Gimme 5! Yea-Ming Chen Shares Some of the Inspirations Behind Ryli’s Debut LP Come and Get Me (Out This Friday!)

With ‘Gimme 5!’ we take a peek into the collections of artists we admire. The premise is simple: artists WE like share five records THEY love. (photo by Alexander Fletcher) 

Hearing Ryli for the first time, the quality of the songwriting is immediately undeniable. This is the kind of pop music that, in a just world, would dominate the airwaves—or rack up billions of streams in the current one. But maybe we shouldn’t be surprised. Ryli features current and former members of Yea-Ming & The Rumours, The Goods, Latitude, R.E. Seraphin, Sonny & The Sunsets, and Healing Potpourri—a true Bay Area dream team. Unsurprisingly, echoes of those bands can be heard throughout Ryli’s sound: there’s melody, there’s jangle, there’s atmosphere, and plenty of West Coast sunshine.

For a quick and incomplete comparison, think of Ryli as the Bay Area’s answer to Camera Obscura. To get a better idea, check out the videos for Medicine Speed, Friend Collector, and I Think I Need You Around, or watch the clip for Break below.

All of those tracks appear on Ryli’s long-awaited debut LP Come and Get Me, out this Friday (teaser: it’s everything we hoped for—review coming soon). We asked Ryli’s frontwoman Yea-Ming Chen—who’s no stranger to the wantlist, check out our reviews on Yea-Ming & The Rumours, The Pennys, and Broken Hearts Are Blue—to share some of the inspirations behind the record while revealing that the band already is working on new material (siked!). Dive into her picks below, and don’t sleep on that pre-order at Dandy Boy Records. This one won’t sit still for long.

Yea-Ming Chen (Ryli): “Since Ryli is such a collaborative project, I’ve compiled a list of albums that Ryli – collectively as a band – have bonded over, that may or may not have influenced our making of Come and Get Me and newer songs not recorded yet. There’s a lot of stuff we’ve bonded over, but these 5 albums stick out the most to me as looming over our collective creative force.   By the way, just so we know who we’re talking about – the band is myself, Rob Good (lead guitar, vocals, producer), Luke Robbins (bass, vocals) and Ian McBrayer (drums, vocals). OK, here we go!”

1. Alvvays || Alvvays
“Back when we first started playing, and still didn’t have a band name, Ian brought up Alvvays as we flirted with the idea of giving ourselves a band name that had a funny way to spell a regular ol’ word. The conversation quickly led to how the band was also good despite having a cheeky band name. I know they’ve been around awhile but I had never checked them out before so I did and Rob did too. We were both immediately drawn to this self-titled debut and Rob loves the “warm, wooly production and the big, soaring chorus” on Archie, Marry Me. Personally, I love Molly Rankin’s voice – a much higher register than mine – she’s got a really beautiful and powerful chest/head mix that I wish I could emulate (still trying haha). Listening to it now, I realize that a lot of our unrecorded newer songs paint in similar strokes as Adult Diversion and that the songs on Come and Get Me are pretty influenced by Archie, Marry Me.”

2. Neu Blume || Let It Win
“Both Ian and Luke brought this record to my attention around the same time Neu Blume came to SF and played with our friends Tony Jay. The rest of the band went to the show while I sadly had to stay at home due to other obligations, but I checked out the record and was blown away first by how much I loved it, and secondly, how I didn’t expect this recommendation from Ian and Luke who usually share post-punk and more up-tempo rhythmically driven stuff. The NB songs have a country element (slide guitars and some twang) and just great melodies and songwriting – something that would probably influence me whilst writing Rumours songs. But it made me realize that I could bring some mellower ideas to Ryli and the rhythm section might be open to it. Also, the four of us couldn’t get over the bass tone on this record, which we nerdily talked about at length lol.”

3. Quivers || Oyster Cuts
“My other project (Rumours) got to play with Quivers in SF when they were on tour for their new album. All of Ryli was at the show and we continued to listen and talk about them for weeks after. I personally was in love with the title track Oyster Cuts – just a classic love / heartbreak song. Rob loves the guitar playing and Luke and Ian think highly of the rhythm section of this band.  I, of course, love the song-writing and its simplicity (no arrogance detected which I appreciate). Quivers just has solid indie-pop songwriting on lock. We all agree that we love it when they all sing together, something we like to call “gang vocals” lol.   You hear a little bit of gang-vocaling in Come and Get Me but be prepared to hear a lot more of it on the next record!”

4. R.E.M. || Murmur
“REM is one of those bands I listened to a LOT when I was much younger, that I don’t think about often these days. But the longer I play music, the more I realize how much of an influence they had and continue to have on me. When I posed the “What bands influenced you?” question to the band to help me write this thing you’re reading, REM was the band that came up the most. On Murmur, Sitting Still is probably the most jangly song on the record which makes me pose the question “Is REM the first big Jangle Pop band?” I’ll let the music nerds answer this question! On Sitting Still, Luke says that he loves “the pre-chorus bit the best and the way it builds up tension. The bit where the lyrics are ‘Up to par and Katie bar / The kitchen signs but not me in / Sit and try for the big kill’” I love learning this about Luke, because when I listen to this pre-chorus, I hear Luke’s playing in it. Luke has an exceptional way of creating (and relieving) tension in his bass playing.”

5. Big Thief || Capacity
“Deep in my song-writing period for Come and Get Me, I was listening to Shark Smile on repeat. Adrienne Lenker to me is a goddess of sorts and true poet in my opinion. I read somewhere that she is arguably today’s Bob Dylan, and I dare say she is that and much more! Some of her songs are “folkier” than the music I tend to gravitate to, but her words always grab me by the heart. Shark Smile has both the lyrics and the pop sensibility that I am obsessed with. I was OBSESSED with the way her singing sounds like the most beautiful kind of hiccuping you’ve ever heard in the “woo / baby / take me” refrain.   Without shame and with minimal success lol, I tried to reproduce that hiccuping quality in our title track Come and Get Me.   When I brought up Shark Smile to the band, everyone quickly agreed they loved the song as well. I know it’s not that uncommon, but when you are listening to something on repeat, and you find out that your closest friends that you’re making music with also love the same song, well it sure feels lovely!”