Down in their colorful basement rehearsal room at 22 International Art Plaza in Beijing, Queen Sea Big Shark have been working overtime on their third disc. While they brought an electronic sheen to the country’s underground with their last, Wave, the synthesizers have been tucked away in a little-used corner as the band undergoes yet another reinvention.
“We wanted to go back to guitar, bass and drums,” explains guitarist Cao Pu. “There’s not so much electronic music or disco on this record.”
“The first album was us looking back at our history, and on our second album, we were looking towards the future and wanted to do something new,” adds front woman Fu Han.
“This album is about now. We don’t care about style or if it’s fashionable. We just want to express our thoughts about the world that we’re living in.”
It’s been a decade since Queen Sea Big Shark formed after Fu found inspiration at a P.K. 14 show. Their 2007 self-titled debut was among that year’s best sellers thanks to an infectious mix of surf-rock guitars, dance-punk rhythms and spunky attitude.
Converse recruited them for the single ‘Let’s Play,’ Mario Testino shot them for American Vogue and they were among the first Chinese bands to play around America, as part of the 2009 Hope for China tour with Hedgehog and Casino Demon.
During that jaunt, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs invited them to open for them in San Francisco, and the group are now seasoned veterans of international touring. They’ve played South by Southwest several times and were given a prime spot at the inaugural Modern Sky Festival in Central Park.
Despite the lag between albums, the group has remained in the public eye thanks to the hugely popular 2013 single ‘Bling Bling Bling,’ a turning point in the band’s career.
“That was the most difficult time for us,” Cao recalls. “We were unsigned, had few shows and were almost bankrupt. We knew we wanted to do something that was different.”
“We found our way to express ourselves in Chinese lyrics and are now able to do something crazy with them,” adds Fu, who admits that Cao often teases her by comparing her straight-forward writing style to “something written by a student.”
The group’s playful chemistry is abundantly clear. Their lineup has remained unchanged over the years – a rarity in the Chinese indie world. “It’s a strange chemistry,” bassist Wang Jinghan notes, while Fu admits that they “fight, but in a loving way.”
“Music is the most important thing for us,” Cao explains. “We do have a lot of arguments about that but never about things like how to share the money.”
The downside of their communal approach is that the band will never be accused of prolific. “It’s very difficult for us to write songs because we treat each motive very seriously,” Cao explains. “Each album takes three or four years from our lives.”
They aren’t joking. Twelve months after our visit with the band, To Wild Heart has finally surfaced. “There were all kinds of details that had to be adjusted, from the track listing to little sonic details,” Fu explains. “It ended up taking much longer than expected.”
With viral hits ‘Bling Bling Bling’ and ‘Mammoth’ included, the group’s third release is immediately essential. However, the extra time they spent on the album is worth it, with the band introducing sitar (‘Himalayas’), rap (‘Modern People are So Fancy’) and skewed slide guitar (’88 Olympics’) to their already colourful sound.
“For this album, we opened up the album creation process and invited a lot of jazz artists and producers to be involved,” Fu says, citing saxophonist Wu Letian as a prominent influence.
The singer promises the group will bring that free spirit on the road when their tour finally comes back home to Century Theatre on June 17 that they promise will be full of appearances of musical friends on stage.
“For us, creativity isn’t just in the music,” Fu says, hyping up the shows. “When people come to our show, they enter a different world that we’ve created.”
June 17, 8-11pm, RMB180-280. Century Theatre.
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