Singaporean indie rock outfit Subsonic Eye is coming back to the United States on their own headlining tour, and they will be making a stop in Portland on Oct. 14 at Hoan Kiem (now known as Little Haus PDX).
Their new release “All Around You,” which came out on Sept. 13, is a testament to their ever-growing maturity as a band, both lyrically and sonically. I sat down with guitarist Daniel Borces to dive deeper into what makes Subsonic Eye who they are.
Formed in 2016, the band came together in a rather unique fashion. Borces and lead vocalist Nur Wahidah met in school, and after deciding they wanted to be in a band, they met the rest of their members through mutual friends or online.
Borces and the other guitarist, Jared Lim, met in an especially unique way. “I met him on SoundCloud, which is pretty cool,” Borces said. “I was looking up the Singapore tag and I found his stuff. I eventually just got to know him, and I found out he plays guitar,” Borces said.
Subsonic Eye packs a punchy and melodic indie rock punch, backed by memorable guitar lines and Wahidah’s individualistic voice. And although their discography spans back only six years and four albums deep, their sound has gone through some drastic changes in that short period of time.
“When we were a lot younger and just starting out, we played a lot of shows,” Borces said. “On our first two records, a lot of the songs formed as we were playing the shows. When we went into recording, we had a live set in mind, and we wanted everything to be loud and reverb-y.”
Borces illustrates this discrepancy perfectly, with songs like “Blue Dream,” a brief instrumental interlude from their second album that is completely drenched in reverb, and “Come Around,” another track soaked in reverb with shoegaze-y guitars that sound like they could’ve come from a Slowdive revival record.
Starting on their 2021 release “Nature of Things” and developing even more so on their latest release, Subsonic Eye has made a stylistic change to their sound. They have started to shy away from the reverb-soaked sound that defined their first two records and have embraced the weight of their lyrics over melodic production.
“Cliche, but during COVID all the shows stopped,” Borces said. Due to the social isolation that followed, the band adapted to the circumstances and changed their recording process. “There was a change in songwriting as well. We got rid of my effects, the guitars went straight into my laptop. And then from there, naturally, there was a lot more space for the vocals.”
Borces also notes that during this time the band finished school, had to get jobs and were forced to think about life with more of a mature mindset. “It was kind of a natural shift for us, which is cool. We’re not just singing about inner feelings.”
The leadoff single to their new album “Performative” is where the stylistic change is most evident, particularly vocally. Wahidah’s lyrics are delivered in spoken words most of the time, which is a stark contrast to the majority of their prior work.
“The whole speaking thing kind of came out of Dry Cleaning, and we’re also a big fan of Sonic Youth. Sonic Youth has some songs where the bassist Kim Gordon is just speaking some stuff, where the delivery is kind of like a stab,” Borces said. “At first [Wahidah] felt like it was cringe, especially because it was new, but over time we all grew to love it. Some things you just can’t sing — you have to say it.”
As someone who has never been to Singapore and is largely unaware of the dominant genres of music there, of course, I was naturally curious about the differences or similarities between the music scenes here in the United States and in Singapore. When posed with the question of differences and similarities between the two music scenes, Borces noted that there is a lot of pressure to stand out, or in harsher words, to be better than your counterparts.
“The Singaporean take on indie rock is never simple. They always try to add a complex thing to it. I find Singapore to be a very competitive place — everyone’s crazy,” Borces said. “Just very heavy Asian culture, trying to one-up each other. When we travel to other places, people usually play simple and catchy songs which is nice, but in Singapore, people are always trying to make their sound more complex than everyone else’s sound.”
Make sure to check out their new record “All Around You,” and if you like it, make your way up to Portland on Oct. 14 at Little Haus PDX to hear them live.
Keep tabs on what the band is up to on Instagram and Twitter: @subsoniceye
