A decade after their first release, Mumbai’s three-piece punk band, The Lightyears Explode, is ready with a change of pace this season with their second album
The band performs on stage
It was the Tom Hanks and Tim Allen film Toy Story that inspired the name of Saurabh Roy and Shalom Benjamin’s band, The Lightyears Explode. Now in their 30s, the lead duo of the band is a bit wiser, older and turning to a new sound with their upcoming album, Suburban Prose, this September. Fighting with your family, the next single from the album will release on May 5, marking the second chapter of their punk journey.
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“Our first album, Revenge of Kalicharan, came out exactly 10 years ago,” lead vocalist and guitarist, Saurabh Roy points out, adding, “The next one should come out sooner. We are steadier now.” Roy and bassist Benjamin teamed up in the early 2010s straight out of college, with drummer Jeremy D’Souza and guitarist Jishnu Guha making up the live set.
Shalom Benjamin (left) and Saurabh Roy
A sense of humour, oodles of pop culture and loud and soft soundscape are very much the next stage of their evolution. The new album’s title — Suburban Prose — is a nod to the American band Green Day. Roy says, “They use the word suburban a lot in their verses, and were an influence on me. The Prose in the title was an attempt to move away from poetry, to simplify things and be direct with our expression in the album.”
Their first album, Revenge of Kalicharan, had definitive punk signatures with guitar lines, and a variety of pop-culture influences. From a song named Garam dharam, to I am a disco dancer, it was a clear homage to Mumbai’s cinemas. “It was a part of our childhood memories. I just thought the names were cool. The lyrics also spoke through characters,” he laughs.
Describing the recent rise of lo-fi music as a part of the game, the 33-year-old guitarist says, “We always chose to pursue sounds that we were intrigued by. It is better to create something for yourself, than to follow the herd.”
So what has changed in the last decade? “Technology,” he says, “we were just a band that was creating music on our own. With time, the influence of technology has increased greatly. You learn more as you do more.” This explains their many single releases including Mellow and Satire in 2020. The funky beats of the latter convinced Roy that the band had found their new sound. “We worked on multiple versions of the song. Finally, we arrived on a funk synth that laid the blueprint of our way forward,” he says.
The first single from the album, Pills, released on March 5 and captures this balance through its dynamics, bass-lines and vocals. Their next single will build upon the growing chasm between generations created by technology. Roy explains, “With the Internet generation, the gap has deepened so much that our battles can be awkward and funny, but they always come from a place of love.” It looks like these punks are here to stay for a while.
On: May 5
Log on to: The Lightyears Explode on Spotify
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