When Beyoncé brought “surfbort” into popular parlance on her 2013 single Drunk in Love, she was referring to coitus in the bath (see also: the bathtub boogie). Dani Miller, effervescent singer with the Brooklyn riot punks who took it as their name, has since widened the term to include the act of surfing on nude Frenchmen.
“This guy got ass naked and was going insane for two whole songs,” she recalls of a recent gig in Le Havre. “The third song, I put him on the ground and stood on top of him, surfing and screaming. He was having a blast.”
Feted by Blondie, signed by Julian Casablancas’s Cult Records, unlikely stars of a 2019 Gucci campaign and famed for their uninhibited displays of wildfire garage punk, Surfbort are the combination of one Californian former wild child (Miller) and three survivors of the 90s Texas punk scene (drummer Sean Powell and guitarists David Head and Alex Kilgore), on a mission to splatter visceral responses to the world’s most terrifying subjects.
“Friendship Music is a collection of our immediate reactions to Trump coming into office,” says Miller of their debut album. In the video for Trash, she vomits on a TV showing a picture of the president. “It’s a dark time. The system’s always been set up to keep people poor and in the dark, but when it’s put out on the table even more, it makes you fucking depressed and feel insane.”
Friendship Music’s 17 quickfire attacks thrum with the spirit of Bikini Kill, Pussy Galore, Patti Smith and X, and you will find tracks about the rightwing resurgence, capitalism and modern narcissism. Plus some deeply personal revelations: High Anxiety tackles the mental health issues that Miller now channels to spur on her delirious performances. Then there is Dope, a song about kicking hard drugs aged 21 because “one day I snapped and realised: ‘I don’t either wanna be in jail, dead on the street or have these crazy, horrible things keep happening to me.’”
A partial turning point was her rape when she was 19. “It kinda turned my mindset to: ‘I don’t wanna be surrounded by evil people,’” she recalls. “‘Instead of searching for drugs I should be searching for health and people that make me feel good and healing my past traumas with other things.’” The memory is particularly raw as her rapist showed up at a recent gig. “I just turned all the energy in the show to releasing all my sadness from that experience. I did yell: ‘Fuck rapists!’”
Healing through positivity; a very Surfbort mentality. “Even though people like Trump and his cabinet are in charge,” Miller says, “we have the power to be happy and promote love and change in a positive way.” Aspiring surfboards: sign up here.
Friendship Music is out 7 June via Cult/Fat Possum