Interview with Sunday Sun's Yoshi Breen

 by Wout de Natris

© WoNo Magazine 2012

You can listen to 'Highly respected rebel' here.

Listening to Giel Beelen's morning show a few months back I heard a new band sing and I truly liked what I heard. And then they announced that their EP was downloadable for free on their website. Followed by two more EPs within weeks from each other. Sunday Sun found a new fan. This music is so much fun, in search of the perfect pop song and harmonies. Time to find out more. Wo. reached out and found singer/gitarist/keyboard player Yoshi Breen on the other end of the e-mail. Here's the interview. (And here, here and here the EPs' reviews.)

Sunday Sun uses modern media actively to make itself better know. In how far does modern media play a role in your marketing?

It plays a big part indeed. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are all very useful. We see it as a great way to reach an audience. The great thing we’ve noticed is that we reach a broad international group of people. From the USA to the UK to Japan. It’s great! The world seems a lot smaller and easier to reach. We want our music to be accessible to as many people as possible.

Do you see modern media as an ability to have a more hands on, do it yourself approach towards the band?

Yeah sure! We’ve been doing more or less everything ourselves. We definitely believe in the DIY approach and modern media is an important tool in all of that. We hope to create some sort of positive energy with our music. Every EP was free to download for 2 weeks. Our main goal is that people can enjoy our songs.

Most bands release a single and then a full album. You chose to release three EPs relatively close to each other. What is the idea behind this concept?

First of all we just had way too many songs for one album. We recorded around 30 songs, so it was difficult to trim the selection down to 12 songs for one album. But visually and artistically we thought it was an interesting concept to release 3 EP’s. SUN … DAY … SUN. And to put them all in one CD BOX set. Which is out now and for sale on our website. The other nice thing about releasing 3 EP’s is that you have three moments to celebrate a release. It’s great because it’s not just one event – it’s three – so you seem to spread out the media attention. It just seemed like a nice new way of putting our band out there.   

Is there an idea to make it one album at a later date?

Sure. There’s definitely going to be an album. We might actually release a selection of the three EP’s as one album for an international release. But we’re busy working on new songs too, so there’s definitely coming an album with brand new songs in near future.

Sunday Sun is a new band. How did you meet and set the steps to become a band?

Koen, Wouter and myself where mates. We went to the same Academy and we decided to start writing songs together. We saw it as just having fun. It was mainly based around Koen’s kitchen table. Then it got a little more serious because the songs got better and we decided to give it a go. We found our bass player Jan through Wouter and it immediately clicked.

Is the band a side project with other musical activities or thé thing?

I see it as THE thing. We all have a lot of different musical activities. I for instance do a lot of co-writes abroad. Which I absolutely love to do, but it comes second to playing my own songs and doing gigs with Sunday Sun. I think we used to see it as a side project 2 years ago, but it has become our main priority now.

Singing harmonies is something you must work hard on. Can you describe the feeling when you find the perfect harmonies?

It’s wonderful. We all grew up with singing harmonies. Everyone in the bands sings and we see it as our trademark. When we write a song and we strip it down to just an acoustic guitar and four vocals that gives us an absolute kick. That’s mainly the reason we started this band, because we genuinely love to sing together.

In my reviews of the EPs I (as a figure of speech) didn’t have enough space to name influences on your music (and I realise I forgot to mention The Posies, so Big Star). So the floor is yours: who are they?

A lot. We have a lot of shared influences. The Beatles, The Kinks, Travelling Wilburys, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, The Beach Boys, Bob Dylan, Crowded House, Wilco, Blur, Oasis, and the list goes on and on and on.

There are also several differences in style within the EPs. Almost as if you’ve given yourself the challenge to come up with a song in a specific style. Is this hunch correct?

I think it just happened like that. I guess we didn’t really give ourselves tasks in that sense. Koen and myself write most of the songs. We love to write together. But often there’s a initial idea we start out with. So there are already two different writers influencing the sound and style of the band. Jan and Wouter also have a part in the process, so I guess that’s the reason stylistically there’s a lot happening. We equally love British and North American influences. So it’s a mix of both worlds.

There’s  more than one song writer in the band. How do you divide song writing duties and the lead singing?

As I said we write most of the songs together. I write something and finish it off for Koen or the other way around. We don’t have any big discussions about who sings which part. It just sort of happens naturally. There are some bits I wrote, but Koen sings them. We also sing a lot of the songs as a double lead. Or I might sing the verses and Koen sings the chorus. Wouter sings the lead in the pre chorus of Light Up The Sky on EP III. That’s the great thing of being in this band. There are so many options. To me that feels liberating.

You already played in Giel Beelen’s morning show on 3FM. What is the effect of playing in a live radio show and is there an anecdote you can share with us?

It just generates a lot of attention. He has a lot of listeners. Which is great. Giel is a lovely guy. It was a lot of fun being at his show. He just got engaged so we bought him a nice bottle of Champagne. We hope to be back at his show soon.

What are the band's plans in the near future?

Well. We just released 3 EP’s, so we’ll try to promote them as much as possible. We just started our first Dutch tour. Check our website for dates! And come and see. :-) We just released out new single 'Now Is Now'. So we’re hoping to play that one live on a couple of Radio shows. If you like the song, please ask your favourite radio DJ to play it. And we hope to do another tour in Spring 2013 and play as many festivals as possible.

You can order the three EPs here.