Suchmos "THE BAY"
Interview & Text: Daisuke Sawada
Only a few months after dropping their first-time nationwide-available EP “Essence”, acid-jazz/neo-soul-rooted band, Suchmos is already delivering their full-scale album.
With all members raised in Kanagawa Prefecture, “We’re like a bunch of childhood buddies or long-standing friends” explains OK (Dr), who shared their musical backbone through a period of “playing and dancing to YouTube videos we would fish around night after night, before forming the band”, follows YONCE (Vo). Even before their CD debut, the band had been winning extremely favorable reputation with their soul music-oriented sounds and reliable performances, and gradually coming to the forefront, last year, they found themselves landed as the closing act of the [ROOKIE A GO-GO] stage (the gateway-to-fame stage for new artists) at the FUJI ROCK festival. This latest album would be marked as a significant piece of work that reveals their path to success.
“We weren’t really satisfied with the previous EP as we couldn’t quite bring our best colour in to it. Given that, we were like ‘okay, we just HAVE to make a super-awesome album this time!’ Simply listen to this (album), and you would get to know how the band Suchmos stands now. Actually, you probably won’t be able to know our band unless you listen to our music in this bulk volume”, explains YONCE.
Including self-produced works of the past, their music in general has exhibited their impartial respect and likings of musicians such as Jamiroquai or J Dilla. However, while the track “GIRL” that features freestyle rapper, Ryohu, gives a snap to the album, their main attention is set firmly to band ensembles, deeply pursuing the grooviness and mellowness of soul music. The narrowly-focused sounds indicate their vision clearly.
“I used to want to lay YONCE’s vocals on hip hop-ish tracks, but realized that sounds like that lacks the dynamism of live performances. Being a band, what needs to be cool is our live performances, and that mindset seems to be firmly connected with the change of the sounds.” (OK)
Now, from this album, the band has welcomed new guitarist, TAIKING, along newly welcoming a DJ, KCEE. The introduction of the turntablism resonates freshly, invoking the mixture movement from back around 2000.
“We’ve added voices or percussive sounds by scratching, - doing something similar to the chases of backing singers. We were amazed with how much a DJ could do. And we appreciate being able to make smoother rendering at live performances.” (OK)
Any contiguity to soul or funk sounds may be regarded as a mode not unusual in music scenes domestically and internationally. Though, in Suchmos’ case, their interpretation of soul music is somewhat different from the ‘smart’ approach well seen nowadays accompanying a kind of unsophisticatedness, where some tracks even display expressions of a heavy rock band. Their deep insight that is impossible to be explained in a single context indicates the potential they hold.
“I’m not very keen on making our intentions too obvious, and perhaps I had that somewhere in my mind. Also, I did try to make each and single track something simple and easy-to-understand, but didn’t want the band as a whole to be something too easy-to-understand. You know how there are these people who simply can’t get out of their fixed image. I wanted to avoid getting that.” (YONCE)
That’s how YONCE puts it, and in fact, each individual track is fairly approachable and comes with a catchy attraction, which is one big strength Suchmos can pride themselves in.
“We have all been listening to classics like Stevie Wonder, and we intend to show that influence naturally. We have not the least intention to look cynical, or be swayed by how the music scene is.” (YONCE)
YONCE comments that they “want to reach the level of filling in a stadium one day”, but such potential is already seen in this album. This first album is definitely a large-scaled piece of work, full of spirit that proudly walks the high road.
