On Nov. 7, indie alt-rock band, Bad Suns, stopped at Nashville’s Rock Club Exit/In on their second nation-wide tour. Best known for their U.S. AAA top ten single, Cardiac Arrest, the band has made a name for itself by opening for acts like The 1975 and Halsey and performing at the renowned Hangout Festival in Gulf Shores, AL this past summer.
The band consists of frontman Christo Bowman, bass player Gavin Bennett, drummer Miles Morris, and lead guitarist Ray Libby—though they jokingly might confuse you by introducing themselves with alternate names and instruments, as they did during this interview.
The release of the band’s sophomore album, Disappear Here, this past September marked the beginning of a national tour of the same name.
“There’s no pressure...it’s kind of just about collecting things,” Bowman said about the band’s creative process on tour. “You pick up a guitar one day and keep playing something, whatever it is, and just jot down lyrics or melodies, or whatever it is, and that’s great to do on the road. There’s no pressing need to be worrying about, necessarily, because it’s just about the show.”
The band usually generates the raw material for their music during their more laissez faire touring schedule and polish it into their record-setting hits while back home in Los Angeles, Calif. “When we are home it’s just more about getting down to the nitty gritty of it basically,” said Bowman, “Just putting the songs together and using the studio space that we have.”
After the success of their 2014 debut album, Language and Perspective, Bad Suns took on the stressful task of producing a solid sophomore album with relative ease. “I really think it’s part of a progression: taking something that we felt we had established with our first album and then moving it into a new direction, making it apparent that it wasn’t just about this one album, that we were a band and we have a lot in us to get out.”
While compiling Disappear Here, the band made sure to avoid the pitfalls some bands face when producing a sophomore album by striking a balance between flexibility and persistence towards a common goal. “We were confident in ourselves and in our abilities as a group of four and because of that it wasn’t so scary” said Bowman.