Inner growth drives Inner Wave
Los Angeles-based indie band Inner Wave isn't scared of change. In fact, the Inglewood-raised quintet very much embrace it.
Since its inception, it has gone through stages of musical transformation, so members feel quite comfortable heading out on yet another adventure, dubbed the Jukebox Tour. The outing kicks off at The Observatory North Park in San Diego on Thursday and winds down with gigs at The Novo in Los Angeles on March 17 and The Fox Theater Pomona on March 18.
“Last year, while on tour, we all had points where we realized so much has changed in just one year,” bassist Jean Pierre Narvaez said during a recent phone interview. “There's places and people that we have met along the way that were never important to us before, but now they are, and I think that's something we've all grown to learn from it all.”
Since hardships are typically part of the game while living through your 20s, it's that acceptance of evolving — even through the rough stuff — that has allowed the band to truly flourish. With some sudden time to spare during the COVID-19 lockdowns, the members made an effort to center themselves. In doing so, they focused on the inner workings of their fourth record, “Apoptosis,” a 2021 release that was their first to be recorded in an actual studio setting. The album title refers to the biological process of the death of cells as part of an organism's normal growth, which resonated with the band in its transitioning state.
Vocalist Pablo Sotelo, guitarist Elijah Trujillo and Narvaez started the band while in middle school in 2006. The trio steadily laid their foundation with daily after-school practices in a garage, experimenting with sounds that would eventually lead to their current indie-psychedelic groove. Other members came and went, but the later additions of drummer Luis Portillo and keys player Jose Cruz were a “match made in heaven,” Narvaez said.
With a solid lineup, four records and a couple of EPs under its belt, the band hit the road hard in 2022 to support its latest effort, describing the tour schedule as a “crazy, beautiful, long year journey” that propelled the five to be more in tune with the music and as a unit. It also played shows in Europe supporting Boy Pablo, did both weekends of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Indio, impressed at the Desert Daze Festival in Moreno Beach at Lake Perris, and jumped on shows with groups like Chicano Batman, L'Impératrice and Foals.
“We had four legs [of the tour] with various openers, all based in different spots of the continent,” Sotelo explained. “Then, in the middle of that tour, we were offered to play with Boy Pablo on the other side of the world and all of Europe, which changed so much for us as a band and as individuals. We were basically in a different country every day. You're in France one day, then the next you're in Italy or Hungary, and it just keeps going. We had to get used to that pace. And we definitely did, but we also learned to slow things down mentally. We're happy to be home to wind down, but at the same time, we're ready to make new music and memories.”
Gearing up for its Jukebox Tour, the band decided to do something a little different and let the fans pick the set lists for each show, much like loading up a jukebox playlist at a bar. Fans in each city can vote on Inner Wave's official website on which tracks they'd like to hear — whether its something like “American Spirits” or a deeper cut like “Change Your Mind.” The band did something similar during a previous show at the