FAR FROM ORDINARY
THE pandemic has given us all time to take stock, but what if life is still passing you by? Brighton rockers Yonaka want to grab you by the collar and shake you awake: that’s the theme of their latest single, Ordinary.
Singer Theresa Jarvis is sitting in her new house – she’d moved the day before from a basement flat so is revelling in the sunlight over Zoom. ‘I feel like I just know so many people who run back to things that don’t serve them,’ she explains. ‘You know that state you get in when you’re complaining about things but you’re not changing anything. You’re just in this cycle. I was wondering why we do that. I know I’m preaching and probably not taking my own advice.
‘But life is too short. Sometimes you just let it fly past you. I just don’t want to get stuck. There’s just no rules to life, I hate it when people are literally just watching their life go by.’
The song, and the previous single, Seize The Power, are all about making change. Theresa took her own advice during the lockdown, and instead of twiddling her thumbs wrote more music than ever before.
‘It was lucky because we had the studio in our house. We knuckled down and wrote like six days a week. It was this constant flow until towards the end of last year, we started fizzling out,’ she shrugs. ‘Everything just sounded like s*** by the end but we had an amazing run to start.’
It was a very different experience to when they wrote their debut album, Don’t Wait ’Til Tomorrow, released in 2019. ‘When we did the album before, we didn’t write loads of songs and choose what we wanted. Every single song we wrote went on the album, so we couldn’t really curate it. This time we wrote between 50 and 60 songs and chose the best ones.’
Not playing live has been getting to them, and the band are looking forward to letting off some steam in their upcoming live-stream performance for Scruff Of The Neck in Manchester. ‘I’m craving people like mad and that cranked-up energy that you get in a show that you don’t get anywhere else. I need that so bad!’ says Theresa. ‘Over the last year we’ve had a few shows, but they’ve literally been in my living room filming it on my s***** little iPhone,’ she exclaims. ‘It’s just the most underwhelming thing, it’s just not cool. It’s not good. I don’t want to do them like that.
‘But that’s what we had. I literally can’t wait to perform on a proper stage. It’s just so nice to be in that environment again.’
Those who have already had the pleasure of catching Yonaka live will know this is where they really shine. Theresa is a ball of energy on
stage, and the band’s high-octane shows have garnered them a dedicated following.
There may be no audience in person, this time, but they won’t be holding back. ‘We’re still going for it! I’ll be throwing myself around, loving the fact I’m not sitting down on my grubby old carpet,’ Theresa laughs.
‘It’s a proper show. We’re looking at your eyes just through a camera, and we’re going to play some new songs, too. I promise it’ll be just like one of our shows, but through a screen.’
Yonaka play Scruff Of The Neck on April 19, twitch.tv/scruffoftheneck