By Gabby McIlhinney
“This is one of the coolest stops we’re ever gonna have,” says bassist Dom, minutes after Sunbather Die finished ripping through a live set on WKDU. Henry, Dom, and Gabe, all the way from a Ballard basement in Seattle, take the cake for the furthest band I’ve ever had play the station. Possibly ever, in the history of the station. I can’t prove that. But it felt that way.
Tonight was history for another reason: a back-to-back in-studio, Sunbather Die played straight into a set from Philly’s own Mirriam. A pairing nobody planned so much as manifested, since Mirriam knew Sunbather Die from home in Seattle and managed to help snag them during their east coast tour.
By their own description, Sunbather Die makes “tragic noises and cannabis and pessimistic loudness.” Having now heard it in person, I can confirm.
Henry and Dom have been trading demos since they were kids; they picked up Gabe on drums somewhere between five and a half and eight years ago, depending on which of them you ask. What they didn’t have, three weeks out from their first-ever show, was a name.
“There’s this little DI box that Henry had heard of, called the Sunbather DI,” Dom explained, “and he just was like, ‘What about Sunbather Die?’ We were like, yeah, that’s cool, that will never last.”
Almost three years later, it’s stuck, mispronunciations and all. (“We get a lot of things like ‘sunbathe or die,’ too,” Dom added. “That’s a really common one.”)
Ask them how the songs get made and the answer is basically: slowly, communally, and with a lot of forgetting. Henry tends to build out a demo with every part already sketched “stupidly well,” per his bandmates and then the rest of the band jams on it for months. “It’s very jammy,” Dom said. “Have an idea, sit on it for a while, see where it takes us.”
That process is about to produce their first album: three songs they’ve already released, currently getting remixed for cohesion, plus three longer tracks they’ve been playing live for the last two years. No title yet. Should be out roughly a month after they get home from tour, though!
This is Sunbather Die’s first time playing the East Coast, and so far the read has been: everyone is shockingly nice. A bar owner in Boston tipped them extra gas money after their set, something Dom said has “never happened, like, in the slightest” back home. As I’ve been told, East Coast people are kind but not nice, West Coast people are nice but not kind.
Influence-wise, it tracks with the geography: Soundgarden, Failure, the Portland band Rhododendron, and Unwound got named as touchstones. Off the clock, the answers get stranger… Dom’s been on an Anthony Bourdain kick lately, and one of the guys’ non-musical passion is, simply, disc golf, played at his parents’ place in Anacortes.
Tour listening has included a full hour-long fart sound compilation and a heavy dose of Norm McDonald. Make of that what you will.
After this run, which continues on to DC and Pittsburgh, the plan is to prioritize getting the new material out, followed by a possible West Coast tour at the end of the year and then a writing hiatus. A few of the new, still-unreleased songs already made appearances on this tour, and per the band, they’re changing a little every night.
Before wrapping, the band sent love to Seattle’s Disaster Artist (“we have thought about you every day”) and closed with the only appropriate send-off for a Philadelphia radio station in this economy: go birds.
You can catch Sunbather Die’s existing tracks out now, with the debut album expected soon (keep an eye out), and find the full in-studio linked here.
Mirriam’s set followed immediately after this one; go listen to that too.
You committed to reading… now commit radio warfare.
wkdu.org/listennow or 91.7FM local.