The nearest beach may only be a few blocks from my seat at Gastown’s Nelson the Seagull, but with mid-January hanging heavy over Vancouver, nothing feels so far away as summer. However, as I start to chat with Jody Glenham—local musician and lead singer of newly minted surf rock combo Pleasure Cruise—our conversation turns away from the dreariness of winter.
Instead, in the hours before Pleasure Cruise’s PuSh Festival Club PuSh performance, which will find the band alongside local institutions like Bend Sinister and CBC Radio 3 personality Lisa Christiansen, we end up discussing (maybe perversely, over hot coffee) the hazy warmth of low-fi guitars, the excitement of new horizons for the still-nascent project, and rediscovering the fun of performance
Pleasure Cruise, which Glenham describes as “the Ramones meets the Ronettes,” came together, rather by chance, in the summer of 2011. “Dustin [Bromley] and Quinn [Omori] were looking for a female singer. At the time, I had an injured hand, so I wasn’t playing. And the way they were looking for a singer was on Twitter. They were actually tweeting back and forth, and I happen to follow both of them.” Glenham stops and jokes: “So I was on the inside track. And I half jokingly tweeted back at them ‘I sing, just saying.’”
Before the night was out, Glenham had a series of “bedroom demos” in her inbox; a collection of sweet, summer pop songs featuring Quinn Omori—Shindig veteran, music journalist, and proprietor of From Blown Speakers—on vocals. From those hypermediated beginnings, the trio (now a foursome with the addition of bassist Kyle Bourcier) began taking steps in the opposite direction, towards a low-fi, sun-drenched aesthetic, reminiscent of contemporary acts like Best Coast and Cults, and for Glenham, the 50s’ pop and girl group revival of the 1990s.
“I think our first band practice was actually on the beach,” Glenham recalls. “I just started joining them during their Third Beach afternoons and talking with them, and that started clicking. So we decided to get into a jam space with no idea what to expect.” This rough-shod happenstance, the kind that only summer afternoons can offer, is immediately apparent on the band’s first EP, Business, or…, which jangles and echoes through tracks like “Summer Fling” and throwback piece “I Really Wanna Know.”
In a city where sun is scarce, Pleasure Cruise has quickly become a bright spot, catching the eager attention of fans and journalists alike. Before they had even played their first show, WestEnder had christened the combo “Vancouver’s newest supergroup” and singled them out as one of five acts to watch for in 2011, alongside 2011 Polaris Prize longlist nominees Yukon Blonde and 2012 Polaris shortlisters, The Pack A.D.
Asked why she thinks Pleasure Cruise’s particular brand of “summer beach music” seems to have connected so quickly with listeners, Glenham offers a fairly simple and extremely convincing answer: “It’s fun! Doing your own solo stuff, you can get caught up in being so serious all the time, and this is just so fun! I think people recognize that and respond to it in a genuine way.”
I have to agree. There’s something about Pleasure Cruise that recalls the do-it-yourself, do-as-you-will punk heritage on which Vancouver sits; that compulsion to make music that just works, and to do it joyfully, alongside friends. And that’s exactly what Pleasure Cruise does—a journalist, a singer-songwriter, and a former punk musician making slap-happy surf rock that audiences love.
The coming months, Glenham says, include a possible vinyl release, some potential festival dates, and sinking “fishing lines” into record label inboxes. But for the most part, the future of Pleasure Cruise seems to be as indulgently casual as its past. In Glenham’s words: “what are you planning? I’m planning on doing whatever the universe hands me.”
You can download Pleasure Cruise’s debut EP Business or… for free on Bandcamp. The band will be playing February 3rd at Lucky Bar in Victoria and February 14th at The Biltmore.