There’s a certain otherworldly quality that drifts through the music of Phoebe Rings, but if their self-titled EP was up in space, their debut album has landed back on earth. The Tāmaki Makaurau four-piece have taken many into their orbit since forming in 2019, and while they carry forward their signature dream-pop sound, ‘Aseurai’ marks a turning point, opening up a new sound born from the warm embrace of collaboration. Evie Bamford chatted with three-quarters of the band. 

Phoebe Rings is the ethereal concoction of Crystal Chen (keyboard, synth, vocals), Simeon Kavanagh-Vincent (guitar, synth, vocals), Ben Locke (bass, vocals), and drummer Alex Freer who is absent when we talk. Despite all having studied music at the University of Auckland over various years, the band didn’t connect with one another until much later. When the opportunity finally surfaced, Simeon seized it. 

“I went out of my way to be in this band. I knew Crystal was playing and I went to that gig with the express purpose of being like, ‘Hey, if you’re ever making a band, I want to be in it.’”

Ben didn’t even need to hear Crystal playing live to know that he wanted in. 

“I was chatting with Jonathan Pearce (The Beths) and I think he was listening to some demos that I wrote. He told me about this thing that Crystal was doing, and described the music to me and I was like, ‘Damn, that sounds really cool.’ Without even hearing any of the demos, I just knew from the description that it was something I wanted to be a part of!”

While initially born from Crystal’s strong songwriting, Phoebe Rings was never intended to be a solo project – the goal has always been collaboration.

“When I get asked that or see the bio saying, ‘…it started off as Crystal’s solo project’, it kind of sounds like I should be doing solo work with session musicians, but it wasn’t like that. I always wanted everyone to be a part of it. I just thought, ‘I can’t ask everyone to write the music from the get go,’ and I already had the material sorted. 

“Also, I just love the together experience and being in a band where everyone’s happy, feeling similarly attached as I am towards the band. So I thought, you know, if they have their original contributions, like writing their own music, they’re gonna be attached, and not leave the band! So, that’s my scheme!”

Among international highlights since then, the band have played at SXSW Sydney, travelled to Taipei for a festival, and in 2024 signed to influential Washington D.C. label Carpark Records ahead of the new model eponymous EP released that year. Crystal had written the bones of all the tunes on the 2024 EP, the others writing parts that complemented her songwriting. The title track of their new album, with its sparkly soaring world, was the beginning of this process changing.

“Before Aseurai, my demos were pretty fully fleshed out, but in that song I only had chords and melody. The band developed the arrangement together, so it was kind of like the start of collaboration as well.”

It’s also the album’s opening track, and the meaning behind the Korean word sets a particular energy for the beginning of the listening journey. The poetic expression evokes sensations of distance and things floating around you in the atmosphere. 

In her process of murmuring sounds to uncover lyrics, Crystal found that the word not only felt natural on the tongue, but also took on deeper significance after her grandmother passed away. It came to reflect both the feeling of wishing people well, even when you can’t see them anymore, and the inevitability of things drifting out of reach. 

Her writing flows instinctively between Korean and English, with some songs emerging entirely in one language, and others being reimagined in both. 

“I always murmur my lyrics first, and sometimes the murmuring decides to be in English. Sometimes the murmuring decides to be a bit Frenchy!”

For January Blues, re-released in Korean four years after its original English version, translating the lyrics wasn’t straightforward. What works poetically in one language can feel clunky in another, so she focused on capturing the emotional tone while also adjusting lyrics according to both their flow in the phrase, and importantly, whether they literally made sense. 

“With January Blues I had to somehow mention that it was summer, even though January is actually winter in Korea because it’s in the northern hemisphere! So there’s a lyric that explains the sweat falling from my forehead, and it sounds natural in Korean, but I’d never say that in English.”

Opening up space for vulnerability with Aseurai the theme of the record is introduced, one that Simeon feels is quite different to what was represented in their EP. 

“We haven’t really figured out a concise way to say this, but I know that human experience is a very big theme in this. The EP is quite aloof and dreamy, speaking more to stories, whereas this album feels quite real – there’s songs about family and personal situations, more so than before.”

The start of the writing process is still a solitary experience for the sake of protecting the song when it’s merely a seedling, but when it came to shaping parts, the majority was completed at the recording stage.

“We did actually spend a lot of time at Simeon’s studio, writing and kind of recording at the same time,” says Crystal. “It probably was the peak of collaboration, because we were coming up with ideas for each part together.”

Rather than make this process tiring or draining – especially considering this was something the four of them met every Sunday for four months to do – Ben says it emphasised their sense of musical togetherness.

“We kind of got into this rhythm of getting together, and it felt like there was a kind of energy through doing little bits and repeating it that felt really fun. And it was something that was an awesome thing to do on a Sunday, get a coffee and play with some synthesisers and add a little bit more.”

The approach differences in the two bodies of work naturally amount to a hugely diverse set of songs on ‘Aseurai’. Get Up, written by Ben and inspired by a specific scene from the Matrix, is undeniably disco-esque, while Alex’s Mandarin Tree is a lament on the insecure rental environment and unreachable ladder of home ownership, brought to life with a more soft-rock style of production.

Other differences help take the 10-track album to a different plane. For Crystal, it’s the tonal implications affecting the sound. 

“The LP has more dancier songs, and I think we added less reverb. I think it just feels a little bit drier overall and the mixing engineer is different. Tom Healy, who has the most luscious reverb, did the EP, and Jeremy Toy did the LP.”

For Ben, it was his own instrument. “The basslines are so much different. There was a sock under the bridge, you know?”

I didn’t know. 

“I whipped off the sock and recorded every song with just one sock on. Yeah, there’s some photographic evidence…”

“I think there’s definitely a difference in how the vocals are arranged and what that does to the overall sound,” adds Simeon. 

“Crystal had written the EP songs and it wasn’t really with the intention of us necessarily being big singers in the band. So there’s a lot of parts that were out of our range, whereas on the album there’s a lot more of us singing together in different parts, and the harmonies sit in different areas.” 

Between international shows, a national tour, and the June release of their debut album, the band are also balancing the realities of work and commitments to other musical projects. On top of all of this, they’ve also become a “long distancing band,” now that Ben has joined the mass migration to London. 

One of the most sought-after session pianists in Tāmaki Makaurau, Crystal made the sacrifice of stepping back from other projects to make space for the band.

“I quit all the bands that I used to be in when I was starting Phoebe Rings, because I knew I just didn’t have the time – actually, creative capacity more than just time. I love all those bands, I was in a very lucky place, but I had to let it go. I never regret that choice because I think this band is very, very worth doing that for!”

Simeon has been even stricter when it comes to what they let into their life.

“I can’t tell if I kind of thought this on my own, or if this is something I’ve just absorbed, but definitely in terms of my criteria for accepting what I want to do these days is three things: It’s either got to be work that you love, people that you love, or good pay. If it doesn’t meet two of those things then there’s not a job that’s worth doing.”

Seems a perfectly simple busy life rule, but in the creative sector it’s not often that last point gets ticked off. 

“I’ve always managed to find the time, but definitely the biggest struggle of this balance is the money side. You know, we’re doing so much work, so many hours have gone into this and it never stops. Even now, the album’s done but we’re still doing work, and we’re not making any money. 

“I think we all care a lot about each other, and I think we’re willing to pick up slack for each other when it’s necessary. So I guess it’s about having that mentality and leaning on each other – it’s kind of the only way to balance it.”

Phoebe Rings is a band bound by collaboration and care. ‘Aseurai’, with its luminescent tracks, uses this to stretch their sound into something new, both for themselves and for the Aotearoa music scene. 

Photo: Frances Carter