Interview: Asobi Seksu
Interview by Jessica Suarez More at home knob-twiddling than shoegazing, Asobi Seksu's James Hanna and Yuki are in part responsible for Citrus, one of this year's most quietly experimental (which is not to say quiet) records. While reviewers tend to focus on the band's supposed roots in that "other" wall of sound, Yuki and Hanna draw their material from more immediate sources, like bug-infested recording studios and food poisoning.
Pitchfork talked to keyboardists Hanna and Yuki, who also split vocal duties in Asobi Seksu.
Pitchfork: When you guys began playing in New York, you were kind of out of step with the other bands that were getting attention outside of Brooklyn. Was that discouraging?
JH: It's kind of hard to get any people to pay attention to you. We definitely played for two years for nobody. Or for friends who we begged to come out.
Pitchfork: On your website and it says, "Surprise! We actually got a great review on Pitchfork!" Were you expecting the worst?
Yuki: We were expecting a pan. All of our friends were being pretty cruel about it.
Pitchfork: What kind of friends are these? They're not coming out to shows, they're telling you to expect the worst?
Yuki: I know! We need to get new friends.
Pitchfork: It's really easy to hear a bunch of things in Citrus. It's more melody-based than a lot of bands and albums, more tuneful, I think. One of the other Pitchfork writers even said he heard a little bit of the Cranberries.
Yuki: Somebody else said that, too. I guess it's the range that I sing in. I know she sings in her head voice a lot. I get a lot of Cocteau Twins comparisons, and I think that has a lot to do with that vocal range as well, she's always singing in a higher register.
JH: I think I only know one Cranberries song.
Pitchfork: Between you two, how do you split up the songwriting?
Yuki: We split it up pretty evenly. James wrote the lyrics for "Red Sea" and he had this image in mind before he sat down and wrote it. That's all James. Obviously, the Japanese lyrics are written by me. A lot of the stuff on Citrus was written with me behind the drums, which is really strange but that's how it was written. With me singing vocals and playing the drums.
JH: Yuki's a sick drummer. She's actually the hardest hitting drummer I've ever seen.
Yuki: I love to play the drums. I kind of miss it now. Haji, the bassist and I, were threatening to quit and start a new band with just drums and bass.
Pitchfork: James, when Yuki writes lyrics in Japanese, do you ask to see a translation?
JH: Sometimes. There's at least one song, I think "New Years"-- I still have no idea what she's saying. I've never asked, and I don't think you ever told me.
Yuki: Really? I'm not saying anything weird, if you're worried.
JH: Nah, I don't care.
Pitchfork: Are there any songs that you do in Japanese where people would be surprised by the translation, because I know people are surprised by the translation of the band name.
Yuki: We're very strange people to begin with. Naturally a lot of our songs are going to have strange stories behind it, or strange lyrics. For example, the first song, "Strawberries", came from a phrase that James kept repeating over and over on the first tour. Probably because he was losing his mind. It was just a horrible tour. That was the tour our bands broke up on. He just kept saying, "Strawberries need to stop talking." I have no idea what that was about, but he just repeated it over and over. So I wrote a song about a field of strawberries that won't stop talking.
JH: That phrase just came into my head. That was when I had food poisoning in the back of the van. I was curled up for four hours. That phrase came into my head. It must mean something.
Pitchfork: Like a hallucination from a food-borne illness.
Yuki: Exactly. He was just hallucinating in the back seat, moaning to himself.
Pitchfork: I didn't know that you had broken up on tour.
Yuki: We were very desperate to make things work, and we were really just too hard on each other. You can't sustain that level of energy for that long. And it makes sense that you go on your first nationwide tour and you get to the furthest point from home and everything just falls apart, which is exactly what happened. Two of the other people that were in that band, one of them had never left home before, and I don't think he liked being on the road and being away from his girlfriend and from a comfortable bed. So there was a lot of tension there. Some people just can't handle being in a van. It's not easy.
Pitchfork: Are you the kind of band that argues a lot?
Yuki: I think the old band, the band that broke up, we never argued. And then we went on the road and there was one argument and it was over. No one even wanted to work it out, no one wanted to talk about it. It was just over, and that was it. They even threatened to go home in Seattle, when we still had over half the tour left. I don't know what it was over. I don't know what happened. With this band it's more reasonable. We have our arguments.
JH: Our bassist and drummer argue a lot because they have to share a bed together in hotels. The drummer punches the bass player in his sleep sometimes.
Yuki: He talks a lot in his sleep, and sometimes he screams in his sleep. He speaks in different languages. I don't know what goes on when he falls asleep, but it definitely pisses off the bass player. He'll dead-leg him in the middle of the night, like start wailing on him.
JH: Yeah, and our new member, who we just added, was an old roommate of mine and he's a serious sleep-talker, too.
Pitchfork: I wanted to ask about how you guys recorded Citrus. First of all, I read that you had sort of a problem with the building.
Yuki: The first day we started recording, the producer, Chris [Zane], looks at us all nervous and he's like, "Dude, there are bedbugs in this building." We all just started scratching. Somebody had it on the lower floors, and then it traveled up. At one point while we were recording, it was down the hall and we were freaking out because they were bringing all of their furniture into the hallway and dumping it on the street. We were having nightmares about that.
Pitchfork: How do you guys like to record? You told me you like to write songs together, but how does the recording process go for you all?
Yuki: James is notorious for his charts, so he had a lot of charts. When we walked in, [the producer] was like, "You guys are trying to make a six-week album in two-weeks, you realize that?" It was just a mad rush to get to the finish line. I had one day to record all the vocals and the overdubs.
Pitchfork: It's good that you still took time to try new things.
Yuki: Chris was getting nervous because I think we were running out of tracks at one point.
JH: We weren't running out of tracks.
Yuki: Are you sure?
JH: You can't run out of tracks in this day and age.
Pitchfork: I had heard that you all do a cover of "Then He Kissed Me". Are you big fans of 60's girl groups?
Yuki: I love all those girl group records, but as a kid I didn't have a record player. I started off with my Paula Abdul and Bell Biv Devoe tapes. I listened to a lot of classical music and jazz and played piano a lot as a kid.
And you know there's controversy over whether it was accidental or not how Phil Spector found his Wall of Sound, how he came up with this technique. But either way, the sound he created on record was amazing, and so to be able to experiment with a song like that was a lot of fun for us.
JH: I grew up on like punk stuff and then Sonic Youth. Stuff like that. I have some dope vinyl.
Pitchfork: I remember buying Bell Biv Devoe tapes.
JH: I never bought Bell Biv Devoe tapes.
JH: I bought Motley Crue tapes and shit.
Yuki: Right, right. Sophisticated.
Pitchfork: You know, a lot of people won't own up to buying the TLC stuff. Everyone pretends like their first record was a Sonic Youth record.
Yuki: Oh, please, I have no shame. That was how we got into music, was James telling me that he loved Motley Crue and it was his first concert.
JH: No, Poison was my first concert. With my dad and my friends.
Yuki: Did he cover your eyes when the girls flashed their boobs?
JH: I don't think girls were doing that. Maybe. Although, I think I would have remembered.
Pitchfork: Most people tend to focus on you, Yuki. Has it been positive or negative-- that weird, nerdy male music fan attention?
Yuki: Not so much. Maybe they're too shy to make themselves visible. I've had my fair share of weirdos. I think with any female musician, or female singer, front person, they're going to attract a certain amount of creepy guys. And most of them, they're harmless. They'll shyly come up to you and maybe say something weird. But that's the extent of it.
Pitchfork: What is the weirdest thing that you've heard from someone approaching the band?
Yuki: Someone talking to me about anime. That was weird. And I think I was surrounded by three of them at once, and they were all calling me Asobi. That definitely creeped me out.
Pitchfork: No one tries to go up to you and speak Japanese, do they?
Yuki: Sometimes it's someone who's like, "I'm learning how to speak Japanese, do you mind if I practice?" And I'm like, "Yeah, I mind." I'm not too fond of that, especially because I obviously speak English very well. I was born here. But I figure it comes with the territory.
Pitchfork: James hasn't had to defend you honor or anything?
Yuki: I don't think that James is that kind of guy. I think he'd let me sink with the ship if he had to. He'll see me trapped and kind of smirk and will go away.
JH: Dude, everybody saved you a bunch of times. I don't know what you're talking about.
Yuki: I know, I'm joking. Nothing where he's had to defend my honor. Not yet
