Janice Ngiam seems excited. It could have something to do with the fact that her band, Sun Eskimos, are due to make their Clockenflap debut or that, as she quietly boasts, she aced a test earlier this week. Around Redroom Studios in Wong Chuk Hang, the demeanour of her bandmates, all still donning their Canadian International School uniforms, similarly ranges from giddy nervousness to complete bemusement.

Yes, Sun Eskimos are as young as they sound – Ngiam, Chris Lai (guitarist) and drummer Sean Ng are completing their final year of school while Ben Willetts (keys), at 15, is the baby of the group. But over the past year – and in the last couple of months in particular – their youth hasn’t stopped their optimistic brand of folk pop from making a mark on the local scene. “Everything has been so fast. It got really big really quickly,” says Lai. “Being number one on the radio. We were just like ‘what?’”

While they’ve existed in some form or other for about a year, the last two months for Sun Eskimos (the name was a ‘very bad attempt at an oxymoron’ says Ngiam) have been something of a whirlwind for the quartet. And after working with Paul MacLean – Sun Eskimo manager and also drummer of metal favourites DP – at Redrooms Studios, suddenly their song A Little Little was not only being heard on the radio, but racing to the top of Radio Station 903’s play charts in late October. “I heard about them a while back. I was blown away,” says MacLean. “It’s just a lot of positive energy. You could kind of see that these guys were either going to be a mediocre band or an awesome band.”

In many ways, A Little Little sums up what Sun Eskimos do nicely – sunny and upbeat folk, but with an angsty lyrical edge. “For A Little Little, I was really sad for a while and I was self pitying and indulging myself in misery,” says Regina Spektor-, Rilo Kiley- and Feist-admirer Ngiam, the principal songwriter of the four. “I feel really stupid saying this, because when you are a teenager, you feel that all the time. Eventually I got out of that. I realised how much I was self-pitying and sad for no good reason and then this song is what I thought about it afterwards.”
Such has been the speed of their rise, as they sit in the studio, MacLean reveals a couple of other bits of news that not even all the members of the band have heard. Like that Untitled Entertainment will release their new three-song single at Clockenflap (greeted by excited giggles), like that the artwork for the disc just came through (gasps, “It looks awesome!”, more gasps), like that there have been enquiries about tours to China and around the region (unbelieving laughter).

MacLean, of course, is keen for them not to get carried away. “They can go a lot further with just a little bit of work and a little bit of tweaking,” he says. “Once the album comes out, we’ll start distributing. First, they just need to keep on concentrating on finishing up the album and keep on writing new songs.” And, yes, there’s also that small matter of school as well.

Mark Tjhung 

Sun Eskimos launch their debut single at Clockenflap, December 10 at the Acoustic Stage at 4.15pm.