process? Also why choose him to produce your album?
Erik produced our first record and we had a great experience working with him. So it was a no brainer to ask him again. Erik just really gets what we are going for as a band and is really helpful with making suggestions in the music and helping us achieve the sound we want. He’s the best at what he does. He’s a great mentor and friend. We’re lucky to work with him.
Sonic Blume won “best young band” at the Asbury Park Music Awards this year. How did being honored like this effect the band?
It felt awesome to win the award. When we got nominated it came as a big surprise and to win was even more shocking. In addition to winning top young band, we were also nominated for best album release and song of the year. Although we didn’t win, it was really cool to be nominated in the same categories as some of our biggest influences like Deal Casino and Dentist.
Talking about the feeling of headlining your own record release party at the Asbury Lanes.
The show at the new Asbury Lanes was surreal. The original Asbury Lanes was a landmark with so much prestige and history, and while we unfortunately were unable to truly experience the old Lanes, we were excited to be a part of its new chapter. And to be able to share that evening with all of our family, closest friends, and fans there, was really cool. It’s so cool to see that the Lanes is getting some awesome national acts too like Kurt Vile, Tennis, Japanese Breakfast, Sunflower Bean, Cold War Kids and more.
What do you love about being in Sonic Blume?
We love being able to share our music with the world and getting to play shows at the coolest venues with some of our best friends. It’s also really cool to see all the support we get from our family, friends and fans. For just being in a high school indie band, we constantly get recognized by random people everywhere and asked if we’re in Sonic Blume, which is the coolest thing.
If someone were to check you out for the first time, which song of yours would you recommend to people to fully understand what the band is about what song would you pick and why?
Definitely “First Nite.” This song has been our fans’ favorite song for awhile now and I think it captures the essence of who we are really well. It has super dreamy vocals with catchy jangly guitar riffs, which I feel like are two common features of ours. You can usually find our fans moshing to this song.
What are you most excited about coming up in 2018?
We are most excited about putting out more new music. Hopefully we can do that before 2018 ends. And we’re in the process of branching out into the Philly and Brooklyn music scenes. So that should be cool.
