One half of Slow Pulp slept through their alarms the morning the photos accompanying this story were taken. After guitarist Henry Stoehr and drummer Teddy Matthews snoozed through a few calls from the lead singer, Emily Massey, she went over to their house and woke them up. “They were like, ‘We have to shower,’ and I was like, ‘No we’re supposed to be there five minutes ago!... I was so mad. It was also really funny,” Massey laughed.
the forefront of their pop-y, psychedelic garage-rock songs songs. With the addition of Massey, they released EP 2 in March this year, and received a surprising amount of attention. “A friend of a friend” passed it along to someone at Stereogum, who decided to premiere their single “Die Alone.” With absolutely no contact or effort on the band’s end, some YouTube blogs picked the EP up.
You’d never really know from looking at the photos. The four of them look relaxed, goofy, upbeat, effortless but — as if by happy accident — fairly put-together. Those descriptors also easily apply to the band’s sound, but they extend beyond that. It’s just the band’s MO.
“Someone just listened to it, liked it, put it on the Internet, had a lot of followers and it just was luck. I don’t know how to do things on the Internet. I don’t think any of us do. Most of don’t even have Facebook. It was kind of a lucky little thing.” she said. “We’ve been getting Facebook messages from people in Mexico and Chile who are like ‘We love your music!’ It’s so crazy.”
Matthews, Stoeher, and bassist Alex Leeds — who now Slow Pulps remotely from Minneapolis — recorded the band’s first EP, EP 1, before the addition of Massey. She originally joined because the band needed another rhythm guitar, which is hard to imagine when you hear her dreamy, coasting voice at
Reflecting on gaining attention in a smaller scene, Massey said, in general, there’s a certain amount of traction in smaller-yet-vibrant scenes. Places like Madison may not have been historically massive hubs for music, but that doesn’t make them bad places to be a musician.
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