Say Hello To… carwash
Wendy Rosales
Let us formally introduce you to Garrett Seamans, the voice behind the soft, sentimental music of carwash. The 20-year-old from San Diego, began his career with a pop-driven sound known as Postcard Boy. Heavily influenced by 90s rock and indie, he kicked off his second musical project titled carwash. The artist flourished from his career as a photographer to a path of self-discovery that ultimately led him to create music.
We met up with carwash on a late summer afternoon and talked all about his upcoming EP, soap water. He shared more about his creative background and the importance of friendship circling his new project.
Bad Wreck: Growing up was there a significant event or person that led you to want to be creative?
Garrett: I guess my sister. I owe a lot of my stuff to her just because I always wanted to be like her growing up. She’s a few years older than me... But I guess she kinda introduced me to stuff. She started piano lessons when she was in first grade so I was like four or something. Then she just kept doing that and so I ended up wanting to start doing music. We would do science experiments and she would film them. We had a blogspot where we would upload our experiments and make talent shows with our friends. We had little skits that we would do but she would direct everything, not me. So I just learned a bunch of stuff from her… I guess I just always looked up to her as a person, so anything that she did I did. And slowly as I got older I branched off to do my own thing but from the start, I owe a lot of just getting into new things because of her…. A lot of her beating me at things and then me so badly just wanting to beat her at something.
BW: It was like you always wanted to “one-up” each other at something.
G: Yeah definitely competitive but in a good way.
BW: You have two different musical personas. Tell us how “carwash” is different from your other musical projects?
G: Yeah so, carwash I just started in 2019. I just had the limbo EP, which was a project I put out on Postcard Boy. It was done in the Summer of 2019, but then it kept getting delayed on when it was coming out and I knew it wasn’t gonna come out until the next Summer of 2020. And then I had “striptease” and “supermarket” already done and I listened to so much alternative music, like emo-inspired music sometimes, and I felt like Postcard Boy didn’t represent that side of stuff. So I had more rock stuff and I was like “I don’t really wanna wait until after the limbo EP comes out”. So, I just threw it on another side project which became carwash. I didn’t even talk to my managers about it or anything. I didn’t want them to be involved so I was just like “I’ll throw all this random shit here whenever I want and it’ll just be my fun thing and then I’ll do my more serious stuff with Postcard Boy. But then it just slowly kept building and people liked it. Now I’m just enjoying doing both and there's not really like a main project or side project. It’s more like I see Postcard Boy as being more experimental pop music now and carwash will always be somewhat more rock-oriented -- even though I wouldn't really say it's “straightforward” rock music. There’s a lot of acoustic-sounding songs on the EP.
BW: This is your first EP as carwash. What do you want fans to take away from soap water?
G: I feel like the whole thing is mostly about friendship -- I guess, the progression of friendship just in general. A few of the songs are about very specific experiences I had in the start of certain friendships. I guess soap water explains the importance of friendship and how a friend can be there for you in different ways. Whether it be in sometimes a dark or fucked up way, when you're low or they’re low. But also sometimes romantically or sentimentally depending on the day… just the various types of friendships you have. So for the people listening, I hope they listen with their friends and appreciate their friends a bit more. I wrote the entire thing in quarantine so I think it was subconsciously something I was writing a lot about -- all these friendship songs because I wasn’t seeing anyone. But I didn’t make the project with the intention of having a project. I had all these songs I’d made, maybe 20 to 30 songs. Then I was listening back and the five that ended up making the project just kinda ended up feeling right. So then I realized the theme after instead of going in being like, “this is what I wanna say.” I’ve had projects like limbo where I knew what I wanted to say. And this one I didn’t even know if I was going to continue carwash after “punch22” came out, I thought it was just gonna be done. But yeah, it just felt perfect to have a friendship EP.
BW: What was the most difficult song to make on the EP?
G: Probably “racetrack,” it just took the longest... I just hated how the guitar and my vocal sounded in the whole thing. I finished it in August of last year but then it took me like four months to record the song even though that never really happens for me. Normally I have an issue with writing and finishing the writing process. But that one was fully written on acoustic guitar and it was an acoustic song for the longest time before I added the droning textures. But I knew I didn’t want to have drums in it. So that one like timewise just took a long time.
The last song, “at least I lived there with you” was originally a poem I wrote my freshman year of college. Sometimes I would go with a friend to the beach and we’d just hang out there at night, so it was about that. I had written one of those poems one of those nights and it was like a massive poem. The hardest part was cutting outlines and figuring out the most succinct way to say everything. I didn’t want it to be this massive thing. I just wanted each line to say exactly what it had to. I feel like I cut it down to exactly what I wanted to say and nothing more. There are no filler lines, it’s just, “this is what happened and this is how I feel.” So I think that was one of my favorite tracks because of that. It wasn’t a hard song to write… It was more just like “I didn’t wanna cut this line and this line, but I know I should.”
BW: What were some of your favorite moments creating soap water?
G: It’s hard to say because I wasn’t showing it to anyone because it was just my Mom and Dad in the house and they like most of the songs that I make for the most part. Honestly, making the movie was probably it. That was the best process because it made the whole project feel like it came full circle. We filmed it right after LA lifted some of the mandates so I got to see a bunch of people I haven’t seen in a long time. My best friend from high school and I had written the whole movie together during quarantine. So it’s like after all the preparation you finally get to see your friends. That was probably the best time so far. I remember that “boyfriend girlfriend” has actual live drums on it. I had this guy record live drums and when I got the file sent back to me with the drums on it I was like “oh shit now it's a rock song.” Before it didn’t have the energy that it had, so that was a rewarding feeling. That’s kinda the only thing I remember from making the songs, to be honest.
BW: You have a film coming out with soap water. Tell us more about the motives to have a visual alongside the EP?
G: I’ve been wanting to do a sequential, larger project that would accompany a music thing for a while. I thought I was gonna do it for the limbo ep and then I started to write a film and the project just didn’t work with it. But this one… flowed through the songs with a story arc. It starts hard and then it slows down and “boyfriend girlfriend” is like the climactic song and then there’s the resolution at the end so it was kinda perfect. Also being in lockdown mode, what else are we gonna do? We should just write something because we can. My roommate’s from Hawai’i and he didn’t move back into my apartment so there was an empty room. That's when my friend from home moved into his room for three months and we were like, “let's just do it.” We would wake up -- I had online classes -- and between my classes we would go to the jetties in Marina Del Rey and sit there and bring a notebook and just write it. It was a peaceful time because there was nothing else to do. The sailboats go by so it's very pretty. I just knew that I had to commit to doing it because I knew at some point I wanted to do a project like this. This one was already set up perfectly and it just made a lot of sense and I was doing it with my best friend from home. It just made sense.
BW: It’s so nice when things just fall into place like that.
BW: How do you think you’ve grown during all of this downtime?
G: A lot. It’s interesting now because I’m past carwash mode. This kinda sounds weird because it’s just me, but there are certain headspaces I get in. Like now I'm very much in “Postcard Boy mode'' on a day-to-day basis. stupid rich kid is here right now from New Zealand so he’s been coming to my place and we’ve just been working on what will probably end up becoming the Postcard Boy album... Which is interesting because it’s flipped with the carwash thing where I didn’t know I was working on a project but now I’m on “album mode”. I haven’t been on that before because I’ve never made something that big. I’ve learned how much I flip-flop between headspaces randomly but also how that defines eras for me.
But the biggest way that I’ve grown is becoming more social again. Like really trying to meet people and being less judgmental. But now I’m trying to be more open to meeting people and being conscious of building new friendships. Also, realizing places where I can improve self-care stuff. So I've been trying to eat better and get outside. I’m just healthier now. Before I would just be on my phone all day and now I’m like, “ok I need to go for a walk.” My girlfriend started doing this thing where the length of your walk is the length of an album. So you listen to a new album you’ve never listened to. Then it’s like you’re going outside and you’re also learning about new music. Overall, I feel I’m more in tune with how I can be a healthier person and I think that’s the biggest thing for me. Really basic shit, but it all adds up.
BW: As a creative person, what is your drive? What keeps you going?
G: Sometimes I don't even know if I should keep making music, it sounds like a lot of effort. [laughs] Sometimes I get randomly inspired… Even after a conversation like this, I’ll go home and keep sharing my perspective on the world. Before I was making music I didn’t know it was an outlet I could explore. I figure out things as I’m writing that I wouldn’t have figured out without doing music. I’ll be writing a song and be like, “shit, that's why I feel this way and I should probably go adjust this in my real life rather than just writing about it here.” So it’s almost like a conversation that I have with myself as I’m writing. It’s like, “I need to re-evaluate that” or “I didn’t even know this about myself” kinda thing. I don’t know if there’s a drive, it's just kinda a natural part of thinking… and sharing my thoughts with someone else. I don’t know if I have an exact drive.
BW: What do you think of when you’re going through something? What’s the thing that makes you go “oh my god I just have to keep doing this”?
G: Sometimes I just have zero drive at all. Like when we were writing the movie I was making no music. I just recently started to have the energy or a desire to make music. I probably didn’t sit down and work on something for a 3-4 month period, which is the first time in the last few years where I haven’t sat down and made music. I would just sit down and feel super stale. I was like, “I don’t even know what I wanna say.” But I think I was just tired and putting all my energy into the visual stuff. Honestly, it’s my friends that make me really wanna go do shit… Like in quarantine when my girlfriend was doing these DJ zoom sets, those were kinda inspiring… I think that’s it -- just seeing friends and family doing cool shit. My sister and my mom got into pottery and making mugs and stuff which is so sick.I guess the drive is seeing my friends being stoked and happy doing their thing. I can definitely be in a lot of funks sometimes so it’s nice to see your friends doing good.
BW: Do you have anything else you’d like to say?
G: I guess I would just say: go outside. Go hang out with your friends!
Listen to soap water here!