Double Parked

West Auckland five-piece Double Parked have quickly built a reputation as one of the country’s most exciting young guitar bands. Made up of Tom Purdie (vocals), Travis Hassell (bass), Carlin Diprose (guitar/vocals), Ben Woolford (guitar/production) and Chad Mascelle (drums), the band first came together almost by accident — originally forming to play a handful of covers at a friend’s 21st birthday before the project took on a life of its own. In the years since, their jangly, guitar-driven sound — which they jokingly describe as “post-surf”, a loose mix of surf rock, alt-rock and post-punk influences — has helped them develop a devoted following both online and on stage. Now, with the release of their sophomore EP Rosary, Double Parked are pushing their songwriting into more personal territory, unpacking themes of mental health, friendship and the messy realities of navigating life in your twenties.

How did the band come together?

Ben: Chad, our drummer, needed a band for his 21st. He did like a thing up at Goat Island and we just kind of threw together like a couple covers. I'm pretty sure Tommy came up and sung like two songs or something. From there we just started playing house parties.

Carlin: And then Chad turned his personal Instagram into a band Instagram, and the rest is just history.

Where'd the name come from?

Ben: It came from partying as young fellas and having two beers and being double parked. 

Travis: We’d be like “Double parked, that's a sick saying.” 

Ben: Yeah. And now we can't really change it, but it's great. I think it's still fun, you know, I think we can be double parked in many ways in life. You know? 

Travis: Like being double parked here with two great friends.

Carlin: I often have the conversation with someone when I'm, when I'm talking about what I'm up to in life and quite often they'll be like, “Double Parked? I think I have heard of you guys” I think that's just testament to the name. It's just a great name.

So you guys refer to yourself as “post-surf” What does that label mean to you and how did you kind of get to that sound?

Travis: Well, this is a, this is a contentious topic.

Carlin: It's a constant debate. "Are we a post surf band or are we rock band?”

Travis: I guess post surf entails that we came from writing pretty standard surf rock and then post surf is now the evolution of that sound leaning towards more of the alt-rock scene. It’s sort of a UK sound that's going on at the moment. Post-punk.

Carlin: Take, post-punk and surf rock and, and mash that together. That's kind of what we're doing. Post-surf.

Tom: With a bit of my yodeling in there.

Your new EP Rosary digs pretty deeply into things around mental health and personal struggles. Was that something that you consciously wanted to explore on this EP or did it just kind of happen as you were writing?

Ben: I don’t think it was ever really a conversation that we had. I think all of us were just individually, you know, going through the depths and then it just all came together. The EP ended up being a collection of things about how we're feeling, and how we're coping with it, and how these things can be a big part being in your twenties. It wasn't deliberate but it all came together well.

What's your songwriting process like?

Ben: Ever changing.

Carlin: As it kind of always is. I mean, we're very much a jam band. We just start playing something and then it turns into a song. But each song came together a little bit differently. One might have started with a guitar riff.

Ben: Yeah, Carlin brought in the guitar for Buttercup and then we all built that as a band.

Carlin: Yeah, that one came from me just sort of mucking around with my loop pedal.

Ben: And then with Lighthouse I came up with the like verse and the chorus kind of thing, and then the boys liked it. I brought it in and then we all wrote to it.

Travis: And Survive was a jam session we all did.

Ben: Oh yeah, I got real stroppy because I couldn't figure out what to play.

Travis: Yeah that was a jam from ages ago that I kept bringing back, being “like, fuck, we’ve gotta play this boys.”

Carlin: We'll always record a little dusty video on our phones of all the jams, and that one we plucked out of our vault.

Tom: And then we couldn't find lyrics, so we played it on the acoustic and I just, whatever came to my head, just kind of spat out.

Ben: Yeah. Because that's quite a riffy song, and as soon as we just took away all the riffs and just gave you the acoustic it kind of just came to you.

Tom: It worked out well; because we were a bit stretched for time at that point. They were like, “We need a song. We gotta write this. We gotta write these songs. We've only got a little bit of time left.” And then it was like, “oh, we made it work.”

Ben: Yeah. And honestly, I love being under a time crunch when I'm writing. It just pushes the ideas outta you. 

Travis: Yeah. Because otherwise, otherwise you never finish the song. Sometimes it becomes “oh, we’ll just write it another time.” 

Ben: Yeah. You gotta have deadlines man.

My favourite song on the EP is Necklace, was there any sort of story behind that one?

Ben: With Necklace, I had just seen Serebii the night before and I was enamored by his chord progressions and all that. And then I was, I um, I wrote this like finger picking seven, eight song with all these chords and I was showing the boys and they’re like “fuck, these are sick chords.”

And then we started strumming it out in a bit more of like a rock and roll fashion. Um, and then Tommy jumped on the vocals and sang the best bloody hook I've ever heard and best melody. 

Tom: Yeah, we just played it all together, jamming together, and I just sung the bit that became the chorus. And after that we went away and Chad did some writing and wrote the verses. And then we progressed through the bridge.

Ben: Yeah. That was quite like a partsy song, man. We were stuck on what was gonna be the chorus and what was gonna be the verse for ages. We did so much of it different parts. But yeah, that's the story of how Necklace came to be.

Your song Place I Hide is kind of the centrepiece of the EP. Is there a reason that it's so important to the overall record?

Carlin: Hmm. It's funny with Place I Hide that it's the first song that we wrote out of the lot. We were originally gonna record it with our previous batch of singles that we did. But we never got around to it.

Tom: I guess that it sort of leaned us towards the EP itself. The sound from Place I Hide sort of took us to the EP.

Ben: I think thematically it kind of sums up [the EP], it's got like a climax to it. It's like when you really fucking hit that hole and you hit it hard and you get stuck in the hole, and then you’ve got to work your way out.

Carlin: I don't know if we consciously wrote around that song. I don't think we necessarily knew that it was going to be that sort of centerpiece of the EP. I guess everything sort of formed around it naturally, which is interesting when we decided the order of all the tracks and everything there wasn't really much debate. Everyone just agreed on the order that the songs would go, and how they needed to sit next to each other. Far out, we wrote that one song so, so long ago. It was a jam session.

Ben: We had to convince Tommy to like it, it took a while. He didn't like it for ages but we figured out that if we play heavy Tom can sing a bit softer.

Carlin: It's the Turnstile approach.

Ben: Yeah. And then, something clicked, 'cause Tom was actually stressing about the song. We went to record it, and Tom was not feeling good about it. But we went in there and we told him “dude, just, take it easy. Just do a soft run through.”

So we recorded the first take, and then I was like, “That's it. He did it. He fucking nailed it.” He did it in a bit of softer tone. And I think we were all just unanimously went, “Shit, that's how we should sound.”

Carlin: It was the song that felt the most complete immediately after recording it.

So the last track on the EP, Rhythm of Silence, it's quite poetic — it kind of sounds like something you'd hear while walking through an exhibit at Te Papa. Did you kind of always intend on doing an outro?

Travis: No, uh, we had no idea we were gonna do that.

Tom: We were recording at Ben's bach in Ruakākā, and then we were just like, “oh, what if we chucked like a poem at the start as an introduction." Like XXXTentacion has at the start of some of his albums.

We kind of went off that idea. Chad said “Oh, I can write something up.” And then he just out of nowhere, just spat that little poem out, we were like, “what the hell?”

Ben: And we all thought he was sleeping. He's just laying on the couch writing away.

Tom: Yeah. And then we were trying to decide where it would go. Whether we split it into two, or if we did in one, maybe we did half the at the start and half in the middle. And then later we forgot that we had recorded the poem,

Ben: We recorded it in the same session as Survive. And then we were outside, having a break, blasting the tune. And then it just started playing. You hear Chad's boomy voice over the top and we were like “This is where it needs to be. This needs to be right here. This is how we're closing the EP.”

So you guys just played in Australia, which is pretty cool. Is that your first time playing overseas?

Carlin: Yeah, it was. It's a lot more hard work than we were expecting.

Travis: It's like when you go on holiday with your girlfriend for the first time and you're like “Far out is this what it's like. Really?” But we had a great time when we got there.

Were the crowds very different playing in Australia?

Carlin: They don't dance as much, those Aussies

Travis: We had a good time. It was a nice, like dipping the toes in. 

Ben: It was good. It was a good learning lesson. It taught us a few things that we would do differently next time. But you know, I think we had to rip the bandaid off at some point and fucking good that we’ve done it now, you know?

Carlin: Oh, and I mean, let's be real, we played mean, man. We played so great. We're very happy.

Travis: But maybe next time we go to Aussie we’d jump on with The Terrys. That’s the dream.

So have you been playing any of the songs from Rosary live? Have you had any unexpected reactions to them?

Travis: We’ve definitely played a couple. We've actually been playing Place I Hide for like fucking a year and half

Carlin: But we’ve definitely had to restrain ourselves at times to not just play every song on the EP in our set. We’ll be like “Oh yeah. Everyone will have no idea what's going on.”

Ben: Yeah. I think we haven't played, I think we've played everything except for Survive. We’ve played Buttercup, Necklace but we are putting off playing Survive 'cause we're all really scared to relearn it. It’s a beast. It's a bit of a difficult song musically, that one.

Tom: I think it'll change the dynamic of our setlist too. In a very good way.

Do you guys have any pre-show rituals or traditions you do before going on stage?

Tom: Probably just too many beers!

Ben: And we’ll do a little huddle and Chad will normally start us with a bit of chant. 

Travis: Depending on the energy, we just start making heaps of weird noises. 

Ben: I think the biggest ritual, the thing that happens every show without fail is as we're going on, Chad goes, “oh, I need to go take a shit.” And then we lose him for 10 minutes and we're all going “Chad, come on.” 

Do you guys have any dream venues or festivals you'd love to play?

Travis: Oh, Powerstation would be a goal.

Ben: You guys are not reaching far enough. I'm hoping on getting to the Shaky Knees Festival in Atlanta. Boston Calling Festival, that would be sick.

Carlin: I mean one day when we’re old and grey we’ll play the Auckland Town Hall. I feel like that is like the best venue you can aspire to in Auckland. 

Ben: I'd love to play the Enmore Theatre in Sydney would be the fucking coolest place ever.

What's up next for you guys?

Tom: Probably just more tunes, eh? More singles. Uh, we haven't really discussed this together yet, but I'm saying it now. We're gonna release heaps of singles. That's the goal. 

Travis: And we’ll be doing a New Zealand tour that will eventually get announced.