CLICK HERE FOR MORE SXSW 2018 COVERAGE!
AUSTIN, TX- Originally from Los Angeles, but currently based out of Austin, Texas, brothers Joey and Ryan Selan make up the electronic pop band The Lagoons. Having their infectiously dreamy single “California” (which has over 300K plays on Soundcloud) on heavy rotation on my playlist for the past year, I reached out to them ahead of SXSW to catch them after one of their many gigs that week to speak briefly about what they’ve got ahead of them this year.
****************************
What drew you guys to Austin? Was there a particular reason?
JOEY: I actually went to school at UT (University of Texas), and that’s what brought me out here originally… I graduated a couple years back, and while I was out here, I just saw how amazing the music scene was and thought it would be a good place to kind of get our feet wet and that’s kind of how we ended up where we are now.
RYAN: We are originally from LA but he went to school out here. Basically he graduated and then I moved out here to kind of do the music thing.
JOEY: Ryan had been in a couple of bands in LA and I had kind of seen the struggles they had faced in LA as a start up band, of getting people out to shows, and LA is just a giant market. [That] doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing, [it’s] just [that in] Austin we thought was a good place to start off and we saw it was just as beneficial or just as good of a music scene here pretty much, so that’s kind of where I was the one who kind of persuaded him to come here, cause I saw that it was a really good live music capital and that we would be able to get our practice as musicians and really become more comfortable in our own craft.
The song that really drew me into you guys and made me want to come out and catch you here is “California”. Can you guys to give us a primer for anybody who doesn’t know it? How’d you guys come up with it and what’s it about?
JOEY: I think it is kind of an ode to California, you know, at that point, I had lived in Austin for almost 5 years now, so I think there was a little bit of home sickness that came through in the lyrics. But honestly, I think when we both listen to the song it kind of emitted those beach vibes and so we tired to definitely capture that and make sure that those vibes were then translated into the rest of the song. [It] definitely is an ode to California overall, you know, kind of missing the California sun and as cliché as it might kind of sound, I think, uh, it worked out for us.
And so what do we, as listeners, have to look forward to? You guys have an album in the pipeline?
JOEY: We just released 2 singles off the Escape EP, which is coming out, and then I think the next 4 songs from that are coming out in the next month or so. And then we got [a] tour stuff coming up this summer. Just lot more shows and that’ s pretty much it.
Sonically, what can we expect from the album? Can we look forward to more of the new-wave kind of vibe?
RYAN: Yeah, we are definitely building off of our Gems EP, a lot of those similar vibes we want to try and capture those but also you’re definitely going to hear some new more experimental-electronic-pop sounds that weren’t necessarily involved in the first EP but you’ll hear a lot more of in this new EP.
Follow The Lagoons on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
