Q&A: Coming Up Roses on the Old and the New & What Rock Means to Them
“IN SINGAPORE, THERE’S A DISH CALLED ‘ROJAK,’ WHICH MEANS — ‘an eclectic mix’ in colloquial Malay,” lead singer Emily Sera of London-based Singaporean band Coming Up Roses says. Moving to the UK at the end of 2022, Coming Up Roses’ myriad of genric influences, from shoegaze and dream pop, continues to be enriched by the seamless marriage of their Singaporean roots with their love of ’80s and ’90s British music culture.
Collectively inspired by the likes of My Bloody Valentine, Cocteau Twins, Slowdive, Ride, and Wolf Alice, the band has managed to craft a world where sound becomes feeling. “I guess that’s what we are trying to do here — we are trying to put together our own understanding of what rock is to us,” Sera adds. In a mutual celebration — or perhaps, in understanding of the potent necessity of music — Coming Up Roses has created a unique dialogue with their listeners, who, nostalgic and curious, have gathered in intimate rooms and festival stages across the globe to converse in the beauty of unspoken conversation with the band, and to escape in the all-encompassing warmth of sound.
From their first single, “Lies,” released in 2019, to their most recent single and accompanying video, “Utopia Reimagined: These Corners,” the band’s sonicscape wavers between a place where fragility meets aggression and a space that is textural, melodic, and contemplative. Throughout their artistry, the band leans into their vulnerability, unafraid of the paths this may take them down, and as the guitars shudder between the haze of synth and instrument, as the vocals obscure fluidly into mysterious, new forms, there is somehow a serenity at the center of this sonic extremity. There is nothing left but the soul of someone ready to traverse the boundaries of their own feelings.
On individual journeys through musicianship, having spent years mastering the command of their respective instrument, Coming Up Roses came together at music college and have since found a natural cohesiveness — an emotional and technical bond that appreciates liminality, discovery, experimentation, and newness. The band values music as a vessel for introspection, and this forms the foundation for their process — one that is open, intuitive, and prioritizes collaboration. This is evident with every listen, every dive further into their multi-dimensional discography. Candid and emotional, their latest release, “Utopia Reimagined: These Corners,” is a culmination of the band’s journey so far.
The track, strikingly ethereal, is a blizzard of sound: percussive, lyrical, and cinematic. By the end of the song, we shift from the gentle haunt and rhythmic contours of its opening to a world that pulsates the fibers beneath our skin as the band locates the brink between melody and noise. We are soothed but we are frenetic, we are lost in something that in itself is not concrete, that shape shifts in a melange of everything we’ve ever felt.
As Coming Up Roses continues through the global rock scene, they contribute the sounds and stories of their roots. “We kind of get the best of both worlds actually: the familiarity of home and the excitement of discovering cultures in a new land,” the band says. The group has emerged as one of the most promising acts out of Southeast Asia, forefronting its underground rock scene, which teems with emerging talent. Working with names such as Caesar Edmund, playing shows such as Canadian Music Week, Fred Perry Subculture, and The Alex Blake Charlie Sessions, as well as touring Taiwan and Indonesia, Coming Up Roses looks forward to the continual growth that arises with life, and how music both drives and relieves these significant shifts.
Read below as Coming Up Roses discuss their personal and collective relationship with music, their journey, inspiration, and process.
LUNA: You know, I wish I could live in the world of your music. I love it.
COMING UP ROSES: Thank you so much, you know that means a lot.
LUNA: How was the move to the UK? What have you guys been up to?
COMING UP ROSES: Since coming to the UK, we’ve played a couple of shows. We’ve released one single and a music video alongside it, too.
LUNA: I understand the culture of Southeast Asia is starkly different from the UK in almost every form. Coming from Singapore, what surprised you?
COMING UP ROSES: It’s quite different from what we expected. I think it's a very chill, relaxed environment. Compared to Singapore, which is extremely embedded in hustle culture — you know, we might walk slowly, but we move quickly (laughs). People here walk fast, but their pace of life is slower. It is really interesting to see that manifest into everything that people do.
LUNA: Did you find that this shift affected your music? Environment can breed such massive shifts, personally and artistically. In what ways did this impact your artistry, conceptually and in your process?
COMING UP ROSES: To be honest, we haven’t written a lot of music since we came. It has been a lot of picking up the newness of being in a new country, in a new city. The other thing is that we moved to the UK specifically because a lot of our music[al] influences are part of the culture and history of the UK: British bands from the ’90s, the shoegaze movement. We moved here with a lot of awareness and very much in love with British music culture. I think it has allowed us to feel like we can be part of it [and given] us the opportunity to find a place in it.
LUNA: Definitely. It must be quite cathartic, or things must feel like they are aligning when you’re able to walk the streets and be in the places of people you’ve been inspired by.
COMING UP ROSES: Oh yes, it really is — that’s such a big part of our experience at the moment.
LUNA: Do you find that this is part of the role that music plays for you?
COMING UP ROSES: For us, music acts as a catharsis for emotions that happen in our daily lives. But also, we find that music is sort of like pictures where it captures a moment in time. You kind of write what you’re feeling in that instance and thus when you look back, you remember that time.
LUNA: How has the release of “Utopia Reimagined: These Corners” been? How did this track come to life? It is such a detailed project.
COMING UP ROSES: It has been really amazing. It was actually part of a project from Singapore, which we recorded here. The theme of the song was — well is — utopia, the idea of what it means, because what does it really mean? For everyone, the word means something different. We wanted utopia to be this very mystical, mysterious place, where the word doesn’t have such a concrete meaning. We also wanted to question whether it really exists, since it can be understood in so many ways.
LUNA: Sonically, it’s cool how the world you create becomes so personal to its listener. That’s the beauty of music in general. How did you play around with sound in this particular track to fulfill your conceptual intention?
COMING UP ROSES: We came up with this very enigmatic theme in the music and in the way that it’s sung too. The backing vocals are a little more wispy, rather than being very front-and-center. Of course, too, the lyrics share the same message.
LUNA: The music video is such a visual embodiment of the sonic world, the lyrics, and the basis of the track. Did the vision come alongside the song? What was the process for this like?
COMING UP ROSES: It definitely came after we did the song. And we did the music videos ourselves, and it was the first time we tried to do something like that. Obviously, being so new in London we wanted to check out cool spots in the city, so before we filmed the music video we were just scouting locations, exploring, finding things we liked. We are in Northwest London, and we’ve walked by certain places and noted that they would really fit the vibe of the song.
LUNA: So it was a simultaneous process of discovering your surroundings and trying to create something from these discoveries, this newness? That must’ve been different in terms of process.
COMING UP ROSES: Oh, when I say we filmed it ourselves, I mean we really filmed it ourselves. It was the middle of winter, you know — January, six degrees, and I was wearing a summer dress.
LUNA: (Laughs) The things we do for our craft. That must have been freezing. The winter in London made the imagery quite mystical — you managed to create a very captivating experience for the watcher, and that’s very impressive you did it yourselves.
COMING UP ROSES: Definitely. Darius was behind the camera and I was standing in front of it. There were so many random people looking at us. It got to certain points where when the sun was out it was bearable, but when the sun wasn’t out, I couldn’t even move my fingers; my hands were numb. I kept asking Darius to give me the gloves. It was the funniest process of having to film for five minutes, then huddle in my coat for another five minutes, put on a very serious face when the camera was on, you know, pretend I am fine and not shaking (laughs).
LUNA: Darius mentioned that you are heavily inspired by the shoegaze movement. Though you maintain that consistent world of sound, there are certainly a multitude of inspirations. Would you classify yourself through genre? Or would you say it’s limiting to do so?
COMING UP ROSES: I think we recognize [that] we wear our influences on our sleeve, so we don't shy away from acknowledging that. I think we label ourselves more as shoegaze-influenced because we tie in a lot of other stuff from our personal influences. We don't limit ourselves — we're very much open to trying new things and exploring different genres. You’re right, we continue to incorporate some elements from shoegaze, of course, but also our music is so heavily influenced by everything that we experience in our personal listening,
LUNA: How do you implement the diversity of your personal listening, being in a band?
COMING UP ROSES: We've always said that when you're in a band, it's very much a combination of everyone's influences coming together. And we really like to make sure of that; [we] let it happen naturally. Our process really allows for it. We work together like that.
LUNA: Did this develop overtime, as your process became more intertwined? How do you experiment with your sound together?
COMING UP ROSES: I think at the start, what really helped us was when we wrote the song “Waters”… It was so vastly different from the other stuff that we previously wrote, which were somewhat poppier, in a sense. From there, we thought, “This is cool, we really like this sound.” And Darius is very knowledgeable — he knows his history about shoegaze. He influenced me, and I started learning about shoegaze, so it was from there that we immersed ourselves in it.
LUNA: Did your understanding of shoegaze shift, in the way it interacts with your own artistry?
COMING UP ROSES: Yes, for sure. I think as we grow as people, we don't want to confine ourselves to just that. So it turned from wanting to be a shoegaze band to being a shoegaze-influenced band.
LUNA: Beyond shoegaze, are there any artists that you draw from or enjoy, on both an individual and collective level?
COMING UP ROSES: I think one of the bands we've been listening to over the past year is Deafheaven. They started out being a really heavy-metal band, but their most recent album is more directed toward the shoegaze dream pop direction. But there's still that heaviness, which we think is really cool. They were one of the bands that we've been listening to a lot. We got to watch them live when we came into London, which was amazing.
LUNA: That’s a wonderful quality to London — many bands come through the city and it bridges this space between listener and creator. Any other bands? Japanese shoegaze and metal in general is flourishing insanely.
DARIUS: Yes! I love Kinoko Teikoku from Japan — I think they've been a band that I’ve always come back to. Yeah. They also combined shoegaze elements with very pop-rock vocals, bringing those two influences together.
EMILY: I’ve always listened to more pop stuff. Taylor Swift, The 1975. I appreciate and love Deafheaven as well, but my day-to-day listening is very much pop. It is funny because I write shoegaze, and you would think that because I listen to so much pop I would want to write pop music, but the heaviest songs are written by me. The poppy songs are written by Darius.
LUNA: I think the experience of consuming and creating something can be so disparate. As we said before, one could say genre undermines the ability of music to be quite boundless.
EMILY: We don’t want to write what we listen to — listening is its own experience; expression is its own too.
DARIUS: Exactly, we want to experiment naturally, and it helps that we have our personal interests and inspirations.
LUNA: The common ground of these inspirations — pop, dream pop, shoegaze, grunge, metal — are their abilities to be densely captivating, nostalgic, cathartic. What do you hope that your listeners feel or experience when interacting with your music?
DARIUS: There is a sense that the goal has been achieved when people start crying. It means that the song means as much as it does to us, and that they relate to it at some level.
EMILY: I remember watching this live performance of The 1975 at one of the big festivals, as they always do. And there was this girl, she was up front-and-center, and she was crying. And I started crying as I watched through the screen. I thought to myself, “Yeah, this is what I want to do” Doctors heal the body, but musicians heal the soul.
LUNA: What a lovely way to put it. You’re right — soul, mind, heart, everything. We talked about connection within music, from audience to artist, but I think a further layer of it is a connection to self, and roots. Are there any ways that you recognise connecting to your Singaporean roots in the creation of your music?
COMING UP ROSES: I don’t think we think about it consciously or forcefully. Yeah, it is very much part of us, it comes naturally. We are very Singaporean. We notice it in small details as we navigate being outside of Singapore, you know: the distinct accents, the pace of life, specific values, maybe how we approach things.
LUNA: Singapore is such a diverse place in itself. As well as this, Southeast Asia is sort of gaining more attention in Western realms of music. There is so much talent brewing within, and there always has been. Have you been inspired by Singaporean music in any way?
COMING UP ROSES: Singapore has various cultures: we have Chinese culture, Malaysian culture, Indian culture. It’s really a melting pot for such a big range of music and culture in general. We grew up with a lot of these sounds, and whether they make their way into our music we aren’t really sure yet. I think, again, it is so natural to the sounds we may be familiar with. We grew up with a lot of Western music, which I think is a more conscious part of the music we create. But yeah, I think it's always an interesting perspective when you grow up with so many different sounds. I think it's always good to sort of broaden your perspective — maybe [we will] eventually incorporate these.
LUNA: I think there is much space to be traversed between the arts and culture of countries in Southeast Asia. With time, it might be easier to find that middle ground in acts such as making music, without it being too conscious of an act.
COMING UP ROSES: Well, yes, exactly. For me, I feel like Singapore is a little too young. And therefore we don't have a backlog of culture in the arts. Because of that, I think that perhaps for our generation, due to the internet, we're so influenced by the West in terms of sound that it might not exactly reflect our roots. However, I think the themes and the social issues written about in songs are things that a lot of Asians — not just Southeast Asians who are not used to the Western way of life — can relate to.
I was reflecting a lot on why there is that generational gap. I realized, because our parents or grandparents were immigrants, for most of us a lot of their perspective is about survival. A lot of our generation is about chasing dreams, being educated, expression, which is more of a Western thing. So there's that gap. And I realized… if you want to talk about how Asia or Southeast Asia has influenced us, I think it's these themes that are so important and so dear to us Asians that we make movies about it — great ones, too.
LUNA: There has been a recent breakthrough in the representation of Asian culture in the arts, music, film, and so on, which I am sure has been lovely for you both. It has been so potent in its impact on how we are able to see ourselves and understand our experiences amongst and alongside others. There’s a lot of healing involved, and just as you said, an approach to life that is unlike our elders, but also unlike many of our peers.
Extending on this, how did you guys come to the point that you are at now with your music? Was there a point at which you kind of said, “Okay, we’re going to commit to music and follow this dream”?
EMILY: I started music quite late. I've always been singing; I was in the school choir. But I thought I was going to be a doctor. I’m sure this is a common experience. I even got an internship at the hospital, and my mom was so proud. But then I broke my arm during A Levels. I couldn't write because it was my writing arm — I'm left-handed. I think when you have that taken away, you kind of sit and wonder, “Well, what am I doing with my life?” I really wanted to be a doctor since I was young, but I think I was attached to the idea of it. So I thought really hard about what I wanted and still didn't know.
Like a lot of Singaporeans, we just go through the system. We think, “What’s the next step?” I just want to get a job. I want to get the house. So a friend told me, “Isn’t it obvious? You're always singing,” and I was like, “Oh yeah.” I just dove in and I quite literally said, “Okay, I'm just going to do singing now. I'm going to heal the soul.” It was really scary because my mom was like, “No, definitely not. You're not going from a doctor to a musician, especially when you're in Singapore, where there's not as rich a culture of arts as LA or London.” But honestly, I just dove into the deep end and never looked back.
DARIUS: For me, it's quite the opposite. Because my dad is a musician, my mom had a musical background. So I was always surrounded by music. I was doing the piano thing. You know, as you do — I was the stereotype. When I was a bit older, I discovered rock music. And yeah, I never looked back.
LUNA: How did you find your way to each other? Your first single was released in 2019, and the last few years have been quite a shift, culturally and on a grand scale. How was your journey from then until now?
COMING UP ROSES: We actually met in school, in music college, along with our two members at the time. We didn't know what we were doing. You know, we just came together because we really enjoy music and we wanted to do something interesting. It’s been very long — I know we're still young artists, we recognize that. But I think it's been a very long journey in the sense of what we've done and the things we've had to overcome as well.
So you know, we started out playing shows and festivals in Singapore. And then we were recording music, and then obviously the pandemic hit. We were stuck in Singapore. That was around the time where we wanted to start touring. When things started kicking off again last year, we were able to go overseas for the first time. And then obviously, now we've made the move here.
LUNA: That’s amazing — it’s very admirable, and I think it is reflected in how careful and powerful your artistry is. Also, another testament to your growth would be some of the names you’ve been able to work with, Caesar Edmunds being one of them. Moving forward, are there people you hope to be able to collaborate with?
DARIUS: There's so many people we'd love to work with. I'm so glad that we actually got to work with Caesar already, because obviously he's done a lot. And the crazy thing to us is that Caesar is actually Singaporean, so there was that connection. When we met, it was very easy to get together. In terms of bands, we’d love to play with Paramore and Alvvays. Also, we've always loved Wolf Alice.
EMILY: Since I was young, I’ve been a Swiftie. She’s a genius. I'm waiting for the day that I can meet Taylor Swift. It's funny, right? Because you go from Wolf Alice to Taylor Swift. But to me, you can admire people from different times, from different angles. For some, it is musical. Some as a business person and what they’ve done for their career. I think Taylor Swift is a big one for me because for her to be a woman in music from such a young age and still be here so many years down the road, that's amazing.
LUNA: Taylor Swift is a storyteller — lyrically, I think she is able to capture moments that are very personal but very universal. How do you approach your lyricism in your process? Has it changed over the years in working together?
COMING UP ROSES: I think it's changed over the years because of the way we've had to work. One of us will come to each other with a song — we sort of get the basic sort of melody and structure of the song. But when it comes to arrangement, a lot of the time we try to bring it into the band space because we want to include the other band members. They often bring in ideas that we wouldn't have thought about.
LUNA: Would you say your process is very entrenched in collaboration?
COMING UP ROSES: We try to keep it very collaborative; we try to keep the process very open and flowing. Even when it gets to the production stage, especially with “Utopia” because when we brought it to the studio, we felt that it needed a bit more. When we worked with Joshua Rumble, who was the producer for that track, he also gave us a lot of ideas that we were happy to run with and experiment.
LUNA: Does collaboration, the openness of it, create a more natural inclination to experiment? Would you say it pushes the boundaries of conception for you?
COMING UP ROSES: Definitely, I think it creates a safe space. I think in the future we want to continue doing this as well because one of the important aspects of having a producer is having them unravel the band in a way and reading the song and trying to push you in directions that might be unfamiliar to you, that ultimately, is important in the creative process.
LUNA: Is your process spontaneous, or is there a relative routine to the way you approach your projects?
COMING UP ROSES: Yeah, I think so. I think sometimes … we can have a song that has been with us for a long time. Then one day, we were just like, “Okay, let's just try this idea.” And then it turns out to be a really important part of the song and we end up recording it.
LUNA: You said your process was impacted by COVID — in what ways has it shifted, and how would you describe your growth as artists?
COMING UP ROSES: I think at the start it was always writing based on feeling, and there were instances where we would try to write songs by randomly jamming things out. But I think now we are a bit more focused in the sense that we will have a theme, we will write the structures, or at least the melody and the chords, before doing the arrangement. In the past, it was very much a rock band approach. It was very bare-bones: two guitars, one bass singer, that's rock ’n’ roll. But now we try to refine it with backing tracks.
I think, obviously, there's a lot of value in that rawness of just being a guitar band. But I think we've all developed our various influences and want to include other aspects. Heavy synthesizers, backing vocal stuff, vocal effects, all that stuff. I think it helps to make the sound richer. I think that has changed the process of it too.
LUNA: With these newer additions to your sound, the gradual inclusion of these external features, this must have also changed live performance for you.
COMING UP ROSES: Definitely.
LUNA: It must be extremely cathartic and freeing to perform live. What do you love about it?
COMING UP ROSES: It is the energy you get from the audience. I think that is the most important thing to us. We missed that very much when we had to perform live stream stuff during the pandemic. But I think it’s just about having people together, bringing people together. So when you're in that room, you're playing with your band, and there's people in the room and you sort of feed off the energy. You know, we're not very extroverted. But I think when we're on stage, there's nothing more we enjoy — connecting with other people in the audience.
LUNA: Part of live music is also that the world created through personal listening then becomes this externalized, measurable thing. In terms of world, how would you describe the world of your music?
COMING UP ROSES: Exactly. Again, energy is something so important for us. We would say that our music is brave, sentimental, and introspective.
LUNA: I know that you guys have a lot coming up in terms of recording and shows. What are you looking forward to?
COMING UP ROSES: Yes, we do. We’ll be heading back into the studio soon to record new songs! We’re really excited to record again in London. We also have a number of shows coming up. We also just released our first two EPs on CD as a Japanese exclusive. We’re grateful to have released vinyl, cassette, and CDs now — and that’s something that we definitely want to do again for future releases.
LUNA: Ah, the art of vinyl! It’s amazing that part of your process is the release of your music in different forms. There’s a sense of permanence and physicality to music when interacting with it in vinyl, cassette and CD. On a broader scale, and also my last question: What do you hope you are able to contribute to the spectrum of music as it continues its inherent connection to culture? Also, considering in this particular epoch there is that focalized intrigue in highlighting stories that may not have had their chance previously.
COMING UP ROSES: Thank you! And yeah, for us it is definitely about helping to put Singapore on the map in terms of contemporary music on the global scale. We know that it takes a team effort and is much broader than just us, but we hope that we can help to push the needle, as so many others before us have done.
LUNA: That is super exciting, and thank you again.
COMING UP ROSES: It truly is, and thank you!
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