In Conversation With - Tokyo Tea Room
Tokyo Tea Room are back with their trademark dreamy psych-pop sound. Their new single ‘Half The Man’ sees the band go in a more melancholy direction. We spoke to the band about finding a musical style and the inspiration behind their music.
How are you?
Not bad considering the situation, looking forward to life after lockdown!
How would you describe your sound?
I think our sound is quite dreamy, glassy sounding with hints of pop. We define the genre as dream pop for that reason but if you listen close enough there’s some other stuff going on.
How did you form?
We started at university, where we used to gig on campus and at uni social events. We took a break for a while but then got back together and it’s evolved into the band we are today.
What is your new single 'Half The Man' about?
It’s about feeling as though something happened in your life that diverted you off the path that you were perhaps supposed to take, commenting on how it defined who you turned out to be, and coming to terms with that.
How does it feel to write such personal lyrics?
Writing personal lyrics feels quite freeing, it’s nice to be able to have a sense of release for your emotions. I think everyone has that kind of creativity, if you apply a part of yourself to it the end result feels more genuine and might invoke others to connect to it.
'Half The Man' moves away from the dreamy sound of previous singles. What made you decide to move in a new direction?
I think within the spectrum of Tokyo Tea Room we are wanting to explore some of our more darker sounds as well as the lighter dreamy sound. ‘Half the Man’ is an example of that, I believe it’s all in the same direction just with a few different routes. It’s nice for us to have that kind of output, we all have different musical backgrounds and sometimes our music might reach out towards something that one of us feels more inspired by. It’s funny because when you release a piece of work like an album, the music that makes up that body of work should, in my opinion, take you on a bit of a journey that makes sense as a cohesive piece of work. For us, and because of the modern way music is consumed, we are defined by each single we release. From our perspective this single is part of a broader identity, and it’s weird because to enable people to get to know us properly we have to introduce ourselves slowly, by releasing one song after another until one day we are able to produce a piece of work like an album.
What's next for you?
Just more music, it’s impossible to get together at the moment but when we can we’ll be in the studio writing and recording more records.