This preschool teacher makes smart, amazing music that transcends genre

The second half 2022 was full of changes for Mei Semones. The musician had just moved to a new city, New York. She was falling in love as she began a new relationship while ending a close friendship, and adjusting to the unlikely reality of adulthood after graduating from Berklee College of Music that spring.

“It was a transitional period in my life,” says Semones, who struggled to find time for creativity now that she had a full-time job at a Japanese kindergarten. “I was trying to get into music after a 10-hour shift and I was like, 'It's just not working right now. I am miserable.”

Despite her workload, Semones managed to write a number of songs during the time she faced this period of instability head-on. These songs are his backbone Kabutomushi, Semones' third EP, due later this spring. With forays into indie rock and melodic pop, Kabutomushi is her most exciting and fully formed release, expanding on the adventurous jazz-based music she's released in recent years. She made the record with her band, which consists of collaborators she met while at Berklee: Noah Leong on viola, violinist Claudius Agrippa, bassist Jaden Raso and drummer Ransom McCafferty.

Semones' music is difficult to categorize, something she is well aware of and not particularly concerned about. When someone asks her to describe what she makes in one sentence, she tells them it's “indie J-pop influenced by jazz and bossa nova” and leaves it at that. She's introduced her music to all kinds of new audiences over the past two years, sharing the stage with everyone from Korean indie rockers Say Sue Me to alt-pop singer BRATTY, for whom Semones will be opening on tour in the spring, and she doesn't really care how young fans describe what they're hearing.

The new EP (whose title means “rhinoceros beetle” in Japanese) ranges from the jazz-inclined cover of “Tegami” to the anthemic indie-rock tune of “Inaka” to “Wakare No Kotoba,” which Semones says it started with an arpeggio. learned in college. “I was like, 'This is really sick,'” Semones says of the arpeggio, which forms the basis for the song's guitar line. “People use it in a modern jazz context, improvising, but what if it's just in a pop song?”

Semones' unique blend of influences (everything from John Coltrane to the Smashing Pumpkins) and taste can be traced back to her childhood in Michigan, where she first fell in love with the guitar after seeing Marty McFly perform “Johnny B . Goode” in Back to the Future. This led to a typical pre-teen classic rock phase – 'Stairway to Heaven', the Red Hot Chili Peppers – before diving deep into jazz in middle and high school.

Semones' lyrics are in both English and Japanese, which is not an accident or a gimmick, but is, in fact, essential to Semones' sense of self as an artist. “I didn't feel like I even liked the songs I was writing until I started writing in Japanese and English,” she says of her teenage attempts at singing. “Before my freshman year of college I had never tried to write in Japanese, but then I said, 'This is what I want my music to be.'

Semones is well aware that she usually plays for predominantly English-speaking audiences, and uses switching between languages ​​as an additional narrative tool at her disposal: a way to startle the audience by jumping from one line to another, or a means of reinforcing certain musical or narrative points which he does by moving from the familiar to the unknown. A rare exception to this dynamic occurred last month, when Semones played her first show in Japan to a sold-out crowd (Semones' mom brought 15 friends to the show).

Looking forward, Semones is excited to try to exist in both jazz and rock venues, playing the Bowery Ballroom one night and the Blue Note the next. He's already working on his debut LP, which he expects to be “all over the place”: originals that sound like jazz standards, waltzes, indie rockers, more than anything he's composed in years.

Semones is mostly grateful to have more time to make music (her preschool job is now just part-time). Every time she plays a concert in her new hometown of New York, she thinks to herself, “It's great that I can do this.” Even though it's her third EP, Semones sees Kabutomushi as a principle. “I feel like I'm at the beginning of a new phase,” he says.