Back with their first album in almost five years, Inner Wave is ready for a triumphant return, but with more than just a new record in tow. Their newest artistic endeavor is more than a track list; SEE YOU WHEN I GET BACK will also be accompanied by an original film co-written and directed by the band’s frontman, Pablo Sotelo.
From “the Swamp” to the Sun City, or in other words, from their “hot as hell” recording studio to El Paso and everywhere else they’re hitting on this tour, Inner Wave is bringing their highly-anticipated album to audiences starting April 23rd with support from Venezuelan-rockers, Los Mesoneros.
Inner Wave’s new album was released via Nettwerk Music on February 27th. The accompanying and eponymously titled film premiered on March 6th at Gardenia, CA. Another screening is set for April 11th in Long Beach, CA, at the Art Theatre. It was directed and written by the band’s frontman, Pablo Sotelo, and their friend, Abraham Recio.
This interview was done via Zoom the week before the album’s release and has been edited for length and clarity.
Inner Wave is Pablo Torres, Eli Trujillo, Jean Pierre Narvaez, Luis Portillo, and Jose Cruz. Follow them on Instagram for more information on their tour dates and everything else Inner Wave.
Antonio Villaseñor-Baca: Everything is right around the corner. How are we feeling? What are y’all up to?
Elijah Trujillo: Well, the feeling is extremely excited. You know, it’s been just about four years since our last album came out, so it’s been a long time coming. We’ve been working on this album for about three years, but it really started to get to the nitty-gritty about maybe a year and a half ago, let’s say two years. It’s a little bit that it’s finally here and something we’ve been thinking about for so long. The funny thing is, the album has been done for a while, but we’ve been finishing a movie that we’ve created, so along with this album, we made a whole movie. But that’s been the companion piece to the album that is kind of in a world that we dove into and figured out as we went. But yeah, it’s mostly just exciting, the tour dates have already been announced and getting ready for that, and seeing what people have to review of the album, what people have to say about it, and the new sound and everything, right?
Jean Pierre Narvaez: Yeah, like Eli was saying, these past couple of days and weeks have been crunch time for the movie. I feel like I get mixed up with the amount of years. But it’s been a long process, and finally seeing it come to life is very exciting, and I’m stoked for all the fans to get to see a different side of us. I think the music can be quite moody—there’s maybe an upbeat aspect to it. But I think overall we’ve always been a very moody, colorful band and sound. The movie is also supposed to be moody, but it does have a lot of our humor in it, and for the most part, we don’t always showcase that. It’s nice to give some personality behind the sound. I think that’s the most exciting part for me, the culmination of all the hard work everyone’s been doing. I haven’t really been thinking about the tour too much, but starting to get the gears going on, rehearsing and stuff, that whole aspect is a whole preparation of its own. I think after the movie comes out, then we’ll finally be in that headspace to be like, all right, cool, let’s uh let’s prepare everything, and let’s really, really lock in to get ready, and then once we’re in the van, I’ll be excited.
What was the process for this album? I mean, Inner Wave has been going on for a little over 10 years. Was anything different in the way that the album was made? It’s made very specifically in terms of its sound and recording, but the actual concept of putting pen to paper was that at all different? Or was it just jumping back into form? Was it just a slower process?
Jean: I think that maybe the songwriting process, or the creative songwriting process, where we’re actually making the sound and instrumentals, and that kind of thing, and all like in the room together, kind of felt pretty similar to the past, where we are all just in a room. Maybe someone brings an idea. Maybe the idea is created right then and there. So that has always kind of been like our formula, and I think this time around, maybe was a little more mature in the sense of we’ve preserved all the tools that we know how to use. Now that we’re more mature songwriters, we’re able to…I don’t get ideas out quicker and get ideas out in the, I guess, flow state kind of way. So I think for the actual songwriting process, that was really clutch for us because every session was a new song, every writing session, there’d be like maybe two songs that come out of it, and etc.
I think for maybe the first half of that writing process, I think the writing process took about two years. But that first half, it was all just like writing into demos, writing into demos, writing into demos. Then, for the second half, it was more like re-recording the demos and going with a completely revamped structure of the production process. It’s like where Cruz, like how Eli was saying, is a very gear-head kind of guy, and he’s very good at mixing. He knows his shit basically when it comes to all the recording process, tape machines, and all that kind of stuff. He brought a bunch of his gear over from his own studio into [our] studio that we call The Swamp, and we basically created this whole new studio like, two studios in one, you know? And with that, a new sound was created because of it. We all brought pedals from home, and we bought new keyboards, and Cruz had keyboards he hadn’t shown us before. There were new guitars Cruz had that were just sitting around; that created a lot of the sound that this new album has. The phrase or the quote that we’ve been repeating whenever we talk about the process of the album is, ‘leave no stone unturned’. I feel like I’m fucking that up.
There were new guitars Cruz had that were just sitting around; that created a lot of the sound that this new album has. The phrase or the quote that we’ve been repeating whenever we talk about the process of the album is, ‘leave no stone unturned’.
Eli: That’s right.
Jean: Okay, cool. But yeah, so we tried a bunch of different methods of recording, whether it’s like different amps and different mics for the amps, or like I think there were like 12 condenser mics on the drums, and a headphone mic on the drums as well. That part had never been done before, where I feel like before we used to be like, ‘well, let’s get it onto paper, let’s just record it as quickly as possible, because we want to get the first take, or we want to get the magic out of the takes. But this time, instead of being scared of losing the magic, we were a little braver, and we’re more willing to look for the magic rather than feel like it’s only there for one take. Instead, you can have that one take and think it’s magic, then there are also these other takes that can happen that could be even more magical. I think for the production recording process that was the bigger difference, or we’re a little more mature, a little more seasoned, and we’re now unafraid to explore. The biggest change is like when you’re learning how to skateboard, and you learn how to kick flip on the ground, but then you want to learn how to kick flip off of stairs…I feel like we were learning how to kick flip off the bigger stairs.
Right, is that at all scarier? Is it more exciting?
Jean: Personally, I love change, and I love the evolution of shit. I’m always down for that. I guess the unknown is always a little scary, but I find it very exciting.
Eli, what about you?
Eli: I feel like it didn’t feel scary. It felt more like, oh, shit, well, you know? This is going to be more work. Fuck it. Let’s try it out, you know? It’s going to be more work. There’s going to be more time spent in here—maybe some ideas might not make it. But in the end, we’ll have a lot more to pick from and a lot more knowledge on what we can do and what different types of combinations we could do, whether it’s, a lot of times with the guitars, a guitar part is layered as three different guitar takes, all on different guitars, all on different amps. And to kind of go that far to see what the best blend is, we just tried everything. Like, ‘What if we tried it this way? We’ve tried it that way.’ But I feel like we have this type of trust in the process and trust in ourselves that we’ve always had. So we knew it would end up with something. What that something was, we didn’t know until we got there. But we knew we would be happy with it.
Right on. It seems like, correct me if I’m wrong, but the last album came with some touring that was post -pandemic. I think we were all in some shape or form burned out, but I can’t imagine musicians like y ‘all, you know, touring, making an album, all in this world, seeing so many different sides of it. And then you sign up for this gargantuan task, and we end up getting more than just the album’s worth, but a movie now. I want to ask a little bit about the name, the title of the album. Something that’s prevalent in a lot of the actual songs themselves in the album, it was a lot of their experimentation. When it came to the lyrics in the story that we’re telling in this album, it seems like it’s speaking a lot in that second person. It’s very intimate. It’s talking to someone. Can you give me a little bit of insight into who the person might be, who that audience might be, who that ‘you’ is in the album, and how this plays into the technical experimentation of the album?
Jean: Yeah. It’s kind of hard to say because we don’t write the lyrics. Pablo writes the lyrics. If I can say anything, knowing Pablo, I think he likes that sort of mystery behind what the lyrics mean. So, for the listeners to kind of make up for themselves is the reward behind it for him. I would like to answer it in that way, where it’s like, well, from my perspective, it sounds like he’s talking to himself, and in this sort of way, where when you’re talking to yourself in the present. Still, you’re talking about your past to yourself, and you’re talking about your future to yourself as well. You’re kind of trying to figure out, like, where it is that ‘I’m’ going? How is it that I’m going to get there?’ We all have different issues in our lives that are very similar to each other because we’re all human, so we’re all going to naturally have the same kind of issues as others. Some issues are bigger than others. Still, I think that we can all connect to our issues, and having those conversations with yourself brings you closer to people in your relationships. We naturally want better relationships as we grow older, and as we mature, we find our faults and where we need to grow to have those better relationships. So when I listen to the lyrics, I’m like, ‘Oh, it sounds like a meditation process of what an event was, what it taught me, and what I need to change. Or what I did, or what I did wrong, or what I did well, and how I want to move forward within it.’ I guess that’s what I feel. If I could speak for him, I’d say there was a lot of change in him as a person throughout this writing process that I guess made him look at himself very honestly and very transparently. He’s always been good at writing about his experiences and laying him out for himself. I feel like it’s a very cathartic thing for him.
Eli: To add to that, like tying it in with the title and everything, Pablo always says it feels like a breakup album. I think that could come in a lot of different ways, not necessarily just like a relationship or a romantic relationship, but a relationship with friends, with family, with yourself. The idea for See You When I Get Back came from the fact that, after the last album, we toured more than we ever had. We went to China for the first time, then to Europe, and then back to Mexico. We toured so much, and there was this ongoing theme of, ‘I’m leaving again. I’ll see you when I get back.’ I feel like the movie also touches on that and kind of explains it more so. But a lot of the lyrical content kind of is like this transformation of a breakup, whether it’s with someone that you love and you’re going to go on tour and not see them for a while. Or even just like breaking up from your older self and older patterns and older thought processes that you shed yourself, and an old version of yourself can seem like an entirely different person. Kind of the maturity and the kind of life process that leads to that change. I feel that kind of ties in the title of ‘You know I’m leaving, I’ll see you when I get back. But when I come back, I’m going to be different because of what I’ve gone through while I’ve been gone.’
I love that. I think that’s something that’s picked up, not just lyrically but, I mean, like y’all have been saying, it picks up in the music too. This album has more dark corners and crevices in the music, but it’s also more uplifting, too, and it has these higher resonances. So I love that. But that’s a perfect segue. So I would ask now, at what point of making the album, did you know, ‘Oh, let’s make a movie? We’re going to do this. It’s going to be more than an album. It’s going to be a whole, the album is an experience, but a whole other larger task, a movie experience.’
Eli: I feel like that was pretty early on, huh?
Jean: Yeah.
Eli: We’ve always talked about doing movies, and Pablo’s always been into films, and he’s directed a few of our music videos from the last album. So he’s been into directing for a while, and we’ve always talked about doing scores for a movie. With this one, it felt right to do it up. It’s our first time on a label. We have new management now—our previous manager had passed away during this time. Everything kind of feels different. We wanted to make this one really pop and go all out with it. Pablo decided on writing the movie as we were still making the album, right?
Jean: I think so, yeah. It’s kind of hard to remember the album writing process without the movie in it. It might have been just like pretty damn close to its inception.
Eli: We also have a book, too. So the process kind of went like, you know, started making the album. As we started finishing the album, the movie idea came up. So Abe and Pablo were working on the movie, writing the script for a while, getting all the storyline right. And after our previous manager, Gonzo [Lubel], passed away, his boss was helping us out for a while. And he suggested that we do like a lyric book to accompany the album. So the book came out first. The book came out last year, I think in November? The book is, it’s a lyric book that has all the lyrics from the album. I feel like there are multiple chapters. And each chapter is a different song. And within that, it’s also a picture, like a photo book of photos from us touring, photos from us making the album, photos from us making the movie. And it kind of ties everything in so that people read this book first, and they see all these references to things that they don’t understand yet. And they see these lyrics to something that they haven’t heard yet. So you kind of get a scope of what the universe is before actually figuring these things out. The books will be on sale at the shows, too, just to let you know. There are photos from old tours or even some photos from when we were kids because- I heard you earlier say a little over 10 years, but this year it’s going to be 20 years of Inner Wave- we started in sixth grade. 2006. So there are some photos in there of us as kids playing with giant guitars.
I like it. Well, that’s it for me and my questions. Really excited about the album and the movie that’s coming out. Is there anything else that maybe I didn’t focus on or that y ‘all want to add?
Eli: I don’t think so yeah, the movie you know we eventually will come out to stream. We’re going to have the book available at the show, of course merch specific to this album and yeah, get your merch. Get your tickets.
Jean: We have an El Paso date!
Eli: We love playing there. Lowbrow. Classic.
By Antonio Villaseñor-Baca.