Rolling Stone India Premiere: Modern Mafia Release New Single “Chewbacca’s Revenge”
The Mumbai alt rock band’s latest track is heavy on pop culture references and guitar riffs
Modern Mafia. Photo: Monisha Ajgaonkar
“Imagine what Chewbacca would do if he went for a haircut and he didn’t like the results?” asks Modern Mafia vocalist Varun Das, “It started off as a joke and now we’ve been performing the song for two years.”
The four-member alt rock band from Mumbai, who first premiered the track at Ray-Ban’s 75th Anniversary Celebrations in 2012, have reworked “Chewbacca’s Revenge” after Jason D’souza [who is also a member of Mumbai indie rock band The Koniac Net] replaced Ishaan Krishna as lead guitarist in 2013. Says Das, “He’s incorporated a lot of his own style into the track and he’s changed some of the guitar parts, so in a lot of ways it’s almost an entirely new song.” Since the release of their EP Random Sheep in 2012, the group has regularly released singles instead of albums. Adds Das, “We kind of realized that no one has time to listen to an entire album and singles just seem like more fun. You can experiment with different things every few months.”
Produced by Sanchit Bhan, who has worked previously with actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s record label HitRecord in New York, “Chewbacca’s Revenge” is the group’s first release this year, but Modern Mafia promises that they’re wrapping up new material, which will be released in the next few months. Not to mention a new music video where “Chewbacca goes crazy.” Adds Das, “We’re just four friends having fun on stage and we don’t take ourselves very seriously. The idea was to make songs about things that influenced us while we were growing up.”
Listen to “Chewbacca’s Revenge” here. Download the single for free here.
