Contrary to common belief, Current Swell is not a surf band.
Sure, the local indie/folk/rock group may have a name that fits that criteria, and the band members are all surfers, but in addition to not having traditional surf-sounding music, lead guitarist and vocalist Scott Stanton says that they rarely write songs about surfing.
“I don’t want to look like that band that’s trying to sell surfing to help their career,” says Stanton. “It’s just something I do. I also golf, too.”
And the band also really likes to switch things up on a regular basis, which is why they can be found at festivals that cover a wide variety of genres.
“I don’t love doing the same thing over and over and over again,” says Stanton. “Once in a while we’ll play Skafest or Rifflandia, but it’s not something I like to do over and over again, as a local band.”
It’s not because Stanton and the boys from Current Swell have anything against local festivals—quite the opposite, in fact—it’s because at some point during their career they decided to switch it up to avoid overplaying any markets.
“We’re from Victoria but we don’t play in Victoria any more than Edmonton or Calgary,” says Stanton. “We just don’t want to oversaturate it. It’s not something we take too seriously, but it’s something we always consider when we’re taking shows and thinking about festivals to do.”
This came up when the band got an offer to play at Rifflandia this year; it would have been their third appearance at the local fest. But because Current Swell is releasing their latest album, Long Time Ago, on October 25—and launching their tour in support of it at the McPherson on October 21—they decided against having two local shows so close together. So while locals won’t have too many opportunities to see the band, the select shows they do get to check out will be full of new material.
“It’s been a while since we put out an album,” explains Stanton. “I found that our last album, we didn’t even play a lot of the songs off it because we were still playing a lot of our older songs.”
Stanton says that one of the goals for Long Time Ago was to create an album that is more complete sounding than previous Current Swell records.
“There’s a lot of really good songs that didn’t make it on the album because they didn’t really fit,” he says. “Some of our albums have jumped all over the place a little bit, so this one we wanted to be more cohesive than our other ones.”
Current Swell
Macpherson Playhouse
October 21, 8pm, $24.75
currentswell.com