Asobi Seksu’s Citrus, out on Friendly Fire since May 30, is a dreamscape of reverb and darkly girlish singing. The day after performing for a sold-out crowd at New York’s Mercury Lounge, singer Yuki checked in to share her thoughts on bilingual lyrics, kitties and the band’s forthcoming music video.

So I know you’ve been described as a shoegaze band. Do you think that’s accurate?
Yes and no. I mean obviously the influence is there. We do pay homage to the bands that we love, but I think that there are more elements than just shoegaze. I guess people will write us off as just another shoegaze band because there’s distortion and reverb on our guitars, but I think our songs are more poppy and there’s more structure and we’re more rhythmic. Those elements were not part of the shoegaze scene so I think we try to bring in some other elements and bring a sound that’s all our own. I do see why people say that, but I’m hoping that people will dig a little deeper.

When you’re writing a song, where does the decision come from to have a lyric be in English or Japanese?
It’s always just a coin toss. If a song feels good in Japanese, it will just end up in Japanese. Sometimes I will start out wanting to write a Japanese song and other times if it doesn’t work out in English, I’ll say, “You know what? I’ll just write Japanese lyrics for this one.� It depends.

How did you get the idea for “Strawberries�? It’s about a field of talking strawberries?
Honestly, it’s because James, our guitar player, is just a complete lunatic. He’ll come up with these strange phrases. One of them was “the strawberries need to stop talking.� We’re like, “What the hell does that even mean?� But it just kind of stuck with me and I actually sat down and wrote lyrics about it, and there you go.

You started your new album with a 17-second instrumental track called “Everything Is On.� Why did you decide to do that?
Honestly, we just kind of liked the idea of having a short intro to kind of warm up the listener. And I guess it’s kind of a short overture sort of thing.

How do you think this new album is different from your self-titled debut?
The debut album was something that was recorded pretty early on and we kind of recorded it for ourselves. We never really thought that it would get released and get out there. So we really weren’t able to write it as an album or record it as an album. This time around, we really put a lot of thought into everything––the songs, how we wanted to record it and the sound we wanted to get. We went in with a very specific idea so I guess it sounds more like a whole album to me.

Did you have any specific goals for the album?
I’m hoping that it helps us get a deal with a big indie label. I guess that’s our goal, to hopefully jump up and become an established band, so that we don’t have to have day jobs anymore.

You performed at CMJ’s Music Marathon last September. What do you think of college radio? Has that been important to the band?
We’re so happy that college DJs and radio stations around the country have been so enthusiastic about this record and have been so supportive. It definitely gets our music out there and we get more fans through this. We get a bunch of people telling us, “I heard you on such and such station, I’m a really big fan, now I have to buy the record,� so I think it definitely helps.

Are those kittens on your album cover?
There’s a weird story behind that. We actually played a festival in Northampton last Fall and we went into a weird novelty store. Our friend Sean, who designed the album cover, found these weird stuffed cats and he was like, “I know this sounds weird and you think I’m crazy, but I’m going to buy these now, and believe me, they’re going to go to good use.� We’re like, “Okay.� Then he drew his idea for the album cover and he’s like, “It’s going to have cats in it, we’re going to need those cats that I bought,� and there you go. I guess yeah, we put those cats to good use.

The actual name of your band translates from colloquial Japanese to mean “playful sex.� How did that come about?
Honestly, I really don’t even know. It was just one of those things that came into my head and we figured it works because our music is so visceral and sensual and playful and all those things. We figured, hey, it works, so we’ll use it.

Do you have anything you want to add?
We just actually finished a video for “Thursday� and we’ll probably be posting it on our website and MySpace pretty soon. It was directed by So Yong Kim and Bradley Rust Grey, two directors we befriended at Sundance. They actually used our songs “Walk on the Moon� and “Sooner� and “I’m Happy But You Don’t Like Me� for their movie In Between Days, which won an award at Sundance, so that’s how we became friends. They wanted to make this video and I think it’s absolutely beautiful so I can’t wait for people to see it.

Interview By Megan Brown

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 11th, 2006 at 12:21 pm and is filed under Interviews, Posts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.