If you are looking for your next bops to be played on repeat or finding comforting music to chill out in a hectic life, The Noize Team is here to introduce the rising self-produced duo — corner club. Their distinctive music style and heartfelt messages that resonate with global fans fulfilled the current indie-pop music landscape as seen in the recent milestone when their second single, ‘Manhattanhenge’ from EP ‘in the rareview mirror’ reached Spotify’s Thailand Viral 50.
The Noize Team would like you to get to know more about corner club with this exclusive interview before getting under their spell from the latest EP ‘no refunds’ which dropped in mid-November.
TNM: For any readers who don’t know you just yet, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your music style?
Sav: corner club is the duo of Sav (me) and Mike! We’re friends who write and produce everything together, so the style is a genre-bending mix of our backgrounds and personal listening preferences. Our music ranges from indie to pop to more folksy to sometimes experimental, always with an element of whimsy and heartfelt emotion. We write songs about our lives and we fold in elements of our more classical backgrounds, sound effects from our environments, and we pull from all the different genres we love in order to write music that we want to exist in the world.
TNM: How did you meet each other?
Mike: We originally met through an a cappella group called VTone when we were students at Princeton. Eventually, we became music directors of the group together and started performing covers of Chinese songs around campus representing our group, but it was only after we both graduated that we started jamming out and writing original songs as corner club.
TNM: After your first EP ‘little love lullabies’ (2021) and ‘in the rearview mirror’ (2023), and EP ‘no refunds’ is out now. What makes this album different from previous ones?
Mike: Every EP evolves with us in a way that makes each a sort of time capsule of where we were at that moment. ‘no refunds’ finds us in an experimental period, as we had many different sounds we wanted to explore this year, and we decided to own that and put it all together in one collection. In a way, we found ourselves leaning harder in every direction on individual songs rather than having every song be a little bit of everything. It’s fun in a way because the end result has a song for everyone, but it still feels very much like us.
TNM: Where did the inspiration come from, and how long did it take to put this EP together?
Sav: Our surroundings are a big source of inspiration for what and how we write. A while back, someone asked us if moving to California changed our sound at all, and I think it’s hard to imagine us writing some of these songs if we were still living in New York, especially a song like “clementines” that’s inspired by rolling around on big hills. We started this EP around the beginning of this year, and it took us maybe half a year to put everything together.
TNM: Which song/lyric is your favourite on this EP, and why?
Sav: “Clementines, like razors in the sun”— this is the opening line of “clementines” and a play on words that few people have gotten! Growing up, I had a Razor scooter that I used to ride around the neighborhood. It’s the kind of bright summer childhood activity that the song is really all about.
Mike: “Turn me into a donut, bite my ear off, and spit it out” from “donut hole” would have to be my favorite lyric — it’s just such a vivid and almost visceral metaphor. I relate to it in a weird way, and I can’t really tell you why.
TNM: What are your career goals as a singer for the next 5 years?
Sav: Mike and I started taking singing lessons this year and they’ve been an absolute game changer! We’ve learned how to sing in a more healthy, stable, and resonant way. I’ve been especially excited about trying different singing styles like R&B, and expanding my range. 5 years is a lot of time to experiment and see what new sounds we can open ourselves up to!
TNM: Who are your favourite artists you have found yourself listening to at the moment?
Sav: Olivia Dean, humble the great, Amie Blu
Mike: Mustafa, Gracie Abrams, Stevie Bill — they all express themselves in their own unique ways and there’s a particular emotional resonance I have with each of them.
TNM: Are there any best experiences about being a musician that you’d like to share?
Mike: Anytime we get to meet our fans, it’s such a special experience. It’s always amazing to hear about how they discovered our music and what our songs mean to them, and it really gets to the core of why we love to share our music.
TNM: If you have one movie or director that you can produce the music for. Who would you be, or which kind of movie would you want to work with?
Mike: There has been a lot more representation of Asian-Americans in Hollywood in recent years, so we would love to contribute our sound or music to projects that feature Asian-Americans and their stories, whether race is a central theme to the story or not. Last year, I went to Sundance for the first time and got to watch Sean Wang’s Dìdi, which was an amazing experience and movie, so there’s a lot of talent coming up that we would be honored to work with.
TNM: So far, what is the best advice you have received this year?
Mike: This isn’t new to this year, but every year, I find myself going back to the same John Mayer video I stumbled upon on YouTube a while back where he basically talks about how important it is to have a good song as his way of responding to someone who asked him about marketing advice. It’s something I believe in and it’s a very core part of our ethos in how we operate, but it’s easy to forget, and it’s so important to remind myself of this constantly when we do music.
TNM: Lastly, do you have anything to say with Thai fans? And what do you expect to see, try, and eat when you visit Thailand?
Sav: Sawasdee ka and thank you so much for listening to our music 🙂 Food-wise, EVERYTHING! We both love Thai food, so we’d probably try and eat as much as possible if we got to visit Thailand.
Mike: Yeah, Thai food is one of my favorite cuisines, so I’d come prepared to gain a few pounds. And to our Thai fans, honestly thank you so so much for listening to us all these years. It’s crazy that we can reach an audience oceans away in this day and age through the power of the internet, and we never would’ve expected having one of our songs land on Thailand’s “Viral 50.” The fans make that kind of thing happen, and it’s far more than we could ever ask for.
Stream corner club’s ‘no refunds’ here: https://stream.cornerclubofficial.com/no-refunds-ep.OYD
Thank you, Secret Signals, for this special opportunity.