Pure Bathing Culture

Pure Bathing Culture, aka Sarah Versprille and Daniel Hindman, are exporting their own unique brand of opalescent, shimmering pop across the globe. Though their rise to prominence has been astoundingly quick, considering they have only put one self-titled EP and their first album Moon Tides, which was released little over a month ago. While sitting in a London pub, recovering from recording an acoustic session, we caught up for the story behind their rise, as the pair mulled over the places that inspire them, why the London Underground might not be so bad after all, and how becoming a band was a far more difficult decision than uprooting their lives and moving over 2,500 miles from Brooklyn to the West Coast.

How did you discover that you wanted to make music together?

Daniel: It didn’t happen fast. We played music in bands together, starting in college and moving forwards from there. But we never collaborated with each other. We were both just like a side-man in bands, if you will. And we are dating, we are a couple and we live together. But we weren’t a couple then. Eventually, about 2009, I came home one day and Sarah had written some words to a song I was working on. And that was the first song we wrote together. And it kind of surprised both of us, and we both just sort of laughed. But it wasn’t a moment where we were like: “This is it, we’re going to have a band! This is great!” But we did continue to collaborate on a few songs. After that it was still very slow going. It wasn’t until after the EP was recorded that we first really started trying to be a band!

After New York, you moved to Portland? Why then?

Sarah: It was kind of a perfect storm of circumstances. We had sent early demos to our friend Richard Swift, who at the time was just starting to record bands in his studio in Oregon. He was really the first person that we played the music for, because we were playing in his band on tour. And he was like: “Oh, you guys should come up to Oregon. I’d love to record you in my studio.” We were instantly like – “great!” We were trying to figure out ways to get out there, and it was coinciding with the point where our lease was coming up in Brooklyn. We had been based in New York for a long time, but constantly on the road, touring with Vetiver . We decided that, instead of buying tickets – we would just move to Portland and try it out!

So…instead of diving into having a band, the straightforward commitment was actually, “let’s move to Portland”?

Both: Yeah!

Daniel: And that was able to function as a mechanism for us to then be like: alright, we’ll have a band now. We have space here, we can store all of our equipment, we have space to rehearse and that did then lead to us being serious about the band.

What was the starting point for Moon Tides?

Daniel: Moon Tides is an extension of the EP, and really the end of the first chapter of our creative process together. I think what that meant was us learning how to write songs together – just going ahead and admitting that we were going to go ahead and do this, that there was a way, a process and a sound developing. It was sort of like our undergraduate studies at being songwriters.

Tracks like “Temples of the Moon” seem like a sonic progression from earlier work. Do you see it that way?

Daniel: We wrote ‘Temples of the Moon’ right before we went into the studio. It’s more of an open structure – it’s less of a tune, less of an A-B or simple verse-chorus structure. I I think we were more interested in doing something that was more emotionally expansive. That is something that we would be interested in continuing on the next record. Those ideas are really inspiring to us. It’s a nice muse for us, for sure.

When making this album, what tracks made you step out of your comfort zone the most?

Sarah: I think “Only Lonely Lovers” was one of the songs that was the most difficult to write. The music for that song existed as a full form that Dan had written years ago, that just existed as instrumental music. We attempted to write quite few different lyrics, maybe three different sets.

Dan: Yeah. I remember that we felt almost embarrassed by the way that it sounded, because it had… a sort of extreme sound to it. Some people have told us that it sounds like a Christmas song! And it’s definitely a weird song. We had that element in other songs too, though. The song from the EP, “Silver Shores Lake”, is like that too. Sometime we would have something, and we weren’t quite sure if it was a song. And then it would turn out to be something which we thought of as one of our best. But hard things…I think we need to get more into hard things. We recorded Moon Tides so quickly, it was so minimal. I think we need to try harder, I think we need to reach deeper and I think we need to find ways to step out of our comfort zone. I think it’s just time for us to move forward into new territory.

And, finally, having lived and worked in Brooklyn and Portland, how does dear old London measure up?

Daniel: We love London! It compares to New York in that it is so big and there is so much going on. And you don’t get that in every city. I think it’s cleaner than New York and that’s nice. The trains are so nice here, it’s amazing – compared to the subway! But yeah, London is amazing.

Sarah: It would be great to spend some time here not touring. Just hanging out. It would be amazing to make a record here. It’s a really beautiful city and a really inspiring place to be.

Moon Tides is out now on Memphis Industries / Partisan.