Before I became a devoted Spotify user in late 2016, I would go on Youtube and embark on circuitous journeys to discover new songs and music videos. Type a keyword here, click on a recommend video there. This favorite pastime of mine introduced me to Parekh & Singh.
On one of those deep YouTube dives, I found the music video for Parekh & Singh’s “I Love You Baby, I Love You Doll.” (If memory serves me right, I was looking for Wes Anderson-inspired videos because I loved Vampire Weekend’s Andersonian “Oxford Comma” so much.)
Not only is this music video excellent, the song is fantastic. I became a Parekh and Singh fan foremost, eventually forgetting the Wes Anderson element that first introduced me to their music. From there, whenever I was in an Anthropologie with “Ghost” playing on the speakers, I’d make sure everyone knew about Parekh & Singh and have a homework list of follow-up songs they should listen to next.
In September 2022, Gabby Etzel and I personally interviewed the Indian dream pop duo of Nischay Parekh and Jivraj Singh. Nischay Zoomed in from Dubai; Jivraj, Kolkata; Gabby and I, Québec City. I’m finally releasing this conversation to celebrate one year of their album The Night Is Clear and just in time for their CCC tour in India. (CCC, standing for “City, Coast, and Country,” à la their song “CCC.”)
The album came out while I was living in Québec City, and I still associate certain tracks with different streets in Old Québec. I’d hum the limited French of “Je Suis La Pomme Rouge” to make myself feel better about my even more limited French. I played “Bedouin” on loop along Rue Saint-Jean and tried to do all of the melodies as I strolled. This album is so special to me, and I hope you play it and give it the chance to be the soundtrack of your own bildungsroman adventures.
It’s such an honor to finally share this conversation. Enjoy!
Cathleen
A Conversation with Nischay Parekh and Jivraj Singh
GABBY ETZEL
How did you two first meet?
NISCHAY PAREKH
We actually both grew up and lived in India, in Kolkata. We lived on the same street for most of our lives. There's a bit of an age gap—like a six year difference between myself and Jivraj. But the music scene in Kolkata, at least back then, was very tiny, so everybody knew everyone. Even though it's one of the most populated cities on planet Earth, the independent, non-vernacular language/English-speaking music scene is kind of niche. It still is.
Long story short, we met through mutual friends at another musician’s birthday party where I was this young kid, and Jivraj was an established musician in the scene. He was already playing professionally, and I was trying to break in. Some friends of ours who owned the studio I was recording at the time just introduced us and said, “Hey, I think you guys could do some sort of interesting collaboration.” And we became really good friends in the process.
CATHLEEN FREEDMAN
So it wasn't even your birthday party, but you got the best present of all?
PAREKH
Ha—yes.
FREEDMAN
Do you remember the conversation that officially led to you becoming a duo? When did you realize that you have great synergy together?
JIVRAJ SINGH
It's been a process, beginning with some quite innocent experimental music, which we would play at one of the smaller venues in town. And then, Nischay took a break to go to music school in Boston. After he returned to Kolkata is when I guess the time was finally right for something more substantial, and perhaps serious, to unfold, even though it's still innocent experimentation at its core.
Just meeting, trying stuff, taking some time apart, and then meeting again after a couple of years—that sort of solidified our understanding that we had something promising as a shared creative unit. It was 2011 when we started in earnest.
ETZEL
When it comes to your genre, you're often labeled as being dream pop indie. How would you define that genre? And what do you think distinguishes your music from the rest of dream pop?
PAREKH
Well, I personally didn't even know what dream pop was. I think back in the early days, everybody—at least people in India—started labeling our music in the dream pop category. I only just recently started listening to Beach House, and I think I finally kind of understood what it means. Based on all the literature, they're kind of the pioneers at the forefront of dream pop music. I wouldn't really say our music necessarily fits into the category exclusively.
FREEDMAN
What is your style then?
PAREKH
I would say we're quite all over the place. Stylistically, there's elements of North American folk music. There's a lot of European jazz influences in the writing that I've been doing recently as a songwriter. And there's good old rock and roll, as well. We grew up with a lot of that music.
I don't really see a lot of specific dream pop in our music, but I think it's just more the feeling that our music evokes rather than the songs themselves, which led to a lot of people calling us dream pop. It somehow fits the vibe of what our earlier lyrics may have conveyed. There are literally a lot of themes of dreams and sleep, and there still are, in our music. So, I would say it's quite esoteric and sort of wide ranging. As a band, we’re not very loyal to a style.
FREEDMAN
On that note, if you had to compile a listening guide for somebody who's never listened to your music before, but you can only give them a little sampling in four songs. What would be your personal four songs from your discography?
SINGH
Nischay, do you want the first two, and I’ll take then I’ll take the other two?
PAREKH
Yeah, collaborate?
SINGH
Let’s do one and then another. I’ll start. “Nightingale.”
PAREKH
I’m going to say “Ghost.”
SINGH
I’m going to say “Hello.”
PAREKH
I’m compelled to say “I Love You Baby, I Love You Doll” then.
ETZEL
Do you feel like your music has gone through different periods or phases over the years? How would you characterize each of your albums?
PAREKH
It definitely has gone through a lot of phases, more than musically. Even just in terms of musical maturity, personal, and emotional maturity for me as a songwriter for sure—and the both of us as producers as well. We understand our craft more with each album. The first one that we did was very nascent in the sense that we were literally just trying to put the songs together. There wasn't a lot of process, there wasn't a lot of direction or thematic understanding of how an album is even constructed. It wasn't as collaborative as well, because I would write the songs as demos, and then I would just bring them in. Jivraj would sort of play drums on them. That was our album Ocean, album one. I think album two, Science City, is where we started really collaborating as a band in the studio. Right, Jivraj?
SINGH
Right.
PAREKH
That's when we sort of started playing off of each other more. Somehow the compositional elements started coming out of what we were interacting with in terms of music. And then this third album, The Night Is Clear, was truly a mix of both album one and two in terms of our process because there was a lot of back and forth and demoing in isolation for both of us.
We would send each other ideas, and then there were some songs that came out of jams or grooves that we did when we were together in a room. I don't even remember when those moments were because they've been sort of collected over the years. It's tough to pinpoint exactly where each song started, in terms of time and space.
FREEDMAN
I hadn't even really thought about how this current album was a pandemic album. Let's take a moment to appreciate how international this conversation is right now. We're currently in Québec City, and you guys are in Kolkata and Dubai. How did you guys end up where you are right now?
PAREKH
We were both born in Kolkata, India. Jivraj went to university in Kolkata, and I went to the Berklee College of Music in Boston for a while. I actually met my then-girlfriend, now wife, who got a job in Dubai. We were always discussing the idea of trying to live outside of India for a while just to see what that would be like. Dubai just seemed like an easy opportunity to dip our feet into it. It's literally in the middle between Europe and India, and it's easy access to both continents. I moved here three years ago.
ETZEL
How do you keep in touch while you and Jivraj are apart?
FREEDMAN
Especially musically?
PAREKH
We're constantly communicating through email, iMessage, and various mediums. I think we got really good at sharing music remotely, even before the pandemic, to be fair. We Dropbox, sending each other demos. It's been pretty easy. We like to use all of the technology that's available, and our communication is quite fluid.
FREEDMAN
We lived in New York City and are currently traveling around, and I find I'm having to really reconcile with the idea of being a New Yorker, even though I'm not presently living in New York. My Instagram bio is “Texas time in a New York minute” because I've come to realize that being from New York is, as cliche as it sounds, a state of mind, and I'm shaped by where I come from. If anybody understands that mentality, it would be you guys in “Philosophize.” I love the line, “I've got a New York State of Mind on Indian Standard Time.” How has that Kolkata pace influenced you?
SINGH
I think on one level, it's encouraged us to allow things to develop slowly because it is a very slow place. It's probably the slowest city in the country. It feels like a small town even though it's a huge city. Trends are slow to catch on here. It's sort of out of sync with what's happening in the rest of new India. I think maybe subconsciously, we've absorbed some of that and are content to explore our own pocket of reality. I still feel that energy and that influence very strongly. But maybe Nischay’s move has resulted in some changes that he could talk about now that he can look back on life in Kolkata, and how the change has perhaps influenced the songwriting?
PAREKH
There's definitely an element of that. 100%. That being said, I'm still from Kolkata, and I still carry a lot of that sort of resistance to the trends or to anything too catchy. Not just musically but in life all around me. It always felt like we're kind of outside of any sort of competition, personally and artistically. I guess that's ‘small town benefits.’ It's not New York or any of those central cities in terms of commerce or wealth. We just always wanted to create for creation’s sake. I think that's the main ethos that Kolkata imbibed in us. I’m still going to carry it even though I live in Dubai.
Even though it’s glitzy and glamorous, Dubai it's not a very fast city. But from all of the social media that's propagated about the city, you wouldn’t know it. This is probably true of any city, but there are various and various subcultures that exist within it. So I think, yes, I'm still living Kolkata-style in Indian Standard Time.
FREEDMAN
This is coming from somebody who knows absolutely nothing about music production but can just really admire it. What is your songwriting and production process? And, of course, where does synth fit into all of it?
PAREKH
We kind of build it like Legos. It's layers, and it’s blocks. The first block will be probably some sort of lyrical and harmonic idea. The ‘harmonic idea’ means it could be some chords on a guitar or piano maybe. So, a little ditty is just the first block. It could be a verse, but more often than not, we start with some sort of a vague idea. Then, I either put it into my software that I produced music with and then I share it with Jivraj.
If we're in the process of making an album, sometimes I'll share something with him to get his opinion. I don't say, ‘Okay, put drums on this,’ or ‘Add something to this.’ I just share something and then based on his reaction—sometimes it could be a compliment; sometimes it could be silence; sometimes he sends another recording back with his parts already added. That's when the blocks start getting collaborative.
From there, we build. When he sends something back, and if we have the drums already, then I'll add extra layers, which is often synth. And sometimes, especially on this recent album, there's a lot of melodic and harmonic stuff outside of drums. So it's just like Lego blocks, basically.
FREEDMAN
So a whole album is a Lego city.
PAREKH
Pretty much.
FREEDMAN
Walk us through the songwriting process of “Je Suis la Pomme Rouge,” Nischay’s fascination with King Richard I and Duolingo.
PAREKH
“Je Suis la Pomme Rouge” was quite a unique song for me as a songwriter because most of the songs I write tend to be quite intuitive and instinctive. I usually get into a flow, but “Je Suis” was quite laborious!
I was trying to build something specific. I was editing and spending a lot of time trying to make it something that I felt should be in my head just as an exercise. I wanted to combine these two totally unrelated concepts into one idea: I wanted to write a tribute song about King Richard I, who—in my head, again, totally imaginary, not verified at all, was the world's first singer-songwriter. There's a lot of history about him being a troubadour. There's also some evidence of him composing some lyrics. He's obviously like a badass king, powerful warrior, and whatnot. I was totally enamored by this idea that he also had this side where he was an artist, essentially.
I wondered about how many political and commercial leaders we have in our current age who also happen to be serious artists and understand that side of life.
I also just wanted to write a song about how he might have felt in those years where he was a ruler and a troubadour. And, yes, I also happened to be learning French at the time. “Troubadour” comes from the French word “trobar.” So, again, that’s a weird connection I made while learning on Duolingo.
I don't think any French person uses that sentence in that sense, but that's what I wanted. I wanted it to be whimsical. There were a lot of these elements that I was trying to force, and it took a while for me to find the balance.
ETZEL
I think knowing that a sentence doesn't make sense in French is enough to know that you're starting to make sense in French. So how's your French now?
PAREKH
I haven't moved forward from there. It's probably gotten worse since that sentence…
FREEDMAN
That's still a pretty fruitful learning experience. You got “Je Suis la Pomme Rouge” out of Duolingo.
ETZEL
It’s my favorite song on the album. Cathleen and I feel like we’re in a “Je Suis la Pomme Rouge” era.
FREEDMAN
We're minding our mood. We're buying new clothes. We're moving cities. So what about you guys? What Parekh & Singh song do you feel like you're in right now?
PAREKH
Oh, nice… What do you think, Jivraj? I’m furiously scanning lyrics in my mind right now.
SINGH
It can be off any album, right?
FREEDMAN
Yes, we’re not cruel!
SINGH
Might be “Monkey” off of Science City for me.
FREEDMAN
Any line in particular speaking to you?
SINGH
“We all live in experimental walls.”
PAREKH
The new album has melancholic themes, and I’m not feeling melancholic right now. Personally, I might be “Songbird.” I was even playing it before we talked.
ETZEL
We have to know, where do you get your matching suits from? And tell us as much as you can about them, please.
SINGH
We get them from a third-generation dealer in Kolkata. It’s a small but legendary shop. We developed a good relationship with those guys. I think they enjoy making our suits because every other suit in that shop is black or navy.
PAREKH
There was that initial phase where we would go out in the textile market, which is a crazy place in Kolkata—it's this massive world of chaos. Eventually, we found these colorful fabric rolls, and we kept taking them to our tailor. Every time he would chuckle upon seeing the color.
FREEDMAN
Speaking of colorful matching suits, I found you guys from the “I Love You Baby, I Love You Doll” music video. I want to hear more about the process of making, and how did the idea behind it even come to life? All that good stuff! Whatever you can recall from all those years ago, please expound.
PAREKH
We’d just gotten signed to our record label, Peace Frog Records in the UK. In fact, they were a big catalyst with us making the custom suits, and they nudged us in that direction because we weren't thinking about our visual identity much before. They were in a conversation with us, and we had mentioned that we liked the idea of wearing suits because we're fans of uniforms. We like the Beatles and whatnot. We were also thinking about how we can make it our own and have the suits be specific to us. We had the suits made in pastel colors originally, and then primary colors for the second album, and now, white.
And then they wanted us to make a music video, which we had never really done a proper music video for a song. We didn't know how to do that. I had no idea how it started. While Jivraj also has a background in films and editing, I certainly didn’t know where to start. We had a lot of help from our friends who are filmmakers, and even the guy who shot it. He grew up in the same sort of apartment building as me, and then we reconnected later. Our music video was quite homegrown. We put this crew together, and there wasn't a specific production house or anything like that. We just assembled this team that somehow came together. The budget obviously works because it's Kolkata, and it is a very economical place to shoot and make anything. The biggest challenge, I think, was finding a location, which then led to our director, who was the most experienced person in that group. The rest of us were just kids. We had no idea what we were doing. But our director, Misha Ghose, reined us all in and held it together. She was sort of our mom on set in a sense.
There was a phase, around this time 2016 and 2017, where I was driving around the city a lot and even driving to the outskirts in all directions. I was quite interested in trying to show these parts of India, which are semi-urban and semi-rural. They're not village scenes, but it's not the city, and there's a lot of greenery and lush natural landscapes, which our city and the state that it's in—West Bengal—is quite blessed with. It's also diverse and tropical, and it's got woods as well. So, I was trying to find how we can match these two things: basically, the whimsy of the suits and all of this beautiful, natural imagery.
My wife's friend’s family owned this estate that is basically a palace. Their family is a descendant of the rulers of that district, and every district had a palace, it's like the feudal system. This is even before the British era, so they were the landlords of that area. That's kind of still how it is in some parts. People don’t pay taxes to them, but they still very much have that respect for the people who are descended from those families and in those areas outside the city. So this was one such place called Mahishadal Rajbari. ‘Raj’ means ‘king,’ and ‘Bari’ is ‘house,’ basically. That's where we filmed. It's a decrepit place, though… It's totally falling apart at this stage. It's obviously not possible for it to be maintained in all of its splendor and glory because it's acres and acres huge.
The estate also has these taxidermy rooms. You’ll remember the animal heads from the video. It was just a magical, surreal environment. Obviously, you can tell it's an aging beauty from the scale of the estate. But the architecture, even in its decrepit state, was quite charming.
That's the vibe we felt was the best visual representation of our music at the time. It was fun to experiment with, because it's a site that a lot of people outside of India haven't seen. They don't know that this is a version of India that exists. It's not your stereotypical Slumdog Millionaire setting, it's its own thing. There are thousands of places like this all over the country with all the lush green and tropics our state offers. Without being too blunt, we didn't want to make it a tourism film for India, we just wanted to tell an interesting story and be quirky and fun.
My job, at least in production, was just to help find the location. The rest was all up to our director and the editor and the team that we assembled. We didn't have a strong concept. We didn’t even want the video to have a strict narrative. We went with the flow. We just wanted to showcase the locations and showcase ourselves, obviously, in a neat package. And I think we probably probably did that to a certain extent! Obviously there are things that we might want to change looking back now. But it was a fun project for sure. Short, too. We shot for two hours or something, all in one day.
ETZEL
And we wanted to address your stylistic homage as to Wes Anderson. Is that intentional on your part or more with your art director’s? What's your relationship with Wes Anderson films?
SINGH
For me personally, not that much of a connection. I have enjoyed his films, but he's not somebody who I immediately think of when I think about filmmaking.
PAREKH
It was after the music video that I became more of his fan and started watching more of his films because of the comparisons that were drawn. That being said, I think our art director and our director probably were way more aware, at least our director for sure, Misha, was aware of the comparison while she was making the video. But then again, there wasn't like a conversation where we said, ‘Oh, we want this to look like Wes Anderson,’ or ‘This needs to be Anderson-esque.’ There were more words like ‘symmetrical’ and ‘balanced’ instead.
He's obviously a great filmmaker and that's his trademark—the combination of colors and deadpan expressions. But I think those comparisons with our video are there because that style is just how me and Jivraj are. We didn't really, and even now, I guess, don't really know other expressions!
FREEDMAN
All these years I thought the similarities were an homage! I suppose this next question will just be a fun hypothetical because Wes Anderson is working on a new film right now called Asteroid City about kids and their parents at a stargazing convention. Let’s just say that Wes Anderson calls you after this interview, and he’s like, “I want one of your new songs in the film.” Which would you give Wes to consider?
SINGH
“Miracle” could work.
PAREKH
I can’t imagine “Miracle” in that way.
SINGH
He could make it work.
FREEDMAN
Oh, yeah, Wes just called and said, “Whatever it takes to make it work, I’ll do it.”
PAREKH
Great, then “Miracle.”
FREEDMAN
The visual art in the “Sleepyhead” music video is so dreamy. I know that you worked with a few art directors and producers to bring that vision to life. How big of a role did you guys play, when it came to conceptualizing those ideas?
PAREKH
We've been known to be quite involved in the music videos now. We're basically like a member of the crew. We're looking for solutions, trying to rig stuff, and we like to be fully immersed in the process. But the video for “Sleepyhead” was probably the first time where we really sort of had a hands off approach. Mainly because we wanted to see what that feels like and try it. We wanted to see what would happen if we just gave an idea, just a few loose ideas to a new director and a new team and see what they come up with, based on their own artistic vision. “Sleepyhead” was an experiment, I think, for sure.
FREEDMAN
You've said that your new music has a Lord of the Rings element to it. Do you see your music as a medium for stories?
PAREKH
Jivraj and I are big fantasy fans. We love Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Dune—any epic saga with a lot of chapters and a lot of story. We would definitely call this our fantasy album. We wanted it to feel like a book or something with many episodes. We wanted to lay out the album in that same spirit where each song is a chapter that works together. It's more like assorted short stories. I wouldn't say that it's all a specific narrative of a singular character or anything like that.
FREEDMAN
I like thinking of it in terms of like a short story anthology.
PARKEH
Yes.
FREEDMAN
“Time is a waste of life.” That is an excellent aphorism from one of your songs. That is so wise, it should be needlepointed on a pillow. What is another lyric of yours that you think should be merchandised in some capacity and how?
PAREKH
A song from “Seven Days," which is on the new album. I just like how it all flows together. “Morning turns to noon. The Sun becomes the moon, and our lives are infinite.”
FREEDMAN
That would be good on a sleeping eye mask.
SINGH
I have to go with something from “No Secrets.”
FREEDMAN
There are lines from that that could be good on the eye mask or maybe just “No Secrets” across a journal.
PAREKH
We have to keep it in mind for the store.