COIN Talks Growing Pains and Mr. Brightside

COIN, the indie-pop quartet hailing from Nashville, TN, released their first album in the summer of 2015.  Their self-titled debut featured their first major single, “Run,” which launched them into pop/ rock consciousness.  Following up that success with their sophomore album, How Will You Know If You Never Try featuring hit singles “Talk Too Much” and “I Don’t Wanna Dance,” COIN proved they were something special.  Their infectious melodies and high-energy live performances quickly garnered the band a large and dedicated fan base.  During their North American Tour, COIN made a stop at Paradise Rock Club, and Melisma got to chat with lead singer Chase Lawrence in advance.  Check out the interview below. 

Chase Lawrence: Hey, how’s it going?Melisma: Good, how are you?Pretty good, we have our day off today.  We have Atlanta tomorrow, so I went home to my parents’ house in West Virginia, so if you could imagine, just picture me on like the porch and some mountains—I’m just kidding.  It’s pretty terrible and cold actually.How have the first few dates of the tour been?Really great, kind of unexpectedly great, actually.  This is like a terrifying experience, like a terrifying risk to play these bigger rooms and just have faith in ourselves, and it’s really worked out so far.  I’m excited to see what happens the rest of the tour.Have you noticed a lot of new fans coming out who have just started listening to you after the new album?It’s tough to tell.  There are so many familiar faces in the crowd, but there have to be new because literally we’re playing to double the amount of people we played to in these cities last time we were there so there have to be.  I’m not sure if it’s attributed to the album or their friends telling their friends last time they saw us.  I’m not sure what exactly it is, but it’s pretty incredible to watch it grow.So you’re touring with The Aces.  How did you choose them as your opener?We love bringing out unique bands and bands that are going to be different than our show, so we never want to bring four guys that play rock music or pop music before us because people will be like, “We just watched the same show,” so we’re always on the hunt for something unique and different and I think that there should be more amazing women bands playing music and we love what The Aces are doing.  It’s a thrill to have them.  That’s basically what it is.  It shouldn’t be a thing, I shouldn’t have to say they’re an all-girl band, it should just be like they’re a band and they’re amazing.  It shouldn’t be a novelty at this point, and hopefully we can start a trend of that.You guys are playing Bottlerock this summer.  Do you have any preference between playing headlining gig and festival sets?I really like playing headlining shows right now because first of all it’s fun to have a show that’s yours from the music you play before the show to the production and everything.  Festivals are really fun to but you have to play kind of a different show because you have to play to the person in the very back because a lot of the people don’t know your music.  You’re playing to like ten to twenty thousand people that have never heard of you before or potentially only know one song, so you have to do a condensed version of your set in less time and with twice the energy.  I really like headlining shows right now because it’s fun and rewarding.  Festivals are rewarding in a different way in that they’re harder to win fans over but it’s very satisfying when you see the crowd move with you.What bands would you include in your dream festival lineup?I feel like my festival lineup would just be hip hop, like just Kendrick and Drake and Kanye.  It’s just three artists, basically.  Maybe The Killers could play "Mr. Brightside" and that’d be the end of the show.How do you guys choose which songs you’re going to release as singles before the album?We were supposed to release a song last week—it was a new song—and we had this whole plan.  We were in California and we had recorded it and we had it mixed and mastered and we had it all done, and then we wrote this new song and we were like “Whoa, that’s kind of an interesting song.”  It was totally about where we were in our career and in our lives, and we just sent it to Columbia, which is our label, and they heard it and they heard something special in it and so we just ditched our entire plan of releasing that song January 26, which will come out next.  So now the song “Growing Pains” is coming out next week. *So that means you’ve been working on new music.  Does that mean you plan on releasing an album soon or is it just the singles for now?There’s going to be a lot of new music.  It will be driven at an album ultimately, but we’re kind of just going to release music over time how we want it, how we create it.  I think we’ve been so strategic in the past, and there’s just something about where we are now that’s kind of allowing us to just do whatever we want for the first time.  I think it’s an exciting place to be in music and artistically.Definitely.  If you had to pick a favorite song from How Will You Know If You Never Try what would it be?It’s probably a two-way tie between “Malibu 1992” and “Heart Eyes” but I think “Malibu” probably takes it.  It’s one of those songs that it doesn’t feel like it’s my song.  I think all of the rest of the songs I’m like, “I definitely wrote that one,” like I can hear where I would change stuff.  With “Malibu” I just got lucky one time and told this story and now I can listen to it and just be emotionally affected by it.After having so much success with your first album, did you guys feel a lot of pressure making the second one and now producing more music afterwards?The first two were really no pressure.  I mean, I guess there was pressure, but looking back on it not as much as I feel now.  At the same time, our fans and this community of people—I can’t even call them fans, they’re basically family—there’s these thousands of people who are just so supportive and just love the music and where we go artistically.  They’re just down for the ride, and I think that right now I’m feeling the pressure of success to some capacity, but I’m just happy to be doing what we’re doing and they’re just down to grow with us.  That’s kind of what the song is about, too, the song coming out Friday.  It’s a really special movement that’s happening for us.Speaking of your fans growing with you, how have you guys grown musically, within your sound, the way you approach writing music, anything regarding that?The first album we wrote all internally.  Joe did the guitars and I wrote it all, and the second one, we co-wrote a lot of it in L.A., and with this third that we’re writing now, it’s a hybrid of both.  I spend a lot of time in my studio, and I’ve just spent the past couple months—it’s wild because usually it takes time to cultivate and figure out what you’re doing, what you want to do, but over a month’s time, I got all of these songs, the entirety of what is going to be album three.  I was taking some ideas to other people to sharpen them and refine them, but it’s been cool to kind of develop the idea on our own, whereas for album two, we didn’t have a specific vision going into it, but then we developed it.  This time, I think we’ve got exactly what we want to say and exactly how we’re going to say it before we even started the process. *“Growing Pains” has since been released.