Mei Semones doesn’t have much time or energy for much else other than music. “It’s just what I love the most,” she shrugs. The 24-year-old is most content when channelling her laser-focused passion for songwriting, weaving together jazz and indie-pop into songs that are technically impressive yet emotionally rich. Pursuing your deep desire to be a true original comes with some occupational hazards, she readily acknowledges. “I don’t really watch that much TV or that many movies. I’m just not worried about that stuff…”
Speaking to Semones on a bright March morning, NME finds a musician ready to enthuse about beloved jazz greats (John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, Thelonius Monk, Bud Powell) and treasured rock titans (Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins) in equal measure. But she’s not just a student of the craft – Semones is actively cultivating the personal threads that link these ideas in her mind and, increasingly, her own music.
Mei Semones on The Cover of NME. Credit: Marisa Bazan for NME
“For me, it’s about finding a balance between the two [genres],” she suggests. “I feel like people think jazz is easy listening or smooth – and there is that type of jazz – but the type I listen to is not necessarily like that. In both types of music, there’s that intensity.”
Semones speaks about her influences with such dedication that it’s surprising to learn both sides of her musical palette almost fell into her lap. After learning piano as a kid at the behest of her grandmother, she started playing rock music when she got her first electric guitar because “that’s just what everyone does – you start playing Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd and that sort of thing”.
In high school, the only way she could play her instrument was via their jazz programme. “It all just happened that way where I’m like… ‘OK, I guess I’ll do this now!’ And then I end up really liking it,” she laughs – so much so that she went on to study jazz guitar at Berklee College of Music. Her introduction to these musical pillars might have been pure happenstance, but the way that Semones has nurtured and coaxed them into her own distinct style is all her.
“I’m just trying to make music that’s one of a kind”
Semones’ debut album ‘Animaru’, set for release in May, is the culmination of a lifetime spent joining the dots: between genres, between attitudes and between the facets of her own identity. It’s a record that marries levity and power, dancing through the bright shimmy of bossa nova-nodding recent single ‘Dumb Feeling’ and out into the grunge purge of ‘Rat With Wings’. And it’s also – as its title, a nod to the Japanese pronunciation of ‘animal’, suggests – a release that takes the same dual approach with language.
Born to a Japanese mother, Semones would spend a few weeks in Yokosuka every summer, visiting her grandma and being immersed in the Japanese education system (“The semester there is longer, so once school ended in America, we’d go to Japan and go to school for a couple of weeks,” she explains). For a long time, her Japanese life was something she kept separate and uninvolved with her burgeoning musical career, but when she wrote her eventual 2020 debut single ‘Hfoas’ in a mix of both languages, the missing piece of the puzzle finally revealed itself.
Credit: Marisa Bazan for NME
“I don’t know why it took me a while to start writing in Japanese – I suppose I grew up here [in the US], and my English is definitely stronger, and everyone around me is speaking or singing in English, so it’s what the go-to would be,” she says. “But when I started writing in Japanese, it just clicked for me.”
Over the years, she’s learnt to integrate the two more freely. On ‘Animaru’, tracks such as the deft, almost-scatting of ‘Tora Moyo’ (translated as ‘Tiger Pattern’) – a love letter to her guitar – finds Semones switching seamlessly, line by line, between her two languages. “It’s whatever feels natural and is able to convey what I’m trying to say the best,” she explains. “Either way, I try to keep my lyrics as straightforward as possible in whichever language I’m in. I don’t write with too many metaphors; I just try to say it how it is.”
This simplicity, meanwhile, feels just as key. Offsetting the obvious technical proficiency of Semones and her band, a close-knit group of friends and collaborators that she’s been gathering since freshman year of college, there’s a wide-eyed sense of wonder that rings throughout ‘Animaru’. It’s a charm that’s as crucial to her current sound as the diversity of cultures and genres that make up its bones.
Credit: Marisa Bazan for NME
‘Animaru’, at its core, is a record about love, but rarely the romantic type. Instead, Semones focuses her attention on the other loves in her life: for her twin sister on ‘Zarigani’, for music on the aforementioned ‘Tora Moyo’, and for her latest base of New York and the world she’s found within it. Perhaps the thing that shines the brightest is a refreshing lack of cynicism. “I’ve been able to preserve that side of myself until now,” she nods, “but also, a lot of it has to do with just being with my band, which makes me so happy. Being able to make music makes me so happy; being able to play the guitar makes me so happy. All of that stuff just comes out in the music – that I’m just so happy to be playing this song and doing this job.
“One of the main themes is just following your instincts, doing what you want and what’s most important to you,” she continues. “I don’t wanna say prioritising yourself because I feel like that sounds selfish, but making sure that you’re staying true to yourself and doing things that you love because that’s really important in life. I sometimes see people that are maybe doing things they don’t love, and I just think that sucks, and it’s obviously easier said than done, but [I’d love if] people just tried to do something they liked. That’s kind of the message of the record.”
“Making sure you’re staying true to yourself and doing things you love is really important in life”
Before going all-in on her art, Semones was working at a Japanese preschool – an “inspiring but also extremely tiring” job that left her drained as much as it gave her moments of joy. “Working with kids is both rejuvenating and the most exhausting thing,” she laughs. “They give you so much, and you see so much beauty in them, but at the same time, you’re changing their diapers…” Having the guts to take the leap and quit, she notes, was central to the exuberant lust for life that rings throughout her debut. Similarly, she recalls being a fairly studious and law-abiding child, “always one to follow instructions for the most part”, until music came along and allowed her to rip up her own rulebook and follow her passions instead.
Throughout our conversation, there’s the constant prevailing undercurrent of music as the saviour – the key to unlocking everything within her. She’s softly spoken and measured in her words, but passion comes through at every opportunity. “If I wasn’t doing music, I have no idea what I would be doing,” she says. “It’s the only thing I really care about that much, so to write a song about my love for music just feels like the natural thing to do. This is the thing I love the most in life.”
Credit: Marisa Bazan for NME
Semones has been touring heavily in the run-up to ‘Animaru’, supporting Hippo Campus in the US and, as of this week, Panchiko in Europe. Last November, she played her first Japanese headline show at Tower Records in Shibuya – a chance to connect with the other side of her fandom that felt meaningful. “Performing in the US, I know people don’t really know what I’m singing a lot of the time, but it was the other way round there,” she smiles. “It was nice to be seen in that way.”
And back on home turf, she’s scored a perhaps surprising champion in Red Hot Chili Peppers’ bass-slapper-in-chief Flea, who shouted her out on Instagram as “an incredible musician, deep guitar player and singer”. “We’ve only met once and we’ve chatted a little bit, but even just him posting about me like that… so many people have said they’ve found us through Flea,” she says.
For Semones, the co-signs are only just beginning to flow. But the seeds of her ambition were sown in her longtime obsessions over those musical greats, way before her own star began to rise and gather momentum. “The reason why I love that music is because I think each person has their own voice that’s so distinct,” she says. “When you hear John Coltrane, you immediately know who that is; when you hear Monk, you know immediately, and that’s what I love in music. So if people can get that from my music, like, ‘Oh, this is Mei’ and recognise it from the first note, that’s what I’d like. I’m just trying to make music that’s one of a kind.”
Mei Semones’ debut album ‘Animaru’ is released on May 2 via Bayonet Records.
Listen to Mei Semones’ exclusive playlist to accompany The Cover below on Spotify or on Apple Music here.
Words: Lisa Wright
Photography: Marisa Bazan
Styling: Isa Castro-Cota
Label: Bayonet Records
The post Mei Semones: the jazz-loving indie star connecting the dots of life and language appeared first on NME.
