Raw Plastic (the new project of Seb Polus and Bastian Najde, who are both in Polish bands Syndrom Paryski and Revive) released a two-song promo at the tail-end of 2020 with the songs “Car Parks and Recreation” and “Hazy,” and now they’re gearing up to release the Waiting Till Summer EP this Wednesday (3/17) via New Morality Zine, Peleton Records (Europe) and Native Vision Records (Asia), with “Car Parks and Recreation” and three new songs. The EP finds the duo offering up surfy, shoegazy punk that’s as hazy as it is driving and catchy. There’s clearly a lot of influence from ’90s punk, emo, and shoegaze, and it also kinda sounds like the late ’00s/early ’10s era of lo-fi bands like early Wavves, Cloud Nothings, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, Yuck, etc. It’s punk, and the members have experience playing in heavier bands, but it’s also literal bedroom pop and that vibe very much comes through.

The duo formed during the pandemic, as they explain:

Bastian: RP started during the pandemic, nearing the end of 2020. Seb, who started this whole thing, moved to the UK for a little bit and we couldn’t practice with our other bands, so we’ve decided to take this time and experiment a bit. Seb sent me a draft of the first song and we’ve chatted about it and he invited me to carry on writing together. We had kinda one goal to start with – trying not to limit ourselves as it’s our “for fun” project. So we’ve been sending riff/composition ideas, voice memos and demos to each other and that’s how the EP was created. It all went really fast haha

Seb: I started RP as my solo project to keep myself busy during my stay in the UK. I had some ideas and riffs floating around for a while that were either too raw and punkish, or quite the opposite – not heavy enough for my other projects haha, so I guess Raw Plastic was sort of my little escape, both from the mundane reality of working a dead end job and from all the inherent boundaries that come with more “serious” projects. I guess Bastian felt the same way and was happy to come aboard.

They also both gave some background on the EP, the individual songs, and the idea that this project was “for fun”:

Bastian: I think the “fun” aspect is the result of mixing upbeat tempos with chill chord progressions and simple little lead parts, but yeah the lyrics are way “less fun” than the music haha for me it’s kinda Promise Ring/The Get-Up Kids 90s emo approach where you had upbeat and not-so-mellow music with sad lyrics if that makes sense? The lyrics on the EP were usually written together, like someone came up with one part and the other one carried on with it trying to nail the initial vibe and I’m really happy with the results, it was different compared to the other bands I played in.

“Gamer’s Worst Nightmare” for me is focused on the feeling of being a let-down to others and to yourself and not meeting the expectations of others, whether those expectations are real or just in your head, and kinda being stuck in a loop of wanting to change things but also constantly procrastinating.

“Heart Rush” is way less straight forward, and I think this is the way of writing that I really enjoy. For me it’s a song about thinking too much and making way too many interpretations/assumptions.

Seb: I feel like the “fun” factor came from the fact that we didn’t really know what to expect from this material. It’s rough around the edges, but it’s intentional. We didn’t want anything to hinder our creative process, as it was all about capturing raw emotion in its unfeathered form, as quickly as possible. We collaborated on all the lyrics on this EP, except for “Car Parks and Recreation” which is a song that I’ve pretty much done on my own.

My inspiration came from my surroundings. I was living in Wrexham at the time, where I grew up (yep, the hometown of Neck Deep) and honestly, that place is really depressing, especially now, during the pandemic – a bleak industrial town. The song is about falling behind and reminiscing about the past, so I’m pretty sure the lyrics didn’t come from the “fun” place haha.

The feeling of regret is an overarching theme in Waiting Till Summer. We never really planned it that way, but yeah, each song covers the same topic, but from a different angle.

The EP isn’t out for a couple days, but we’re premiering a full stream of it, and you can listen right here:

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28 Essential Songs from the Shoegaze / Heavy Crossover

Listen and/or subscribe to our playlist of all 28 songs (with MBV’s “Feed Me With Your Kiss” replacing “You Made Me Realise” because the latter isn’t on Spotify):