Them Clones are back, and not in any regular sort of way. They’re back with a new sound, new singles, a new band member, even. The Delhi-based alt-rock outfit put out two new singles, called ‘Mediocre’ and ‘Speak When I’m Gone’ (stream or download the songs below) last month. The singles are part of the Season Two Singles, a project by the band aimed at introducing their reinvented sound to all their fans.

Season Two Singles is not exactly an EP; more an introduction to the new spaces the band is trying to explore. Akshay Raheja is the newest entrant into the fold, handling low end duties via keys and samples. “The band has just started afresh, considering that I have just joined,” he says, “and these are the two songs that we immediately worked on, so we wanted to release these first. We decided to take out these two singles and release them together on the same day and, since it is a new beginning, we called it Season Two Singles.” 

The singles were recorded by Keshav Dhar of Skyharbor. There is a lot that the band is experimenting with. “Another thing that Them Clones has always done is that whenever they wrote a song, they would write it at a jam and then play it live at gigs, and then hit the studios later to record it. But, this time we did it the other way round – we first recorded the singles and now we will be playing them live.”

“As a band, we have always wanted to release singles and not EPs,” says vocalist Pritwish Dev “because, after Love. Hate. Heroes., we were basically trying to figure out a new sound which was like a natural progression. So we always started out in that particular direction and we’ve never weighed it in terms of developing or creating more tracks and packaging it in the form of an album or an EP.” In fact, the enthusiasm the band has these days about the new beginnings of Them Clones springs forth not just through the music but their demeanour too – a short phone conversation turned into a fun 40-minute conference call with the guys all weighing in with their opinions and thoughts about the exciting new terrains they’ve entered.

Drummer Surojit Dev says, “It is difficult to put our music under a genre, which is something we’ve always struggled with. I think broadly it fits into the category of alternative music, but we see our music fall under pop melodies with rock riffs or patterns and that’s the sort of music we have always played. This is the first time that we have someone dedicated to keyboards and samples and, with Akshay coming in, what we see happen very naturally is that things are taking a slightly different turn from our earlier catalogue of music.”

Stream Season Two Singles below:

The Clones have been out of the gigging circuit for the past few months, spending that time jamming and creating a new sound. “The band was looking for a different direction,” says Akshay. “I was on vacation when I got a call from Prithwish sometime in May asking me what I was up to. He told me that the band wanted to try out something new, where they wanted me to take care of the bass (the low-end), coming from a laptop, with a different sound, and also filling in melodically with my keyboards and samples. So I said ‘Why not?’ We got together in June this year and started jamming.”

‘Mediocre’, far from its name, begins with a beautiful and very ambient guitar melody immediately putting everything into perspective. The song has a pop-rock(ish) feel to it; it is catchy and difficult to push out of your mind. The difference in the band’s music as compared to before is very subtle and likeable. ‘Mediocre’ is the sort of song that one could start their day with and maybe end with too, it is soft, melodic and meaningful. On the other hand, ‘Speak When I’m Gone’ has a very memorable structure to it, where the percussion and the melody gel together in such a way that it will keep your ears hooked to the stereo.

The current line-up of the band includes Pritwish Dev on vocals, Joseph Lalhmachhuana on the guitars, Surojit Dev on the drums and Akshay Raheja on keyboards, samples and low-end.

The band plans on getting back to regular gigging and release another set of singles sometime in October. They may be veterans in the indie space, having been around for ages, but they retain the urge to reinvent and experiment, and good things are happening at their end. Keep your ears alert and on the lookout for their music, there is a lot more in store for the future.

Download Season Two Singles from their official website here