It’s been a minute since we caught up with one of Singapore’s premier indie rock bands Pleasantry. While the quintet have been pretty active on the gig circuit over the intervening years, the beloved group have been evasive when it comes to dropping new music. In fact, their last official release was nine years ago, a dreamy split EP with San Franciscan outfit Starry Eyed Cadet. Their last solo release, an incredible LP called Synapses, was put out in August of 2014, nearly 11 years ago.
Despite the lengthy absence (or perhaps because of), fans have been vociferously clamouring for fresh material from the band. Well, after a couple of false starts and frustrating delays, it’s finally here - a brand new Pleasantry album for your ears to savour! Preceded by outstanding singles such as ‘Constellation’ and ‘Quiet’, their cheekily titled new LP, Slow Burn, is a revelatory beaut that’s well worth the wait. Which is why we thought it’s about time we talked to the indie darlings for a long overdue catch-up.
It’s been over 10 years since your last album, and 9 years since your last split-EP release. How has the band changed in the decade since Synapses?
It’s so wild to think it’s been a decade! When we released Synapses, we were fresh out of school, navigating a simpler phase of life. Since then, we've been on unique journeys - balancing careers, nurturing relationships, and a few of us collaborating with other bands and artists.
Finding time to come together hasn’t always been easy, but we’ve always cherished each other’s company. If anything, the time away has given us a deeper appreciation for what we share. We’re still the same in so many ways across the years, but our approach to music has definitely matured. We’re more intentional about what we want to say and how we want to sound.
We’re assuming the title is a cheeky reference to how long this new album has been gestating. So… what took so long?
We ideated on a couple of names and Slow Burn resonated because this album has been a persistent, simmering passion that endured despite the life-balancing we were each doing in between. It’s definitely an intentional light jab at ourselves for taking so long, but at the same time, to us, the album title represents a reminder to find patience and relish the experience and passage of time in everything. Slow Burn, we feel, aptly parallels our sound - there’s a sense of journey and subtle intricacies we’ve tried to weave into our songs. We’ve always felt drawn to songs that cherished the time to say what they wanted to say.
We initiated the recording process in late 2018, but between careers and personal commitments, progress was sporadic – fitting things in between the realities of life, and finding time to get into the studio. We made progress when we could, but we never really set a hard deadline for ourselves - partly because we really didn’t want to rush it, and partly because we just weren’t pushing ourselves to finish it. For a while, we found ourselves in a cycle of inertia. But once we got organised and committed to seeing it through, things started falling into place. In hindsight, perhaps the delays also gave us some headspace to be intentional about how we wanted this album to take shape. We didn’t just want to put something out for the sake of it.
So in a way, Slow Burn isn’t just a nod to the time it took. It took longer than any of us expected, but we didn’t want to stop believing in the idea that we would eventually release it. And now that it’s finally out in the world, we couldn’t be prouder of what it took to get here.
Could you tell us about the recording process behind Slow Burn?
We recorded the entire album at Snakeweed Studios with our dear friend, the legendary Leonard Soosay. The process flowed really naturally at the recording stage as we’d already been performing most of the songs live for some time. Once our own parts were tracked, we had a couple of listening sessions to determine which songs might benefit from additional layers and elements. As many of these songs had been part of our live sets for years, we wanted to strike a balance between capturing the immediacy of our performances and expanding some of the songs in ways that wouldn’t have been possible in a live setting.
We roped in Bennett Bay who arranged the strings and keys for ‘Currents’, ‘Waxing Gibbous’, ‘Started Dreaming’, ‘Over & Under’, and ‘Quiet’. Myra Choo recorded the violin parts with twists of her own for ‘Waxing Gibbous’, ‘Started Dreaming’, and ‘Quiet’.
The songs on the latest album are new per se, but we’ve heard some of them at Pleasantry gigs for years now. Which of these songs have you guys been carrying the longest? And how have they evolved in the time it took to release them?
The songs have been quietly taking form for nearly a decade. Some were written not long after Synapses. Some songs had minor adjustments, while others had the instrumentation, lyrics, and melodies reworked and given a chance to take shape until they felt right. It was never about forcing them into place but rather allowing them to settle into their own identity.
Oddly enough, the album opener, ‘Currents’, is one of the oldest on the album and one of the last to be completed. We’ve played it live in different forms over the years, experimenting with intros, lyrics, and vocal melodies, but those variations didn’t feel truly right. It wasn’t until we were deep into recording that the vibe finally clicked and we landed on the version you can take home with you in the album.
‘Started Dreaming’ has been with us for some time too. The song really came into its own with the addition of Bennett’s keys, which brought out a warmth and depth that tied everything together, especially the interplay between the lead and rhythm guitars.
‘A Glimpse’ and ‘Constellation’ are also among the older tracks that evolved over time. In many ways, Slow Burn captures the journey these songs have been on, growing and shifting with us.
On the flip side, which of these songs are the newest? And how do they reflect the band’s current sensibilities?
‘Over and Under’ is one of the newer ones we wrote. It shares the same DNA as the other songs, but felt (strangely) both more complex and simpler at the same time. The play of rhythmic accents and interlocking patterns from the guitars, drums, bass, and vocals was a fun idea we wanted to try out – it’s pretty satisfying to dance with and around each other that way, especially live.
‘Waxing Gibbous’, another newer one, had tightly-wound lead-but-not-lead guitar parts that became a key feature of the song, while the outro section featured a call and response with vocals. We might’ve subconsciously leaned into exploring these sorts of interactions between our individual parts, through patterns of rhythm, or harmony. I suppose through the album’s progress, we just went with it and started having more fun approaching things this way.
‘Frequencies’ is a newer one too. It’s the only full-acoustic song we have on Slow Burn. We’ve always wanted to find some sense of balance across our songs, as a way to express ourselves in different setups and arrangements, and to create distinct peaks and troughs in our live performances.
What’s the most exciting thing about releasing new Pleasantry music after so long?
Honestly, just putting something out into the world again. These songs have lived with us for so long but they’re not truly alive until people hear them and make them their own. We’re excited to reconnect with old listeners and hopefully reach new ones too. And of course, getting to play them live and experience that shared energy with an audience again is something we’re looking forward to.
What gives you guys the most anxiety about releasing new Pleasantry music after so long?
There’s always that little voice in the side and front of our heads asking, “Will people still care?” “Will it resonate the way we hope it does?” But at the end of the day (and years), it’s been a long and personal journey for each one of us, and releasing Slow Burn is about more than just the reception. I think we’re all really glad and proud of this release, and maybe that’s what should always come first.
What’s next for Pleasantry? Anything that we should keep a lookout for?
We recently released two stripped down recordings and videos for ‘Quiet’ and ‘Constellation’, filmed at Isa Ong’s place. We wanted a homely, unpolished feel to reflect the raw and intimate side of these songs. The split-screen effect was something Isa envisioned before shooting, together with the overall album art direction with artist Juan Yong, and our friend Naufal, who shot and edited the videos, stitched the footages together even better than we imagined. If you haven’t seen them yet, definitely give them a watch!
We’ve got something completely different dropping in April - an animated music video created by yet another talented friend of ours, Sadiq Mansor. This project has been a labour of love with Sadiq spending months on meticulous planning and frame-by-frame animation. The level of dedication and creativity that went into it is beyond anything we expected, and we’re seriously excited to share it. We’ve never had animation set to our music before and we can’t wait for everyone to experience this fresh visual take on our music.
As for what’s next after that, nothing’s set in stone yet but we have a little idea - now we just need a plan to bring it together. Hopefully not as long as it took to make this album (wink).
