It’s all the more impressive considering the secret to their success is simply friendship, Dropbox and a mutual love of pop music.
“We all got really into One Last Time by Ariana Grande,” vocalist Christie Simpson says. “Josh [Burgess, guitar] has a pattern on tour where he’ll find a song he likes and then every time we get in a car he’ll play it. When we set off for the next town or whatever, he’ll put it on. I think it probably reached its peak for that song when we were in Japan. We went and did karaoke and had a lot of beer and absolutely belted that song out – all four of us and our friends that were with us.”
Geographically separated, with members in Paris, New York and home in Christchurch, the Kiwi band spend most of their time working remotely via Dropbox, uploading parts and ideas. For Willowbank – their forthcoming sophomore LP – they decided to convene on home soil to write and record with some proximity. It’s a new dynamic for the band, and one that’s challenged them to improve as collaborators.
“Ideas get rejected, so it’s more like working in real time. It’s quite scary actually but I think it helped us grow a little bit as songwriters and become a little bit less embarrassed if we have a bad idea,” Simpson says.
The results speak for themselves. Willowbank maintains Yumi Zouma’s delicate pop sensibilities, but pulls them into tighter focus. Gone is the ephemeral quality of their internet compositions, where you can hear the wash of timezones as they overlap, each part riffing on the same theme but in isolation, cleverly layered for sonic nicety, but without a unified purpose.
“I think we all agree within the band that this is our best album yet. There’s still a lot of parts that get done separately, but it’s those final parts that tie it all together when we’re actually recording vocals and writing lyrics – we do all of that together.”
Simpson also cites the recording process for drawing more intimacy from her delivery, as having access to quality equipment really captured the depth of her voice.
“The vocals were all recorded in a studio for the first time, so a lot of the songs on this album, my vocals are just one track. They’re my raw voice that’s been produced really well but it sounds a lot clearer. You can hear the nuance of my voice so much more compared to our previous recordings. It gives it a different feeling.”
Simpson has always been a huge fan of the band, even before she took over from previous vocalist Kim Pflaum. Despite the daunting task, Simpson feels confident now that both she and the band have managed to evolve without having to compromise.
“It was obviously a huge role to fill and it made me very anxious for a long period of time to try and live up to that reputation. I think since joining it’s given me my own thing that I’ve developed within myself but also brought to the band. It’s a little bit different these days which is good. If we continued in that same vein with me just trying to be somebody else I don’t that would have come across as very genuine.”
Simpson is pretty zen about her sudden rise to international stardom, attributing her presence in the band to Christchurch being a really, really small place. Sam Perry, the group’s bassist, just happened to be dating her sister when Yumi Zouma were in the market for a new vocalist.
“I think that’s probably one of the reasons that I was actually asked to join the band. Sam was [my sister’s] boyfriend, and then he became my bandmate and one of my best friends.”
The band wouldn’t have it any other way. “We all love doing it. It’s so much fun to be able to travel the world and write music together. There’s no sign of us slowing down.”
