Black Letters’ Sharath Narayan Launches Moody, Multilingual Solo Project

Singer-songwriter and producer Sharath Narayan finds a new voice in his multilingual solo project, after more than a decade and a half with Kerala-origin indie-rock band Black Letters and some years making electronic music under the moniker Cosmic Attic. Over the last couple of months, the Bengaluru-based artist has released the playful, vocoder-informed Malayalam song “Anthinilavin” and the moody Tamil track “Thathalithen.”

Narayan says singing in Malayalam and Tamil has been on his wishlist for the longest time, right from the Cosmic Attic EP Climb. “In it, I wanted to sing in Tamil here and there in one of those songs, but I just couldn’t, I think I wasn’t there yet. So I sampled a bunch of stuff from Tamil movies and Tamil songs, and made my mother sing a few lines in Tamil on the song ‘Chasing Your Horse,’” he adds.

The downtime with the pandemic brought about a chance in “re-establishing those thoughts” and took the artist back to phone-recorded rough ideas featuring from a few years ago. “I was mostly singing gibberish plus a few Malayalam/Tamil words thrown in here and there […] More than trying to indulge in the singer-songwriter side of me, I think I desperately wanted to ground myself, in terms of where I am from, the languages I speak and think in, and who I think I am, as a person,” Narayan says.

With both songs out now, there’s a third solo single on the way in Hindi, even as Black Letters too takes the spotlight with their recent single “Simpler Times” and upcoming material. In an interview with Rolling Stone India, Narayan talks about his new songs, language and what’s next. Excerpts:

What are you singing about on the two songs out so far, “Anthinilavin” and Thathalithen”? In both cases, you had different lyricists on board, which is sort of new for you after always having written lyrics, right?

It’s definitely new for me to have lyricists on board. For Black Letters, Sarang and I write and edit lyrics, we sort of have our own ways of tapping into each other’s thoughts. 

In my new project, for the songs “Anthinilavin” and “Thathalithen,” it was similar yet very different. I was sure of what I wanted the songs to be about, and what sort of emotions I wanted to paint them with. It happened that way with [lyricist] Vinayak Sasikumar for “Anthinilavin.” For “Thathalithen,” what [screenwriter and songwriter] Veronica felt the song could be about was similar to what I wanted it to be about. It was one of those beautiful coincidences.

Additionally, these songs have an accessibility to them – maybe Malayalam and/or Tamil-speaking folks would become open to this kind of music, based on the lyrics or vocals. Were you thinking about that too? 

I want to make music that’s outside of what popularly exists in the regional music around here, and that’s what excites me most. Not to say that popular music isn’t exciting or anything, I love some of A.R. Rahman‘s work amongst a few others in Hindi and Tamil, especially some of his Nineties and 2000s music. It was gold, I grew up listening to that music, thanks to my parents. 

Sure, the languages my songs are in could probably connect a bit more with the people who speak and think in one of them, but at the same time, people connect with a lot of kinds of music that are in different languages, broadly speaking. So that wasn’t really the thought behind “Anthinilavin” and “Thathalithen.” I wanted to make a different kind of sound, to offer something new to Malayalam and Tamil-speaking people, and I couldn’t have made these songs in English, because the way I think and write in English is fundamentally different.

It’s been a productive few months on the release front, with the Black Letters song out as well, along with these two songs. What’s it been like seeing it all go out there? 

[Laughs] Yes I think so. These are all from what I wrote during 2020-22, just that I’m getting to release them now. There’s plenty more that’s coming soon. Pretty much the same with Black Letters, we wrote a bunch of songs during that time, and we are getting to release them one by one now.

Will there be any live gigs for your solo project? Is that something you’re trying to figure out? 

I’m focusing on writing a lot more, at least for this year. Sure, why not, I’d love to take them to the stage if people are eager. I haven’t thought about it yet. It needs a lot more work and time put into it, which I can do after writing more songs. So, maybe next year, or maybe earlier than that. Let’s see how it goes.

What else is coming up in 2023 for your solo stuff as well as Black Letters?

My next song is called “Raat Raani” and it’s in Hindi. Good friend of mine, Pranav Bhasin, who is also a filmmaker and a musician, kind of fueled me into making this song, I had never thought of making a song in Hindi. He had come over to my studio while we were shooting for “Anthinilavin,” and played me one of his song sketches. It was called “Raat Raani” and he had sung a few parts in Hindi. It sounded great to me and I twisted and turned it around quite a bit, and we came up with something beautiful that evening. Pranav and I worked with Abhin Joshi who penned down the words for this one, and he is a fantastic songwriter himself (check out Abhin & Tanish). Prabhu Muraleedharan, we’ve known each other since university,  played drums for “Thathalithen,” and he is on this one too. I’m glad that I could have him on board for these songs. He’s a tasteful drummer, one of those gems that are quiet and hard to find. I’d love to have Jay Unnithan again on some of my upcoming songs as well, I like his approach and it’s inspiring to work with him.

An animated music video for “Thathalithen” made by [visual artist and producer-singer] Rishabh Iyer (aka Khus Fir) is coming up soon. I’ve also been mixing songs from his own upcoming album and it sounds out of the world. I’ve been working with Wonderwall Media as well, probably a live music performance video, or something similar, we’ll only know later when it happens.

As for Black Letters, we have at least three songs coming up this year, I’m wrapping up the production and mixing work for these ones right now, and there’s a plan for a mini album too, which we’ve been talking about lately.