Up-and-coming Southern California rock band Sun Room has made waves by refusing to leave their hot, dingy garage. Inspired by the house party concerts they attended as kids, the Southern California trio — Luke Asgian (vocals, guitar), Ashton Minnich (guitar), and Max Pinamonti (bass) — has quickly gone from humble jam sessions to sold-out shows with their raw, wild ’60s garage rock sound that makes records feel like a live show that’s tight and you might call the police on it.
After a series of unexpected viral moments and two song placements in the hit Netflix series Outer banks, Within a few months, Sun Room went from playing in backyards to playing sold-out venues all over the world – supporting Louis Tomlinson’s North and South American tours and Dublin rock band Inhaler in Europe. The band then released their groundbreaking EP, At least I tried –Produced by Zac Carper of Fidlar, one of the band’s biggest influences in the California garage rock scene.
Despite their sudden rise to fame, the band has built a loyal fanbase by staying true to their DIY roots: recording their music during live sessions that leave all the beautiful imperfections in place, perfect for a wild live ambience.
“We try to record everything as live as possible, which I think people can hear and understand, because everything is so processed these days as far as recording goes,” Asgian says. “Everything is gridded and everything is auto-tuned. But we just track it as it is, live. If you listen really closely, there are little errors in it. I think a lot of people get attached to that because it’s something very different than what’s happening in the music world right now, where there’s like AI stuff and everything is just very overproduced. I think people miss that and that’s why they love old music: because it’s not recorded like that; it’s not perfect.”
After a 30-city headlining tour and a festival tour of North America and Australia, Sun Room returned home with renewed energy to focus on the music they love to jam and perform to, without regard to subgenre or sound. Their new EP, Can’t explain itis a 4-track excursion into the world of various influences from blues rock, shoegaze and post-punk revival, revolving around the wild, raw energy of a garage concert.
“I grew up in Long Beach, and there were so many garage rock bands – 14-year-old kids just playing shows in their backyard and without realizing it, we were playing kind of ’60s garage rock,” explains Asgian.
While these local inspirations form the core of Sun Room’s sound, Asgian explains how certain genre labels – like “surf rock” – got in the way of the band’s creativity.
“I think we tried to do Southern California surf rock for a couple of years and that kind of hampered the songwriting a little bit. We might have had a really good idea but then we just threw it out the window because we felt it didn’t ‘fit’ what we wanted to do. But I think we got to the point where we realized we’re not really a surf rock band. Surf is like Dick Dale and we don’t sound like Dick Dale at all.”
Asgian explains how the band’s recent touring experiences inspired the exploration of their sound. Can’t explain itand explained, “Touring really opened our eyes to a lot of cool music. I don’t think we looked too far outside of Southern California in terms of influences or what we wanted to listen to, but then we went on tour with bands like Inhaler and they showed us all these crazy British bands like the Stone Roses or The Jam and stuff like that. Stuff we had no idea about growing up.”
Asgian wanted to test these new styles in her studio sessions and describes Can’t explain it as a breakthrough, as the band stopped worrying about writing songs that conformed to a particular sound.
“I think we’re at a really cool point with our band where we stopped trying to stick to a particular genre. … This EP was really fun because we were just trying to write good rock’n’roll songs, not good Southern California surf rock songs. It opened up new avenues for us in terms of songwriting and creativity.” Asgian says, “The ’60s were super cool and it’s great to be influenced by that without trying to sound like we came from the ’60s.”
Photographed by Isaac Dektor
Styled by Luke Zampas
Written by Oliver Heffron
Flaunt film by Wyatt Stromer
