It’s been one complete year since we’ve last spoken to the cuties from Coast Arcade. In that year, they took the indie world by storm. We’d like to just say we love them and they’re so pretty and amazing.

 

Coast Arcade, revisited, refound and re-hyped 

 

Reduce, Re-use, Recycle – a message from the people, for the people

Hey, hi, how are you all? Been a minute, we’ve missed you x 

Hey cuties, it’s us–we missed you more <3 

Tell us, with all your amazing successes in the festy circuit, how’s life been over the past year? 

Band life over the past year has been pretty epic, not gonna lie. We’ve played some amazing shows, recorded and released new music and travelled outside our hometown–we are now multi-regional. We’ve become even more attached at the hip than before and can’t wait for the next phase of Coast Arcade.

So you released Surf Club recently, as well as opening for some hella dope artists, what can we expect to see? What else is there that you haven’t bloody achieved? 

Haha, you can expect to see a lot more of us over the next wee while. We have an EP on the way (dropping May 19th) which we have put a lot of qroha and mahi into. It has tracks Surf Club and Highest Heights as well as three new ones. Over 2023 we have lots of gigs planned and hope to hit that summer festy route even harder this year.

We want to know how you’ve managed insane growth over the last year. Can you give some advice to aspiring bands so there’s no shooting stars, how can they remain level? 

It really boils down to time, energy and effort. There’s so much good music in Aotearoa, so set yourself apart. You need to be good at all the other stuff as well as the music. Social media, the bookings, the managing, the releasing, it’s all so important if you want to make tracks and is really not that difficult. A lot of people don’t realise all the info you need is online on websites like APRA, NZ On Air and NZ Music Commission.

Any clues as to the EP and what’s coming our way?

Our EP ‘Next To Me’ is going to be massive–in our incredibly humble opinion. It includes the tunes we released at the start of the year ‘Highest Heights’ and ‘Surf Club’ but has three new tracks for you to sink your teeth into. ‘Next To Me’ is our title track and focus single, we were lucky enough to get funding for this single from NZ On Air (the absolute best) and it’s a fast, hard-hitting, indie rock-style song, with some subtle hints of 2000 punk in there. Salty Blonde is the next new track- it’s an indie summer ballad and my (bella) personal favourite song on the EP. Salty Blonde is a song I wrote from the perspective of someone writing a song about me (I promise it’s not as narcissistic as it sounds)- I just really love to set myself songwriting challenges to keep that creative tap flowing. Just Peachy is the final song on the EP and it’s an indie surf punk style tune with soft verses and grainy choruses–this one is just a bit of fun and a great track to play live. I wrote Just Peachy at 14 haha! 

What was it like playing RNV? Did it help you all grow as a band? 

RNV was insane- like the best experience of our lives. To travel to Gisborne to play with your three bestest maties is super cool- the sun was out (mostly) and the crowd was pumping (always). We learnt a lot about working together as a band in Gizzy but more importantly, we came away with a lot we wanted to work on and an excitement to start 2023. Hopefully, we’ll be back on the RNV stage soon!

I guess the last thing is, minus see you in another 12 months, make sure you remember us when you’re famous and keep being dope. Oh also, what’s everyone’s favourite colour? The people wanna know.

Aww, you are too kind, we love our yearly catch-ups with the Nexus team! (can next year’s be labelled Coast Arcade x Nexus again again). Well if the people want to know, we’ll have to spill… Thom and Nate’s favourite colour is purple, and Chris and Bella like blue (basic I know, sorry).