While we were putting the Sounds In Silence magazine together back in March, one of the bands at the top of our list to talk to was the Nashville-based indie pop group Pacific. It was really refreshing to talk with artists outside of our immediate circle and get their perspective on isolation, the industry, and some of our classic date questions. Pacific was just coming off the release of their latest self titled EP, and what drew me to them was the sincerity beneath the hooks. While in quarantine, they started a cover series where they reimagined tracks like “Level Of Concern” by Twenty-One Pilots, and they were also featured on the Felt Cute Fest livestream series based in the U.K. Their next single, following the release of “peace of mind (is there anyone left)” is called “yellow bleach,” and it drops this Friday.

Do you think all foods can be classified as a soup, salad, sandwich, or individual ingredient?

[prolonged silence]

Emily: Do you need an example?

Will: Uhh yeah. An example wouldn’t hurt.

Bre: Okay, pizza. That’s an open-faced sandwich.

Will: I would buy that for sure. Maybe it’s its own category, though. Like if I want a pizza I’m not going to a sandwich shop, you know? I’m not going to Jimmy Johns to buy a pizza.

Nick: What would pasta fit in to?

Emily: Salad.

Bre: Yeah it could be a salad, or it could be an individual ingredient.

Will: A hot salad?

Emily: That’s a thing - we’ve gotten wet salad, cold salad, hot salad, thin salad.

Bre: Pasta salad is a thing, though. It’s cold.

Will: Ice cream?

Nick: What would that be?

Emily: Soup…

Bre: Soup or salad, depending on how many ingredients I think.

Emily: It’s less about the things and more about the structure. Like, lettuce doesn’t equate to a salad.

Will: My question is who is the philosopher that’s thinking of these questions. That kinda blew my mind.

Emily: I don’t remember where I first heard this. A coworker brought it up to me one day and we talked about it for like four hours.

Bre: One band did try to argue that the world could technically be a sandwich because at any given moment there are probably two pieces of bread on either side of the earth.

Will: We’re not the smart kinds of bands like those people.

Nick: We see food and we eat it.

Emily: We’ve asked this question like 17 times and we get weirdly consistent answers but also it sparks debates and I just don’t have it in me anymore to repeat, “yes, pizza really is a sandwich.” But it’s a great icebreaker.

Will: Yeah I’m gonna be thinking about this all night.

Emily: Nobody’s been able to disprove it yet. Every time they come up with something we have an immediate answer.

When you’re trying to impress somebody and they ask you what your favorite band is, who do you say to sound cool? What’s your actual guilty pleasure favorite band?

Bre: Please don’t say jazz.

Emily: Or Tame Impala.

Nick: If I was trying to impress someone, I’d say Drake. There are a handful of Drake songs I can rap all the way through.

Emily: Oh you have to do it for us.

Nick: I really geek out on Coldplay, Twenty-One Pilots, Kendrick Lamar.

Will: To seem cool I would say - well in Nashville, Tame Impala is like the “coffee shop go-to.” It’s like a joke that if you say Tame Impala you’re a classic hipster. You’re not even a real hipster. There’s a band rule too, we don’t talk about jazz. Our keys player is a drum set major in college, and we’ve all tried to love jazz, but something changed whenever we would get together as a band and when we start jamming it would morph into jazz. So I’d have to put my foot down and say “No! No jazz here. One scale. No weird notes.” Play the right notes, as Angela says on “The Office.”

Emily: C-major only.

Will: We do all like The 1975, the new Coldplay record. It’s more old-school than some of their recent stuff.

How do you feel about dating other musicians?

Nick: I’m not sure I could. There would be too much competition. I like having my thing and I like that they have their thing.

Will: I’ve been dating a girl for a little over a year and she’s a singer, but she wouldn’t ever call herself a musician even though she has such an amazing voice. But that’s kinda fun because I can be the one who pulls it out of her and we can sing together. But if it was someone who was trying to “do music” it might be fun to kind of piggyback off each other and play together.

Emily: A lot of bands have had some pretty polarizing answers for this. But a lot of bands say they wouldn’t like the competition, and then others say dating a musician is like dating the only other type of person who would understand their lifestyle.

Bre: One guy we talked to said he’d always choose to write a song over going on a date. He has a serious girlfriend but he’d cancel a date if he had an idea for a song.

Will: I could never do that. I think I love love too much. Big rom-com kinda guy. And what else do you write about? Where do the songs come from?

Do you have a favorite love song?

Will: Oh my gosh.

Emily: Every song is a love song on some level.

Will: There are killer love songs in the movie “About Time.”

Nick: “Open Your Eyes” by Snow Patrol.

Will: Any Goo Goo Dolls song that isn’t like a punky, noisy one. “Iris” is a go-to. “Let Love In” is a love anthem. I like the anthemic love songs or the “I’m dying inside.” Lany’s latest album is a great heartbreak record.

What’s your favorite anti-love song?

Will: I need to pull up Spotify for this one.

Nick: There’s a song by City and Color called “Hello, I’m In Delaware.”

Will: Oh I haven’t heard that one. Should I not?

Nick: Just be prepared to cry.

Will: “In Your Atmosphere” by John Mayer. Even if I’ve never been in that scenario before it would put me right in it. Also “A Sky Full of Stars” by Coldplay.

Emily: Oh cool, like a poppy sad song. My go-to lately is “The Trapeze Swinger” by Iron & Wine and it’s a 9-minute long killer. I’ve never cried at a show before but that one wrecked me.

Bre: I really like “Sideways” by Santana.

Will: Wait what. Is that on the playlist? Featuring Citizen Cope?

Emily: What the...

Bre: It’s great! It’s sad!

Emily: The 1975 “You” and “Me” are both so sad.

Will: There are a few 1975 songs that could take me back. “The Birthday Party” is a new sad one.

Do you think being a musician has helped you in the relationship department or does it turn people away?

Will: I think for the most part people I’ve dated have been okay with it or liked that I can play guitar. I think the only part that can be hard is the randomness of it. Like those people who say they’ll cancel dates to write a song - it can be like that. You could be gone for a few days where they happen to have off so your schedules don’t line up. Or when you feel most creative and want to work you already set aside to spend time together. So that can make it tricky, but for the most part I think it’s a pretty good gig to go with a relationship. It’s not the typical 9-5 so there is a little bit more room.

What’s the cringiest thing you’ve done to get out of talking about your feelings?

Bre: We can start if you need some examples.

Will: PLEASE.

Bre: I had a crush on my best friend for truly ten years, and when we finally started to try out dating there was this moment when we were in his car and he tried to kiss me. And I just wasn’t anticipating it so I backed away, and he was like “I thought this was going well?” And instead of answering him I gave him finger guns. And then still had to sit in the car with him.

Emily: Yeah, ten years of waiting for that moment.

Will: And then???

Bre: Oh we did date for a little bit. We broke up right before the quarantine though.

Emily: These interviews have been her rebound. We’ve dated like 10 bands in two weeks, so she’s doing fine.

Bre: What about you guys, though?

Emily: Yeah oh my god, we asked a question. I forgot.

Will: I kind of just wear all of my feelings on my sleeve. I feel like I fall in love often, and that’s kind of lame for someone who wishes it was once and done. But there have been times where I lay it all out there and then I get friendzoned and then nothing happens. So that’s cringey over the long run. It’s not a one-moment cringe.

Nick: I’ve only dated a couple girls in the last few years. There was one person who gave me very vague “I don’t know” answers while we were out on a date. She’d ask what my hobbies are and I’d give her reasonable answers. And when I’d ask her the same thing she’d say “I don’t know as well” and just give me nothing to work with. My back hurt from carrying the conversation. An hour of “I don't know” and at the end she thought the date actually went well. We didn’t go out again.

What’s your opinion on ghosting?

Nick: I’ve been ghosted before, and I’ve been on the verge of ghosting. But a couple days went by and then I decided I should just say something. I don’t like how I start to process it, I go inward and analyze everything I’ve done.

Will: Yeah, it would eat me alive if I ghosted someone. Most people I’ve had the beginnings of a relationship with were people I knew beforehand, so there was no option to ghost because we’d see each other. So don’t do it.

Bre: If ghosting was socially acceptable I’d do it all the time. I hate talking about my feelings and I hate upsetting people.

Do you think stereotypes about musicians are true?

Nick: There is a stereotype about drummers hitting on girls all the time that I disagree with.

Will: I think Nashville has its own stereotype. Like everyone’s a musician here, so we just don’t talk about it because it literally applies to everyone. But I guess - lazy, scatterbrained, addicted to things.

Emily: Busy... emotionally unavailable…

Will: You guys seem to know the specifics.

Emily: This is our job.

Bre: I think a lot of people expect the worst. Like if a musician asks you on a date you’re like, “okay, but he’s never gonna speak to me again probably.”

Emily: The lack of commitment is a thing for sure.

Will: And the whole, “how’s your little band doing, are you still doing that” kind of conversations with older people. But then there are moments when that turns after you get kind of well-known and those same people have a totally different opinion of you.

Have you ever been used for your musician status?

Will: Maybe in subtle ways, just with how people act if they want to be “in” with you. You’ll get those texts out of the blue from people you haven’t heard from and you just feel like they want something. But I’ve also been in that place where you’re just starting out and you don’t know where to go and you need someone to talk to who’s doing the same thing you want to do. So I try to be sensitive to who’s asking because maybe this is their only outlet to connect.

We’ll end it on a high note: if we were to rob you right now would it be worth it?

Nick: We did just get our stimulus so now we at least have $1,500. But I did just pay off some credit card bills so I’m back to nothing.

Will: Aw you did that. That’s great.

Emily: Green flag! He’s responsible.

Will: I would say no because robbing someone is never worth it. But if you did rob me, it would probably still not be worth it in a lot of senses.

Nick: You could buy a couple packs of Ramen.

Will: You can take my stimulus.

How has quarantine affected your plans?

Will: We were gonna do like thirty shows in the spring that we had to reschedule for the fall. There are four of us in the band, and we didn’t live together before this, but my roommate stayed with his family in Texas so Nick has been staying here with me. We’ve been doing covers every few days and publishing them. But it’s definitely been hard to connect with the other guys considering the stigmas on social distancing. With the Internet, it hasn’t hit us as hard as it could have. We didn’t lose a ton of money on touring because of our size and everything’s been rescheduled so I’m eager to see what happens when we’re able to do this. I think smaller shows will come back before bigger shows and I wonder if more people will go to those, so I think this actually might help bands like us.

Nick:I don’t think we would take the time to fully learn and cover songs the way we are right now but we have the time.

Will: Yeah usually we’d never take the time to totally reproduce a song but it’s been fun. We’re putting out a cover of the new Twenty One Pilots song in a couple days. So that’s been a blast. We just put out an EP a while ago and people have told us they’re listening to it on repeat while they’re home.

Emily: Yeah a lot of Philly bands have been doing livestream sets and that’s been really nice, but my worry is that eventually people are just going to get too cozy being able to watch a super intimate set with a band while they’re just sitting on their sofa and then things won’t go back to normal when we can get out to real shows again.

Bre: I do concert photography so that just totally isn’t an option for me right now. My last gig was Chelsea Cutler, and I had Firefly lined up for the summer and now it’s all gone.

In order to revamp the convo that we had back in March, Will was kind enough to chat for a minute about what we can expect from the “yellow bleach” and beyond era of Pacific’s music.

Emily: What’s the next single about? Is it another quarantine-inspired track like “peace of mind” was?

Will: It’s a song written before quarantine about having a quarter-life crisis and bleaching your hair. Ironically and unpredictably, a lot of people did this in quarantine becuase of being stir crazy.

Emily: What have you been up to since our last chat?

Will: We’ve been up to a lot. We just put out a live performance acoustic video for Felt Cute Fest. It’s the first livestream festival we were a part of. Besides that, we’ve been writing so much music. I’m almost eager to post it all on SoundCloud and let the world have it.

Emily: What does the future look like for you?

Will: After the song comes out, we have a video for it that we’re very excited about. (We may or may not have bleached a nine-year-old boy’s hair for it). This song is kind of our ode to the early 2000s punk era that we all grew up listening to. It feels like we get to be the kids we once were for a little bit while we play this one.

“yellow bleach” drops on August 20th, but in the meantime, you can stream “Pacific” below or anywhere you find music.

The Date Where Pacific Begs Each Other To Play The Right Notes