Q&A: After Nine Years in the Making, Acapulco Lips Present ‘Now’
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
☆ BY GIGI KANG ☆
MEET ACAPULCO LIPS—They’re a Seattle-based, ‘60s-inspired, psychedelic indie-rock band that just released their latest album Now via Killroom Records.
Acapulco Lips are vocalist Maria-Elena Herrell, guitarist Christopher Garland, and drummer Jordan T Adams. Now showcases the group’s signature lighthearted introspection which is a blend of the ‘60s girl group sound, surf rock, psychedelic grooviness, and something unnameable that is uniquely theirs.
Perhaps the charm that sets them apart is the friendship that drives the band. They join me for a call, and it’s just easy between them. Now is evidence of their success as creative collaborators, working together patiently through nine years of completing the project. But the appreciative energy between the members is proof of the authenticity behind their work together.
At its core, Now is about time. Whether it’s a personal past and present, or a reflection on cultural decades that have come and gone, Now always comes back to time.
“In third grade, my teacher had us all sit and look at the clock in the front of the classroom above the chalkboard starting with the seconds arm on 12 and it rounding back, in a circle, to the 12,” Herrell recalls. “She then told us that was a minute and that we could never get that minute back. And that is time. I have thought about that minute a lot in the many years since that day.”
If you’re looking for a band that gets real while having a good time, make sure to check out Acapulco Lips.
Read Luna’s full conversation with the band below.
LUNA: I love the grooviness of the cover art for Now and its illustration of the band members. Who did you work with on that?
GARLAND: We worked with my fiancé, Gwen, who is a graphic designer. She works for Pokémon and does a lot of the packaging over there. She has done some of our posters in the past, and she’s just a really incredible artist. We were all in agreement that she should do the album art for this one. We felt like she could really capture what we wanted.
The portraits of us were Maria’s idea. It [was inspired by] older albums from the ‘60s. A lot of the Motown and soul covers usually had some sort of illustration of the band members. We wanted to incorporate that somehow. Gwen came up with the idea of putting our logo, then putting the portraits in there, so it does a trick on the eyes a bit. You have to look if you see the portrait or if you see the logo. It’s really groovy.
LUNA: Have you been able to tease any of the new music at live shows?
ADAMS: The album took us about nine years to write, so we have been able to tease most of the songs in one version or another! We’ve saved playing the whole thing, start to finish, for our release show on July 18. We’re excited to play them all together as a cohesive piece of art as it was meant to be presented.
LUNA: The central theme of the album is time. Music kind of cheats time. You get to preserve experiences that you went through during a certain point in your life, then a listener finds the project during a certain point in their life. Maria, you’ve said that this album “is for the listener.” Did you have that relationship between artist and listener in mind while creating the project?
HERRELL: Yeah. [As] the songs [came] together, it occurred to me that we could bookend “Welcome To The Other Side” and “See You On The Other Side.” That’s when it started to feel like a record that knows it’s a record. It’s called Now, but [it’s] open to whenever “now” is for when you’re listening to it. I like the idea of it being a record that knows that it’s a record that will be a record for a while, you know?
As Christopher mentioned, we’re super into the ‘60s. You listen to those songs and a lot of the stuff in there is true now. And you have an appreciation for the fact that it was documented. I think that was a very conscious thought putting this [record] together. It’s really cool—the potential for it to be listened to later, and being aware of that. Maybe in 60 years, somebody will listen to the record. I hope some of the stuff in the record isn’t true at that point (laughs), but it’s still a document.
LUNA: How do you balance referencing tradition while being innovative as a group now?
HERRELL: Lyric wise, it’s just so in my brain from listening to [‘60s] music for so long. Sometimes I’ll listen to something and I’m like, “I totally referenced this. I took the same idea. Dang.” It’s just embedded.
ADAMS: We write collaboratively and we all have a love for the ‘60s, for the beats, and the guitar riffs. What we’ve done with this album that makes me really happy is staying true to those loves. But then we’ve also put the Acapulco Lips [sound] of being loud and exciting and fun! We use present rock and roll structure. We definitely don’t turn down—you’re not going to fall asleep to any of our songs. That’s where the music really stays true to what we are as a core, which is a rip and surf band.
GARLAND: We all have our own characteristics with the way we play our music. I think it emulates that when we play, so it sounds new and fresh but you get a bit of nostalgia. I’m very much into the loud, fuzzy, psychedelic stuff. Maria likes a lot of the girl group and the harmonies. Jordan is just bubbly and fun and just rips on the drums. Add all of that together, it makes one whole package. I think that’s what makes us unique.
HERRELL: We’ve all been in other bands. I would say for myself, what sticks out [about this band] is that every song [feels like] you’re invested. We feel attached to every song because we’ve all worked a lot to put it together, even if it wasn’t just our own part. It’s trying to figure out how they’re all going to fit together, and maybe laying back to make something else more present. I’m thinking about the song itself, rather than, “It needs to be the Maria show right here.”
LUNA: Because the album is so much about time, do you feel like you captured anything in your life that now lives forever in the record?
HERRELL: When we started writing “Take My Hand,” the last part of it, I had recently had my daughter. I was in a place of figuring out how to be a mom and all those feelings that come with it. Jordan had just become a dad as well. I think there’s a lot of that part of life there.
“Everyday” definitely came from frustrating conversations about, like, “Oh, this happened again? What’s different this time?” I’m a person that’s very much like, “How do I make that not suck next time?” I can push on the door that needs to be pulled forever, and it’s not going to change. I’m going to need to figure out that I need to pull on the door. That was the mind state of that song.
LUNA: “Everyday” is interesting because you can listen to it and think about your individual experience, your day to day, unchanging routine, but you can also consider it on a wider scale, culturally and politically. It can be interpreted in many different ways.
HERRELL: I agree with you. We actually had several obstacles in getting this record out. We recorded “Everyday” and a few other songs before the pandemic. During the pandemic, they got lost on a hard drive, so we had to re-record. When we went to re-record “Everyday,” I was like, “This is my chance to maybe assess these lyrics.” One of my thoughts was if it is vague enough, but also it’s bigger than just being frustrated with really little things.
LUNA: “Slowly Disappearing” is kind of about physical spaces that change, and there’s a sadness with that nostalgia. Contrastingly, the music video is really fun! How did you find that balance between the reflection of the lyrics and the playfulness of the video?
HERRELL: When we were recording that one, there was something that Jordan was doing on drums. I was like, “This reminds me of The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus.” There’s this part where Brian Jones is shaking these maracas and just seems so dazed. I was like, “We’ve got to do a music video and have it be like everyone is Brian Jones.”
That kind of wraps up our band—sometimes things get heavy, then it’s like, “How do you offset the heavy?” By making something that’s kind of silly, right? We’re not taking anything mega-serious. It doesn’t have to be all gloom and doom. So the result is something really silly.
ADAMS: Most of our songs are about the tragedy of human existence, loss, death, or disappointment. Like Maria was saying about “Everyday,” it’s about literal insanity. But they’re all really fun. I think we’re all generally pretty happy people. We have the same problems as probably everybody else in the world. For me, it was really powerful to read the lyrics of these songs and I found so much meaning in them. And not just meaning that I prescribed to Maria, like, “Maria must have been thinking about this.” But so much personal deep meaning.
I went through a divorce. I had a strong mental health diagnosis. I got sober. A lot can happen over nine years. [I think of these songs] like, “That was written for this major hurdle in my life.” That will always tie to that. But didn’t know she was writing a song about my struggles with mental health, you know?
To have the ability to write music that you can go see, have a sweaty time, have fun, but also get expression of your pain, or expression of the futility of existence, or expression of frustration in the world, has just been such a cathartic release since joining this band. Every Saturday, we go to practice. It’s something to look forward to. Even though we’re singing about death and failure, it has been a really profound force in my life. The lyrics, the music, and the subject matter, it’s all a mish-mash of human existence. This band is one of my first bands where it has truly been a band of friends.
LUNA: What excites you most about releasing this project after nine years of creation?
GARLAND: I think just getting it out. It has been a lot of work. We’ve seen a lot of ups and downs, but we’ve stuck together and put something out that we are really proud of. I feel like with this record, I put my all into it. There’ll be a sense of relief for me, but also joy and happiness.
ADAMS: We have two new band members, relatively new. They came on over a year ago to help us realize the album in a live format. We have a lot of overdub tracks and things, so adding them has made the songs themselves a lot better. We’ve been able to add three-part harmonies and double vocals. They’re both multi-instrumentalists. They can play percussion, aux percussion, keys, and everything. I’m really excited because we are going to start writing with them once we release the album. We’ll have a couple of months before tour, so hopefully we can get a song or two banged out. I think writing with three strong female vocalists is going to get us to really focus on the beauty of the singing.
HERRELL: I’m excited for it to finally be out. A lot has gone on in the last nine years. One of the thoughts that I share with Jordan and Christopher is this thought of circles and cycles. It feels like something is being completed by getting the record out. I’m also really excited about what’s next. A new record, new songs, this new situation of five of us. Just appreciating the opportunity to hang out with each other, continue to write and play.
