It was pretty much exactly two and a half years ago (although it seems much longer, thanks to the circumstances of the last couple of years) that Leng Pleng sat down with comic artist and singer-songwriter Joshua Chiang, Singaporean expatriate and Phnom Penh resident, to talk about songwriting and his then new band Psykic Elektric. Today, 21 April 2022, his long-awaited solo album, Everything Under The Sun, finally appears on Bandcamp.
You can listen (and purchase) here, at the listening party tonight at Cloud, and at the official launch with The Boxchords (and Gareth Bawden) at the same venue on Friday. The first single/lyric video, also released today is I Wanna (Spend All My Time in the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame).
Under the genre banner bedroom pop – meaning it was mostly recorded in Josh’s home studio – this is a full length 12 track album of songs, walking the fine line between influence and reverence and managing to hang together as a cohesive, dynamic whole. A meticulously layered sound rounds out songs that previously were only heard with limited instrumentation. Also a standout are Josh’s confident, nuanced vocals. The album was mixed by Singapore indie rock veteran Patrick Chng.
“There is a certain overarching structure to the album,” says Josh. “Even though there is not a single mention of the city within the lyrics (because I don’t seem to be capable of writing songs about places) in my mind this album will always be tied to Phnom Penh. On some level it tells of a spiritual journey. I left Singapore because I knew I needed a change in order to grow, to figure things out. I ended up confirming to myself what is important in my life. Firstly music, and then there’s a lot of ruminations about love, but not in an I-want-you-girl kind of way. It is a search for a mature, sustaining form of love.”
The press release calls the album “an unapologetic love letter to the music that has inspired Josh.” Leng Pleng asked the question about the strength of influence and inspiration versus honest to goodness this-is-the-sound-I-like. “It’s really hard,” says Josh, “On one hand you want the song to sound a particular way. Until you reach a certain level of maturity in songwriting – which I’m nowhere close to – I think one is always trying to rewrite a song that you know and like. At the same time, there is a tension between wanting to sound the same and not wanting to be too closely identified with the influence. I’m not sure if I struck that balance. For example, would someone who doesn’t know that I am a huge fan of U2 be able to detect the sound of U2, or would they be able to hear the attempt to distance myself from U2?”
Besides writing all the songs, Josh sang and played almost all the tracks, bringing in other players for drums, trumpet (Christopher Yong Lin) and some of the lead guitar parts. “You get a difference between, say, I Wanna and Won’t Fade Away from the rest of the songs, where [lead guitarist] Jared Ferrie had a very different and more bluesy instinct to Denver Danang, who plays lead on most of the other songs.”
Joshua Chiang pictured questioning his decision to make an album. Photo: Rob Narciso
This set of songs was written over a 15 year period. “The earliest is If I Could Keep Up With You, almost the first song I ever wrote, back in 2006, 2007. It was written while on vacation in Ho Chi Minh City – obviously I had a crush on someone. Back then it had a completely different melody, and I played it with the indie post-Brit pop style band I had at the time. By the time I came to Phnom Penh the band had disbanded and the song was forgotten, and wasn’t actually intended to be on the album until the last minute – it was one of the last songs that ended up being completed.”
Over this period Josh feels his songwriting style and process has changed a great deal. Three or four years ago his acoustic trio The Boxchords started to include funk and neo-soul elements in their repertoire of cover songs. “The majority of the songs on the album reflect this attempt to put two very different styles together. If I Could Keep Up With You is what if the Bee Gees were to do an Arrested Development song. Won’t Fade Away was my attempt to write Streets of Philadelphia that somehow became a Bob Dylan song. What do you say is Bob Dylan meets Johnny Cash.”
The change in writing was also facilitated by the use of music software. “GarageBand has really helped with my songwriting process. There’s only so much you can do, writing-wise, with an acoustic guitar, I’m not imaginative enough to know what the song is going to sound like eventually and I felt I was going around in circles.
“Everything Under The Sun – I don’t know where that song came from. I was messing around with some jazz chords and came up with a progression that sounded cool. I invented a character for the song: in gift shops there’s always a very Gothic-looking depressed young girl with black cropped hair, a Wednesday Addams vibe. ‘I live under a rock’ – what does that mean? An experiment in writing something that doesn’t quite make coherent sense.”
Last year Josh visited Singapore and inconveniently and unexpectedly stayed there for many months – it was 2020 and COVID hit Cambodia. Out of that experience came a song that, in demo form, made it to number three in the RadioOun.com Top 100 Songs of All Time poll. “A Friend For The End Of The World wasn’t even meant to be on the album. It was almost finished, and then COVID came, and out of that came A Friend. I loved the song so much that I decided to throw in on – it doesn’t fit anywhere else. It is less an album closer and more an epilogue. It might be an indication of where I’m going next. But then when I write something I’m proud of I’m always afraid that I’ll never write something better.”
Josh’s own favourites? The ones he is most wants to construct lyric videos for. “I Wanna and Love Has Its Own Mind have been done already. Patrick, who mixed the album, says Love is the best track. Don’t Let Them Get You Down, that’s the next one I’m planning – the angriest song on the album, although it sounds happy; it’s basically a list of things that piss me off. Everything Under The Sun, because it’s just so weird. A Friend For The End Of The World. What Do You See is a song that seems to connect with people, surprisingly, for such a pessimistic song. I’m not sure there’s a good lyric video in that one though.”
Get along to the listening party tonight or the official launch on Friday, both events at Cloud, and stay tuned for the return of Josh’s dance rock band Psykic Elektric.