Q&A: The High Curbs on Their New Sound, Working With Zach Tuch and Mexican Slum Rats
SOMEONE WHO HAS FOLLOWED — The High Curbs for a while knows how different their new single, “Drift,” sounds from the rest of their catalog. The Inland Empire rock band, composed of Eduardo Moreno, Aaron Korbe, Alberto Alvarenga, and Kenny Huerta, steps away from their old skate punk penchants and dips their toes into melodic rock ’n’ roll.
One could gauge their genre alignment based on the band’s name alone. The High Curbs are a reference to the high flood curbs in the neighborhoods of Chino, CA. When it was too hot to skate the curbs or hang out at Ayala Skate Park, Moreno and Korbe would jam inside garages with their friends and band members at the time before The High Curbs officially formed.
“Skate punk” and “garage rock” were very literal when it came to The High Curbs. The band and its rotating members throughout the years went from being discovered through SoundCloud demos to gaining notoriety as one of Inland Empire’s noisiest and high-powered bands. The group made their rounds at every Southern California band’s rite-of-passage spots: Tropicalia, Nothing Fest, live sessions with Jam in the Van and Unquiet Live (formerly known as Chad’s Home).
With “Drift,” The High Curbs are at new heights. They worked with a producer for the first time — Zach Tuch (Movements, Touché Amoré), as Moreno put it, “put the puzzle pieces together” and encouraged the band to see glimmers of light in their demos that they otherwise would have left alone. Moreno’s vocals are impressive, and deliver with the same passion as their older songs. In it, The High Curbs perform a tighter, louder, and fuller record than they ever have.
The single follows three post-pandemic releases, “I’d Run Away With You,” “Down,” and “Try,” which were released for the sake of having new material following 2020’s Happy Daps. After the pandemic cut the celebration of Happy Daps short, the band continued to hone in their craft and develop their voice as a band.
Ahead of their show with Mexican Slum Rats and a slot on Unquiet Fest, the boys of The High Curbs talk to Luna about their new single, future music collaborations, and their intentions with the band in a new era. Read the interview below.
LUNA: Do you want to tell me a little bit about the new song, “Drift”?
MORENO: All of last year, we were practicing really hard and trying to craft… almost a new sound, in comparison to what we’ve done in the past. Everything we’ve done in the past in an album, it has been not cohesive. We wanted to craft the sound where we should base all the future songs on. I think it was also different because it was the first time in a while where we were all in the room when everything came together. It wasn’t where I wrote the music and then I brought it to the table, or Alberto wrote the music. It had a nice spark.
KORBE: It happened organically for us. One day we were jamming and Eduardo told Berto, “Hey, just play something,” and then pulled that riff out of nowhere. That song just developed on its own, really. It was kind of sick.
LUNA: You mentioned that you wanted to make something with a little more cohesion to it. Is that in reference to your old stuff? You don’t think your old stuff is cohesive?
MORENO: Yeah, for sure. We were always very proud of having a diverse record or EP where it’s like, here’s a really heavy song and then here’s an almost country-folk song. It’s almost a phase. Going forward, it’s almost like having a completely different band for each album, and I like that aspect. It keeps everyone more fresh, and it doesn’t let things get stale for us. I mean, even through the past two years we probably had 20 songs total and then we were like,
“Actually, we should scrap half of them because we don’t really like them.” Our tastes are always changing.
LUNA: Were those scrapped songs for Happy Daps?
MORENO: No, this is all post–Happy Daps. We didn’t even practice during [the pandemic]. Post-pandemic, we started practicing regularly and we came up with a lot of stuff. It was almost like rebuilding. The songs we were coming up with were kind of mid. It took us a few months to be like, “Alright, these are mid, let’s trash them.” I think right now we have a set of songs we’re going to record, and hopefully that’s the record, you know?
LUNA: Your other songs are very punky and fast, and “Drift” is very pop-y and melodic. Was that an organic thing, or did you want to gear more towards a pop sound?
ALVARENGA: What happened was Ed was like, “Hey Berto, do a quick My Bloody Valentine riff.” And I was like, “I’ll try.” I did the chords and he’s like, “That’s really good!” I think we started leaning into that whole shoegazey, pop punk — we’re trying to go there. Whatever came out of it is “Drift.”
MORENO: I noticed it was a lot easier to come up with stuff when we did demos of it. I took them back home and worked on that myself because it’s hard for me to come up with stuff on the spot. I’ve always wanted that sort of sound — it just never came into fruition.
KORBE: I write all my own drums and everything. A lot of the times, it’s whatever I come up with while we jam the songs out before we go record. This time, doing the demos … allowed me to really sit at home and piece together the way I wanted the drums to go. Even when we went into the studio with Zach [Tuch], he helped me break it down more to put it together.
LUNA: You guys have shifted members since you started as a band. Is that something that affects your sound and the kinds of songs that you make?
MORENO: Absolutely. The first two, three years, it wasn’t really me writing a lot of that music. When “Want” came out, that was the first song I wrote from scratch — zero to finish, almost. Ever since, it’s been easier to be creative and take a little more control. But I really like all the new stuff we’ve done because everyone puts in their two cents. I think it shows with the new song.
LUNA: Is “Drift” connected to your latest singles at all? Were the other singles written around the same time?
MORENO: They’re not connected. At the time, we were just trying to write new songs, you know? We just wanted to put something out post-pandemic. We’re in the same headspace as we are now with “Drift.”
KORBE: I think the only connection would be that we were all starting to jam again… They’re connected in how we wrote them all organically through jams, but not connected in the sense of we were in a different headspace than we are now.
LUNA: Let’s talk about the music video for “Drift” a little bit. How was it making that? It looks so good.
MORENO: Thank you. I came up with the creative idea behind it, but that would not have been possible without Oscar [Arce], who directed and freakin’ one-man-teamed that whole thing in two hours.
LUNA: That’s no time at all!
MORENO: No, and with one person running the show. He went off. I thought of coming up with something aesthetically pleasing — [that] was the whole idea behind it. I really wanted to link the song with the video, which is why [the amp] is the cover. It works in weird ways because that amp that got stolen — we got it back right before we did the video. There's something cool about that for me.
LUNA: You guys have a couple shows coming up with Mexican Slum Rats and at Unquiet Fest. How do you feel?
MORENO: Oh, I’m very hyped. Very excited. They’re both great lineups.
KORBE: I’m excited to play the Teragram [Ballroom] again. The only time we’ve ever played was just a horrible mess. The flyer was wrong so we ended up playing 30 minutes before the doors were advertised. We played a full set for, like, four people.
ALVARENGA: Those were our girlfriends, basically.
KORBE: I’m excited to actually fucking play a good set there.
LUNA: Other than those shows, do you guys have any other plans for the rest of the year? Either music or touring wise?
MORENO: No, I think that’s where our plans stop for the year. We might be recording in the fall — we’ll probably record a record. Definitely next year, we’ll be more active touring-wise and releasing more music.
We do have a couple collabs in the work with some of our friends… That’s something new we haven’t done before. I think people will be really stoked on some of the songs we worked on.
LUNA: And I’m assuming none of which you can mention yet?
MORENO: I mean, I could… I could just tell you. We have a track coming out with King Shelter. And I’m working on a track right now with Kev from [Mexican] Slum Rats. It’ll be a couple of nice gifts from the Curbs before we release music for a while.
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