Hear Smalltalk’s Whimsical New Song ‘Tired’

At a jam session late last year, when Mumbai-based neo-soul band Smalltalk’s guitarist-vocalist Samarth Bahl began playing three chords, the words “Maybe I’m just tired” came naturally. “We just walked into the jam room once, and it started out with a jam,” says Bahl about their latest single “Tired.”

Their first release since 2018’s debut EP Tacit, Smalltalk stick to rubbery basslines from Yohann Coutinho, playful guitar work from Bahl as well as Siddharth Shankar and a solid beat from drummer Linford D’souza.

Much before the song took shape with lyrics and vocal melodies, it was just a jam that the band often opened their shows with in late 2018, including an appearance at Ziro Festival of Music, Arunachal in September. “It had a chill vibe compared to the other stuff we were writing,” Bahl says. They knew they had to release a single, so they added more structure and took it to producer Rishi Bradoo at Theatre 74 studio. Ready since January, the song deals with the lethargy of being caught up in the same old patterns of human behavior.

Bahl says there’s more material on the way, but they’re not yet sure if they want to write an album. “For me, if we release an album… it’s a simple analogy of writing a book of short stories or writing a novel. We’re still sort of growing and we’re aware of that. We want to explore this single release space with a cohesive sound before we find our space and know what we want to say with a larger body of work.”

Up next, a video for “Tired” – shot at Mumbai vocalist Ambika Nayak’s home – will be released soon. Bahl says, “We’ve already shot it. That was a killer experience. We worked with [filmmaker-photographer and singer-songwriter] Jishnu Guha and we had Krish Makhija as director of photography.”

Listen to “Tired” below. Stream on more platforms here.