• Interviews

• All
• Music
• Cinema
• TV
• Comic Books

Nov 20, 2024 Issue #73 - Maya Hawke and Nilüfer Yanya By Frank Valish Photography by Eleanor Petry

For Seattle’s Chinese American Bear, band life is truly a family affair. Bryce Barsten and Anne Tong met 16 years ago in high school jazz band and have been together ever since. They have been married for six years. The music they make is an engaging multilingual brand of hyper-melodic pop that combines twee instrumentation with lyrics sung in both English and Mandarin. The band has released one album on the Chinese label, Modern Sky, with a second one coming in the fall on British label Moshi Moshi. But while Chinese American Bear’s music relies on an undeniable music and personal chemistry, the backgrounds of its players couldn’t be more different.

“I grew up with Chinese immigrant parents in a very stereotypical Asian family, where my parents had me play piano really young,” says Tong, who admits to having a sheltered childhood and not even hearing The Beatles until college. “I minored in piano performance at Princeton and after graduating played in amateur classical music organizations in New York.”

As for Barsten: “More stereotypically, I got into making music and bought a little interface when I was in high school and started playing in bands, recording our bands, and got really into both the recording side and writing side.”

After spending some time in New York, Barsten’s previous bands broke up, he and Tong moved back west, and Barsten was looking for his next musical project. Tong was teaching him to speak Mandarin, and Barsten, liking the sound of the language but being unable to speak it well, encouraged Tong to sing. They wrote some lyrics together, and a band was born.

“I have no singing background, just karaoke in the shower,” says Tong. “But I was like, ‘Sure, I’ll give it a try.’ And before I knew it, Bryce booked us a show.”

Tong, who has much experience on stage playing classical piano, was totally unaccustomed to the difference in fronting a rock band, but she found she took to it easily, “a natural performer” as Barsten says.

The band released its first song in 2020, but things started to take off with the release of “Hao Ma” a year later. The band’s sophomore album, Wah!!!, builds on the quirky bilingual pop of its debut while increasing the sing-a-long aspect to their songs’ charm. And with a full U.S. tour in November with Europe to follow, Chinese American Bear will bring its own particularly quirky brand of music to the stage, which it does in expressly unique fashion.

“I’ve experienced shows in the past where I’m feeling a little bored,” says Tong. “So I just wanted to really make sure that whoever takes the time to come see us has a really good time. That’s where we got the idea of backup dancers who dress up as dumplings and bears. Then I thought it would be really fun to throw stuff into the audience. So in between songs, I’ll throw plushies into the audience, and people love that. Because who doesn’t love a plushie?! And they’re boba tea shaped!”

[Note: This article originally appeared in Issue 73 of our print magazine, which is out now. This is its debut online.]

www.chineseamericanbear.com

Subscribe to Under the Radar’s print magazine.

Support Under the Radar on Patreon.