Credit: Found On Internet

Seventeen Evergreen land in London for a one-off show and talk to Beren Neale about their debut album, floppy cheese and those lazy Pavement comparisons.

Seventeen Evergreen are a San Francisco band, but their explorative music can be linked to no terrestrial region. Having fed a lifelong passion for all things unearthly, drifted around the West Coast of America when growing up and soaked in influences from their travels across Europe, the delicate, magnificent music of Caleb Pate and Nephi Evans is more akin to finding a spider’s web in the corner of a moon crater than any current trend.

Since the US release earlier this year of their debut album Life Embarrasses me on Planet Earth, the two have visited London only twice, including tonight’s show at The Luminaire. But the band is familiar with the city, as Caleb lived here in 2001. It was during this time, after an enjoyable but fruitless search for new musicians, that he returned to San Francisco with Nephi to regroup, refocus, and “make Seventeen Evergreen a more serious proposition”.

Why the move back to San Francisco? Is there a scene that you identify with there?

Caleb: Maybe if they’ll have us. It’s a very hipster-driven, cliquey scene. There are a handful of really cool psychedelic bands, noise bands, but I’m probably more into some of the indie hip hop stuff in Oakland... A handful of bands we like: Deerhoof, The Papercuts, Assemble Head in Sunburst Sound. They’re a Comets On Fire kinda band - heavy psych, buzz stuff.

It sounds like an All Tomorrow’s Parties line-up…

C: ATP is the best festival I’ve ever seen. I went to the Tortoise one, and it was amazing – Boards of Canada, Television, Yo La Tengo, Lambchop. That was 2001, around the time I lived here.

I regret missing the one Steve Malkmus curated.

C: He should have read all the erroneous reviews that we sound like Pavement, and he would have invited us.

Just googling you guys you see…

C: Pavement 1,000 times!

I thought I’d sneak that in there, subtle like.

C: You did a good job - I normally don’t talk about it. (Journalists) can be very lazy. Like, the Pavement thing is understandable because of geography, and the way we speak possibly. But Pavement is like the older brother of everyone that plays music. We happen to come 90 minutes away from where they come from (Stockton, CA), but I think to say that our music is derived from them… I think that’s slighting.