Bringing together former members of Kill Vargas and Death Cow, Social Cinema has been building momentum since releasing a pair of EPs in 2022. Their latest release, Don't Get Lost, marks their official debut album, which made it the perfect occasion for a chat with drummer Logan Bush, guitarist/vocalist Mari Crisler, and guitarist Reed Tiwald.

During our conversation, the band gets into their view of what streaming platforms have to offer indie bands, their approach to writing and releasing new material, and why albums still matter to them — along with a couple recommendations of other Social Cinema-approved artists.

Congratulations on a new single release today — which leads me to the first thing I wanted to ask about, which is what metrics for success look like for a band in your position when you release a new single. 

Traditionally, you'd release one of these things as a teaser for a record and you hope it goes to number one on the charts while convincing potential buyers to purchase the album, and then, you know, you put out three or four more singles to convince other potential buyers, and you go double platinum or whatever. But singles don't really serve that function anymore, so I'm just wondering what you look at when you release a single, and what you hope to get out of it.

Mari Crisler: That's definitely still the goal, going double platinum or whatever. I think we're pretty much locked in on the Spotify for Artists app. Whenever you release a song, it does a live count of who's listening to it. And I know Griffin, he's checking that every hour on the hour. I don't know — we're not super worried about numbers, but we're always just trying to beat the last one.

Logan Bush: Yeah, and before any of that, we start with "Do we like this song?" It comes from us first. And, you know, if we were listening to this, what singles would hit us as a listener? It's a very artistic discussion beforehand while we pick singles. 

The numbers and stuff, it's cool to see how it does after the fact, but we're not really like, "Let's pick this one because it could be big." It's more like, you know, does it serve a purpose on the album? What does this single serve? We've found that we've made some good single choices and numbers do go up, and that's pretty cool. The other main thing is when we play it live, how are people reacting to the song?

You mentioned Spotify. And obviously Spotify isn't really a source of revenue for most people. So you look at those numbers, you see people listening, but it has… It takes a lot for that to lead to any kind of impact on your bottom line. So what's your incentive as a band for playing the streaming game, given that it seems like more and more, the services are stacking it against indie artists?

Mari: I think it's almost like gambling. You put out a song and then it's like, is this going to be the one? Is this going to be the one that hits the algorithm? Literally in our group chat the other day, I was like, "This is going to be the one. It's going to hit the algorithm." It's never worth even thinking about, but maybe this is the one. And then I think it just hooks you, and keeps you wanting it.

But then we also have ways to try and make revenue when we can't make any from Spotify or streaming. We're doing this thing called Buy Before You Stream, where we put out a record on vinyl before it came out on streaming. It's an incentive to not use streaming for a month that you can have it on vinyl.

I think that's perfect. I think that's how streaming should have developed — you have access to older stuff, but need to purchase newer releases. 

You mentioned the algorithm, and in the press release, it talks about the track listing for this record coming from a batch of songs that were labeled "album mode." It made me think that if there is an album mode for you, that maybe it's made up of songs that are not as algorithm-friendly, that require a little more time spent and a little deeper listening. 

But for a younger band, it seems like you almost do that at your own peril. You're so conditioned to appease the algorithm that giving people something that's designed to spend more time with is disincentivized. So was that your album mode?

Logan: I know that Griffin wrote this album to be an album, not to be part of a playlist. If it makes it onto one, that's awesome. If people save songs here and there, that's awesome. But it's definitely a project where all the songs have a place in the order and it's sequenced a certain way, and production techniques were done a certain way, all for this idea that we have. 

We love albums. We just love listening to albums and we love, you know, how changing the sequence slightly can affect the whole thing. We're kind of nerdy about it. 

For a long time, releasing an album was just what you did, and now for a lot of acts, it's not something that seems like it's worth doing. So I'm grateful that you did it. I love to know that bands and artists in general are still in love with the format, because it's my favorite. I know you guys took a while to get to this stage. It sounds like an album was always part of the plan.

Logan: Yeah, I would say so. When we started, we were always building toward it. We had albums' worth of songs for years, but we kind of wanted to kind of get a foothold on what we were doing. In previous bands, we'd put out albums and then go try and find fans to listen. For this band, we kind of wanted to tour a bunch and go get some fans, and then put out a record, because we'd never really tried that approach before. So we just did a bunch of EPs and singles and toured a lot and got ourselves to a place where we were like, you know, we're doing shows that we like, touring with bands that we like. And we felt like it was a good time to actually hit the starting line.

Logan, there's a quote from you in the press release about feeling like all your albums are already out there. I've got a really good friend who's a professional songwriter, and he often compares songwriting to going fishing — they're all out there waiting for you, but you just have to be willing to show up all the time and feel the tug on the line. That's what it reminded me of when I read that quote. Is that on target at all? Can you get into that feeling more?

Logan: I'm not the lead songwriter, my brother Griffin is, but just in the way that the band works, that's just the general vibe — we keep showing up. That's the only way the songs are going to be found, is if we're there. And so it's almost that way of thinking — those songs are out there somewhere, and we just have to be together and play until we discover them.

Griffin's a great songwriter. He's constantly writing music all the time. We all have our small parts in the writing, but it's mainly Griffin. We just have to be a good band that's there behind them and supporting the songs. Everyone does their parts, and he does his part, and it works really well. We know that in two years we'll have another album, and we're already starting to think that way.

I love the Buy Before You Stream approach. Can you talk a little bit about what kind of feedback you got from your audience when you did that?

Logan: Yeah, people have just messaged, and even just talking to people, they think it's a cool idea. Anyone who's heard about it has been like, "Yeah, that makes sense to me." You're helping out the artists with those extra sales before they go on tour or do a big release show or whatnot. It's just more of an incentive. And you get to hear the music early and there's little early bonus stuff in the packages as well, like posters and stickers and stuff.

And for a small band like us, you really are part of the experience. It directly helps us get to the next show. You're part of the whole thing when you're doing that. I think kids don't realize how cool of a feeling that is, because it's just, you stream music, it's just what it is. We've grown up that way now. Now that bands are giving people that option, maybe people will get inspired.

Mari: With streaming, there's just such an overwhelming choice. There's so many different things to choose from, so you just let your algorithmic playlists play, and then it just feeds more into the algorithm and then you get even further from the artists, and from anything tangible and real.

One of the last things that we ask people to do during these conversations is recommend indie artists. I didn't warn you guys about this, and I don't want to catch you cold, but if you have a few indie or unsigned acts you can think of that you're enjoying…

Mari: I'll throw out Bad Self Portraits. They're some of our really good friends, and they're putting out a record next week. They're seriously so good. So I highly recommend Bad Self Portraits.

Reed Tiwald: I was going to say the same thing. I bought the record from Buy Before You Stream, and I just got it.

Logan: Yeah, they're great. They're good friends of ours, and they're great live. I'll say our buddies in the Macks from Portland just put out a music video and two singles, and they're really good. Those guys are really awesome and doing it right, and working really hard. I love the Macks.

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