Observers In Sync: The Steve McQueens Refuse To Pick Sides On Their 5th Album

It’s always a magical fusion with these gifted musicians (Credit: Courtesy of Umami Records)

How much are you willing to bend the pre-conceived formalities of music? This is a challenge that's always spurred the motivation of The Steve McQueens, an outfit with a whimsical sound that manically pirouettes amid the domains of neo-soul, nu-jazz, r&b and synth-pop. Currently comprising Eugenia Yip on vocals, Joshua Wan on keys, Jase Sng on bass and Anson Koh on drums, the experimental quartet are all masters of their craft. Like the assembly of a super team in tight sync, The Steve McQueens steer a sonic identity built on impregnable chemistry and a towering level of musical aptitude. This dynamic has kept their mutual exploits intact since their formation in 2013, and they now place another cherry atop their legacy with a new fifth album, The Observer.

The eight-track LP is a pill of rebellion to those who doggedly perpetuate the necessity of picking sides, rising above the perceived “culture clash between jazz traditionalists and the new vanguard”, or so they declare in their press release. The Steve McQueens simply pull off whatever feels natural to them, and it pays off in this record that’s been tested on the road. The album features material performed during their regional Nerd Lounge tour of Japan and Indonesia. It’s a vivid distillation of their onstage experiences and evolving improvisations that’s survived beyond the crippling inactivity of the pandemic, forcing the band to reproduce the live energy of these songs through muscle memory and archived notes while recording. The result is a full-length that is as spunky as their capricious performances; a deluge of wild-card deliveries that flip the script with unmatchable vision and technique.

Sharing more about The Observer and their growth as a band for the last eight years, The Steve McQueens keep it cool and casual – just like their music.

From left to right, The Steve McQueens are Joshua Wan, Eugenia Yip, Jase Sng and Anson Koh (Credit: Courtesy of Umami Records)

How would you say the band has retained the essence of The Steve McQueens over the years?

Joshua: It’s just a matter of us playing the music and enjoying it together. For me, I write the music and it becomes material for us to improvise over. There’s a whole thing about playing cover versions and getting the exact version of the thing you hear. And I guess there’s part of it where it gives you a bit of satisfaction as a musician, but there’s also a big part of it that feels pointless. So we’re two steps ahead of that. The band makes a version of a song that we all enjoy playing so we’re not really covering anything. We have material to fool around with.

In a way, we’re making versions of things that influence us, filtering stuff we know and making it unique. We all do it. And when we all do it at the same time, then you have something that's unique from the four of us. We haven’t really changed that much. From 2013, we’re generally the same people most of the time.

“We don’t kill each other after hanging out or being in the same room for more than five hours. I think that’s a good sign!” (Credit: Courtesy of Umami Records)

How would you describe the chemistry between you all, and how does it benefit the music?

Joshua: How we feel about each other changes on a daily basis haha. We’re committed to the process of making the music and if we’re all lined up with that, we automatically line up with each other. We get along having the same kind of big picture.

Eugenia: We don’t kill each other after hanging out or being in the same room for more than five hours haha. I think that’s a good sign! That’s always a good place to start.

Tap on each artwork to listen to the respective album.

In general, your sound is loose and unpredictable, bearing omnidirectional potential. How do you get into this zone when jamming together? Is everything built on spontaneity?

Joshua: I recently saw this Steely Dan documentary. They go in with a sketch and they call a rotating roster of top musicians to play and work stuff out, and they get this fantastic ‘best of best’ sound. So that’s the opposite of what we do haha.

Eugenia: We do have a list of things we have to finish and get done! We try our best to follow the list before any of us has to leave. And we usually complete the list.

The Steve McQueens often go on tour before recording an album (Credit: The Steve McQueens FB page)

So how does a song generally make the cut then?

Joshua: We’ll start sketching out the thing and we’ll go to LASALLE to work it out for a couple of weeks, then we’ll go on tour. So Clarence [the band’s manager] will constantly book us on these tours that roughly circle the various festivals, and then we’ll bring the music and play at a bunch of clubs in Tokyo or Paris. Then when we come back when we feel comfortable enough to record it.

Eugenia: It’s important to actually see if a song works when you play it live.

Joshua: The problem with this last album was that we had the tours, but then we came back ready to record and then suddenly, COVID. So we couldn’t go into the studio. And then for a good six to nine months, which is long enough to forget everything you’ve learnt, we couldn’t do anything. And then finally we got to record at the end of that first horrible lockdown. There was a lot of catching up to do.

The Steve McQueens performing in Taiwan (Credit: The Steve McQueens FB page)

Regardless, the band was determined to capture its live energy in these compositions. How did you consciously turn this vision into a reality?

Joshua: We religiously scribe everything. After every gig, we write notes about what worked and didn’t. We’ll already have a working version played through the tour before we play the big festivals. The Tokyo Jazz Festival will often be the end of the tour, and it is the culmination of everything when it is most honed and settled in.

What was your most favourite part of this creation process?

Anson: I think it’s always when we play it from the very first time to the next. I’ll always enjoy the ‘next’ time we play it because even though the parts are fixed, we always find interesting spots as we go along where we might instinctively do certain things differently and we go, “that’s nice.” It’s always fun to look forward to those moments.

“We don’t commit and join a camp. It’s an undisciplined and unruly mish-mash of fish and potatoes.” (Credit: Artwork by Joel Choong @trisected)

**So the title of the new album is called The Observer. What made y’all land on this theme and narrative for the album?**

Eugenia: To me, it feels like everything is changing all the time, especially if you talk about jazz music or whatever music that exists. It’s constantly evolving. You definitely have people who are super loyal to traditions and yes, it is to be respected and guarded. And you also have people who go forth and prosper and change and that’s how music evolves and you get new genres and new things happening all the time. But I guess it’s ultimately the love for the music and craft; being detached from putting too much emphasis on what is and what isn’t. Putting yourself outside of that equation allows you to see things more clearly and objectively. To me that’s what The Observer is – just observing and deciding what you like or don’t and see what works for you at any point of time.

Joshua: You could crudely divide the people into two camps who say jazz must be rooted in these traditions and such (let’s call them the hard traditionalists), versus the ignorant people who will play music without any knowledge of the traditions – that’s like me putting rap onto erhu music and saying I’ve created this new form, but I do it with total ignorance of either. So these two extremes to me are wrong. We stand comfortably in the centre and observe. You are accepting the points of view from both sides and not judging. Those two extremes exist in all of us. The sound of our music will come from where we stand.

We don’t commit and join a camp. It’s an undisciplined and unruly mish-mash of fish and potatoes.

The band released several singles to tease the album. Your sophomore single, “Eye”, talks about bubbles of rage that you can’t seem to ignore in your observations of life. What drove this story?

Joshua: Generally sometimes you do something, and then you get angry lorh. On a simple level, you don’t need to remember the thing, just the anger or the level of frustration or rise in blood pressure or the bubbling under your eye. And then that’s enough for the next time a similar situation comes as a resonance. And then suddenly you don’t wanna do that thing. That’s roughly what “Eye” is. It’s easy to relate to.

And on “Beginning”, the band presents an intimate tale about the “conservation of time and love, dependence and gratitude, acknowledgment and regret”. What deep chasm does this come from?

Eugenia: “Beginning” is my favourite out of the whole album! I think the melody is very beautifully written. The thing that stood out to me were the lyrics because they’re very beautiful but very sad, but also very hopeful at the end! Like it’s all going to be okay.

Joshua: It’s full of regret. But then regret means you actually know you did something wrong. The point of the song is being aware of it and making a change, and not just stopping.

And to end off, it’s no secret that your members have several side pursuits. How do y’all balance your commitments, and how does it differ when you all come together, ultimately, as The Steve McQueens?

Eugenia: I think it’s about deciding to make time, no matter how many other things that you have. It’s about deciding to want to be there. Especially since COVID started, having that break just gave me the time and space to decide what I really wanted to do and deciding that I really like this bunch of people, whether we get to tour or not. I like playing music with them. It makes me excited to go for rehearsal.

Listen to The Observer by The Steve McQueens on Spotify. Follow their Facebook or Instagram pages to stay updated with their activities, and catch up on their repertoire on Bandcamp.