Close your eyes. Now imagine taking a step into a nice, cold shower, not ice cold – just a cool, refreshing feeling to give you a jolt of energy that awakens your entire body and spirit. This is an accurate descriptive of what it is like to listen to the Los Angeles band Cold Showers for the first time. While it’s a little bitter at first and may come as a shock, once the beat kicks in, well, god dammit, I promise you, you are going to dance.
The name of the post punk rock band is actually of a much more simpler origin – “One day Brian came out, said he needed a cold shower and a cold beer and we all thought ‘yeah, that’d be a great name.’” laughs the Cold Showers singer and bassist Jon Weinberg.
While the group of friends could not have more different musical tastes, they all decided to start Cold Showers strictly from the love of music and having a place to constantly play house shows and practice. The meshing of all their varied personal music tastes together is what creates Cold Showers refreshingly unique sound. The band themselves describe this sound as dark dance pop. “We write pop songs that are darker than the typical pop song. “ says drummer and back up vocalist Renee Adams “I like the idea of people coming to a show and wanting to move around, it’s a little dance-y.”
With their first east coast tour now almost finished, the band is coming a long way in a short time. They played their first show in 2010 and released their first single “I Don’t Mind” off Highlands shortly after. Cold Showers also released the music video for that single which involved all of their closest friends, a lot of fake blood and a real pigs head, all going along with their gloomy spirit. A perfect music video for this time of the year and worth checking out for its deliciously spooky spirit alone.
Cold Showers has some new music on the horizon and while they did not say they made any major changes to their sound on their newest release, the band did mention they are enjoying the writing process and the new songs that come with it. “When you see us live expect us to play a lot of songs, we haven’t released yet,” offers Weinberg. “It’s more fun for us to play things that are fresh and new.” Adams adds, “We’ve become more thoughtful with the music and have been using different equipment for different sounds. It’s exciting.” You can find out for yourself if they keep their promise by checking out their most recent tracks off Love and Regret, an album that would be great to add to your fall playlist of darkly upbeat tracks.
One thing that stood out for me when chatting with Adams and Weinberg is that Cold Showers clearly is a band who truly love the music they play and what they do. They enjoy everything about it- from the writing process to playing shows live. The members of Cold Showers aren’t in it for the money, the fame or anything superficial which is a difficult thing to find in this era of music. As Weinberg says, “ To make records that we like and are proud of is the most important thing to us.” It’s a simple quote like that that makes them a band you can’t help but to respect.
