JUST LIKE HONEY (USA): Bittersweetness and Light
Bittersweet melancholy drenched in voluptuous feedback: JUST LIKE HONEY's sound encompasses many inspirations ranging from Dream Pop to Alternative Rock and even a tad of Indie Folk.
The band has developed its own unique style of combining rumbling distortion, pounding rhythms, heavenly harmonies and eclectic songwriting into a sensual amalgamation of shimmering soundscapes.
The line-up is:
Darlene Jonasson: vocals, guitar
Bianca Yang: vocals, bass guitar, piano
Patrick Le Mar: guitars, vocals, songwriting
Ramita Arora: backing vocals
Steve Le Mar: drums, percussion
The music work to date is:
2018: Dreamland, album; The weight of stars, album; Blind, EP
2019: The wood room sessions, album; Slow lane, EP
Follow us to discover the band through an interview, as well as their music with music embedded readers and video sprinkled through this piece.
But first one of the best songs of this year:
How did you meet?
Patrick had envisioned the band long before its actual founding. The basic setup was crystal clear in his mind, however the individual pieces were missing and came together organically.
The only obvious pick was Patrick’s half-brother Steve on drums, whom Patrick had already been playing with in a band named Theme Park Rangers despite having been raised in separate families. The band of brothers provided the musical foundation, but the long sought-after lead vocalist was still out of sight.
Bianca’s addition was a kiss of destiny so to speak as she and Patrick had met coincidentally at the 2014 Glastonbury (UK) festival. There is some disagreement over what exact band they were watching, Patrick maintains it was Billy Bragg, but of course we’ll give it to Bianca who is positive it was Temples playing the John Peel Stage. It was that fateful encounter that sparked the eventual founding of Just JUST LIKE HONEY.
After some jam sessions with other musicians in early 2015, Darlene finally joined the band as the main lead singer and second guitarist. All had gelled together at last.
How did you come up with your name?
Is a common occurrence that a name or word pops into our collective minds, it could be a song or album title or some random piece of inspiration, and it tends to stick with all of us straight away, without the need for discussing or elaborating any further. Patrick and Bianca simultaneously said “Just Like Honey” at our first rehearsal and that was the end of that discussion right there.
Nobody ever looked back since. Unlike most bands that go through foot-long lists with loads of potential names of varying degrees of funniness or inspiration we were all on board with our first inspiration 100%.
The name may, of course, be seen as a hat-tip to The Jesus And Mary Chain. It might also refer to the character of our music, which is mostly sweet, despite the odd guitar noise. And yes, we are all very aware of the glaring and ubiquitous sexual connotation.
What is your music about?
All JUST LIKE HONEY does is about creating good songs. To us, songs are more important than the band itself. A good song should tell a story but at the same time not provide an easy giveaway of its meaning. A good song does not need a wall of sound to hide behind, although we quite often produce a huge wall of sound. That’s because we love noise.
What are your goals as an artist artistically/commercially?
Individual freedom and creating art are more important to us than being commercially successful. JUST LIKE HONEY will never change its sound or attitude in order to become more successful. If we stop being noisy for a moment that’s only because we want to assure ourselves whether our songs function without the noise. That moment led to the “Wood Room Sessions”.
Although we are not political artists in the narrower sense, we openly oppose the negative effects platform capitalism as for the music industry or what’s left of that industry respectively.
Today, streaming platforms like “Spotify” are exploiting the work of artists. We hate them. We are, of course, aware of the fact that making music as a profession does require the existence of a free market and your own ability to make use of the machine.
What are you trying to avoid as a band?
Rock music clichés, power chords, blues scale guitar solos. Well, obviously.
Why do you make the music you make? Is it in you? Is it your environment?
We make the music we love. It’s that simple. We can’t think of doing anything else.
What inspires you for the music or for the Lyrics?
Our songs are like a little window into Patrick’s soul because he is our songwriter. Most songs are based on true stories or occurrences, some reflect strokes of fate. e.g., the passing of a close friend, some deal with issues of the western society (e.g. the song “Goddess”), missing people, false prophets and lost memories (e.g. “Out In the Storm” and “Shorelines”), and others ponder on the odd everyday issue (e.g. “Velvet Skies”).
Those songs aren’t essays in the classical sense as they always leave wide room for interpretation, a dynamic that is further fueled by the use of a writing method called “écriture automatique” in French. It was invented by the French surrealist André Breton and may be loosely translated as “spirit writing”.
Interestingly enough we don’t have any real love songs. All attempts to write a love song ended up in tracks like “I Don’t Like The Girl I Am” or “The Strangest Boy” or “Heart Has No Place”. Those tracks are definitely not love songs in the classical sense although they were meant to be exactly that. It’s interesting because there is so much love in our life and yet it doesn’t quite find its way into our music, at least not in an obvious way.
Tell us what you are looking when trying to achieve your sounds. Do you experiment a lot or have a clear idea of what you want?
Although the sound was quite clear in Patrick’s mind even before JUST LIKE HONEY was founded, we actually do experiment a lot these days, taking all the different styles into consideration which make our palette of sound.
How about including a slide guitar solo where you wouldn’t expect it? How about having a reverse reverb on a chorus? We use a lot of different tunings on our guitars as well, a fact which makes us constantly inventing new ways of playing chords.
We have been jamming and improvising a lot recently. However, when developing new songs, it feels as if the songs themselves take a decision and guide us through the creative process.
Oddly enough more songs than ever have decided to fall on the noisy side recently. We therefore can’t help but to think we’re on the way of becoming a noisier band. It’s an interesting development, especially since it seems to be happening organically rather than as a result of a conscious decision.
Explain your songwriting process.
Patrick usually comes up with the basic song ideas, using an acoustic guitar for a first draft version. Chords, melodies and lyrics are added in Patrick’s studio somewhat simultaneously, feeding off each other in the creative process, even though the music is definitely exerting a stronger influence on the lyrics rather than the other way around.
Once this first step is completed Patrick pitches the song to the band in a second step, where a lot of refinement is added and everybody gets to chip in. In a third step Darlene and Patrick enhance the guitar tracks, developing licks and hooks to support the vocal melody.
We don’t look at one guitar to be the lead, both guitars are on equal footing and merge into the overall harmony. Quite often, Bianca’s bass is treated as the third guitar.
Describe your palette of sound.
A mixture of Alternative Rock, Post Rock and Dream Pop with a tad of American Folk, typically served with a lot of sweet guitar feedback.
Who would you want as a dream producer, and why?
We are actually already working with our dream producer, i.e. Patrick’s wife Karin Le Mar. Being an awesome musician herself, she is constantly challenging us. Beyond Karin, we imagine that working with Andy Bell of the British band “Ride” as a producer would be a dream come true.
If you could guest on someone else’s album, who would it be and why? What would you play?
We’ve been asked that question several times recently. The answer is “Ride” again. We admire their work. Spending time with the four of them in the recording studio would definitely boost our songwriting skills.
Interestingly enough both bands seem to regard the guitars and the vocals as equal instruments. We love that thought. If we had a time machine (the DeLorean type of time machine, of course) we would consider to meet “The Byrds” in the studio for similar reasons. [Editor’s note: some day that the Byrds’ ‘8 miles high’ may be the first DreamGaze song)
What musical skills would you like to acquire or get better at?
Just like everybody else, we are trying to get better every day. There is no specific skill, though, which we’d like to acquire.
Which other musician/artist would you date?
Ha-ha, sweet question! That would be Amelia Murray. She’d have a date with the four of us.
Is there a band that if they didn’t exist you wouldn’t be making the music you make?
In terms of an absolute condition we would probably not make music at all without the DIY attitude of Post-Punk. This is more about that “everyone can be an artist” attitude, of course, not about the sound in specific. As for the sound, we are obviously influenced by the 90s bands we love, e.g. Slowdive, The House of Love, Ride, The Charlatans, Mazzy Star, Galaxie 500, Codeine and also some bands of the late 60s. Also, there is a lot of The Byrds in our music. We are not intending to sound like any other band. We are actually unique. There, we said it.
You are from Canada, Germany and the USA, what are the advantages and inconvenient?
We don’t know. Each of us has been living in many different places in “the west” and basically it’s nice everywhere.
What are some places around the world that you hope to play with your band?
We’d love to travel Korea and Japan. We do have a lot of fans there for whatever reason. Also, Bianca speaks Korean, of course, and that could be of some help.
When is the next album/EP due?
We are about to release the “Show Lane EP” on SHORE DIVE RECORDS in November 2019. Nico Beatastic of SHORE DIVE RECORDS does an awesome job promoting the artists on his label.
Also, we love his label policy. All great British records labels as Factory, Creation or Sarah did have a certain sound and you knew what to expect to a certain extent. By the way, we have been back in the studio since early October, working on a bunch new songs. We’re in the flow right now like never before.
These new songs may become a regular album in 2020. Or even two regular albums. Who knows?
Some artists you recommend.
Please listen to Beach Bunny, Fazerdaze, Mandolin Orange and to our label mates Primitive Heart and Swimming Pool! You may be surprised to find Mandolin Orange on our list but without their inspiration we would not have recorded the “Wood Room Sessions”. We love American Folk as much as we love Indie Pop. Again, it’s all about songs.
Anything else you want your fans to know?
We will become comic book characters soon, isn’t that sweet? That’s because a friend of us, Kelci Crawford, is creating a comic book which deals with JUST LIKE HONEY.
Find Just Like Honey here:
Thanks to the band for their kindness and hard work. Of course support them by buying their music and sharing this and their material on social media.
