Carsick Cars Celebrates 10th Anniversary at Yugong Yishan
By Andrew Chin
Has it really been a decade since Carsick Cars emerged? In a last minute decision, the pioneering Beijing rockers have decided to celebrate their milestone 10th anniversary on August 19 at Yugong Yishan with Maybe Mars labelmates Hiperson, friend Zhong Zuo and more. To get hyped for the show, we revisit our 2014 feature on the band as they prepared for a national tour to celebrate their most recent disc, 3.
August 19, 9.30pm, RMB80-100. Yugong Yishan, 3-2 Zhangzizhong Lu, Dongcheng 东城区张自忠路3-2号 (6404 2711)
It’s been nearly nine years since indie-rock trio Carsick Cars pulled into the Beijing underground, and like any band that has made it this far, they've had their share of broken bones.
“I was pumped with adrenaline and didn't even feel it,” said frontman Zhang Shouwang, who suffered a broken heel in November during Shanghai's Midi Festival.
Though Zhang has since performed for the past couple of months with a cast, the band hits the ground running with a long-awaited third release, 3 (Maybe Mars).
“I wrote so many songs. We actually recorded too many, so we released the extra songs as an EP on Christmas,” Zhang says.
Recorded over two weeks last April, Zhang enlisted Spacemen 3’s Sonic Boom (MGMT, Panda Bear) and Hamish Kilgour of the influential New Zealand indie-group The Clean to help record and mix their first album in almost five years.
With help from new bassist He Fan (of Maybe Mars labelmates Birdstriking) and drummer Sun Heting (Skip Skip Ben Ben), Zhang notes that having a drummer that isn’t “learning on the job” has allowed the band to take more musical chances.
“It’s definitely the most melodic album I’ve ever written, but half of it is also kind of experimental,” Zhang says. “I’ve always been into simple pop songs like the Ramones. Musically, we found our sound as making pop songs with noisier guitar sounds.”
That experimentation, Zhang explains, lies in the instrumentation, where he plays guitar by hitting it on songs like “Midnight Driver”.
While Zhang has kept busy touring internationally and with other projects, including experimental solo act White +, his band has not only influenced musicians at home, but in many ways was the first internationally visible face of Chinese indie.
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Formed in March 2005 while attending university, Zhang and current Snapline members Li Qing and Li Weisi together led the nascent ‘No Beijing’ movement, inspired by the droning guitar of New York No Wave community of the 1970s that produced Sonic Youth.
The band eventually reached the ears of the legendary New York group, who later declared Carsick Cars their favorite Chinese band and invited the band to open for them on their 2007 European tour.
“It was the first time we went abroad and they were our heroes,” Zhang says. “We learned so much about music and being a musician. They have a reputation of always helping young bands. They helped Nirvana and they helped a really unknown Chinese band. If we get famous, then we should always try to help young people, too.”
Their 2007 debut, Panda Noise, was the first step toward that goal. Their song ‘Rock and Roll Hero’ has become a common staple for new Mainland bands to cover, while ‘Zhongnanhai’, named after the cigarette brand named after the official living quarters of the Chinese leadership, became a No Beijing anthem.
“I’m really happy about that because we are the first Chinese band that didn’t know how to play our instruments,” Zhang says.
“For young kids, it’s important to see bands that don’t know how to play so well but have some interesting ideas that make them pick up a guitar and make some noise.”
Their 2009 follow-up, You Can Listen, You Can Talk was accompanied by a 20-city national tour, a rarity for any Chinese band, and something that Zhang calls the most important experience of his life.
The tolls of touring led to an amiable split and Zhang kept the name alive as a touring act fine-tuning the lineup. They’re one of China’s most popular draws, headlining last year’s DongDong International Music Festival and the Strawberry Music Festival in Beijing and Shanghai.
They’re also active internationally, playing major festivals like South by Southwest (SXSW) in Texas, All Tomorrow’s Parties in London and the Primavera Festival in Barcelona. They’ve embarked on tours across Australia, South Korea and the United Kingdom and will depart for a 19-city North American tour in mid-March.
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"Touring is part of being in a band,” Zhang says. “The fun part of being a musician is you can travel to different places, play with different bands and see something that you’ve never experienced.”
While his broken foot scuttled their plans for a national tour last December, the band plans to visit between 16 and 20 cities late spring.
That’s not to say his injury hasn’t yielded good things.
“Not a lot of songwriting, but it forced me to finally figure out these old complicated synthesizers I’ve had for a while that have been sitting around. I had nothing else to do.”
Photo by Charles Saliba
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