Photo by Koto Langa
Something is brewing in Washington, D.C.
In March 2020, the United States declared the COVID-19 pandemic a nationwide emergency and began lockdown, plunging the nation into an era of prolonged isolation, shuttering live music and the community that thrived with it.
In the five years since then, the District of Columbia’s local music scene has slowly but surely begun to build back – and beyond. In recent years, venues such as Songbyrd, The Pocket and Rhizome have been instrumental in retaining and revitalizing D.C.’s local music scene in the rubble of the pandemic. They consistently give a platform for bands like Ekko Astral, Flowers for the Dead and Outerloop to cut their teeth and establish themselves as must-see staples in the region, influencing onlookers to go out and create themselves.
Enter Erasergirl, an emerging alt-rock quintet that has seamlessly merged into the local D.C. scene since their first show in October. The band blends the contorted tones of early-nineties grunge with a personal brand of shoegaze to create a dynamic wall of sound. At its core, Erasergirl consists of Grace Plihal (vocals), Christopher van Deutekom (guitar), Elena Salinas O’Toole (bass), Sagan Gor (drums) and Milton Guevara (guitar).
WVAU had the chance to sit down with the group as they readied to release their debut EP, “30,” which dropped on March 14. Read on to hear about each member’s favorite works by David Lynch, finding inspiration and community in D.C.’s local scene and the origins of ‘Woogaze.’
WVAU: What does the name mean for you?
GRACE: I am personally a big David Lynch fan and we all have a lot of respect for him as a creator and artist, so it’s kind of based on the title of his film, “Eraserhead.” It’s kind of a derivative of that, and we want to also call attention to the fact that we’re a girl-fronted band and we are proud of the fact that we have diversity in our band, both gender and otherwise. So the girl part comes from there. But Chris, you pretty much thought of this name though, do you have anything to add to that? That’s what it means to me.
CHRISTOPHER: Yeah, it came from a long list of potential band names that, throughout the years, I’ve just thrown into my notes app on my phone. It really stuck with us because of, for one Grace’s love of David Lynch, but it felt like it really encapsulated the band itself in the sound.
WVAU: Do you each have your own favorite David Lynch work?
CHRISTOPHER: I’m simple. I’m probably either “Blue Velvet” or “Lost Highway.”
MILTON: “Mulholland Drive” for me.
SAGAN: I don’t have one. They’re all so great.
GRACE: There are some members of the band who hadn’t seen “Eraserhead” yet and I was kind of urging them to see it. We kind of realized that it’s almost an unwatchable film. Iconic but unwatchable.
ELENA: I’m lame. I’ve only ever seen “Twin Peaks,” but we do a really nice cover of the theme song. When I told my dad we were partly named after “Erasherhead,” he was like, ‘What the heck? That’s a crazy movie!’ I couldn’t get my family to watch it with me though.
WVAU: Next, let’s talk about the new EP, which congratulations by the way! Was this your first time recording as a group?
CHRISTOPHER: Yeah, for sure!
WVAU: How was the experience of recording as a group for the first time?
CHRISTOPHER: It was good! We kind of went back and forth as to if we wanted to do it live or if we wanted to record each part separately and just put it together as a whole. I had recorded with previous bands and we did it more of the separate route and it just felt like it made more sense for us, especially as the first release because we wanted to just be a little bit more calculated.
SAGAN: We started with getting the drum part down at a shared rehearsal space that we booked a couple of hours of time to, that people go for like lessons into like practice and stuff like that, so it’s very DIY. Kind of an elevated demo tape, if you will. I think it sounds pretty amazing for not having to go to a studio and contact producers and stuff like that. We emphasize the DIY aspect of things around here, for sure.
WVAU: Could you walk us through the process of creating the EP? Is this collection of songs the first you’d written as a group and workshopped over time, or did they come later in the band’s lifespan?
CHRISTOPHER: As far as writing the songs, most of the songs on the EP, if not all of them (except maybe for “30”), just came from a guitar idea or something that I put down on paper and then brought it to the rest of the group, and we just like iterated on it for long enough that it became something as a whole. I think also with “30,” Grace had sent me very simple chord structures as well as vocals over the top, and it was amazing from the start. We just basically iterated on that.
WVAU: This is a question for Grace; so many of your lyrics feel deeply personal yet resonate on a universal level. How do you strike that right balance?
GRACE: I am very much a people person. I’m very much a collectivist. I feel like love and heartbreak are just such universal experiences, so you can have it be really personal, but at the same time, everyone has been heartbroken at some point. I think that’s the theme of my lyrics. I wrote the lyrics of every song except for “sage,” which Chris wrote the lyrics to. It worked out really well because he has been heartbroken too. So our heartbreaks seamlessly flowed into one another’s on the EP. I’m just a very open person in general, so it comes naturally, I guess, to be able to put my heart on display, especially if someone else can relate to it.
WVAU: How would you personally describe your music? If your EP was a dish, what would it be?
CHRISTOPHER: Sagan, you want to take the dish part? I know that you’re the cook of the band.
SAGAN: Oh my gosh. I’m trying to think of one. The first thing that came to mind was sweet and sour chicken. That’s a little bit on the nose.
CHRISTOPHER: I feel like the sound itself — We put a lot of emphasis on shoegaze. We all come from extremely diverse genres as far as what we’re interested in, but I think that was the glue that tied us together. As far as sound is concerned, it was just like, ‘Okay, we want to build a story based on the ethereal parts of our songs.’
SAGAN: Well, I think we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention the word “Woogaze” here. It has the sort of softer elements of really intimate music that goes into just crazy expression, whether it’s happiness or anger or just kind of that driving sound of shoegaze and grunge.
CHRISTOPHER: I remember when we first came up with that. I was listening to “Song 2” by Blur. You know, like “Woo-hoo!” I was just like, ‘It’s like this song but if it were shoegaze.’
MILTON: As far as a dish, I think we’re either a pozole or maybe like pho — I feel like it’s very comforting but also there’s some spiciness in it. There’s elements coming from all different places, you know? Just like a soup.
ELENA: Dish would be like a purple ube strawberry cake with dark chocolate frosting.
GRACE: That’s the whole course.
WVAU: A lot can happen in one to two years for the development of a band. Has the overall vision for the group evolved from when you formed last year? If so, in what ways?
GRACE: I think that we are ever-evolving. I think we’re still trying to figure out where we want to go with this and what we want our dominant sound to be. The guiding thing for us is to always be fostering our community. We have a really big community of people who support us. We have really great friends. I don’t want to speak for everyone, but I think that everyone would agree when I say the best part of us playing shows and making music is that we get to bring people together. Even if we blow up and become the headliner at Coachella, we don’t ever want to stop doing that, like interacting with our fans who are mostly our friends and family and just continuing to foster that safe space for people.
CHRISTOPHER: Yeah, I agree. Pretty early on, when we were starting to write, we were trying to decide ‘Okay, what’s our genre?’ Grace was just like, ‘Rock music.’ I was like, ‘All right, yeah, I like that,’ because it really doesn’t lock us in too hard to anything. We’re all people who just really try to push boundaries with our music and not just pigeonholed into one single genre, one single sound or even rhythm. Within the next few years, I could see us releasing something — I was just listening to “Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness,” and I was like ‘That’s a pretty massive, ambitious scope’ — I could see us doing something like that together.
WVAU: So many great bands have come to fruition and strengthened DC’s music scene in the last few years. How has being in the same scene and playing alongside these groups influenced your development as a band?
GRACE: Me and Elena are both from the area. Elena’s from D.C.; I’m from Silver Spring. I think that we have a deep appreciation for hardcore music — that whole scene and that culture. A lot of hardcore music is about building community and kind of forging your own path in terms of genre and creation creativity. So for me, it’s been pretty amazing to be able to start playing alongside people who are channeling that energy and that talent. It feels very essence-of-D.C. — when I say D.C., I mean D.C., not like Washington, on the hill type of stuff — that’s been really cool and it makes me feel definitely more connected to my city.
CHRISTOPHER: Yeah, just to develop on that, I came from St. Louis a few years back. That’s where I was born and raised, and I was really involved in the music scene there. It was really tight, but it was also a little bit cliquey. It was just hard to break into other band scenes, whereas D.C., it’s such a big city, but it’s like a big little city in a way where everyone knows each other, respects each other and it does just feel super welcoming. We played Songbyrd one of our first shows, and the person who booked it was just like one of the best people I’ve ever met, just so nice and welcoming. It’s just been like that all the way through; I haven’t had one bad experience with the bands around here.
SAGAN: To go off that, with what you were saying about playing in the scene here, I think opening for Flowers for the Dead pretty early on for one of our shows and seeing them directly in front of us, seeing them fill up Songbyrd and have fans at the end come up to sign their t-shirts and their CDs and everything and kind of saying, ‘Hey, there are people who are playing with this sound that we’re aspiring to, in a very similar sort of ‘90s grunge revival type of sound in a modern context, that are doing really big things in front of our noses.’ We also saw that you interviewed them as well. I think all of us have probably read it at this point. They’re a big inspiration for us. Being part of a scene that’s in such a large city, but feels so small and so intimate sometimes; it’s definitely been huge for all of us.
ELENA: I feel like it’s very hopeful to be part of a scene where there’s so much new art, music and culture coming out. Like Grace, I was raised with old D.C. hardcore, like Bad Brains, Fugazi, Minor Threat — my dad was very instrumental, I think, in my music taste development and hearing about how that kind of counterculture was so strong back then. I think people sometimes focus so much on the past that they don’t really talk about how it’s still there, it’s still very much a part of DC culture. I’m also very introverted; I sometimes struggle to go out to see bands I don’t know so much, so being part of this has been a really awesome way to reconnect to that community. We’re very, very lucky to be in a community with so many amazing artists.
MILTON: We live so much of our lives online and it’s so amazing to see how alive the D.C. and DMV music scene is. Even on a Tuesday night, people are showing up to support local artists. I am just so inspired by it.
WVAU: What are some of your favorite venues to play at and your favorite show thus far?
CHRISTOPHER: I know we’re all going to have a different answer for this, and I love it.
MILTON: I had so much fun at Grace’s house! We did a New Year’s Eve party and that was just a blessing to perform for all of our friends on that night.
GRACE: And the cops only came twice.
MILTON: It’s not a good party unless the cops come.
GRACE: There’s a difference between the show I think the most people came to, that was kind of like the most popular, and then there’s some where I feel like we just did really well. I feel like my favorite show was the last one we did, and that might be true forever; my favorite show is always going to be the last one we played. So right now, my favorite show is the Quarry House show we played last Tuesday.
CHRISTOPHER: Mine is, bar none, Songbyrd. It’s probably the most formal show I’ve ever played which, I don’t know, it felt really nice to have that solid ground. Also, we did a cover of “Better in the Dark” by TV Girl and it was just really heartwarming to see all these kids that we did not know, that were probably sub 21, maybe sub 18, singing along with this song that we were performing. I was just like, “This is the best feeling of all time!’
SAGAN: I think my favorite show is also that New Year’s Eve house party at Grace’s. Having people crowding right up to us like in front of our face, just jumping around going crazy and yelling and singing into the mic with us and hanging out. It’s a really, really good vibe. At the beginning of the night, I was thinking, ‘Hey, we’re right here in front of the window on the street, I’m going try to tone it down a little bit.” By the second or third song, all of a sudden I was smacking those drums as hard as I could. It was a really fun time.
WVAU: What are some of your individual influences and how do they influence your specific aspects of the band?
GRACE: David Lynch for sure. I love him, rest in peace. We tend to have a little bit of Lynchian influences with lyrics that are a little non-sequitur, not as linear. In terms of music, definitely Slow Poke, we do a cover of them. I love their sound. Nirvana for sure, got to shout out Nirvana. Title Fight, you know, D.C. represent, as well as heart-wrenching lyrics. I would probably say also My Bloody Valentine, just because of the tone.
CHRISTOPHER: For me, the most obvious one is going to be My Bloody Valentine. Second to that would probably be Deftones. That’s something that Sagan and I really, really connect on; our love of Deftones. I just feel like that ethereal vibe where they’re kind of reverberating between hardcore and shoegaze is really right in our alley. Other than that, I listen to a lot of hyperpop and hip-hop. I feel like that sometimes gets into like my guitar playing, like with “orange,” which is on the EP. The verses for that, whenever I was writing the guitar part, I was just like, ‘Okay, I want this to kind of sound like a hip-hop loop from an old 90s hip-hop song,’ like in A Tribe Called Quest song, or something like that, where it’s just the same repeating phrase over and over again, but doesn’t sound like it’s repeating if that makes sense.
SAGAN: As Chris mentioned, Deftones is huge for me. I’d say they’re pretty much their own genre. Nirvana is also really huge for me; I always find myself in that top one percent of their listeners on Spotify every year somehow. Despite everything else, wherever my tastes go, Nirvana is always there for me. Personally, also, I’m huge into just grunge in general, so Soundgarden is big. Matt Cameron is one of my idols, for sure. Maybe it doesn’t make its way into our sound, it might in the future! We’ll see. My personal favorite band is Pantera. At least in some breakdowns, whenever we try to get heavy, I always think about Vinnie Paul on the drums for Pantera.
GRACE: Are you not going to mention Creed even once?
SAGAN: I think Creed is transcendent. I think everybody is a fan of Creed. I don’t even need to say it.
GRACE: We’re big Creed lovers over here.
SAGAN: We’ll pull out that cover of “Higher” one of these days.
MILTON: I have a million favorite musicians and guitarists, but one that I’m thinking about a lot lately is the jazz guitarist Grant Green. Everything he does is so melodic. It’s simple but beautiful and I think that’s kind of how I want my playing to sound, but maybe in this case in a rock context.
ELENA: I think my dad’s music really influenced me. He’s in a band. They’re much more political than us and they’re true punk. Like I mentioned earlier, D.C. punk bands, a lot of British punk, too. I was very inspired by the Ramones when I first started learning the bass because they’re very melodic and upbeat. I like that we have a lot of slower songs and mid-tempo songs. We have a fast song too, even though it’s not on the EP. It’s very fun to play live. I think those were my big inspirations for bass, but I’ve honestly learned a lot of other bands through this project. Chris introduced me to My Bloody Valentine, which I’ve enjoyed a lot. I’ve always liked Deftones, but I feel like now I’m getting very into it, thanks to Sagan and Chris. We have a lot of music that’s shared in our group chat. I feel like that ends up influencing our sound too and giving us new ideas for different patterns or rhythms to follow. I get a lot of good inspiration-creative juice from these fellas and missy lady.
WVAU: With the new EP, what’s next for Erasergirl?
MILTON: An album hopefully!
CHRISTOPHER: Fingers crossed, eventually recording a full, maybe 10 to 12-track, LP. I know I’m really making this ambitious, but I think we could do it. We churn out high-quality songs pretty often, so I think we could do it.
GRACE: I want some really weird merch, like diapers or something.
SAGAN: In the direct future, Pie Shop, end of the month, March 30. Really looking forward to that, super excited!
GRACE: We’re with Puppy Angst and Jem Wilde. We are headlining, which is really exciting! Two really awesome bands, their vibes are really good so far. I haven’t been to a Puppy Angst or Jem Wilde show yet, but their music is awesome, so it’s going to be a nice show.
WVAU: Finally, is there anything you would like to add as a band?
CHRISTOPHER: Just come out to shows! We love to see everybody. We love all the smiling faces, come hang out.
GRACE: There’s always a place for people in an Erasergirl show. If you don’t leave having a good time, talk to me personally and I will remedy it.
Erasergirl’s debut EP, “30,” is out now and available to stream here. You can catch Erasergirl at their upcoming show with Puppy Angst and Jem Wilde at Pie Shop on March 30. Tickets are available here.