Bridging the gap between the synthetic euphoria of electronica and the raw power of rock music is not always easy, but London duo Anavae is a surge of just that. With electrifying instrumentals and dazzling vocals, the group takes the best elements of both genres and peaks with soaring infectious hooks. “Forever Dancing” is the embodiment of the band’s ear worm driven songwriting, colliding melodies with a burning emotional passion.
Anavae’s gifted writing talents allow for Are You Dreaming?, the band’s newest EP, to be full of soaring hits and glimmering orchestrations. Vocalist Rebecca Need-Menear and guitarist Jamie Finch sat down to give an insight into the EP and New Noise Magazine is thrilled to let their art shine. Listen to the EP below and read the collective thoughts of both members of the energetic two piece. Catch Anavae supporting Area 11 on their special Christmas Show on December 12th at London’s Boston Music Rooms.
Purchase Are You Dreaming? here
1. All Or Nothing
Becca: “All Or Nothing” was written during a really bad patch for the band. We were feeling directionless, we didn’t know if we were staying or going. We were on the verge of killing each other so naturally this heightened stress and anger was all I could find myself writing about. I like that we’ve started the EP with a representation of a time that almost ended us. Let’s get all the screaming out of the way then we can crack on with the rest of the music.
Jamie: “All Or Nothing” was just a floating head for a long time, I’d written an instrumental chorus and Becca begun jigsawing more and more of it together. This was the first track that our producer Pete Miles really clicked with. I remember him calling me in the middle of the night all excited, saying “LISTEN TO THIS” once he’d had an idea for gnarly intro/verse synths. That was pretty exciting.
3. Are We Alone?
Jamie: “Are We Alone?” was one of my favourite songs to write because it involved me calling up one of our synth guys Kris Hodges and saying “I want something that sounds like this”…so when he disappeared to Cornwall for a week or so, he came back with a track based on what I thought was cool – that built up and up for about 2 minutes. I grabbed all the stems, ripped them apart and gave it structure (verse, chorus, middle 8 etc) and we were on our way. Besides rewriting the chorus 4 or 5 times – I think this track is the one that’s closest to how it was first originally concepted by Kris and I.
Becca: “Are We Alone?” has two different themes running throughout the song… depending on how big you want the picture to be. Initially I really wanted to write a song about a girl who so strongly believed in aliens that her search for them completely overtook her life. She believes, but the people around her think she’s crazy.
But like most of what I write, too many ideas drip and mix with everything so I’m left with a cocktail of feelings. The same girl is too busy living out other worlds in her head to be ready to live in the real world. She’s imploring her partner to just wait a while, until she’s ready to come back down to earth. She believes in this road she has to take, to create, but he’s a man in a dark suit. His feet are far too firmly on the ground.
2. Forever Dancing
Becca: “Forever Dancing” didn’t actually start off as an Anavae song. I was approached to write a top line for an American producer who didn’t end up using it for whatever reason. As soon as I showed it to Jamie I repeatedly received a bombardment of messages shouting “NO, we MUST use this. Don’t let them have it!!” …Things worked out for the best then!
Jamie: Towards the end of writing Are We Dreaming? we were starting to disagree over which songs we wanted to write next, so we made a deal with each other – I’d commit to finishing any idea of Becca’s choice and make it as good as I could – and vice versa. All or Nothing was her choice and Forever Dancing was mine. I’ve been trying to write a song like this since Anavae started. People that have listened to us since the beginning will probably be able to figure out which track from each EP has been my attempt at ‘this song’. Forever Dancing feels like it’s closest to what I was trying to achieve though…i’m not sure I could go any further down that path, so I guess Forever Dancing is it…?
Becca: As the song was originally designed for another artist and not for Anavae, I approached the writing process in a very different way. I knew the chorus lyrics needed to be more ‘generalised’ and broader.
The verses came much later after we knew the song would be for us. What started off as something meaningless later become something quite poignant. It reflected and expressed a sadness and a loss but a need to keep going and never stopping.
4. Stay
Jamie: This is probably the oldest song on this EP. I wrote it in my bedroom years ago haha. This would have been one of the first tracks where I started experimenting with drum layers. I had all the drum parts mapped out and basically finished before adding any kind of chord progression or melody – which was a new way for me to work at the time. There were also about 18 different variations of synth/guitar leads in the intro which all got scrapped…it drove us all a bit crazy. Kris and Ian helped come up with what’s there now and I really dig it. The chorus was pretty bare for the longest time too – but when Becca played around with it and added the second part of the chorus lyric line it really came alive.
Becca: Stay is about feeling disconnected from the world you happen to be living in. It’s the push, pull struggle you face when deciding whether to stay or to run. Either conforming to a life plugged into the wires of ‘online’, where every other human seems to live, slotting into the expected ways of doing things, sinking into it’s sludge of mundane or… clawing your way out of it.
Every human likes to think that they’re different, and a lot of us think we’re so different that we don’t belong with everyone else… which of course makes us the same. (Another title idea at the beginning was ‘Clones’ – suggesting we’re surrounded by an army of carbon copies). We may be the same as everyone else, we may not be… but this song is very much about that feeling of being apart, being separated, being alone in a sea of the same.
5. Lose Your Love
Becca: “Lose Your Love” is the end of the road. “Lose Your Love” is the heart break. When our previous manager first heard the finished recording he simply said it sounded like ‘The sound of a mind falling apart and a heart breaking in two.”
Originally I started writing this track with an electronic producer called Draft, who’d sent me over a bunch of synth ideas and soundscapes, and this particular track just really stood out to me.
Jamie: I then grabbed the demo and gave it more of a structure which we took to Pete Miles who started getting crazy experimental with it. We were really open minded about where this song went – so it was cool to see Pete put his own artistic spin on the music. We also got to add some secret references in the last chorus which is something we’ve wanted to do for ages. We thought it’d take ages for people to spot those…but it took a couple fans about 20 minutes after release to Tweet us saying they noticed them haha.
// Are You Dreaming? was recorded at Middle Farm Studios with Pete Miles and Ian Sadler.
