Foto-© Eric Daniels

Manchmal klingt eine Bandgeschichte fast zu gut, um wahr zu sein. Demo verschicken, am nächsten Morgen die Antwort, kurz darauf ein Showcase, wenig später der Plattenvertrag. Bei The Sophs liest sich genau das wie ein moderner Indie-Mythos – einer, der sich erstaunlich mühelos in die Label-Historie von Rough Trade einfügt. Doch hinter dieser scheinbar geradlinigen Erfolgsgeschichte steckt etwas anderes: Jahre an Vorarbeit, gewachsene Beziehungen und ein fast schon ungewöhnlich klares Verständnis davon, was diese Band sein will.

Goldstar, das Debütalbum der sechsköpfigen Band aus L.A., ist deshalb kein spontanes Produkt eines Hypes, sondern eher das Gegenteil: ein durchdachtes, vielschichtiges Werk, das sich seine Offenheit hart erarbeitet hat. Zwischen stilistischen Brüchen und einer bewusst fragmentierten Ästhetik zieht sich eine erstaunlich klare Linie – eine Stimme, die versucht, Unsicherheit, Selbstbeobachtung und Identitätssuche nicht aufzulösen, sondern auszuhalten. Es ist letzten Freitag via Rough Trade erschienen.

Im Gespräch in Berlin erzählen Ethan Ramon und Sam Yuh Ende Januar von genau diesem Spannungsfeld: zwischen Kontrolle und Zufall, zwischen kollektivem Vertrauen und persönlicher Intimität, zwischen dem Wunsch, alles richtig zu machen – und der Einsicht, dass sich vieles letztlich doch nicht planen lässt.

We’re here to talk about your debut album Goldstar. If you read the press material it almost sounds like you’re living the dream: sending a demo to a label you like, getting a reply the very next day, and now here we are talking about your debut album just weeks before its release. But could you tell us the longer version of the story? I’m sure it was much more complicated than that.
Ethan Ramon: At least four of us have known each other since high school. I’ve known Sam since I was 15, and Austin [Parker Jones] and Seth [Smades] – our guitar players – are also people I’ve known since my teenage years. We all moved to L.A. pursuing different musical projects, with The Sophs sitting on the back burner as a side project. Once we got there, we brought in Cole [Bobbitt], who became our bass player, and Devin [Russ] on drums. The music kept getting better to the point where it didn’t make sense for it to remain a side project anymore. It demanded our full attention. Around the same time all our other bands and projects fell apart, leaving us with just The Sophs. I then teamed up with our creative director, whom I’ve also known since I was a teenager, and we put together a five-song demo, some press photos, and a full “brand bible” – everything from font sizes to photo references and color schemes. We also wrote a cover letter explaining who we were, where we came from, and what we wanted to do, and I sent the whole package to about 30 independent labels. I basically only heard back from Rough Trade—but I heard back the very next day. Around 8 a.m., I got on the phone with Geoff [Travis], who loved the songs. He told me his co-founder Jeanette [Lee] would be in L.A. in ten days with the band Pulp and asked if we could play a show for them. We had never played a show before, but I couldn’t say no. So our bass player called in a favor with a bouncer at a pub in Pasadena, who put us on before another act on a Friday night. We locked ourselves in a rehearsal space for those ten days, got about 40 of our friends into the room, and just made it happen. We were signed before the end of the year.

What a coincidence, but also not really. You came in extremely prepared and professional, with a clear idea of what you wanted, and then you made it happen. When you read about it, it almost sounds like The Sophs just appeared out of nowhere. But that’s not really true then, you had already put in a lot of work beforehand, and that’s what allowed things to fall into place. So when we talk about Goldstar as your debut album, what does that mean for you? Is it a collection of the best songs you’d written up to that point, or did you develop a new concept after signing and shape it into a cohesive album?
Ethan Ramon: We actually had the album finished before we sent out the emails – at least in terms of the songs and the tracklist. It wasn’t engineered or mixed yet, but the material itself was all there.

Is that how you usually work, being very prepared?
Ethan Ramon: Honestly, this is the only time something like this has happened for us, so I’m not entirely sure. But I do think it’s important. We’re not teenagers anymore. We have rent to worry about. It matters to be pragmatic, to think about preparation and professionalism. It’s not enough to just say that music is your life. You have to take a few extra steps beyond that.

Yeah, it’s a job. Before we get into the lyrics, let’s talk about the sound. The album feels really varied and full of surprises. You keep discovering new layers, and there are lots of different references. I’ve seen it described as a kind of zigzag. How would you describe it? Do you consciously use different genres as tools, or does it just come together naturally from your influences?
Ethan Ramon: What mattered most to us on Goldstar was keeping a consistent narrative voice, despite all the shifts in genre. We always knew what we wanted to say, and that stayed clear throughout. Because that through line was so strong, it gave us the freedom to really experiment on the musical side and to play with different genres and sounds. One of the core themes of the album is this kind of frantic lack of identity. It’s like wearing a series of masks that never quite fit, but also not feeling comfortable without one. And I think that sense of fragmentation is reflected in the music as well – the shifts in genre support that idea.

You’re six people, and most of you have known each other for a long time. Still, arriving at such a clear, shared vision isn’t always easy in a group that size. Was that difficult for you, or how does your dynamic work when it comes to writing together?
Ethan Ramon: It’s actually pretty easy. We all trust each other – as people and as really competent musicians. So, everything each of us brings into a session is for the betterment of the song. We’re all very strong musicians, and when you’re surrounded by people like that, you tend to leave things like ego and resentment at the door.

But it’s not just about skill or talent – it’s also about taste. So, did you just find the right group?
Ethan Ramon: I always like to say that the one band The Sophs all agree on is The Sophs—because we do have pretty varied tastes. I think that actually works really well for the creative process, since everyone brings a different musical background into the room. And more than anything, there’s a sense of trust: even though we all like different things, we trust each other to be arbiters of good taste. So, every choice we make, we trust that we have the awareness to make it a tasteful one.

I’d love to talk a bit about the lyrics. They often feel very direct and emotionally exposed when you listen to them. So, I’m curious – does writing like that come naturally to you, or can it sometimes feel uncomfortable? And how much of it is personal? As a listener, it can feel incredibly intimate, but of course it could also be shaped through characters or storytelling.
Ethan Ramon: My intention was to take a part of myself that felt uncomfortable, unsavory, or intrusive, and really blow it up and turn it into a character and write from that perspective. In a way, that process was cathartic. I took thoughts and feelings I wasn’t comfortable with and gave them a name, a face, a kind of label. Bringing them out of the shadows made them easier to deal with, easier to compartmentalize. So it’s both – it’s me, and it’s also a character at the same time.

And what is it like for you on the other side of that: being in the room and hearing these kinds of lyrics for the first time? You’re confronted with very raw, personal emotions from someone you’re close to, and at the same time you’re shaping the music around it. I imagine balancing the creative process with emotional connection can be intense. How does that feel from your perspective, especially as someone who isn’t writing the lyrics?
Sam Yuh: It’s something all six of us can connect with in our own ways. Ethan acts as the one who speaks for all of us, he’s just able to express those emotions more clearly on every level. We all really feel what he’s writing. So our role, as the ones shaping the music and the instrumentals, is to dress these lyrics in the right way and bring out what’s already there.

When you listen back to the songs now, do you each notice specific moments and think, “Oh, that came from that idea back then”? Do you have little favorite details – your own “gold stars” in the songs that you recognize?
Ethan Ramon: I think just by being fans of our own music, everyone has their own memories and feelings that the songs bring up. And I think that’s also a sign of great music. So, we hope that not just us, but anyone listening can have their own unique relationship with each song.

There are also lines that feel quite provocative – like “I need a death in the family.” When I heard that, I understood the feeling behind it, but it’s such a striking way to phrase it. Do you consciously aim to challenge the listener with lines like that, or is it more about being completely honest, regardless of how it might come across?
Ethan Ramon: I think there is an element of being funny or witty, or of trying to say something a bit outrageous, but that’s also just part of who I am. At the same time, I feel like the best music comes from not really considering the listener, because that’s when you’re most honest. And honesty isn’t always comfortable. But looking back, I do hope that listeners take in both the comfortable and the uncomfortable moments of the album and recognize something human in it. Because that’s what being human is – it’s contradictory, uncomfortable, and sometimes awkward.

You’re asking some big questions on the album: Am I doing the right things for the right reasons? When will I be seen? How did I get here? Did those come from trying to distill your thoughts into a few core questions, or did they emerge more naturally as you were writing? How did it end up coming together as one record with all of those big ideas?
Ethan Ramon: It’s much more important to pose questions in music than to provide answers. The moment you start giving answers, the music stops being about you, and you kind of put yourself on a soapbox that I don’t think artists should really be on. So, asking questions comes naturally, because they reflect a very real confusion I have about my environment and the world. All of those questions are basically running through my head at the same time, and they end up in the music.

How is that for you to be constantly confronted with these big questions in your work?
Sam Yuh: There are definitely moments where Ethan comes in with a line or an idea and I just don’t even know how you arrive at something like that, or where it comes from. He has this kind of eloquence in the way he writes that I can’t really imagine myself. So, a lot of the time I just think, “Wow, that’s really something.”

When you take something like that and start building a sonic vision around it together, how do you see your role in that process? Is it more of a back-and-forth, with everyone suggesting ideas and shaping things together, or does it come out of jamming? Or is it more structured from the start? How does the sound usually come together?
Sam Yuh: A lot of the time Ethan will come to me with an idea – maybe just a topline or a starting point. From there, we build a skeleton for the track, usually around keys or piano, just to have a foundation before bringing it to the rest of the band. We might already have some rough ideas or references for how it could sound, but once everyone gets involved, it really opens up. Because everyone has such different influences and approaches, people start suggesting things – like where a guitar part could come in, or how to develop a certain moment, or what instrument could add something new. That’s created a really strong dynamic where anyone can throw out an idea, even if it’s a bit out there. And because we all trust and respect each other’s musical instincts, those ideas are always taken seriously and often lead somewhere exciting.

Do you feel like that dynamic also translates to your live shows? You mentioned you started out as more of a recording project, which is often the opposite of how bands develop. You essentially became a live band in about 11 days and are now going on tour. Has that changed how you approach music? Do you find that songs evolve once you start playing them live and reacting to the energy in the room?
Ethan Ramon: Yeah, definitely. I mean, the songs do take on a life of their own, but over time we’ve developed a live sound we all really love. We don’t dial down any of the eclecticism from the album—we’re not trying to turn it into, say, a straightforward punk set. We actually lean into it. Sam plays accordion live, even picking up parts that were originally acoustic guitar. We’ve got things like a jaw harp and a vibraslap, and everything is played live. It becomes this big mix of different musical influences, and from the start our main goal was not to tone anything down or simplify it for the stage.

Do you feel like place plays a role in your music? You started in L.A., and now you’re spending a lot of time in Europe as well, partly because of your label. Those are very different music scenes, do you notice that being in different places influences your sound or the way you approach your music?
Ethan Ramon: Goldstar is very much an L.A. record, and it was shaped by being there – maybe not always in a positive way, though “negative” might not be quite the right word. I ended up writing a lot about traits in myself that I think developed while living in Los Angeles and being around certain kinds of people for a long time. At some point I noticed those same behaviors in myself, and I started looking at that more closely. I took a pretty journalistic approach inward, writing about myself, but also about people I encountered, other artists I crossed paths with. That all feels very tied to L.A. At the same time, I’m really curious to see how all this traveling will start to influence my writing and my music going forward.

Now 2026 has just begun. It’s the year of your debut record, and probably a year of intense touring. Do you already have a sense of where you want to be by the end of the year? What are the next steps for you? Or are you taking it as it comes? From what you’ve said, you seem quite strategic about these things.
Ethan Ramon: In a way, the only thing really in our control this year is the quality of the work we put in. It’s hard to make a one-year plan, let alone a five-year plan. What we can focus on is showing up, playing as well as we can, taking every opportunity, whether that’s live, online, in interviews, or on the radio –and really doing everything we can to make the release a success. How it’s received and where it takes us is something we can’t fully control. At that point, you kind of have to cross your fingers and leave it up to the universe.

The Sophs Tour:
28.04.2026 Hamburg, Molotow
29.04.2026 Berlin, LARK
30.04.2026 München, Live Evil
02.05.2026 Köln, Blue Shell