Last week I interviewed Bella, the frontwoman and vocals, and Leo, the bass player of Coast Arcade – a 4-piece indie rock band from Auckland – who in my uneducated, groupie opinion, are the most promising new band of the 21st century. Here’s our discussion.

Talk to me about Acetone, your latest release.

Bella: Acetone was the first song we’ve written super collaboratively. With Acetone, I’d written all of the chords and the structure except for that ending solo part, and I brought it to band practice with a rough melody in mind and some lyrics, and we sat in practice and I just had the boys play it over and over again and we built it out from there. Leo had this mean riff he’d written, and we didn’t love what we had for the opening riff, so we put them together, and it just instantly worked.

Lyrically what is Acetone about?

Bella: What I really like about songwriting is that people can listen to it and interpret it however they want. So, I could sit here and tell you Acetone is about this or that, but I think it’s way more valuable if people listen to it and create their own meaning, because then they’ll connect to it a heap more. (Go listen to Acetone.)

What artists are you most inspired by?

Bella: I love band music. I love guitar-driven music, which is a lot of Aussie and Kiwi indie, as well as the UK Brit indie scene. I’m also probably more into modern bands, rather than older stuff. So that kind of stuff is where I draw a lot of my inspiration from.

Leo: I still gravitate towards heavier styles when it comes to my writing. But I listen to a lot of lighter stuff these days, so it balances out. So, I’ll write a really heavy riff and then as I add layers to it, it becomes lighter. When it comes to my inspiration, I guess I’d say 90s grunge is what really turns the gears in my creative process. And then lighter stuff as I develop the riff.

Did you always know you wanted to pursue music?

Bella: It took me quite a while to get to the point of being able to admit that pursuing music is what I wanted to do, and then not being ashamed to say that that was my dream and that I was going to follow it. Now, I am 100% sure I want to do music for the rest of my life. Whether I’ll be lucky enough to do that or not, that’s another question.

Leo: I think music was always what I wanted to do, even when I didn’t know it. A lot of people around me saw it before I truly accepted it myself. Even when my music teacher found out I was going to study psychology, she was like “Music is the thing for you.” But I think I was scared because it’s such an uncertain road.

Bella: Totally. I had a teacher when I was in year eight, and he was really into music, when I went back to see him years later, he was so disappointed when I told him I was going to uni, but not for music. And he was like, “are you sure?”, and I was like, “yeah, music’s not a career. Like, why would I do that?”. For some reason, I had it in my head that I couldn’t do music and had to go to uni, and it would be stupid to pursue music. So, I went to uni for five months. Hated it. Dropped out. And here we are.

If you went on Triple J, which song do you reckon you’d do?

Bella: With Triple J, I feel like you have to go for something that’s completely opposite, or something really fucking iconic.

Leo: I’ve always wanted to cover 1979 by Smashing Pumpkins.

Bella: Yeah, I think we could do a Smashing Pumpkins song really well. I would also love to do Five Seconds of Summer. We’ve covered that in the set quite a bit, it’s a similar vibe to us.

How has your relationship with listening to music changed since you’ve started making your own?

Bella -

“I’ve been playing guitar since I was seven. And writing songs since I was 13. Bad songs, but they were songs. I think I sometimes struggle to separate being just a music enjoyer versus a music creator.

There are days sometimes where I wish I could purely enjoy it for what it is. I think often I’m listening for things that can be used as inspiration or cool little production techniques or writing techniques or things like that. I guess when you’re listening to music, as a creator of music, your kind of going, what are they doing? What instruments are in there? How is it mixed? What do I like about it? Whereas a normal person might just listen to it and be like, yeah, it’s a good song."

What’s something people may not know about you?

Bella: I really hate big crowds. The boys will create a safety barrier if we’re in the mosh pit, because they know that if I get whacked, I’m gonna come back fucking swinging.

Leo: We’re not defending Bella from people in the crowd, we’re defending the people in the crowd from Bella.

Bella: Another thing, when Leo and I first started playing, he would pick up dead bugs and take them home and pin them into action figures.

Leo: I’d pin them into poses and then I’d make them fight and stuff. I still have them.

Bella: He also bought his pet spider to one to our first band practices, and my parents were just like are you sure you want to let him join? But in school, I had a group of friends I would sit with, and they were like, “your band is so weird like are you sure you enjoy it?”, but I loved it, because I find nothing more engaging and fun when people are just genuinely being themselves. Especially about Leo and his bugs. It’s like fuck was it weird? Absolutely. Do I understand it? No. But it was something that he was passionate about, and I think that’s really cool.

If you guys could join one band in the world from anytime period which one and why?

Bella: I think Leo’s would be Black Sabbath.

Leo: Hell yes.

Leo: I think for Bella, Pearl Jam or inhaler?

Bella: Oh, fuck yeah. I’ll take that, and ABBA. I would join ABBA in a heartbeat. I fucking love ABBA just for the drama. Didn’t they all marry each other?

Do you guys prefer big or small venues?

Leo: I love the interactive-ness of the smaller venues. Having the audience within arm’s reach, there’s a feedback of energy which I really like. But also, I love the hype around a bigger gig. It feels like you’re gearing up for battle; hearing thousands of people around you chanting for the headliner to come on. It evokes something primal in you. I love it. It’s such a good feeling.

How do you make it in the NZ music industry?

Bella: I think to be successful here you have to be stupidly stubborn and driven. But also, unfortunately in today’s world it’s not enough for the band to just be good and to have good songs. You have to be good at every aspect: your marketing and your promotion included. So, I think if you can see yourself as everything, rather than just a creative, that’s how you be successful. Because for us like Coastal Arcade is independent. I manage us. I book us. We do all our own tours and stuff like that. And so really, we wear all the hats. We promote all our own music, but we’ve made incredible headway around the world just from being consistent and stupidly stubborn and just shoving our music down people’s throats at every single opportunity. And it’s going to piss some people off and some people are going to love it.

Leo: Yea, you’ve also gotta kind of treasure the connections that you make with people in the industry. Because New Zealand is such a small country, with an even smaller scene, you get so much out of it if you make friends, man. Rather than small bands competing, it’s about community building. Yeah. Working off one another.

Bella: I think that’s really important. Because it’s very easy to see this as an individual race, because it kind of is, but, you’re going to get so much further if you support and lift other people up as you go along. We try really hard to do that, and we hope that other bands see us and think of us in that way.

Go check Coast Arcade out! In my humble opinion, their songs Baited, Next to Me, and Acetone deserve to be top of the charts. I’ve been hearing rumours there is a tour coming up, so keep an eye out.