Chinese American Bear Discuss Dim Sum & Then Some, Touring And Finding Joy In The Studio
The Seattle duo reflect on touring, creative freedom and building Dim Sum & Then Some one idea at a time.
There's a glow to Chinese American Bear as I sat down with them last week. Since knowing each other from high school eighteen years ago, the married couple of Lingbo Anne Tong and Bryce Barsten are inseparable in life and in the studio.
A buffet of cultural combination with both Mandarin and English lyricism, Chinese American Bear have been a persistent force in the indie-pop circles. Ever since their lucid pop psychedelics self-titled debut dropped in 2022, they have been the glowing backdrop at Summer cookouts and trendy coffee shops ever since. 2024's Wah!! saw the pair reach dizzying heights with their most commercially successful record. A plentiful record with plenty of catchy bops to rifle through, it allowed them to transcend up a few more steps.
Flash forward four years and they're now celebrating the release of their third studio record, Dim Sum &Then Some. Now with label and management at the helm, it sees the band making some of their most cohesive works to date and selling out some of the biggest shows of their career.
After a fly-by to the UK for Dot to Dot Festival after just a few weeks since the new record was released, I sit down with them to ask how it's been going so far.
We talked about all things music, playing to new audiences, cost of putting on shows and oh.. the World Cup of course.
Fresh off a two-week stint on the East Coast playing shows, the pair have a glint in their eyes and after how their shows have been received, I can see why. "It's been really fun for us to see live how fans are reacting to the new songs when we play them live," says Anne. Fittingly, Bryce agrees.
"You can look at your Spotify numbers or songs that have been streaming best or on radio, but it's been nice to just see fans' reactions and enjoy songs that fans know all the words to."
Hitting up bucket list venues and discovering new cities is always an exciting - perhaps the best part - about being in a band. So reasonably, I had to ask them about some of their favourites. Anne jumped right in on this question, "So we opened for this artist Poppy last year - because of her we got to open for her a few theatres, which was an absolute treat. We played at The Fillmore at San Francisco and The Wiltern in LA. And both of those were legendary venues and would be such a dream to go back and headline those venues. More recently, we got to play London Calling Amsterdam at the Paradiso. The capacity was like 1,500 but feels so intimate still. And the sound was so amazing and had these cathedral glass stained windows - that was such a treat too. We'd love to play a headline show there." Bryce followed suit, "We just played a headline show at Bowery Ballroom in New York, and that was a dream venue for me. We lived there for like ten years and I was in a band [before] and we always dreamed of just like opening for a band there - we never did, never got even close. So that was a big highlight, if I keep playing there my whole life, I'd be pretty happy. I feel like those venue sizes where things start to really click and it's big enough that makes bands really shine."
Alongside headline venues, the duo have also been celebrating the album with intimate in-store performances. "It was really fun," Anne recalls, "Banquet Records outside of London - such awesome people and we played inside the record shop. And we were like - how are we going to fit in here?" Apt to the setting, the pair surmise it as a different kind of scary - "it feels so stripped down, you're usually playing more of a stripped down set, so more exposure to mistakes. Those were nerve-wracking performances, but a lot of fun. Always."
"For the first time ever, at least in my career, we had an album that did okay [Wah!!!] and have a label and an agent now. With this new album, thoughts come in like, "is this going to do as well as the last one?" We try real good to stamp out those thoughts because it's just not productive for us and our way of writing. I also think to the end of the day, I just want to feel real good about what I'm making and that's the success. If that doesn't resonate with as many people then that's okay. Maybe it will, maybe it won't. So it's just like keep making what you want to make and others will resonate and others will not."
Of course, with the pair harking from Seattle, it was only a matter of time before The World Cup came up in conversation, with the US being one of three host nations this year. "It was crazy, it's really fun having the World Cup here. We were driving through, you know, some of these East Coast towns and we arrive or leave on a World Cup day and traffic was crazy", says Anne. "It just felt, it just felt like a little crazier everywhere, which was both fun and also like annoying. Cause we were trying to just make our way [from show to show]!"
The dynamics of a band are always insightful into how it works behind the scenes. For married couple Anne and Bryce, sitting down to intentionally write a song is never on the cards. Bryce leads with, "Yeah, we don't jam together. We're very much like a studio band in the way that like The Gorillaz are or MGMT. Like, they're not bands that get together and jam. They're studio people, you know - and that's definitely my background. Jamming with people is fun but I think what I really love is kind of getting lost in the studio on my own or with someone if it vibes right." Like many, the creative process is never a set thing and for these, it works. "Messing around with a drum beat or a bass line or playing a synth [...] just doing that until you find little hooks or a little bit is good - and then we just build from there."
Anne agrees. "Yeah, he's constantly recording bits - there's probably thousands of bits."
"Too many bits. It's terrible," replies Bryce. "And you know, sometimes you come back to a bit. That's the good thing about a bit is [that] it's so unformed, you can always come back or grab it and put it in some other bit that you're working on." Fittingly, Anne finishes the point, "To make a full bit, it feels like we're talking about engineering!"
It was only a matter of time before these "bits" came together, of course. "I feel like I'll get obsessed something for like a month and all the bits kind of stem from that," Bryce recollects. "There was a month where i was working in my friends' studio in Seattle and I was obsessed with disco beats, disco bass and the JUNO and this Mellotron that he had. And so you know for that month, I was going hard into disco. So I wrote hundreds of riffs and the Dance Dance Dance, Mama and Land of Fun all came from that little span of a month going into those disco vibes. Sometimes I worry, it can feel like a bad habit - being bored is the wrong word," continues Bryce.
"But wanting to explore new sounds is so important for new artists, but I feel like it's also good to sit in a certain zone and even if you're feeling uninspired, sometimes if you just hammer away, some real cool things can surface. So you know, maybe there's a balance of sitting through the boredom rather than just moving on."
When it comes to lyrics, that's Anne's wheelhouse and since the start, that food influence has always been there. "The food thing wasn't like an intentional thing, "let's about eating," Anne expands. "It really came out of me not having a deep enough Chinese vocabulary to write about anything deeper. I can't really write as much about deep emotional feelings or like philosophy. My Chinese is really limited to like daily life, and food is a really big part of our daily life. so that's kind of how it came about."
And how ultimately Chinese American Bear ultimately came to be. That's what they are all about - uncomplicated bouts of fun wrapped in fuzzy feel-good grooves. There's a reason why they're coined as one of the hungriest bands in the world. After my chat about all things food, I was feeling slightly peckish myself.
I asked the two what songs on their new record was their favourite. Anne opted for Forever Lover, a stand-out to perform live while Bryce picked Dance, Dance, Dance - a bustling rave that actually doesn't feature on stream yet, the pair are saving that for a separate release come Autumn. This exclusive is only available to listen live or on physical. Naturally, the band still have a few tricks up their sleeve.
Next on the agenda was some of those most memorable fan interactions. Fans bare butts on display to show tattoos backstage sprung to mind. "After our DC show, there was this guy with all these tattoos and he was really nice," recounts Bryce. "I was admiring his tattoos and he was like "oh, I got more" - and he just rips his shirt off and just pulls his pants down." But as always, the interactions hark back to what's important: the music.
"I think we're taken aback at how much people connect with the music, says Anne. "Like whenever I’m sad, I listen to your music. Or like, your music has helped me through difficult times. Your music was the soundtrack to all my travels last year. I sometimes can't believe that these silly lyrics I'm writing at home connect with people on the other side of the world."
We get different fandom, Bryce quips amongst giggles, "it's all the sentimental emotional support and I just get the butts."
After Bryce and Anne remarked about them being Argentina fans following on from their first footie match over in Buenos Aires, we wished luck to our counterpart nations taking part and went on our way - luckily both England and USA won that night! (1st of July).
Indie-pop stalwarts Chinese American Bear continue on their upward trajectory with their third Dim Sum & Then Some, which was released in May. The band continue their string of US shows during the World Cup from the 11th of July, with both LA and San Francisco on the list. The duo hit Italy's leading indie festival in August before returning the UK in September with trips to London and Brighton.
Photography By: Nicole Miller & Eleanor Petry