INTERVIEW: Jordan Black – Like Pacific

Canadian pop-punk band LIKE PACIFIC seemed to be having a blast on tour with the lads of Brighton’s, AS IT IS. During this wild tour, we caught up with Jordan Black, the lead singer of the Canadian pop punk outfit, before their show at the KOKO in London, to talk about their new single, Sedatives, embarrassing moments on stage and even a new record in the works.

So LIKE PACIFIC formed in 2010, how did that come about?

Jordan: I was in a couple of bands at the time until my friend asked me to play drums for his pop punk band. But we didn’t have a singer so they were like “you should try and sing!” and I was like, “uhh… okay!” and that’s basically how it happened.

Sounds like it was pretty straight forward then! What bands inspire you? Any recent or old bands that you have always looked up to?

Jordan: Growing up AFI really inspired me, so did MISFITS, but in our genre at the time, in 2010/2011, THE STORY SO FAR first came out and we were like “oh sick that band is good!” and they did so well, so we all seemed to look up to them. We’re friends now too! They’re all super nice!

So your new single Sedatives has just been released, how has it been perceived by fans?

Jordan: Fuckingg amazing! [Laughs]

Did anything inspire the track? There are some super strong lyrics…

Jordan: We released it as it was a good single to put out, it is like a mix of the newer sound we are trying to put out. The song itself was just about me being really depressed and staying up until six in the morning every night getting wasted. [laughs] It was pretty bad!

Well it’s a great song anyway! Have you had a best show to date?

Jordan: Oh man, Baltimore on the FOUR YEARS STRONG tour, last October. I was on stage thinking “this is the last night of the tour!” and there was like 500/600 people there, people were going nuts, running around on stage and shit, it was one of the craziest shows.

Talking about crazy shit, do you have any weird rituals LIKE PACIFIC do before playing live?

Jordan: Drink a beer! [laughs], I don’t like to get drunk before I play, but I feel like getting a beer or two before we play is cool. I like to stay quiet and sit and do nothing, I don’t run around and do things before playing. If I do that I get stressed out.

Sounds like a calm pre-show ritual! Have you ever had any embarrassing moments on stage?

Jordan: Yeah fuck, so many! [laughs]. Loads of voice cracks. I also fell on my ass when playing in Boston. Everyone was laughing then was worried I didn’t get up! I just remember thinking “this is awful!” Someone filmed it too, on their Snapchat, right before it ended they got me falling!

Oh no, the fall is forever on camera! Are you and the rest of LIKE PACIFIC working on a new album?

Jordan: Yeah it’s done, it’s been done for a little bit now, I think we’re just waiting for the right time to put it out. So right now, we’re just chilling. We put Sedatives out for the UK as we were already playing it live so we thought we might as well put out a song we like playing it and it’s introducing something new to our set as we had been playing a similar set for the last two years. It got good reviews so we added it to our setlist.

What dictates your setlist choice?

Jordan: We tend to open and close with the same kinda stuff, with what we like playing as we just got used to that. We switch up some songs, like, we get people tweeting us like “play this song!” and we’re like “fuck it, let’s play it”, we’re quite open to suggestions.

One last question, is pop punk dead?

Jordan: No. Definitely not. I feel like it is slowing down like all music does, but all of that comes in waves. It goes through weird periods but it’s never gonna die. 20 years from now there’s going to still be bands doing pop punk and easycore, it just comes and goes in weird phases [laughs].

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