INTERVIEW: Haiku Hands release their debut, self-titled album

Image: Dan Fairman
Interview: Jett Tattersall

Today Australian band Haiku Hands release their debut, self-titled album. The Sydney based trio, comprising of Beatrice Lewis, Claire Nakazawa and Mie Nakazawa have been releasing their unique take on pop since 2017 and their sonic landscape encompasses electronica, R&B and hip hop in a way you have likely never heard before.

Preceded by the two singles, the swaggering, brash belter ‘Manbitch’ and the satirical, at times Donna Summer riffing ‘Fashion Model Art’ (featuring Sofi Tukker), the album is everything you have ever hoped for from Haiku Hands. Their take on pop is brilliant - totally unpredictable, life affirming and clearly made by a band of artists that are passionate about every genre of music from multiple eras. ‘Jupiter’, which was first released as a stand-alone single in 2018, is still as fresh as ever and throws back to the new wave, post punk of the 1980s with it’s chanty vocals, chomping guitar riff and intermittent synth blasts, while ‘Onset’, which features Mad Zach, and ‘Eat This Bass’ are both blasts into the 1990s techno scene with discordant electro sounds swirling through your ears paired with a booming rap. Elsewhere, ‘Car Crash’ is a complete change of pace, a gorgeous low-key indie ballad devoted to supporting a friend going through hard times - ‘You’re fucking awesome’ the chorus refrain goes, while ‘Super Villain’ amps up the rap and hip-hop in an empowering anthem to take on the world ‘Fuck this shit / Imma do this if I want what I want when I want Imma get it / Get it girl’ they rap.

Bold, envelope pushing, bar setting and utterly ingenious, Haiku Hands has proved this group are one of the highlights of the Australian music scene right now. It is not often you can say no-one else is making this type of music today, but with Haiku Hands it is undoubtedly true, and for that we should all celebrate them. To mark the release of the album, we recently caught up with all three members of the band to chat more about the creation of this gem.

It is so lovely to catch up with you today and thank you for carving out a time to chat. It's such a momentous time in your lives as the album is out today, how are you all feeling?
Claire: Great! Where do we begin?
Beatrice: I'm just going to say I'm so excited. I have a really immense feeling of overwhelming excitement for people to hear music and for them to hear this music. And for us to, this has been such a big journey with this album. I've been reflecting on that a lot and putting this out in the world just feels like a bit of a cumulation of maybe four or five years of work. It's nice to do that. 


The album follows a string of killer singles, but of the tracks that will be released on the album is there any particular track you’re each looking forward to the most?
Claire: Yes, some of my favourite songs that we've done are on the album and I think a lot of the songs on the album could also have been singles themselves. I think we weirdly wrote each song with its own kind of character and identity. I'm looking forward to ‘Eat This Bass’, which is a banger and ‘Car Crash’, which shows the other side of our vibe. They’re my two that I’m looking forward to the most.

Mie: I also am really excited for people to hear ‘Car Crash’. I think it's really beautiful and it makes me cry when I listen to it. I was thinking about ‘Mechanical Animal’ and it is weird and I'm excited for people to hear something challenging, because it's not a regular pop song. It's exciting to have that one on the album.

Beatrice: Definitely ‘Eat This Bass’, definitely ‘Super Villain’. People having that on hand. We’ve played it live a lot but I'm looking forward to people being able to own it and play it whenever they need it. And another track called ‘Sunride’, which I really love the chorus of. It's one of my favourite choruses to sing. 


The singles have been amazing and a current round of applause for ‘Fashion Model Art’, with the incredible Sofi Tukker. Can you just talk me through the inspiration? I know there's a story! All of us sort of can relate to a certain story with that song, but I want to hear yours where that track came from.
Mie: The hook came from going to different art shows and dance shows. And I found whenever I went to these shows, I felt slightly uncomfortable, but also really enjoyed it. And then one time coming back from the Biennale, there was a group of us from the inner west [of Sydney], which is an artsy area, but more grungy arts. We all got dressed up, went to the Biennale and then on the train going back to our area, we were switching from our artsy, sophisticated - or trying to be sophisticated - characters to our rowdy characters. That change over for us is where the chorus came from and we started like joking about it, like ‘art, art, fashion, fashion’. And then by the end we were all chanting it on the train. 


It's brilliant. You're poking fun at what everyone has a tendency to do when they go to these situations without being mean. Likewise, ‘Manbitch’. I must say personally, this track has been my driving, cooking house sliding in socks in quarantine track of 2020.
Beatrice: That’s awesome.

Hands down. I have played it in so many different moments of my day. I heard a rumour on the dance floor that this is the first track you all wrote together.
Claire: Yeah, I think it's officially, the second track, but it is one of the first tracks that I think defined our sound. A little more like ‘Jupiter’ is a bit of a left field stand alone, which was the very first one that we did. But ‘Manbitch’, that came back from the producer after we'd written it and he sent it back to us after he'd worked on it a little bit more and we played it I was like, ‘this is really cool!’ This is a sound that I was super keen to stand by. And it's just been the funnest song to play live as well. Watching the audience respond having never heard it and just being confused about the chorus and not knowing how to respond. It's moments like those that impact people's brains and make them think about words and social norms and stuff like that. That song kind of does that.

It's done beautifully. The use of the word bitch again, it's been thrown around the last 12, 18 months, big time with Beyoncé shouting ‘bow down bitches’ and how people felt about that. Like you said, Claire, it's getting into people's brain, but at the same time you're doing it without forcing your opinion on people. Like discussion can be fun. And I think t that seems to be behind a lot of your music, which is just so welcome.
Claire: That's important for all of us. We're all quite politically minded in a way, but also love music and the arts and are aware of the platform that music and arts has to impact how we think about things. I'm really so happy that we've been able to like talk about things without preaching.
Beatrice: I had a really cool experience when I was quite young and I worked for this environmental education company and I used to do music and theatre for kids. The man who ran the company was this amazing activist who was also a clown. And he studied a lot of sociology and anthropology around people not really feeling inspired to make change or to be different if they're being didactically told or fear-mongered into doing something. But if people feel humour and fun and laughter and empowered, then that's a better place for them to make change from. And I think about that a lot. I think about that with music and art and in general.

Exactly. It’s the general rule in life. Everything has to be funny.
Beatrice: No, I just feel like there's so much dogma in religion and politics and social opinions and I just don't feel like it helps people feel good or helps people truly make deep internal change because it's not coming from themselves.
Claire: I just want to say one more thing about ‘Manbitch’. The word bitch, I would never use. I would never want to use that word ever. The only context I would want to use that is in, like in my mind, ‘manbitch’ is one word and it's a new word. And that's the only context in which I'd ever want to say it personally.

I like that. Reclaim it and stick a man on the front and then it works. Australia has been historically a temple of dude rock. I'm interested given that, you know, you're a powerhouse of Aussie dance, pop, what are your thoughts on the gender canyon within the Australian music industry?
Mie: That it’s closing. I've watched a lot of people and a lot of women do a lot of work at the forefront of the music industry and behind the scenes to be changing that dynamic and that huge gulf. Maybe you see what you want to see, but I just see a lot of really amazing strong women, women of colour, non-gender specific people really coming to the forefront and to me the gap is closing.
Claire: It's been good, I guess the call out culture for festivals who, that's forcing festivals to have a number of women on the line ups. And it's really good. The industry is being held to attention and it's inconvenient for a lot of people who've been doing it a certain way for a long time. But I just hope we can like continue that and push it a bit further so that it becomes normalised, it's to be expected that there's women on the line up and to be expected that there's women headliners.

Obviously, you guys work solidly as a team. What are the benefits of having a squad behind you in this industry?
Claire: It's everything for us. Our whole project is based on the many hands that make it happen, that's part of our ethos. In terms of the producers that are involved, the photographers, artists, the industry teams that have supported us, the friends, the family, we value that super highly. We all recognize we couldn't have created this thing that we have as individuals. 


Beautiful. Is that the story behind the band name as well?
Claire: At some point we were like, ‘Oh. ‘haiku’ is about the art and the poet, the words and the word play and the ‘hands’ is about the team.’ It had meaning to it after it was a thing.

Now you lot are known and adored, as you mentioned for your very kicking live shows. And I'm just interested. How has your debut album release build up been hitting you without the possibility of touring or performing at the moment?
Mie: Huge. Not being able to have a connection with the audience and seeing their smiling faces is really hard. Putting stuff out on online, you don't get to see people's facial reactions and it's hard to know what people are thinking and a bit harder to push forward, but I guess just trusting that they're gonna enjoy it. But not being able to do any gigs and share that side of Haiku Hands is pretty sad. I don't know if there's another way we could do it. It's just not the same on a screen. You don't feel the endorphins and see people flirting in the crowd and all that kind of stuff I really miss.

Do people get it on at your gigs? I'm missing out!
Mie: I feel like there's tension, which is always exciting. There was one show at the NGV Gallery in Melbourne. And there were all these young kids and it was amazing. They were all just kissing and got up on stage. I was watching them I think more than they were watching us!


If you haven't already got one on the album, can you all write one of those beautiful, slow dance numbers, like ‘Crazy For You’ or ‘Careless Whisper’, cause you know that's what happens just as they all leave at the end of the night, give them something to snog to?

Claire: Yeah, the last song on the album’s kind of suited to that, ‘Morning Becomes’.

And last but not least. What is up next for you three talent nuggets? What's on the horizon?
Beatrice: I'm thoroughly enjoying the time off touring. It's hard, but I'm also really liking not moving around too much. I just kinda want to make more music. I've been making a lot of bangers and for me releasing the album feels like a chapter’s closing. And I feel like I have heaps of fresh headspace and fresh new energy for new ideas. So, I'm looking forward to writing new music.

Haiku Hands the debut album by Haiku Hands is out now via Mad Decent. You can download and stream here

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