Carolina Beach band Pleasure Island makes waves with throwback sound, cool vibes

On one level, their Bandcamp bio says it all: "We are Pleasure Island. We are from Pleasure Island."

On another level, however, mere words can't quite capture the sonic exuberance of this dynamic, four-piece eponymously Carolina Beach band, which blends the sounds of '60s garage with poppy hooks and '90s-era alt-rock into a style that layers laid-back cool over clear-eyed lyrics.

Pleasure Island — the band takes its name from the island where Carolina Beach, Kure Beach and Fort Fisher are located, and where its members grew up attending elementary school together — emerged from the pandemic last year to considerable excitement among Wilmington music heads. Now, with singer/keyboardist/guitarist Cameron Sinclair back from art school in Kansas City, 2022 is shaping up to be another Pleasure Island summer.

The band plays June 9 at Carolina Beach's Ocean Grill & Tiki Bar with indie rockers Pinky Verde, and has Wilmington gigs June 17 (at Bottega), June 18 (Varnish) and June 21 (Satellite).

Like a number of other Wilmington-area bands comprised of musicians in their late teens and early-to-mid 20s, Pleasure Island didn't exist before the pandemic and formed more or less because of it.

The band's members — singer and bassist Chloe Torres, guitarist Marc Fatum, drummer Kevin Penn and Sinclair — were all working at the Ocean Grill when the pandemic struck. Over the course of it they bonded, especially after the lockdown caused Sinclair to stay in town rather than leaving the state for school.

"Chloe and Cameron were just kind of hanging out playing music together," Fatum said. "They were learning 'Andromeda' by Weyes Blood."

"And then we saw you at McDonald's," Sinclair said with a laugh. "And we're like, 'Learn the chords so we can play it with you.'"

"On Marc's birthday, we got him a cake that said, 'Join the band,'" she said, and that sealed the deal.

Before long, "We played our first show out of quarantine. People are still wearing masks and everything," Torres said. "Before COVID, it's like there wasn't really a scene for young people at all … Then COVID happened and I think everyone just got bored, I'm guessing," and started bands.

Now, you'll often find Pleasure Island on the same bill as other youthful rock acts, including Free Drinks, Narah, Cancel and Lawn Enforcement.

Sinclair said "we definitely went into it knowing that we wanted to write our own music," and that led to the composition of such tunes as the lilting banger "New City," which, contains the exquisite line, "The scene around here is as good as dead/ So learn to tie a sailor's knot instead."

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The band's original songs, which they write together, focus variously on feelings of love ("When We're Together"), insecurity ("Cut Me Loose") and the complex emotions conjured by the whiplash of simultaneously looking forward to and back on your life.

One of the band's best songs is the very meta "Pleasure Island Queen," a spooky, swirly rocker about, in part, being nostalgic for your youth while you're still young.

"It's pretty much just about life on the island," Torres said. "We kind of grew up living in, like, a daydream. Living at the beach, not really having any rules or responsibilities."

The band's first show was right on the pier at the Ocean Grill, the restaurant that's owned by Sinclair's parents.

"The reaction from Carolina Beach is really cool," Fatum said. "I've had a lot of great support from, like, coworkers, family, friends."

Buoyed by the support of their home crowd, the band quickly branched out to other venues around Wilmington and is regularly asked to play college house parties as well as benefit shows. When Sinclair was off at school last winter, Pleasure Island played as a trio.

"We've played venue-venues. We've played art bars and two piers. We're about to play our second skatepark," Fatum said. "It's just it's been unreal. It's definitely been more than I expected."

One of the band's biggest supporters has been Cameron Sinclair's father, Dave Sinclair, a trained chef who not only owns and runs the Ocean Grill with his wife (and Cameron's mom), Abbie, but who also served as the frontman for longtime, legendary Wilmington punk rock act Rural Swine. (The new band he's part of is called Teeth of England.)

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"He's the reason I make art and make music," Cameron Sinclair said of her dad. "He's been my role model. All of us look up to him."

Torres concurs, saying that, "When we started we were like, 'Where should we play?' We were playing in (Cameron's) garage. We were playing in my living room. And then (Dave Sinclair) was like, 'Well, I have a storage unit.' And so we started playing in there."

"We would play literally every day," she added. "It's not an exaggeration. Every day, and sometimes it'd be two times."

Torres said the band's sound has evolved, and that people who saw them last summer might be surprised at the new shape their songs have taken.

"We're a lot louder and faster," she said. "We get a little crazy and it feels really great to, like, be going crazy on stage."

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The band hopes to have a 10-song album, a follow-up to their 2021 EP, recorded by the time Sinclair heads back to school in the fall. Plus, they want to tour as much as they can, and the band has two shows lined up in Boone later this month.

As for the band's name? References, intended or not, to earthly delights aside, let's just say they came by it very organically.

"We just wrote a bunch of names down on a piece of paper and then showed Kevin," the band's drummer, Torres said. When they got the list back from him, the name "'Pleasure Island' was underlined. It has a cool ring to it. It means something to us."

Contact John Staton at 910-343-2343 or John.Staton@StarNewsOnline.com. 

Want to go?

Who: Pleasure Island

SCHEDULE

June 9: Ocean Grill & Tiki Bar, (Carolina Beach), with Pinky Verde

June 17: Bottega (downtown Northside)

June 18: Varnish (downtown)

June 21: Satellite (downtown Southside)

June 24: Black Cat (Boone)

June 25: Ransom (Boone)

This article originally appeared on Wilmington StarNews: The throwback sound, cool vibes of Carolina Beach band Pleasure Island