INDIE ROCKERS

A ‘DREAM POP’ DUO FROM KOLKATA IS MAKING INTERNATIONAL WAVES

Nischay Parekh and Jivraj Singh, indie rockers from Kolkata, have long been part of the city’s music scene. Having inked a five-album deal with London’s Peacefrog records last year, the duo is now working on their second album, and is set to embark on a tour of the UK in May. Better known as Parekh and Singh, their sound has been described as Death Cab for Cutie meets The Smiths, but Parekh says it could just as easily be Louis Armstrong meets Nina Simone. “We’ve grown up listening to nearly every kind of music. We don’t mind wearing our influences on our sleeves,” says Singh. They performed together in 2010—and opened for Norah Jones at an NH7 Weekender in 2013. Parekh, 24, studied guitar with Kolkata stalwart Tajdar Junaid, while 30-year-old Singh is the son of musicians Gyan and Jayshree Singh (once of Skinny Alley).

Last year, Peacefrog re-released their 2013 album Oceans, with a video of their song I Love You Baby, I Love You Doll. The video—in which the duo wore now-famous pastelcoloured suits—has garnered more than 320,000 views. The Kolkata setting is the most recognisably Indian thing about it, but there are hints of home in their lyrics as well. In Philosophise, Parekh writes with an almost immigrant angst: I’ve got

a New York state of mind/ In Indian standard time. It should be no surprise that the song was written at the Berklee School of Music, Boston, where Parekh was studying at the time.