Rogue Wave Perform Live on the Interface

In the past few years, Oakland indie pop act Rogue Wave haven't had the easiest of times. Multi-instrumentalist Pat Spurgeon struggled with kidney failure, the search for a donor and facing the realities of undergoing twice a day dialysis to keep him afloat. Guitarist/vocalist Zach Rogue randomly awoke one morning with two slipped discs in his neck, causing him to be paralyzed for a bit and undergo months of bedridden rehab.

"The doctor I was seeing said I had to throw in the towel, stop playing music 'cause he said I couldn't physically do it, said I'd have possible paralysis so he said I had to stop completely," Rogue tells Spinner during a recent Interface taping at our New York studio. "So I was thinking I'd maybe learn to play the Theremin or something, but after a few months went by and I started actually picking up the guitar again and writing, then there was no doubt that we'd keep playing."

Indeed, the band pressed on. Though Rogue still has permanent loss of feeling in his thumb, he was able to eventually get the foundation down for what's become the band's fourth album, 'Permalight.'

"When I started writing again, it was months later and I felt like a new musician," he says. "'I had limitations that I didn't have before, in terms of how to actually play but it made me excited to go in a different direction and try to make more physical, rhythmic music. I'm not glad I felt all that pain, but I'm glad that it happened in the sense that I think ultimately, it served our music better."

While 'Permalight' found the band recording for months in Oxford, Miss., working to build a full sound between just the two of them, Rogue Wave's Interface taping presents the new songs in a rare, stripped-down format that highlights the poignancy these songs were born out of.