30 May 2016

Verse Chorus Verse: Yumi Zouma walk us through their new album Yoncalla

12:29 pm on 30 May 2016
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Photo: Chad Kamenshine

Verse Chorus Verse sees local artists break down the stories behind their music. For the latest in the series, we asked Yumi Zouma to break down each of the songs from Yoncalla, their new album which dropped late last week.

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Barricade (Matter of Fact)

Charlie Ryder: The bones of this one had been lying around for a few years as a pretty minimal track with no chorus or anything. I thought that it was a pretty basic song that wasn't going to become much, mainly because I didn't know where else to take it. Then the song came up again when everyone else came to stay with me to record stuff after the European tour for EP II, and Josh and Christie added the chorus' chord progression and melody, turning it into a real song. It came together really quickly and I think that this was probably the first song we finished together for Yoncalla.

Text From Sweden 

Christie Simpson: I love the duet elements in this one... they lend a very slight R&B air to the song, which I'm super into. I love this track and listening to it instantly takes me back to Paris in springtime - possibly one of the greatest things a song could ever remind you of!

Josh Burgess: This song was a skeleton when we started working on it in Charlie's apartment in Paris in 2015. I worked on the lyrics in the bath (not on, just chilling in there). A lot of it is about trying to feel connected with people when you travel a lot (something we all have experienced). I think the line "who am I to try and save us, haven't felt you close in ages" really captures that feeling. This song also has a little easter egg for die-hard Yumi Zouma fans - the vinyl version has an alternative bridge which features Charlie's girlfriend Emily reciting a spoken word section.

Keep It Close To Me

Christie: I can't believe how far this song has come from the demo version - I honestly I never thought this one would be the first single! The first lyrics (purely as a placeholder) were about Charlie's favourite souvlaki place in our hometown. It really did undergo a huge transformation, and it's one of my favourites now. 

Haji Awali

Charlie: This track was more of a story of making marginal edits - the vibe of the song was always there in the beginning, but it was one we just had to keep working on, trying out different arrangements, adding in new parts etc, until it finally became a finished song. The choruses ended up changing the most, with lots of different melodies being put in and taken out. I think it was one of first tracks we started on and one of the last that ended up going on the record.

Remember You At All

Sam Perry: I originally recorded this song on my first tour with Yumi Zouma in 2014 during a stint in New York living with my good mate/co-label manager Andi Wilson (who recorded harmonies on the original version). It wasn't until the following year that I showed it to my bandmate Charlie who - being less enthusiastic about my taste for the slightly more dissonant and a strong believer in my potential for pop success - hijacked the stems and created a totally new song. The rest is history. We all loved it, so Christie got cracking on the vocal magic, Josh embellished it with his fabulous lil' Josh-isms, and voila! 

Yesterday

Christie: This is definitely my favourite track on the album. Josh mentioned at once stage that it sounds a little like Tango in the Night-era Fleetwood Mac, and that's probably their influence shining through my contribution! This one has a great memory attached; we were all dancing around Josh's apartment and coming up with new melodies that we were recording as voice memos. I remember trying out a bunch of melodies and finding one that stuck - it was one of those fantastic moments where everything just fits and feels great. I really feel a special attachment to this song for that reason.

Better When I'm By Your Side

Sam: This started off as a song I wrote about five years ago, and while I'd ditched that demo I still wanted to incorporate the chord progression into something. So, given we'd been joking about doing a total 180 and making a post-punk Yumi Zouma for a while, I got cracking and made a track with Charlie. When I woke up, he had totally transformed it into something far less aggressive and far more sexy (he has a knack of doing that). 

Short Truth

Charlie: This one is pretty full-on and we spent a while working on it. It was another one where we spent a lot of time just making marginal edits until we got it right, adding in a bit of backup vocals or guitar here and there. It wasn't until Josh added the pre-chorus guitar line that it all kind of came together.

Hemisphere 

Josh: This is my favourite song on the album. Where it started and where it ended up are two very drastically different places. It's working title was Project Sleep which was a reference to the insomnia I was dealing with (mostly a result of a few big weekends back-to-back that ruined my sleeping schedule). Those weekends were spent at parties listening to deep house music really really loud until the sun came up. Something I thought I'd never do, but tastes change and people change (which is what the lyrical content is mostly about). 

Drachma

Charlie: This track was an interesting one because I think we only started working on it on the final day of the writing week we spent in New York. We were just messing around, finishing up, and then we came across an old track that Josh had kicking around on his computer, and just started jamming with it, recording weird little string sounds and stuff on top of it with Josh's Motif keyboard. Then we got our friend Andrew Keoghan to record actual strings, and that really brought the track to life.

Follow Yumi Zouma on Facebook and hit up their official site for more.