Floating through “Icy Blue”: new Chammeili album contemplates change

Characterized by dreamy doubled vocals and temperamental time signatures, Berkeley-based indie band Chammeili’s 2022 record Icy Blue provides listeners with a bird’s eye view of the trials, tribulations, and realizations that occur throughout one’s early 20s. This introspective album contemplates the changes that come along with burgeoning independence, including new perspectives on time-tried relationships and an emerging consciousness of the world we walk within.

As an acoustic guitar riff traverses 3/4 and 4/4 beats in the title track, songwriter and lead singer Kaamya Talwar Sharma paints the first metaphor of the album: “Like a moth trying to//Fly through glass, to light, to you.” Futile frustration is evoked by the moth’s wings fluttering against unyielding glass, tapping into the purgatorial post-grad mindset that Kaamya occupied at the time. “There was a lot of figuring out that I was doing, in terms of who and what and where I wanted to be,” she commented. The imagery reminds listeners of the painstaking growth process undergone by moths during metamorphosis: the building of the chrysalis, then the brutal self-digestion that occurs within, before the moth finally emerges in its adult form. Then, before taking flight, the moth must flap its wings, shaking out wrinkles in the malleable chitin. It is trapped in a period of pause, drying off from primordial fluid and preparing for what comes next. “There’s a lot of uncertainty in the lyrics, a lot of not knowing what’s happening. Making this album was moving through that place of not knowing, kind of coming to terms with it,” Kaamya said.

The song also captures the intensity of a single moment with another person: the frigid eye contact between both parties, neither willing to relent. Tensions arise in a time of greater uncertainty, heightening the stakes and the emotional weight of the conflict. These ups and downs are chronicled throughout almost every song on the record, the paradox of suffocating closeness and, simultaneously, uncrossable distance. “It’s better at the start//Maybe we’ll skip past this part,” Kaamya sings in “Hush Now,” making it unclear as to whether this line is interspersed with optimism or is rather a tongue-in-cheek commentary on their previous naivete. Finding themself unable to work the issue and escape this state, they search for answers and guidance elsewhere: “Listen to the deck now//Listen to the cards.” Though the song begins in a more apprehensive minor key, it makes the transition to a major key for the chorus, continuing to oscillate between these states of nagging apprehension and lighthearted anticipation throughout. 

In a sudden shift from this introspective introduction, “Take Cover” opens up a space in the record to contend with the alarming state of the world, showcasing a delicate and necessary balance between grounding oneself and continuing to get engaged and involved in the struggles of others. The sudden displacement of upwards of 2.4 million refugees from Afghanistan greatly influenced the song, as did the developing war in Ukraine. These pressing political issues have found personal significance, instilling in Kaamya a sense of heaviness and bleakness about the state of the world. In the process of writing “Take Cover,” Kaamya asked “What the fuck is going on?”; the final product begins to answer that question, describing amassing populations that wait to cross borders and the conditions they endure in the meantime. Much of mainstream music is self-contained and apolitical, but Chammeili shucks off this standard. Other artists in the indie genre such as Thao and the Get Down Stay Down and the Mountain Goats have similarly addressed immigration in their music, ensuring visibility for this conversation within current cultural discourse. 

Another deviation from the band’s modus operandi takes the form of “Aao Na,” the first song written in Hindi to enter Chammeili’s discography. Speaking Hindi takes Kaamya back to their childhood living in New Delhi, before they moved to Britain and finally to the United States. Though she remarked that her relatives often comment on her foreign accent, writing this song allowed her to tap into the familiarity she finds there, and open-heartedly embrace that side of herself through music. The loving effort poured into this form of cultural connection and a sense of its eternal elusivity, as vocabulary is lost over the years, are captured in the lyrics of the chorus. According to Kaamya, they roughly translate to: “The words that we used to use to remember are the same words that have been erased.”

Much more organic in its production than the band’s previous EP Necromancer, the majority of the album was recorded at Kaamya’s parents’ home in Palo Alto, during one long week in January. “From the moment we woke up to like 2 o’clock at night, we were either recording, rehearsing, or listening to the tracks,” Kaamya said. “It was so much fun.” For the album, vocals as well as acoustic and electric guitar were done by Kaamya herself, with Connor Boyd and Aidan Finn on additional electric guitar, Gabriel Giammarco and Clem Zimmer on bass, Connor Finn on drums, and Andres Tepedelenlioglu Soult on keys. Choosing a live recording format as opposed to tracking individual instruments, the recording process relied a lot more on consistent collaboration between band members. Though Kaamya often had the final say on decisions related to songwriting, she was overjoyed to see her bandmates bring their musical knowledge up to bat, throwing out ideas as to how to arrange the songs. “I have a lot of faith in the musicians in my band. They’re all really, really talented,” she said. “I love when they come up with something and it just is perfect.” For Kaamya, who for the vast majority of their life has been writing, recording, and playing music solo, Chammeili has been an exercise in adaptation; but the process has been fulfilling and exhilarating as they all grow closer as collaborators and as friends, experimenting and celebrating together as they work to reach their full potential as a band. 

Already maintaining a cult following in the East Bay music scene, specifically in UC Berkeley circles, this record is an exciting new installment in the synthy, folky, dream pop project’s musical career, which Kaamya hopes will open up future opportunities. “It would be really cool to tour, and I’m hoping that Icy Blue captures enough people’s attention that we can finally do that, as a supporting act or as a headlining act. In any way, I’d love to be playing in new places.” In addition to touring, Kaamya hopes that the record may help the band secure studio time. “We’ve done this home recording thing for a while and there’s so many positives to doing that because you have complete control over your product, your time, the equipment. But it would be cool to record in a professional studio, to see how that’s different and see how that sounds different,” she said. “I’m just hoping to catch the right ears and continue to make music that means something to people.” 

Overall, the album is a stunning representation of sudden snatches of self-awareness and self-doubt which grow in significance during the transition to adulthood, articulated through a string of moments in Kaamya’s own life. The complex emotions she experiences are brilliantly captured in equally complex musical arrangements; the technical assuredness found within the composition becoming a profound accompaniment to these feelings of uncertainty. Icy Blue will undoubtedly chart a new path for the band as it continues to catch the interest of listeners in the Bay and beyond, while remaining true to the intimate sentiment Chammeili has already mastered, and with which all of us have fallen in love. 

Article by Sophia Shen

Photos by Addie Briggs

Art by Mayank Sharma