It’s a rainy Wednesday evening, but inside North London venue Oslo, George van den Broek, who releases music as Yellow Days, is bewitching his young crowd. He saunters onto stage in a baggy white t-shirt and, bathed in yellow light, brings his rich, drawling vocal to the fore as he works his way through material from his new project Is Everything Ok in Your World? and last year’s debut EP Harmless Melodies.
At only 18 years old, it’s no surprise that there’s a slight nervous stiffness to George’s demeanor as he settles into his performance; one of a string of sold out shows in his first U.K. tour. It only takes a couple of songs for George to get into his groove, visibly loosening up, adding playful nuances to his performance.
Yellow Days is joined on stage by three band mates. There’s Mylo on drums and Hector on bass—these three have been playing together in their college music rooms for the last couple of years. The newest addition to the band is Ollie on keys, whose jazz soul inflections make him a fitting addition to Yellow Days’ nostalgic sonic palette. “I remember when we used to jam and we couldn’t get a proper sound together,” George tells me later, reminiscing on their first moments as a band. “Two years on and we’re doing this, we’ve come such a distance”
He might be 18, but Yellow Days has a voice that is far beyond his years. Gravelly, melancholy, aching with emotion. When we speak over Skype a week or so after his show, I ask him how he would describe his sound to someone who has never heard his music before. There’s a pause and then he says, hesitantly, “It’s real hard, there’s no such thing as a genre anymore. You can just stick the word ‘neo’ in front of loads of stuff, I guess, or alternative, but that’s such a weak term. I try and make a concoction of jazz, soul, and blues.”
I try and make a concoction of jazz, soul, and blueS.
George grew up in Surrey, South East of London, and during our conversation I pick up on his penchant for describing things as “real nice” or “real crazy.” That’s how he described his recent gigs, adding, “I’ve never experienced such warmth at shows before”. The reason for the tour, Is Everything Okay In Your World?, is out now via Good Years, the label that’s also home to the likes of Banks, Lil Silva and Kidepo.
The 13-track effort pre-empts Yellow Days’ debut LP which we can expect in the spring of next year. The release features two guests, saxophonist Nick Walters plays on “The Tree I Climb” and rising Irish rapper Rejjie Snow on “Lately I.” Yellow Days was the support for Rejjie when he played shows in Brighton and London and he sounds excited as he talks about their work being the start of a lovely relationship.
George’s intention is to curate each of his releases so that they answer a series of consecutive questions, starting with Is Everything Ok In Your World?. A philosophical character who generally keeps himself to himself, he uses his music as a way to express himself; from his happiest moments to his deepest insecurities. “Everyone gets asked that question [Is everything ok?] in their day to day, and often the answer is no, they’re not really,” he explains. “The songs on this project sit under an umbrella of answering that question in different ways.” Is the title also a play on the fact that many people don’t feel they can be honest if someone asks them how they are? “I guess it does have an element of that” he ponders, “I guess I used to pour my heart out to people, but now I’m older...I think we have a tendency to box ourselves off, not be as open”.
As we talk about the importance of acknowledging your emotions, we move onto the most sentimental track on Is Everything Ok In Your World?. “I would give the outro the most emotional credit” he says. “I put the least amount of pressure on myself to write them so I think I ultimately deliver harder.” The closing track to this project, "Outro (Lost in a World with You)" is a hazy, heady, downtempo ode to wandering aimlessly with someone that you love. For George, it’s the most captivating track.
The hazy nature of much of Yellow Days’ material is matched by the pixelated, fuzzy, pastel visuals displaying on the wall during his Oslo show. As well as singing, writing, and producing his material, George also makes his own artwork, all from a garden shed behind his family home in Surrey. The artwork for Is Everything OK In Your World? shows George’s face cut and pasted out with a pale pink circle. Is the faceless cover an allusion to the fact that Yellow Days sings about universal subjects of struggle? Not really, he laughs, “it was more of an MF Doom thing to be honest. I thought, I don’t want to expose my face. I want to make a point, it’s not about me, it’s about the sound. I want to pride myself as a musician and only as a musician.”
I want music to be as personal as possible.
The area that George grew up in is fairly secluded, a remote countryside life built for locking yourself away in a shed to brood and make emotionally charged, soulful music. But whilst music is for feeling, it’s also for sharing. The family shared one computer and thus one iTunes library, and George found himself becoming increasingly proud and protective over his own collection. “One of my brothers loved heavy metal, the other R&B, and my dad was always listening to psychedelic rock,” he explains. “I learnt to take pride in my own taste. If you dig something you should never be ashamed of that. I want music to be as personal as possible, just rep it.”
George has been open from the beginning about the musicians who he holds in the highest regard, Ray Charles. “He never leaves anything behind, it’s so honest and raw. You can feel his pain, that’s real blues.” As Yellow Days, writing music that makes people feel is paramount. It has to compute emotionally. Where he’s inspired by Ray Charles in his lyrical content, Mac DeMarco helped motivate him. “I remember watching a YouTube video and they just looked, well, like a bunch of bums in torn shirts with terrible guitars! It just shows you don’t have to be this calculated born pop artist, you can just be yourself, push yourself musically and investigate your aesthetic.”
You have to stay in touch with the anxious teenager inside of you.
As George continues to develop his sound, his stage presence and his depth lyrically, he’s aiming for “bigger, brighter shows” with gigs in Los Angeles, New York, and Hong Kong on the horizon. “Touring is quite challenging,” he admits, but he welcomes a challenge. “The bigger the crowd, the bigger the thrill!”
For young acts like Yellow Days, the music industry can be an unfriendly place, and he knows it. “A lot of artists get fed into the system and they stop acting like musicians,” he says. “Instead, they act like businessmen and then their music ends up commercial because they lose sight of their role. Their role isn’t to PR themselves, it’s to make music. I stand by that heavily. You have to stay in touch with the anxious teenager inside of you. If you stare at spreadsheets too much, you’ll kill that.”
