What the fuck does WEBB mean?
WEBB: Well, WEBB came out of the Covid era and was created out of bedroom demos after being isolated and getting into different music. I was in a band, Goodbye Honolulu, for years, almost ten years before this all started. I was going to name it some bizarre shit; I was actually going to call it Walker. I remember trying to find simple names, and my friend from LA, Brem, was hanging out, and he made me a playlist. We were talking about music and hitting it off, and he wrote “WEBB” for a playlist. I saw and went “of course.”
From bedroom demos to where you are now, what have you been releasing? I know you had a bunch of releases before the EP, Take Away The Pain, came out.
Everything before the EP were one-off singles; I did everything on GarageBand that I either worked on with roommates or friends. Everything was visually accompanied by music videos. I was trying to stray as far away from a normal release strategy as possible. WEBB always just started as a multimedia project. I wanted to do more than just drop songs or work towards an EP or an album. So, we did that for a couple of years.
I mean, yes, I slowly started gaining traction in Toronto, playing with bands like 9Million and eventually working with Prince Josh, who produced and wrote the EP with us. When we started working together with Young Clancy, I was showing them my GarageBand demo work, tweaking some stuff, and it was very natural. We worked on the EP for almost a year, and it was half bridging the live sound and weird pop. I always wanted to do pop, just weird shit, music you could play at parties. This EP had to be able to exist with DJs.
When listening to the EP, it had this staticky or crunchy-ness to it. Almost similar to Sleigh Bells’ Treats, where they have this low-res sound.
Yeah, exactly. That was purposeful, 100 percent. A lot of that was also because we were pulling from demos I had made with shitty gear and vocals that I was doing on GarageBand Auto-Tune. I realized I was doing everything wrong. I had started discovering I could change keys in GarageBand a good year into it. Looking back, we were like “oh, this is great,” but it was a bit like refining lo-fi sketchy sounds and making it great. Making it accessible, building on the idea of weird lo-fi pop to make it big and low-res, but also high-res.
Yeah, I mean, you can make your high-res intentionally low, which makes it so good.
The Sleigh Bells were huge for me, and always were a reference for WEBB. Their guitar work, especially. For WEBB, I wanted it to be guitar-heavy because that’s where my background is. Even the early work from Wavves, the first two albums, was so crunchy. I love that fuzzy sound, which was always a reference.
So, in terms of the EP—actually, I really want you to tell me the story about your fourth track on the EP, “Gas” and how that was made, because I’ve heard it involved beer in your throat.
Okay, so I had this demo from forever ago, maybe five years ago, that I made in my bedroom, and it was kind of funny. I was always referencing Butthole Surfers, this talking weird poetry. They were a freak rock band, experimental, kind of like a performance art band, but they’re crazy. Their lore goes deep. My parents had shown them for the first time. But yeah, the grovelly vocal on “Gas,” what I was trying to get wasn’t happening. Then, while Josh and Nate were recording it while I was chugging beer, I’d keep the beer in my throat to get sound.
Did you not choke?
No, I would keep it and hold it. We’ll get personal here, but it was some mucus that would really help out.
How did you set the mannequin on fire in the music video?
It was shot at an abandoned gas station, and I pretty much am just killing myself. I just light myself on fire, covering myself in gasoline. I didn’t actually do it. We set a mannequin on fire. We got this mannequin with a blonde wig, this might have been one of the sketchiest things we’ve ever done. I thought we were going to get arrested for arson. Actually, it was all VFX.