Parekh & Singh wants us to feel the magic of music with their new album

Back on the road after a long hiatus—with a new album in tow—the suit-clad musicians are fan-favourites for a reason

From the moment musician duo Parekh & Singh burst on the scene, so to speak, they had one thing down pat—Nischay Parekh and Jivraj Singh were not here to add music to their lyrics and churn out hits alone; instead, they are here to make albums that tell stories. Albums? You know, the kind that you would listen to from the first to the last track as you let it transport you, which is getting rarer, one single at a time? While Parekh brings to the table his expertise in stringing together lyrics with structure, Singh brings his experience in the language of sound. And together, they have not only garnered critical acclaim globally, but they also have fans who are constantly asking for more.

Since their album Ocean in 2013, little has changed in their intention as they continue to be guided by their authenticity of sound, the evolution of which has now led them to The Night is Clear. Dreamy, fantastical and replete with mythical imagery, kings and bedouins, the album allows you a moment’s escape from the mundaneness of everyday life. The release of their latest album has also seen them hit the road after a long hiatus. In a chat with The Established, Parekh talks about the making of the album, the way the duo works, and the story behind their now-signature performatory imagery of the suits:

What inspired the sound and lyrics of your latest album The Night is Clear? How did the pandemic affect its production? 

Most of the making of this album was remote as I was in a different location from Jivraj. But to be honest, that's how we usually worked even before the pandemic. There's not a lot of us having to be in the same room at the same time until the very end or until specific moments. We have always used technology to our advantage in that respect. 

I live in Dubai now; Jivraj had travelled there a couple of times during the pandemic—thankfully, he got to do that. While we did work on a few things together, even with working remotely, there's a constant stream of communication between us about small bits of the songs where I would change things around. It's also a good way to keep ourselves accountable because we know when the other person is updated. It's almost like you are working in a team of two so there is a constant back and forth. 

In terms of the album itself, my vision for it was quite literary. More than me, Jivraj is a voracious reader and that was an influence. You know, he's constantly reading various kinds of books and a lot of that has been a good influence on me in various respects. But the books that both of us grew up reading are classics and fantasies like The Lord of the Rings specifically, or even the Harry Potter series. I was enamoured by the idea of trying to build songs that might exist in those types of fantastical worlds—a mythical sort of landscape where we have nightingales, kings and bedouins. These don’t have much connection to our current state of reality and the lyrics definitely have a strong undertone of escapism. But that was quite deliberate. 

I wanted people to feel the magic of what music and literature can do because I think the best music and the best literature ultimately manages to transport us to different places. We wanted the music to match that idea of feeling really dreamy, nailing it and making it feel very open. And we used electronic music to pull it away from the normal sort of sounds and ideas that we think or when we listen to a lot of lyric-driven music or the usual singer-songwriter type of music. The obvious inclination was to keep things simple and organic with non-abrasive instrumentation so that everything could be soft and delicate.

But I think we like to flip that notion somewhere on its head. Sure, it can be lyric-driven but there can still be interesting and challenging moments in the music itself. That also shows the experimental side of our artistry and that's, again, where Jivraj plays a very pivotal role. 

Visuals have always been key to the music you make. What did you envisage for The Night is Clear?

We wanted this album to be a journey in terms of its lyricism and the fantastical elements, so much so that we haven't felt the inspiration or the inclination to make a classic music video for the album, in the format that we've done previously. But having said that, we actually were going to be shooting some sort of performance-based music video, in an auditorium where we also shot our photographs, which we've just used for our tour. So we're planning on shooting stylised performance videos there to accompany some of the songs. Later, we might also consider making a more traditional Parekh & Singh video for some of the music. So far, all the concerts have been really great. We've performed in Mumbai, Kolkata and Hyderabad. We will do Pune next and we're still working on New Delhi and Bengaluru.

You mentioned how it's been an assimilation of both people who have known your music for many years as well as newer ones who have discovered you more recently. But as the ones who are making that music, how do you see your evolution story when it comes to your sound, or the way you make music?

We're always evolving. I think we're very inward-looking and not the kind of band that is restless. When it comes to creativity, process, skill and craft—these are things that we're always trying to improve. We are constantly looking for optimisation or exploration and even pure experimentation. We're not the type of band that has a specific singular sound. So when you attend a Parekh & Singh concert, or listen to one of our records, you're listening to a wide variety of music, whether that's the lyrical content or even just the pure sonic that a song might have, which could be very acoustic with a string quartet or have very organic sort of elements. But there might also be a sudden wildly experimental, electronic sample or an abstract sort of tune, right after that in a concert or on a record. So that's where we're at. We're always trying to push ourselves as well as our audience a little bit, to expect the unexpected, basically. And I think we're looking for surprises as well—as creators, that's our main philosophy.

Both of you are seasoned musicians outside of Parekh & Singh as well. How do you collaborate when you make music together?

Jivraj is definitely a bit more experienced, especially as a touring musician, before we started working together. I'm slightly younger than him. In the early days, I looked at him as a sort of mentor for advice to navigate the industry and understanding what it is that we're trying to do and how we do certain basic things. The early albums reflect that work as we were both finding our feet, so to speak, as artists and as well as collaborators.

We kind of figured out how this format would work, where there's a gap and how to fill in that gap. And since it's not a single person’s act, there is no autonomy as such. But as far as our respective roles go, over the years, we've refined the areas in which we both like to work individually before coming together. 

For me, it's always my responsibility or my sort of journey to do most of the lyrical content. Though, more recently, Jivraj has written for the album—lyrics which have come from his journal entries or little diary notes that he had made over the years. These are not entire songs so it’s a little difficult to pinpoint but he has contributed towards parts of certain songs and also in a few new songs that haven't been released yet. These have significant bits and pieces to fill in the blanks in my lyrics. So I usually bring the lyrics and a basic structure of what the song might be and then Jivraj and I work on it as an entire piece of music, actualising it into a full production. 

That's where Jivraj takes quite a big role as well, in terms of the sound design and the dynamics of how the song moves from start to finish. It's very democratic and there are no “bad” ideas as we're always challenging ourselves and questioning whether a certain thing needs to be changed. We're very slow in our processes and that is why our albums usually take three years or more to write, record and produce. This is mainly because we go through hundreds of versions of edits and I think that's sort of our main occupation. We're actually just song editors, because we just keep editing until we're at a place when we are either too exhausted or feel like there's literally nothing else we can do for this. So it's just time to push it out into the world. But that's also the process and we enjoy  it. 

Playing in the studio and doing live shows are very different from each other. We just like to rehearse as much as we can and we always tweak our arrangements with every show. So I don't think any two Parekh & Singh concerts are identical.

The duo sport their signature look of suits as they believe in having a strong visual element that is synonymous with their music. Image: Instagram.com/parekhandsinghWhat’s the reasoning behind the signature Parekh & Singh look that has now become a quintessential part of your identity as musicians?

There was always a lot of indecision about how Jivraj and I would like to present ourselves visually because we spent so much time working on our music, before we started wearing the suits. But we always struggled to see how the music would look or how we’d look when we played the music. That's a very important component for us as artists, though there are a lot of great artists who don’t really believe in that. I think for us—and the kind of mindset that we're in, where we're always so detail-oriented and always searching for specific things—we had to have a uniform and that was the only way to move forward. 

We would wear that uniform in all our concerts, photo shoots and public interactions. And it just  so happened that the suits fit the bill. But we also wanted to be playful—we love colour and we were lucky enough to get great collaborations with several graphic designers and artists over the years who helped us build the tally for all the colours for our specific albums. For example, the first album had a lot of pastels so that's why our suits were pastel-hued. Our second album had bold, primary colours, so we had red, yellow and blue reflect in our clothing. And for the new album, we will probably get new suits stitched, which might be a bit deep green or maybe even pink. 

Now that you are back on the road after the pandemic has abated, as musicians, what changes have you noticed in the way people are touring or in the way they are consuming music?

Currently, there’s a huge outburst of emotion and excitement because live music has returned worldwide, and everybody's touring frantically. But I kind of feel that somewhere, this is not a very sustainable emotion because it's also a lot of saturation. While it's great for fans and musicians alike because we're getting to play our music to people who want to listen to it, I also think with every boom, there might be a bit of a downer. Even economically, I think there's a recession that is approaching, and we need to be cognisant of it. As artists, we need to look at the economics of the live music industry in terms of how much our tickets are costing and who we are letting  into our venues based on the ticket costs. 

Promoters and venues need to understand that sometimes less is more. But for now, it's just a massive wave of excitement and we're happy to be riding that wave. We are, however, very forward-thinking about what might happen in 2023. It'll look very different from what's happening now. But if we can perform, we definitely want to perform more next year. And if that isn't an economically feasible operation, we'll go into the studio and just write more music and release more music.

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