Sextile Pushes Their Style With a Vibrant and Inclusive Energy
Photo Credit: Shannon Johnston (@me_onlylouder)
Seeing a Sextile show is a colourful experience. Bouncing around from post-punk guitar riffs to rave anthems, they have pushed the boundary of their sound, especially with their latest album Push. Coined as the party-provoking force in the LA underground, the album marked their first release in 5+ years and saw the band embrace a new energy that has created a space for inclusivity, vibrancy, and overall: a good time. Consisting of founding members guitarist/vocalist Brady Keehn and multi-instrumentalist Melissa Scaduto, in addition to Cameron Michel on guitar/keyboard; the band have found their place in the world of electronic synth-pop, while still forging a unique path of their own.
After catching a packed dance-fuelled set at the Hotel Vegas stage in Austin, Texas, we took a journey with Sextile in their green room to talk about how the trio have evolved over the years, where the concepts for Push began, and how a Social Distortion documentary influenced their love of Calgary, AB.
REVERIE: Hi Sextile! We’re so excited to talk about your latest album Push. It was one of our favourites o last year. How has the reception to the album been so far?
Brady: I think what we’ve noticed from touring is we have a younger and more colourful crowd coming out now. And it’s really awesome to see. And then Melissa can speak to this - there’s a lot more femmes that we see who go to the front to see Melissa.
Melissa: Honestly, just people that I’ve wanted to see for a really long time at our shows. We want the girls, gays, theys, and thems. I’m so here for it. I feel like I’ve waited a really long time for them to come. Our shows used to be…
Brady: …like 50 yr old goth dudes.
Melissa: And there’s nothing wrong with that! But I wanted something more like…myself represented out there in the community. And I love that these people are relating to what we do. Honestly it certifies that if they like it because the viewers are cool, then it must be cool. And I’ve just been meeting a lot of younger women that tell me the music we make is inspiring and I’m just like man I love that we’re giving that because I’ve received that from so many artists throughout my life. Our fans are cooler than ever and it’s awesome.
REVERIE: I could definitely see that in the show today at Hotel Vegas. You brought some folks up on the stage. Is that something you do at every show or were you just feeling it in the moment?
Melissa: For that song particularly, I’ve been really into pulling up the people at the front to dance with me on stage. Every show that we play there’s usually a group of femmes in the front singing all the lyrics and getting so excited when I talk to them. So yeah, I’ve been pulling them up every time that I can.
REVERIE: Also seeing the girls at the FRONT! It’s hard for us at shows.
Melissa: That’s what I’m saying! To see that - I’ve been waiting for it.
REVERIE: Totally. I think your shows exude an inclusive energy and the crowd made me feel that I belong and it’s a safe place to party.
Melissa: Exactly! We want it to be fun and not violent. And I feel like that energy is something different that we are bringing now to the shows.
REVERIE: You’ve also been bringing a new sound to the band - more electronic/dance elements vs. before. You were very post/punk. What moved you further into the electronic realm?
Melissa: Definitely just what we were vibeing with. I think things got a little more underworld due to listening to more of that kind of music. We still love post/punk - I’ll never get over it. But the post/punk community itself started leaning more into darkwave and we just see ourselves as more colourful. I love colours. I want to expand and post/punk and goth stuff is great, but we wanted to say something new with the art. So we’ve kind of naturally progressed as things have gone on.
Brady: yeah for me, it’s more so sound exploration. 60 yrs ago the subwoofer was invented - but right now we get to make music that no one in the entire world in history gets to experience and that’s happening right now. So why not explore this technology? These deeper sub frequencies that we get to play with, but wasn’t ever possible before, and I really want to explore that while I can. I don’t want to miss out. I don’t know how long I have in this moment, so I want to try new things and experiment.
REVERIE: You’re also DJ’s too! You’ve played some sets here at Hotel Vegas for a few days in a row now for their Springbreak Boogie. What energy do you bring to those sets compared to your live performances?
Melissa: Well we bring the same kind of energy. We want people to dance. Someone just said to me that it was their first time seeing us play not on molly - they weren’t fucked up - where they could actually talk to us. But they said “it was crazy! Because I feel so high from dancing!”. And I honestly think the natural high from dancing is more rewarding than any drug I’ve ever taken. Musically we all spiritually connect to music on some next level shit, as humans.
Brady: yeah it’s spiritual in its nature.
Melissa: That’s always what we want. We want people to dance and feel alive. It’s funny - the movement of your body, my therapist even says - if you feel anxious it means you need to move your body. So even just dancing, it’s a release.
REVERIE: Are there any specific songs you feel are a must when it comes to a Sextile DJ set?
Melissa: Yeah we always play this one band called Locked Club. They are from Russia. We really love the way that they mix their music. It’s electro punk I would say. But they have a way of being really bassy and overblown and distorted while still having room. And I notice that whenever we play Locked Club everyone always moves to it even if they may not know what or who it is. It’s like a secret banger that you can always bring on the dance floor. That’s Locked Club. I don’t think we’ve done a single DJ set without them.
Brady: yeah their label is also really cool too. We’re fans.
Melissa: Locked Club have their own label called Private Persons and in general it’s awesome.
REVERIE: Going back to the album, you named it Push. What do you find pushes you forward as a band?
Melissa: We were trying to come up with a title for the record and we couldn’t think of anything. It’s kind of a sad story but a friend of ours who was around us early on in the band - our friend Sami - he wasn’t doing too well health-wise - and I was actually watching The Cure play and they played their song called “Push”. And I had gotten a text message right before - he was on life support - saying that they were going to pull the plug. I don’t know it just hit me all at once. With The Cure song and everything with Sami and his support of the band early on and how we were in this place of trying to move forward. Push just felt right as far as what we should do. And I had also envisioned the record cover having red and blue colours because I was thinking about The Cure and the record that it came from. It’s not like these guys are huge Cure fans or anything but I texted them with this idea and they really liked it.
REVERIE: The album art is beautiful. It really pops with the colour.
Melissa: I came up with that in two days before the record was due. I did all of our graphics and merch designs and I was like trying to figure out what this record should look like. I was doing all of these digital graphics, but nothing was working for me. And so i was like, ‘hey I think we should just do my tongue sticking out with a fake piece of acid that’s like a sextile symbol. As if you’re dosing the band’. And then like candy, I would just add colour to my tongue. So my friend Sarah Bardini, she’s an incredible photographer, I hit her up. I went to her house and made it happen right away. She took that picture of me with just a mattress as a backdrop. But she’s just incredible and kept throwing water on me. That’s why I look so wet in the photo.
REVERIE: What I love about it too is the album was released on Sacred Bones and they have a pretty consistent aesthetic on their releases. It’s very iconic and familiar. But when I see your art, I forget that it’s associated to the label, it stands as your own.
Melissa: Yeah one of the things, I specifically asked for before I signed with them, is if we had to use the branding. But I just really wanted this to be the photo, that’s it. I didn’t even know where to put Sextile in the photo. So we tried to make it look like a tattoo on my neck, so we had to alter it a lot. We didn’t really want text, I just loved the photo. It’s unedited too. It just came out that way with the film that she uses in her camera. You should definitely check out Sarah’s work, it’s so colourful. We’ve done a lot of shoots with her.
REVERIE: What’s next? Maybe a Calgary date one day?
Melissa:We’ve been offered some stuff in Calgary, but the routing never makes sense for us to do. But we’d love to play Calgary, AB! I only know about that place from this great documentary I watched called Another State of Mind. It’s about Social Distortion’s first tour in 1981 with Youth Brigade. The documentary follows this really young band on tour and Calgary is featured in such an awesome way in it. They stopped at this punk house and all of these kids are living communally and making food together. They have a skate ramp in the back. And I realized quickly thanks to this documentary - damn Calgary has a killer punk scene. And I can’t imagine that it’s died in any way because stuff like that continues throughout generations.
REVERIE: Yes I love our punk community!! How do you find the community back home in LA?
Melissa: We have an awesome community back home in LA. We had a record release show at the Fonda, which is a really big venue, and it was incredible to see all the people that started watching us at DIY venues we played early on like Lacklust Ultra. Brady shouted them out at the show because they are a venue that are open to anyone playing and truly community based. And they supported us very early on, we even practiced above it for a very long time. The way that the community responded in LA, our biggest supporters are definitely there, and they wile the fuck out. I think the people there feel proud that we are from there too. LA really wants to dance and get loose.
Brady: It’s really touching.
Melissa: Yeah there’s no cool guy shit! You think there would be in a city like that. But there’s good people everywhere. And the people surrounded by Sextile are good.