From The Smiths to Tame Impala, Death Cab for Cutie or Sufjan Stevens, there is something about Poor Rich Boy’s music that is both individualistic and reminiscent of favourite familiars. The reason is simple: Poor Rich Boy, with their music, engage in an intense sonic and lyrical love affair. However, with three albums, a change in its line-up, tour of the USA, critically-acclaimed live shows and a slew of terrific Urdu songs in their arsenal in addition to English ones, the title of being Pakistan’s best indie-art-folk band isn’t an overrated one. They jumpstarted an indie revolution in Lahore a decade ago and PRB has never been an ordinary band.

Having accomplished the things they have, including releasing more music than some of our mainstream acts, Poor Rich Boy (PRB) is now moving on, but no longer as a band.

You may ask why? And we’ll get to that, but before PRB mutually moves on, their two new tracks, ‘Khudi Kya Hai’ and a redone version of ‘Jaatay Jaatay’ must make your playlist. The former is a tribute to Allama Iqbal.

Speaking to Instep, music producer and guitarist for the band, Zain Ahsan explained that the song is a tribute and was played at the 144^th birth anniversary of Allama Iqbal in Tehran, Iran.

Elaborating further, Umer Khan (also known as the artist Duck) explained how the song came about: “Mekaal [Hassan] called me a month ago and said Iqbal’s grandson is a PRB fan. Before I could process what that even meant, he went on to say: ‘He’s picked out some verses and would like for you to sing them - to be released on Iqbal Day.’

I said I’m not really qualified for this. I’m not a real singer. I’m barely a real person. But, okay, I’d love to give it a shot.”

This led to a meeting between Umer and Walid Iqbal. “I told him I’m not very competent. He did not believe me. So I decided I should at least try; after all, this could be the only bit of my artistic body of work that would sit well with my parents’ generation.”

“I always have some tunes lying around in my head; I tried one of them and it fit. I showed it to Mekaal and Walid. They thought it was pretty decent too. Now that I had something real, it was time to bother Zain. I asked him to replace the lame guitar composition I had with something respectable. And he did exactly that. In fact, he composed and played all the music. It is always humbling to watch this nearly illiterate genius work his magic and save yet another god awful, terrible vocal melody that I’ve come up with. People sometimes ask which one of us is PRB. It’s him. He is the band. So if you hate the music, take it up with him. Our old friend, John (AR) was asked to make the music video, and he, yet again, managed to pick and choose only those shots that made me look like a young widow singing next to her husband’s ghost.

He is more a documentary film maker at heart, I suppose, than anything else. To sum up: I loved doing this. This whole project.

A month ago, none of it existed, and now it does. I think it’s a big deal to have a post-colonial vision in a colonial society. And Iqbal had that. His audience was a defeated and humiliated nation of colonised, broken people. And he planned to change that. He was a master craftsman and a visionary.”

Their other release, the remarkable ‘Jaatay Jaatay’ connects to a larger narrative. Umer, who handles PR for the band, as Zain laughingly explained, told Instep what the immediate future looks like for Poor Rich Boy.

“It’s been ten years since we released ‘Alice’. The song, in fact and that EP [Old Money], was received well and pretty much paved the way for a lot of good things. For instance, it got us connected with Mekaal Hassan and his studio. And once that happened, things started to really improve on the production side. Instead of recording songs, huddled in a makeshift cubicle fashioned out of spare mattresses, with borrowed microphones, we had access to some real gear. Since then, Zain has been really focused on production. It’s a lot of subtle, tedious work that I just don’t have the aptitude for. I can sit and watch him at it for a few hours but it’s all hopeless fiddling about with software in front of a computer screen that I can’t even begin to understand. I come up with words and harmonies. That’s my job. Or I deal with interviews and write ups and that sort of thing.”

“You know, a band that lasts is one whose members value teamwork. The whole is always greater than the sum of the parts. In any case, it is impossibly rare for an individual artist to be good at all aspects of the craft. There are exceptions, of course, but usually that’s just people who can afford to not have a day job. For the rest, when working in close quarters, you may want to bash each other’s head in every now and then because of ‘creative differences’ or for whatever reason, but that’s just silly. The best solution is to go complain about your bandmate to somebody who doesn’t care.”

Umer admitted that after a year he didn’t find the production quality of ‘Jaatay Jaatay’ up to par and so began the process of the song going through a change. “‘Jaatay Jaatay’ had serious production problems. Learning and progress aren’t always linear. You’ll be surprised how sometimes the easiest things can stump you in art and science, and life and relationships. Not a great song to begin with, really just a bad pun on the coronavirus, he opened the song back up, tried to fix it, failed, then went to Mekaal for help. And he fixed it. Then obsessive as he is, Zain started fixing the fixed song. And he messaged me and said in his most apologetic tone: you know I can’t help it! I obsess!

But while he was messing about with the song, he figured out a completely new musical presentation for it. And this led to ‘Jaatay Jaatay’ (perb mix).”

Was it necessary?

“No. Will the world go on just fine without it? Absolutely. Should it exist? Probably not, but what’s the harm!”

Umer Khan added about ‘KKH’. “In my mind, singers who usually take on Iqbal’s work are either classically trained or just really very talented. As far as I could tell, I didn’t fit the bill. I told as much to Walid Iqbal when I met him. But the man really is the Allama’s grandson! He can motivate anybody to do anything. Literally. By the time his pep talk was over, I knew what to do. And frankly, in our 10-year-long history of releasing songs, we have never released a song on the date we’ve said we’d release it. Zain is always mucking about with the mix. But this time, he got done with ‘Khudi Kya Hai?’ in record time and released it a day earlier than the deadline! So, technically, still not on time, but definitely well in time. And it wouldn’t have been possible without AR (of mosiki) and his video team getting the video shot, edited and finalised in about 48 hours.”

What was the response like?

“The response we’ve received for ‘Khudi Kya Hai?’ has been really pleasant to say the least. The song’s been aired in Iran and in Qatar, and most significantly, it was shared from the official Instagram page of the Prime Minister of Pakistan! That’s pretty intense. I’ve been told that the fact Fawad Khan tweeted about it was on its own a newsworthy event! We’re obviously grateful to everybody who put in a good word and supported our work. Truth is, we would keep making songs even if we had no audience at all. But to have an appreciative one is really very encouraging.”

What should fans and critics expect from Poor Rich Boy in the coming days?

“For the rest, we’ve got to finish our Urdu pop album,” confirmed Umer. “The album will have about 10 songs or so. I want the last track to be a patriotic song, just the way all Urdu pop albums used to have back in the ‘90s and early 2000s. It might be a little tongue-in-cheek, or maybe it’ll be straight up patriotic. We’ll see. If you get a chance to check out ‘Yaqeen’ on YouTube or Spotify, do it. That might just get to be the title track! Or maybe ‘Kaghazi’. Finally, we’ve got our final project, an English album called No Honour Among Thieves. We’re all really excited about that. God willing, this will be our best work. And once that’s done, Zain & I are going to take a much-deserved break from music and see what else life has to offer! 10 years is a long time. But it went by much too fast.”

As for Umer’s solo effort as Duck, the future is not about becoming a superstar, but he isn’t done just yet.

Will he make music? “Not really!” he noted. “I’m a team person. I don’t do much on my own. I’ll keep making songs for my Instagram page maybe. But that’s just because I can’t help making songs. They just won’t be very good. Or maybe they’ll be great! Who knows.”