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Premiere: Cruise Director’s New Album, ‘Emerging Layers’
Published: December 20, 2024

Spencer King and Evan Hynes of Cruise Director. Photo provided by the artist.

Charleston-based indie surf rock duo Cruise Director have just released their new album, Emerging Layers, their first album release since going on hiatus back in 2017. The Atlanta-born duo consists of Spencer King and Evan Hynes, longtime friends who have been playing music together since 2011, and returned to the studio in 2021 to record what would become this album.

Today the album makes its debut on Extra Chill along with a Q&A with Spencer & Evan about the band’s origins and the making of Emerging Layers. They had been recording remotely for years, but ended up with some rare in-person recording time in the mountains of North Georgia to kick-start this album.

Emerging Layers explores a desire for connection and the transformation of grief, while pulling influences from 60s psychedelia, 70s folk, shoegaze, and indie rock. The duo has not performed live since their farewell show at Atlanta’s 529 in 2017, but that may be about to change.

Stream the new album below, and read on to learn more about the project via our Q&A.

Q&A with Cruise Director: Emerging Layers Album Release

How did you first meet and start playing music together? 

Spencer King: We met on the first day of high school because we were both wearing REM t-shirts

Evan Hynes: We were always homies, but played in different bands in our high school music scene. We started playing music together our senior year as kind of a way to make music outside of our bands. I think it actually started out of a joke! We jammed whenever we were back in town throughout college. After we both graduated we moved into a house together and decided to officially form a band. I remember being so stoked after those early jams together, it definitely felt like we had found a fresh sound! A few months later we had enough material to record that first EP.

SK: In whatever form the “band” was, I think we always had kind of a conceptual idea behind the music too, I remember us dreaming up concept albums about different seasons at the cabin. 

EH: We’re a pretty creative duo and have always been able to collaborate well together. Even before focusing on music we painted a series of murals around our hometown.

What inspired the name, Cruise Director? 

SK: Well when we first started this iteration of the band we were calling ourselves “The High Signs” and wanted to really lean into the surf-rock thing. My sister, brother-in-law, and I play a game pointing out random phrases that would make a good band name. We took a family cruise to celebrate my dad’s life and we saw “Cruise Director” written on a door and it jumped out as a particularly good one. I pitched that idea to Evan and it immediately felt right. 

EH: People seem to just like the way the name sounds too- it’s just phonetically pleasing. 

What was the reason for the initial hiatus? 

EH: It was literally like he went this way, I went that way. I made the decision to move to Charleston, I dug the music scene and had a chance to get involved and be in the mix 

SK: and I had just met my partner and was looking into grad school in Colorado. Life just took us in different directions

EH: Thankfully sometimes things work out and we found our way back to finishing these songs!

The same photo as earlier, just black and white. Provided by the artist.

You have done remote recording, but for some of these songs you actually got into a studio together. What can you tell me about the recording process for this album? 

EH: Essentially ever since we met we wanted to record an album ourselves. Inspired by the greats, we always thought it’d be cool to set up a studio in my family’s cabin in the north Georgia mountains. So, In spring 2021 after we uncovered some demos we’d made in 2017 – we decided to take those ideas and re-record them up at the cabin. It was only a handful of songs, on a pretty minimal recording setup, but it served as an excellent excuse for us to hang out, catch up, and spend time making music together again.

SK: The whole thing felt pretty organic, after that weekend session we decided to record a couple more at Ev’s parents house in Atlanta later that week, and then a few more in my apartment in Colorado that I sent to him, and a few more, and a few more… I made a few trips to Charleston to record with Evan in person over the years. Then some final tracks sent from my new place in NYC. So it’s really been a 50/50 mix of remote and in-person recording. 

EH: It was also my first project engineering anything myself, but I’m proud of the sounds we achieved ourselves on our little DIY set up

SK: For sure! it was pretty experimental at times, just picking up a mic and saying “hey what if we put it over here?” Especially when we were recording at the cabin, which we did a couple of times, there are a few takes where we were “recording the whole house”. 

EH: For what it’s worth, we decided on the name “Emerging Layers” after the very first weekend up there

SK: Based on a conversation about the “emergent layer” of a tree canopy in a forest 

Do you have plans to play any shows? 

EH: We’re working on it! We’re hoping to play some shows next year around Charleston, Atlanta, and New York. 

SK: Yeah the “remote band” thing does make playing shows difficult, but now that we’ve finished the album, it would be really fun to play live. We’ve done the live two-piece set up for years, but it’d be great to get a full band together for a small tour. 

Anything else you want to mention? 

We captured a lot of good sounds ourselves, but Damon Moon who mixed and mastered the album at Standard Electric Recorders Co. in Atlanta, really took it to a whole new level.