Beloved New Zealand alternative pop band Yumi Zouma have today (Friday 17 March) released their 4th studio album Present Tense on [PIAS] Australia.
PRAISE FOR YUMI ZOUMA
“Yumi Zouma showcase a gentle melody that deals with staying present, digging deep, and tackling self-doubt, despite the unknown. It’s a cruisy car ride filled with relaxing vocals, uplifting instrumentals, and hopeful melodies that grant the mind breathing space and clarity – allowing us to appreciate the moment amidst the chaos.” – Happy Mag
“[Mona Lisa] is as textured as it is melodic, its final, soaring refrain culminating with a freewheeling saxophone solo.” – NME AU
“‘Mona Lisa’ sounds like a track that has been swimming about in your head for years.” – Beats Per Minute
“…prepare for some dream-pop motivation…” – Under The Radar
The theme of isolated togetherness and distant creativity has been a throughline for the band throughout their career. Originally formed in New Zealand, the members of Yumi Zouma now come together from around the globe: New York City (Josh Burgess – guitar, vocals), London (Charlie Ryder – guitar, bass, keys), Christchurch (Christie Simpson – vocals, keys) and Wellington (Olivia Campion – drums). And while you may assume that this global spread held their creative process in good stead for the realities of COVID-19 – the opposite proved to be true.
Without looming tour dates driving them to release new music, the prolific band found themselves at a standstill. So they set a date. By September 1st, 2021, the album needed to be finished, regardless of whether they’d be able to tour it or even meet to record together. With a mix of remote and in-person sessions in studios in Wellington, Florence, New York, Los Angeles, and London, what began in fits and starts became a committed practice again as Yumi Zouma dug through demos from as early as 2018 to collaborate on and make relevant to the peculiar moment in time the band, and world, was experiencing. “The lyrics on these songs feel like premonitions, in some regards,” Simpson reflects. “So much has changed for us, both personally and as a band, that things I wrote because the words sounded good together now speak to me in ways I didn’t anticipate.”
Bringing in new collaborators from different disciplines and from around the globe, the band enlisted disparate friends to contribute pianos, saxophones, woodwinds, pedal steels and strings, multiple mixers in Ash Workman (Christine & The Queens, Metronomy), Kenny Gilmore and Jake Aron (Grizzly Bear, Chairlift), and recruited the mastering expertise of Antoine Chabert (Daft Punk, Charlotte Gainsbourg) for the first time. In the end, two years away from the road and the bustle of touring life proved beneficial for the group, affording a new appreciation for the friendship they’ve sustained and the opportunity an abundance of time off-cycle offered. “We used to run on adrenaline, and if a song wasn’t working we’d just nip it in the bud and move on. This process gave us the opportunity to really sit with songs and rethink them until they felt like they belonged in the collection,” Burgess says.
There’s a defiance heard throughout Present Tense, a refusal to bend to what might seem fated, communicated not only through lyrics but in the boldness of these arrangements, metamorphosing between tracks without ever losing momentum. Dedicated to an embattled past, Yumi Zouma’s fourth album is the band’s offering to a tenuous future. “To 2020, and the memory of all that was lost,” they write in the album’s liner notes. “Kia Kaha.”
Yumi Zouma – Present Tense is released today, March 18 on [Pias] Australia
1. Give It Hell
2. Mona Lisa
3. If I Had the Heart For Chasing
4. Where the Light Used To Lay
5. Razorblade
6. In the Eyes of Our Love
7. Of Me And You
8. Honestly, It’s Fine
9. Haunt
10. Astral Projection
