When Zac Shober was living in Europe, he really missed Santa Cruz. So he wrote the reverb-drenched, low-key dream-pop song “Summer” as his ode to the sunny California coastlines and carefree afternoons spent surfing.
When he returned to Santa Cruz, the song found a home with his new trio, Coastal Greetings. Their first EP, also called Summer, features the image of three guys on the shoreline walking back with their surfboards on its cover. It’s not a surf record, though. The rest of the songs have similar influences, but go into darker, sadder territory, with prominent psych-pop influences.
“I feel like surf culture is an influence in our lives,” Shober says. “We don’t want to sound like a normal surf-rock band. It’s kind of boring for us. We just want to be more technical music.”
Shober says they started working with reverb to help fill in the spaces of their low-key music. Pretty soon it came to define their sound.
“It makes it sound really full, especially when we’re performing live as a three-person band,” Shober says.
INFO: 9 p.m. Saturday, Jan 19. Bocci’s Cellar, 140 Encinal St., Santa Cruz. Free. 427-1795.
