Carsick Cars Interview

 This interview was originally published April 30, 2014 on Frontier Psychiatrist.

In the back room of Chicago’s Logan Square venue The Burlington on a cool evening toward the end of March, three guys from Beijing are playing to a capacity crowd. The room isn’t big, but the sounds the trio is making are. Carsick Cars are in the middle of a North American tour. It’s the first time the group has been back to Chicago in quite some time, and the first time since the new drummer and bassist joined. At the helm still is the fiery singer/guitarist Zhang Shouwang (张守望). The group has just released their third album, 3, which sports production help from Hamish Kilgour of the Clean and Pete Kember from Spacemen 3. The album was released on Maybe Mars, the leader in new music coming out of China’s underground.[1]

While the band has opened for Sonic Youth on a European tour and has cultivated a modest Western following, their music is best understood in the context of China. The band’s name is a play on the horrible congestion in Beijing. In general, Shouwang has a penchant for playing around with language, aided by his fluency in English and Mandarin. He sings both languages. “Zhong Nan Hai” from their eponymous 2007 debut, arguably the band’s most well-known song and encore of the evening at The Burlington, references a major cigarette brand in China but is also a reference to an imperial garden and home of the Communist Party in Beijing. Much like when punks used to gob on the Sex Pistols, fans throw cigarettes on stage during the song. “Especially in China,” said Shouwang, “we don’t even need to buy cigarettes anymore.” Shouwang takes the opportunity to explode onto the crowd and surf while playing the song as they close their set.

Carsick Cars also maintain a strong connection to the Beijing art scene. “I always get involved with the art scene, especially [with] this album,” he said. “[On] the cover art, we [collaborated] with this artist Guo Hong Wei (郭鸿蔚)…the whole LP and CD and EP is by him. He’s a really fun person to work with.”[2] The cover of 3 shows three different colored beetles, and the album insert shows an array of stones. Guo Hong Wei’s use of repetition reflects the music of Carsick Cars and may even be inspired by Ai Weiwei’s work (his Instagram account is full of haircuts, flowers, and cats these days).[3] As far as following what else is happening in China’s music scene, Shouwang suggests “a great website called Xiami…they have just everything, but it’s a little bit tricky because sometimes there’s too much Chinese.”

While the band likes coming to the United States, traveling abroad is not all fun and games. “We always have so much trouble with visas. I think [the] Chinese passport is the worst,” he said. “The only countries we can go to without visas are North Korea and some African country I’ve never heard of. And maybe Cuba.” But they’ve managed to deal with the red tape involved and have seemed to tour outside of China semi-frequently in recent years. The most interesting thing on this tour that’s happened to the band was when they were driving in Canada through the Rockies. “That was really beautiful,” Shouwang said. “That was something we never expected.”

Yet, if driving across North America doesn’t make the band carsick, American food makes them homesick. Shouwang laughed as he explained how terrible Chinese food in America is. “I’ve had some really good Chinese food in America, but it’s more expensive and rare, [and] I think it’s even more delicious than [in] China. But most of the takeout Chinese food is really bad,” he said. “Everything tastes the same. I try to eat healthy [in America], but it’s really hard.”

Despite any troubles the band has encountered in coming here, the band members display a generally positive attitude and demeanor. Maybe it’s because when I talked to Shouwang it was 1 A.M. and after they had played their second Chicago show that day (third including his opening performance with White+, Shouwang’s more experimental and electronic side-project), but he was calm and relaxed in contrast to all the noise the band made on stage that night. “I’d bet like 80 percent of people making noisy music are very quiet,” he said. “Because they make enough noise, so they have to be quiet in normal life; otherwise, they would go insane (laughs).”

Overall, what’s most impressive about Carsick Cars is their leadership role in the growing rock scene in China, a scene that’s no secret. PK14 may be the progenitors, but Carsick Cars seem to have made the biggest waves internationally, which is not a small feat in a country not particularly known for its freedom of artistic expression. And yet, various individuals continue to grow the country’s global cultural clout. The philosophies of Ai Weiwei and Mo Yan may differ greatly, but they’re both names that have made it into the international art and literary worlds, respectively. Likewise, for rock bands, Carsick Cars is leading the way for mainland bands to gain exposure abroad. While it will sadly be sometime again before the band is able to tour stateside, the plethora of bands exploding out of China’s underground gives hope for a very loud and unpredictable future of rock music in China and beyond.[4]
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[1] A much much more in depth look at the band’s history can be found on Smart Beijing.
[2] Read about Zhang Shouwang and Guo Hong Wei’s poker games on Beijinger.
[3] Speaking of Ai Weiwei, his work was recently censored in Shanghai.
[4] Concert photographer, passionate music lover, friend of the site, and all around great guy John Yingling’s account of touring China for two months and seeing various bands can be found on Maptia. His work is a great introduction for a Westerner trying to follow what happens there.