Since 2010, Coate have been an exciting fixture of the Christchurch music scene. This weekend they head up to play two Auckland shows with like-minded hardcore upstarts Winter. We caught up with Coate's bassist, Thomas, to talk about the band, the Christchurch scene and the upcoming Auckland shows.
Can you give us a brief history of Coate? How did you start and what have been some of the highlights?
Coate formed in mid 2010 out of my brother Will, me, Taylor and Dan. We had been in bands before but wanted to pretty much be American Football/Penpal. We got some recordings done that summer on a reel to reel, and have just Ben playing shows in Christchurch when we can, and writing more stuff. Highlights would be opening for La Dispute in Wellington in 2011, and Loma Prieta in 2012, and basically just making new friends through playing music! It's made all of NZ seem a bit smaller, but in a good way.
How would you describe your sound? What are some of your main influences?
We call ourselves an Emo band in the sort of Midwest 90s revival type thing. Lots of inluences from twinkly guitars and sad vocals. More recently we've got a bit louder/faster/more pop punk. We all really like Joie De Vivre, The Wonder Years, TWIABP, Empire! Empire! (I Was A Lonely Estate). That kind of thing.
You're heading up to Auckland with Winter this weekend to play at Lucha Lounge and Whammy Bar. What are you looking forward to?
Auckland is going to be so much fun! We get in stupidly early on Friday and we are really excited to get to hang out with our friends in the other bands. Future Theft, Carb on Carb, Parents and God Bows To Math are all awesome people who we've played with before - and looking forward to meeting the other bands too! Personally I'm pretty excited for Hospital Sports on Friday night, it was a pleasant surprise to hear an NZ band with a familiar sort of style to us! Also, Wagamama.
Tell us a bit about Winter?
Winter are some of our best friends and are probably my favourite Christchurch band! They started playing shows last year with our friend Simon doing vocals. He moved to Melbourne and Angela has taken over, it's really great to get to play with them so often. I think they are super excited about playing with Parents, cause usually they are playing with us and other quieter bands so getting to play with another hardcore/skramz influenced band will be wicked.
You guys have been involved in the Christchurch scene for a while now - what do you think of the scene at the moment?
Christchurch is so hard to pin down sometimes. I really like the bands we've settled into playing with lately and it's created a really positive like minded micro scene I think. With us, The River Jones, Winter, Teke and Craig, Steven Bell, it's great fun! Venues are pretty booked up quite often since there are a few less now but it's sorta made a lot of people more determined to get things happening. Will has just started singing in a pop punk band called Earn Your Stripes which has opened us up to another group of bands in Christchurch and that experience has been really great. In small towns there's not often a super cohesive scene of similar sounding bands so it forces a bit more variability and we've found that we end up playing with people who have a similar attitude about music, more so than all playing the same style.
What are your plans for the rest of the year?
Will and Dan are studying so we will be working around that a bit but we are going to Dunedin in August, with Winter again, to play a show and also record songs or a four way split Coate/Winter/Bastard/Machina Rex - the last two are Dunedin bands we are friends with. We've also been saying we will get back to Wellington this year as well.
------------------Coate play:
Friday 5 July at The Lucha Lounge with Winter, Parents, Carb on Carb, and Hospital Sports
Saturday 6 July at Whammy Bar with Winter, Parents, God Bows To Math, Sex Pest and morre
