Track by track: Yumi Zouma - ‘Yoncalla’

This was one of the first truly collaborative songs we did after the EP ‘II’. The bones of this one had been lying around for a few years as a pretty minimal track with no chorus or anything, before we finished it in Charlie’s apartment after the last EP ‘II’ tour. This is one of my favourites because it’s probably the first song we finished for the album and it’s a bit more flowy and breezy, but still with a heavy sentiment. It reminds me of a sinking feeling I get sometimes, but maybe its also a song that shouldn’t be over thought - It’s got an upbeat feel which is a bit different to our other songs and It kind of reminds me of the Calypso ice block that was available in NZ in the ’90s.

At first we thought it might be a little bit too much to have this kind of vibe on the album.. it’s a bit of a heavy song that references Christie’s long-term relationship ending, and the feeling of hopelessness that comes when you know a relationship is coming to end, and you feel so far away from someone and that is only made worse by being physically far away from that person on tour at the same time. But it’s not all bad - it kind of reflects an acceptance of that hopelessness, and the duet vocals kind of embrace that.. It’s not all doom and gloom. I love the feel and tempo of it, we haven’t really captured something like that before. It was also exciting as it was the first time Sam had sang lead on a YZ track!

‘KICTM’ started out as a song Charlie wrote as something else completely different, but the positive feeling remained even after we stripped the song to its bare bones and started again. No one really liked this song in the beginning - the transformation it went through was kind of like what had happened with ‘Alena’, where we took a demo we weren’t happy with and completely removed everything apart from the vocals, and started again, rebuilding from the ground up. In the end it was quite a weird surprise that it ended up being the track it is now, and something we chose to be the first single off the album.

This song is about Josh growing up in Bahrain. It’s one that took us a long time to write - it was a story of making marginal edits. The feeling of the song was always there in the beginning, but it was something 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 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.

This is such a great one to talk about because it’s also a song on Sam’s new Zen Mantra record, played in a totally different style. Sam was staying over at Charlie’s place one night, playing the original demos for his album, and he loved ‘Remember You At All’ so much he stayed up all night producing a new version of the track on Logic. The final version of the YZ track still features a lot of the stuff that was in the original Zen Mantra version of the track, especially a lot of Sam’s vocals that we ended up messing around with a bit. This one reminds me of being apathetic in Christchurch after the earthquakes and no one caring about anything anymore.

‘Yesterday’ was a fun one to do because it was one of the ones where you all get really enthusiastic about a track and transform it really quickly - it was borne out of a great moment one night when we were all coming up with ideas super fast. It’s one of the most collaborative songs on the album - it started off from another track that we had been working on, before we took the verse and wrote a completely new song around it. That verse just had such a great vibe that we were all dancing around Josh’s apartment and coming up with new melodies that we were recording as voice memos. It was such a feel good vibe, and one of my fondest memories from that time in New York. The song has a lot of fun vocal runs, and the verses get a little bit seductive with some glimpses into the world of Christie Simpson (ie. accidentally getting too invested in intimacy which can be confusing/amazing, and going out with your bestie before hanging out with a cute boy for the first time who you never thought was on the cards and then getting weirded out by guys who pretend they don’t want to hang out with you until they are in person and get so flirty and then you get really annoyed when they don’t text you back), so it’s very fun to do live. Jimi is just my friend from Christchurch.

This was another one of Sam’s songs that started off as a Zen Mantra demo. I think he was playing us stuff that he wasn’t going to include on his new album, and even though he wasn’t totally keen on it, we were like “whaaat this song is amazing”, so we started working on it straight away. Josh and Christie were working on something else in the living room, so Charlie and Sam went into Josh’s bedroom and just started jamming on logic on Josh’s bed. I think we tried do it in double time at first, like Sam had it in the original demo, but it was kind of weird, so we cut the feel in half and voila. It’s about craving solitude, but still needing to keep busy to keep going, and needing friends around to laugh at jokes and keep away the feelings of loneliness that you get when all you can think about is how we’re all going to die and nothing really matters.

‘Short Truth’ is an optimistic song about looking forward, but being stuck in a place with bad stuff happening to you all the time, the same stuff happening over and over, making the same mistakes, but knowing that eventually you might be okay if you get one piece of luck going your way. Musically, this one is pretty full-on, and so 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’ was the hardest song to work on, because for some reason the Logic session was gigantic, and it would often crash whenever we edited something. It would take about 5 minutes to move one piece of audio around. So we had to become really selective about what we changed, as it was one of the last songs we did, and we were running out of time. I think we finished it right at the end of the mixing process, signing off on it just before Josh left to go back to New York. This one is one of those Sunday night kind of songs when the endorphins are low and you’re in a super reflective state. It’s a cathartic song live with the punchy bass and kick.

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. This one is for anyone who is with someone but knows that something has never been right. It’s definitely imbued with a suspicious and unsettled vibe - feeling worried that you’re falling for someone who doesn’t know how to make time for you or treat you the way you want to be treated.

Yumi Zouma’s new album ‘Yoncalla’ is out now. They play London’s Moth Club tonight (21st June).

Tags: Yumi Zouma, News, Listen