INTERVIEW: Haiku Hands release new album 'Pleasure Beast': "Everyone knows deep down that we're beasts, but we often don't get to be in our beast.

Interview: Jett Tattersall
Image: Bronte Godden

Australian trio Haiku Hands (consisting of Beatrice Lewis and sisters Claire Nakazawa and Mie Nakazawa) are one of music’s most unique - and genius - bands.

First releasing music in 2017, the band have received acclaim across the globe for their alternative electronic dance sound and after the release of their self-titled debut album in 2020 received multiple AIR Award nominations. Today they release their second album Pleasure Beast and it is another delicious, absurd and utterly addictive chunk of electronic dance-pop bliss.

Haiku Hands have a remarkable talent to be able to tear up the rule book of exactly how a song should be structured and what it should sound like, while at the same time making you wonder why you liked music any other way. Getting comfortable with different is almost Haiku Hands’ guiding principle and it makes music the more powerful for it.

Pleasure Beast stays firmly in the alt-electro world, yet there are still multiple levels of sounds and feels across the album. ‘Ma Ruler’ is a thumping, chanty electro-rap song that sounds like it has come straight from an underground all night rave, while ‘Feels So Good’ with its rushing, trip hop beat and almost dreamy vocals - albeit interspersed with a rap - resembles a traditional pop song with it’s lush melodies and sweeping chorus. Lyrically it talks about refusing to be silent and to not let things bottle up inside you - “Break the windows
Shake the shackles / All the pressure building up inside of you / Let it out.”

“‘Feels So Good' is a song about speaking your truth into a world that would often much prefer you to stay quiet, polite, in line and obedient,” the band said on the song’s release. “It can be speaking loud political truths or quiet needs and wants to the people closest to you. This song is a dedication to those moments in your life when you can be brave enough to find your voice and let it out.”

‘Cool For You’ has a harder electronic-synth sound with a strong dose of trance, which breaks down into a slower, shuddering beats in its closer. Tying perfectly in with its sound, the lyrics speak of partying and letting yourself go and enjoying every moment of life. “Ain’t playing with caution / My peoples are awesome / We’re having a ball.”

‘Elastic Love’ is a smooth, almost sultry R&B infused song which also has sonic throwbacks to the 1990s trip-hop sound, while the six minute long ‘To The Left’ is a wild ride that mixes disco ‘I Feel Love’ vibes with hard techno and rap.

First single ‘Nunchucka’ brings a slice of funk into a electronic foundation, which the band say is “a super charged, high energy, self affirmation anthem for anyone who wants to wipe off the patriarchal stain of self-loathing.” It is an incredibly uplifting song that encourages self belief and recognising that you have everything you need within yourself. “I can be the one that I want / I can be the one that I'm looking for…Jump back and kiss myself / I'm a motherfucker.” There is also a reference to Claire’s recent pregnancy: “I am a beast when I eat up the face of the front of the crowd / Go crazy / Have you met me lately / Mega babe with a baby”

Pleasure Beast is a remarkable album that confirms Haiku Hands status as one of our greatest musical acts and is a blast either dancing around your kitchen at home or pumping out on a sweaty nightclub dancefloor. The party album to dance your way through to the end of the year. We recently caught up with Claire from the band to chat all about the creation of the album.

Hi Claire. Lovely to chat to you again. First of all I have to say Haiku Hands’ sophomore album Pleasure Beast, you have hit the nail on the head with regards to the title. It's does what it says on the tin, there are all various forms of sonic pleasurable beasts. It's so visceral.
Yeah, we all have our inner beasts. That's something that we often connect with, try and connect to our intuition and our feeling side versus the society thinking side.

Do you think because of that, that's how you resonate with society, because everyone just gets it? They're like, ‘Oh, yeah, this is where I'm actually at, as opposed to pretending where I'm at.’
Yeah which is an awesome connection point, because everyone knows deep down that we're beasts, but we often don't get to be in our beast.

You’ve created this album, making it a pleasurable thing, a joyful thing in a moment where there is this huge global despair. And I feel like a lot of that is almost being dictated to us in this competition of how bad do you feel? And I find this album almost quite defiant, in the best possible way.
The timing has been really interesting, because we started writing it coming out of COVID lockdown, so there was a defiance against the feelings that people were having post COVID, wanting to shake that all off and remember how to have a good time. Initially, we were going to create an album called Enjoy Your Life, because we want to remind ourselves and remind others to appreciate and enjoy your life. Along the way, writing the album, the journey was so much more complex than that sentiment, and there were moments of struggle, beastly moments, and then pleasurable moments. So that in the end felt more right. But also with what's happening in the world now, there's a song on there, the first song, and towards the end it’s ‘all around their world, there's bombs going off’, and then on the second or third song there's a line ‘we all need to think about peace’. We put those in before what was happening now was happening, so the timing is kind of interesting.

The timing is interesting, and you released your debut album full of floor fillers in 2020 when no one had a place to dance except their living rooms. And I feel like this album has come at a time when no one has the space to let loose with abandoned joy.
I feel like that's hopefully our offering, because it is easy in times of struggle to think that we're not allowed to feel pleasure, we’re allowed to enjoy ourselves. But it is actually such a healing, important and empowering process to get into that part of yourself where you feel powerful in on the dance floor or enjoy. There's healing and power in that and that's something that we shouldn't ignore because things around us are hard or there’s stress or there's too much work to do. I hope that Haiku Hands and the album can be that offering for people

I'm so glad you just said power because I want to talk about ‘Paradise’. I'm seeing shoulder pads, pencil skirts, big hair, big earrings and court heels like Joan Collins, and it doesn't get much more powerful than that. Tell me about this track.
We started writing that track during lockdown via Zoom with a producer in New Zealand, who's one half of Broods, Caleb, he was really lovely. He gave us this beat that was really dreamy, and we just went with the feeling of it and the word ‘coconuts’ came out the lyrics kind of stemmed from the feeling the track was giving us. It's quite a different new style for us, it's a different genre that we tried out but we all really loved it and a year later we finished it. It just has such strong imagery, when it was getting close to finished I listened to it outside and I was literally transported to an island. I just love songs that take you elsewhere because music is so nice for escaping your present state and that song really does that for you.

I wanted to talk to you as well about ‘Feels So Good’. Am I right that ou recorded the vocals on this quite heavily pregnant?
Yes, that was also recorded initially during lockdown, the first pass. It was like two days before I gave birth, you tick off things you have to do before you give birth because you know after it happens you a write off. So I was like, ‘I gotta just do this one more thing!’ I recorded it and my lung capacity was really limited, it sounded weak or soft but I feel like it had the right energy to it. And then again with that one, a year later we did another recording session on it together in the States. But it was another written-during-lockdown song.

The album ends with fan favourite ‘Nunchucka’. Can I just ask what was it about this track that just complete a journey with Pleasure Beast?
The lyrics ‘I can be the one that I want / I can be the one that I'm looking for’, I feel the message in that song is you have everything you need. Stop looking outside of yourself for something, look inside. It just feels like a nice summary. “I'm a motherfucker” is self empowering, the message is ‘you are powerful, you got this’. And that's the message that we want to leave people with, feeling good about themselves.

That's what you do as a group very well. I always go back to ‘Manbitch’, and that song just brought so much joy and laughter in a world where here was a lot of fear against words and fun and everything with its double meaning and then you guys just burst onto the scene, and I feel like ‘Nunchucka’ has got that similar heart to it.
We definitely consciously want to be saying things in our songs, but without sounding preachy. We want to be able to spread messages in a way that is absorbable and humour and being tongue in cheek is a vehicle for that for us. And it's not always easily done, it's a very fine line. You’re right about people's fear of words, and that can be really stifling and oppressive. But if you if put it in a joke form, you can get away with a bit more.

You've had some killer shows of late, and obviously now we've got Pleasure Beast, what's coming up for you?
We have our US tour, we’re supporting Big Freedia, who’s like a party queen so that'll be fun. I'm just so excited for people to hear the songs on the album and to see what songs connect, because there's such a diverse range of songs on there. I'm just so curious to see how it's received. After the US we go to UK for a headline tour, and then we come back and do an Australian headline tour. In between that we do Woodford Folk Festival, which I love going to, on New Year's and then also Lost Paradise on New Year’s, so that will be really fun. Festivals are my favourite.

Pleasure Beast is out now via Spinning Top. You can buy and stream here.
To keep up with all things Haiku Hands you can follow them on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.