Superorganism

The London-based collective Superorganism gathers up a wide range of musical genres, from left-field pop to hip-hop, with stops along the way at electro-pop, indie rock, and hyperpop, and ending up with a sound that’s bright and weird, especially when the slacker poetry of lead vocalist Orono is factored in. Their 2017 single “Something for Your M.I.N.D.” caused a minor Internet meltdown and released a jolt of excitement that their debut self-titled album amplified. After losing some members and focusing their sound to a finer point, the band continued on making music unlike anyone else on 2022′s World Wide Pop. The band was initially formed by members of the New Zealand-formed, London-based indie rock group the Eversons, namely Mark Turner, Christopher Young, Tim Shann, and Blair Everson. After playing together for almost a decade, the allure of the standard indie rock sound faded, and they embraced a looser, more adventurous sound that incorporated synthesizers, samples, and elements of hip-hop and electro-pop. In early 2017, when looking for a vocalist to sing on a demo they had cooked up, they turned to a 17-year-old fan of the band who was living in Maine. Initially, they had met Orono Noguchi while they were touring in Japan; now they asked her if she wanted to sing with them. She happily obliged, and the resulting song, “Something for Your M.I.N.D.,” proved so exciting that they decided to form a new group called Superorganism. Soon after, Noguchi moved to London, and the band took over a large house, adding more members — Ruby, B, and Soul, along the way. At the same time, the former members of the Eversons ditched their real names in favor of stage names. Turner became Emily, Young switched to Harry, Shann adopted Tucan, and Everson took on Robert Strange as he moved from music-making to working on the band’s visual image and videos. Living together made it easy to work on music at all hours, and throughout 2017, the members would spend time adding to basic tracks and cooking up new ideas whenever the mood struck. The precarious balance of maximalist pop full of bright hooks, sound effects, and odd samples and Noguchi’s tales of teenage life delivered in a slacker-friendly deadpan proved an irresistible draw, and after releasing another single, “It’s All Good”/“Nobody Cares” (that like their debut release also became a small Internet sensation), the band signed up with Domino Recordings. After another 2017 single, “Everybody Wants to Be Famous,” was released, their self-titled debut album came out on March of 2018. The band worked hard to promote the record, playing a hectic schedule of Internet concerts and radio sessions, and in early 2019, Superorganism embarked on a long tour, with CHAI serving as opening act. Later that year, the band contributed a song, “Hello Me & You,” to The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part, then more or less vanished from view. When they returned with the first single from their second album, it was minus Robert Strange, Emily, and Ruby. The remaining members of the band teamed with producers Stuart Price and John Hill, the latter of whom owns a Grammy for his work with Cage the Elephant, to concoct a sound that was a slicker, more streamlined version of the sound of the first album. 2022′s World Wide Pop also featured a large contingent of guests, such as indie rock icon Stephen Malkmus, Japanese pop star Gen Hoshino, French singer Pa Ji Ma, American rapper Dylan Cartlidge, and former tourmates CHAI. ~ Tim Sendra