Though the early days of The Beach Boys are well-documented, the role of founding member Al Jardine is often overshadowed by the Wilson brothers. Inspired to play guitar by The Kingston Trio, it was Jardine who first suggested he and Brian Wilson sing together. It was also Jardine who thought adding Brian’s brother, Carl, and their cousin, Mike Love, would work, thus forming The Beach Boys. In addition to guitar, Jardine sang lead on some of The Beach Boys’ biggest hits, including “Help Me Rhonda”, “Sloop John B”, “Heroes and Villains”, and a cover of Leadbelly’s “Cotton Fields”, which Jardine rearranged to make a bigger hit.

David Marks joined The Beach Boys after the band’s first year and after Al Jardine temporarily left the band to go to college. Marks’ phenomenal guitar playing and the chemistry between him and Carl Wilson is often credited as creating The Beach Boys’ sound. Appearing on the band’s first five albums, Marks shared guitar duty for a couple of years upon Jardine’s return to the group; however, by the time he was 16, Marks left The Beach Boys. Marks became a successful studio musician, working with such artists as Leon Russell and Delbert McClinton. When Carl Wilson was sidelined with cancer in 1997, he returned to The Beach Boys.

Consequence of Sound had the opportunity to talk with both of these legendary musicians as The Beach Boys embark on an international tour in support of the band’s 50th Anniversary and their latest album, That’s Why God Made the Radio. We discuss what it was like making this album compared to the band’s first releases, the division of labor in the band’s early days between their appearance and the studio, why it took Jardine so long to do a solo album, and why both men left and what brought them back.

Al Jardine

You’ve said: “We’ve come full circle. Sharing our memories and our present in the studio has been really remarkable. I can especially feel it when we’re all singing around the mic together, because we all hear each other and we really lock in.”

What was it like making this new record? Were you more actively involved in the process rather than just doing vocals and harmonies this time around?

We’re recording brilliant songs, I think. Or had recorded, I should say. But not in a way I had anticipated; it wasn’t all getting around the piano together and singing. These are songs that Brian had been writing, has been writing, in his head and in his own studio for the last, oh, I don’t know, six, eight years. So, these are new creations, and we all just got together and sang our parts, our various parts, that he had already outlined for himself, something he might have done on his own solo album for instance.

So, all I had to do was drop, shoot, whatever you call it, my own part in, and it sounds pretty good. It’s a wonderful production. Very Pet Sounds-like in scope, very deep and moving. I think people will appreciate his continuing output.

Prior to joining the band, you were more of an athlete, were you not? What led you to pick up the guitar?

Brian and I were on the football team together, if that’s what you mean. Folk music. I was a big Kingston Trio fan. When Brian and I were in school, they had the number one records. They were the hot new act in town. They had the striped shirts and that collegiate look, and so I always aspired to do that kind of music; Brian had other ideas. But being similarly afflicted by the bug, we compromised with each other, and I sang some of his music, and he sang some of mine.

What did Brian say to you to convince you to come back to the band after you had left to go to college?

Oh, he was just fit to be tied. He had so many things going on in his domain, his musical domain, meaning his creative processes. And then his dad was pushing him to go out on the road and be more of a musician instead of a composer. And Brian… he just wasn’t able to do it all. Eventually, he did have a nervous breakdown over it. His dad forced him back into the group a little bit later on. So, it was always a conflict between the appearance band and then the recording band, so I was able to take some pressure off of him for a while by coming back into the touring band and ultimately into the recording studio, well, immediately into the recording studio after a short hiatus.

With regard to the difference between the touring band and the recording band, at what point in time did the recording process change in the studio?

When we were on the road for so many days out of the year, we weren’t available to record anymore. We recorded on the first couple of albums ourselves, and then when we weren’t around anymore, Brian was really left with no other alternative but to use studio musicians, and so, ergo, the Wrecking Crew.

Let’s talk about your Leadbelly cover, “Cottonfields”. That was the last single The Beach Boys did with Capitol Records, and the arrangement that was released as a single features you on lead vocals, and you actually rearranged the song. What was behind all that? Why did you rearrange it? What was wrong with the original? Or was there something you were trying to grab?

Well, I thought Brian was going to give me another “Sloop John B”. We went into the studio, and it just didn’t happen. It was quite flat, I thought, and very un-Beach Boy-like. It sounded more like a country thing. Not even that, it just sounded like a demo. So, I picked up the gauntlet and took the appearance band into the studio, and we re-recorded it with my band, which is much more powerful than the studio guys we were using at the time. And I thought it was great. And Dennis Wilson kind of helped me out. He was, you might say, our “spark plug guy”; he was our energy guy, and he really believed in it.

And a couple of new additions, one being a steel guitar, kinda gave it a country flavor, which, in hindsight, I wouldn’t put on today, but it’s there, and that’s what it is. It was a famous guy, a famous steel player named Red Rhodes. But anyway, that’s how my production ended up being the single. It was just a good live band recording.

You released your first solo album in 2010. Why did it take so long?

I don’t know. I’ve always been a Beach Boy, and I haven’t had time to concentrate on that. Since I hadn’t been touring with the band for so many years, over the last 10 years I got kind of homesick for singing and getting behind the mic, not producing, but singing again. And I used my good friends up and down the coast–Neil Young, America, Dewey Bunnell, those guys, even Brian Wilson and some of The Beach Boys–to fill out my album. It really was a nice panacea for me while I was out of the band.

What was behind the band’s withdrawal from the Monterrey Pop Festival?

Politics. And we were busy making an album at the time, if I recall. But there was some politics about it. And it was the first one, and we weren’t so sure that we really belonged in that particular group that they were putting together. Of course, we were wrong, dead, dead wrong. We should have gone. But sometimes managers and agents don’t all get along, one thing or another. But we did finally make the ’71 appearance, I think. The last one. We were at the last one. The crowd really loved it. I remember singing “Sloop John B” up there, and the crowd just went crazy.

David Marks

I am going to quote you to begin: “This is more like a family reunion than anything. When we’re together, we get along great. The chemistry always works the same as the last time we were together, and the five of us become a single element.” Your mention of chemistry ties into the Beach Boys biographer Jon Stebbins, when he said that it was your guitar chemistry with Carl Wilson that changed the sound of the band. And even Al Jardine said that it was you and Carl that brought the electric drive into the band. What do you have to say about that?

That’s true. Actually, when the band started off, they were headed down sort of a folky road, and Carl and I pretty much introduced the electric guitar to Brian. He liked the sound of it, and when he incorporated his jazz vocal voicings to the grunge-sounding electric guitars, it just created a unique sound that no one had ever really heard before. It caught on, needless to say.

You started with the band when you were just 13, played with them for almost two years, appearing on four albums, right?

I moved in across the street from the Wilsons at a very young age; I think I was about six or seven years old, an only child, so I was there every day, and they kind of adopted me, the Wilson brothers. It was a very musical family; the parents both played and sang, and what happened was we automatically formed the band. It was something we did every day.

With the 50 years from then to now, how do you reflect on the time when you left the band?

I did do the first five albums in a very short period of time. As a matter of fact, we did so much material in a short period of time that some of the stuff I was on leaked into the sixth and seventh albums. And through the years, I stayed pretty close to the boys, socially and musically. There were a few years where we weren’t in that much contact. I moved away to Boston, went to music school. I was receiving Beach Boys royalties, so I was able to pursue some other musical endeavors. I studied some classical. I took a shot at being a composer. I became a studio musician. In the late ’60s, early ’70s, I went out anonymously, without my Beach Boy credentials, and played in a lot of studio environments. I would say that I had a just as fulfilling a musical experience as if I had stayed with The Beach Boys.

You’ve played with Warren Zevon, Delaney & Bonnie, even producer Mike Curb. What led you to leave Los Angeles and head back east to study jazz and classical?

What prompted me to do that was I was roommates with Warren Zevon in the mid to late ’60s. We hung out extensively, and he had been studying classical music with Robert Kraft, who was involved heavily with Igor Stravinsky, so he had a very solid, strong classical background, and he introduced me to that world. That’s kind of what prompted me to go to Boston in the late ’60s to pursue some musical education.

Did you ever just want to stay in the academic world, or were you trying to use that to carry over to a more advanced musical career?

Well, what I had learned at that time I still use. It had to do not only with music, but philosophy and life. I had a very good teacher. Avrin David was his name. He was a very, sort of, eclectic guy. He composed classical, played jazz trumpet. He was interested in blues and rock. He had a teacher, Margaret Chaloff. He introduced me to his teacher, and she was incredible, and she just opened up my world with philosophy, beyond music, stuff I use today.

I’m familiar with Mike Curb and The Mike Curb Congregation, but I’m only familiar with him as far as being a deep crate-digging, soul kind of producer. What kind of work did you do with him?

Mike Curb had a producer’s workshop back in the late ’60s. One of the producers there was Larry Brown. I had been playing in a band with Matt Moore, who was accumulating a lot of songs that he was writing, and he wanted to do an album. So, he recruited me to come in and do guitar with him. We literally spent months in the studio. We did two albums. We never left the studio; we lived in there. Empty pizza boxes and oxygen tanks, all kinds of stuff laying around. We didn’t know what time of day or night or day of the week it was.

We produced two albums. The band was called The Moon. They were released on Liberty Records. Unfortunately, the distribution didn’t go along with it, or the promotions, but it has since become sort of a cult thing. The albums have been re-released on Cherry Red on CD, and you can get those now.

Cherry Red is a great reissue label. When Mike Love asked you back into the band in 1971, why did you decline?

Oh, in ’71? I was still pretty heavily involved with my own musical endeavors, and Carl actually wanted me to play bass at that time, and I was just so wrapped up in my guitar that I wasn’t ready to give it up to play bass. And that’s pretty much why I didn’t stick around in ’71 when I was asked to rejoin The Beach Boys.

You came back when Carl was sick in the late ’90s?

Yeah, I came back in the late ’90s for a few years. Unfortunately, we were expecting Carl to return, but tragically he passed away during that time.

What was it like making the new record after so many years? Were you more actively involved in the actual creation of the record beyond just vocals and harmony? Were you actually in there playing the instruments this time around?

I was given free reign to fool around with guitar parts and that kind of stuff, which is really nice.

Are you excited about the new tour?

We’re really excited about the tour; it’s going really well. We’re being received tremendously in every city. We’re getting along great. Everybody’s loving each other and having a good time. It’s just totally positive.

The Walkmen (Matt Barrick – drums, Pete Bauer – multi-instrumentalist, Hamilton Leithauser – vocals, Paul Maroon – guitar, and Walter Martin – bass) have managed to stay together, with the same lineup, for over a decade, a remarkable feat in and of itself. Over that time, the D.C. via Philadelphia/NYC collective may have taken the long way around, but in doing so have crafted a unique atmosphere and sound with their music. Following a brief anniversary celebration, the band has readied its next full-length, Heaven. Produced by Phil Elks (Fleet Foxes, The Shins), the album reveals a more mature band, comfortable in its skin and as described by vocalist Leithauser, “a bigger, more generous statement.”

This week, Consequence of Sound caught up with original bass player and now organist and occasional guitarist, Pete Bauer, as he was helping lay a new floor at drummer Matt Barrick’s Philadelphia home. We talked about Heaven, the presence (or absence) of rock throughout the album, working with Phil Elks and Fleet Foxes, moving to New York, and what was behind switching to organ, the instrument he’s played for the last five years.

What’s that you’re up to?

I’m just helping our drummer lay a floor.

In his apartment or house?

His house. He bought this house, and it’s a fixer-upper.

In New York?

No, in Philadelphia. Yeah, we live down here; me and him live in Philly.

Why Philly?

Oh, you know, affordable living. It’s a little easier going. It’s a cool town. I don’t know. I love it down here.

And it’s midway between D.C. and New York, too. Do you still have family in D.C.?

Yeah, it’s nice. We’re all east coast guys from birth. It’s like kind of the last place on the east coast you can live and have some space and hang out and everything.

Maybe you can cut an album with The Roots. Congratulations on the new album, but I have to say congratulations even more so on staying together with the same five people for 10 years. That’s pretty impressive. How do you account for that?

Yeah, we’re very proud of that. I don’t really know. It hasn’t been like… there’s been parts that have been really hard. And in the last couple years, I feel like we’ve kind’ve… just everything’s evened out. We’re in it for the long haul. I mean, I think we always were, but it seems less like you’re worried about “Is this it?” And I think it’s probably a reflection of getting better at what we do, and we’ve all really cared about that the whole time. We’ve always been trying to get better, and so that’s helped a lot.

The heaviness heard on albums like Bow + Arrows and You & Me seems a million miles away from the quiet nature of this album, Heaven. But even on previous albums, like Lisbon, you delved into the quiet areas, so you’re no stranger to it. But I want to say you almost shed all the rock and roll on this album for almost an alt-country folk vibe at times.

Really? I keep hearing that, and it’s shocking to me, because I thought we were really rocking.

Seriously, you don’t think that you guys are chilled out on this?

I think it’s calmer in the sense that Ham is singing more in his range. But I mean to me, I feel like we have actually more rock songs on this record than we’ve ever had. More than Bows + Arrows; maybe not A Hundred Miles Off, but definitely more rock & roll tracks on this record. I was very shocked. I thought it was like… you know, because it’s all pretty uptempo. I guess it’s happier music and less dark hell rock. Hell rock that sort of has goofy parts to it like on “The Witch”, but at the same time, I was very surprised when I started hearing that. To me, playing it is a lot more fun and uptempo than the Lisbon stuff.

Maybe it’s just the acoustic nature of some of the songs that set it off. I was going to ask if maybe it was working with Phil Elks [producer, Heaven] and John Congleton [producer, Lisbon].

I think that also we put the stuff at the center we really liked: two slow songs, “Southern Heart” and “Line by Line”. We put them right in the meat and potatoes area when we sequenced it, so maybe it comes across like that because those are really slow. It probably feels like that, but I don’t know. I guess when we’re playing the stuff live, it definitely feels like, you know, much more, kind of like festival rock than sort of laid back. But what do I know? [laughs]

You have Robin Pecknold [of Fleet Foxes] guesting on this. Whose idea was it to bring him in?

I don’t know whose idea it was. I think we were all just excited about them, the band Fleet Foxes and Robin. We knew we’d be out in Seattle, and we’d been hanging out with them all fall on tour, so it was just something that was a natural thing. Ham just asked him to do it, and he was excited. I feel like they had a nice part in the whole thing, so it was great to have him and Morgan on it to play some percussion.

I was looking through the credits, and I noticed you thank a few people, but one name jumped out at me: Simon Raymonde. Is that Cocteau Twins Simon Raymonde?

Yeah, he runs our record label in England. He runs Bella Union.

I was really intrigued when I saw that name. I was thinking, wow, they’re going to be doing a collaboration with some dream pop stuff; this is getting really trippy. All of you are originally from D.C., right, and you were the only one of the five who didn’t attend the same school?

We all grew up in D.C., yeah. I went to a different school down the street that was more for like the druggy kids. We got to know each other in high school. Hamilton and me have known each other since we were 14; the other guys have known each other since they were in fifth grade. Hamilton and me were younger than the other guys, so they were sort of like the cool older kids who had a band that was semi-successful. That was how we ended up kind of copying them.

What was behind the move to New York?

When you’re in D.C. and you’re like 18 at that point. I mean, D.C.’s changed a lot since then, I guess. And it’s kind of this place where a lot of young kids go to now, I suppose. But back then, it really wasn’t. It didn’t feel like there was a lot of space to have a band. When we moved to New York, people didn’t really like rock & roll music in the way they like now, where it’s this thing that people talk about. You would be shocked if a girl was at your show. I think when The Walkmen started even, it was very different. It was a much stranger scene back when we had our old bands and stuff than it is now. I don’t know if that’s a reflection on us or like what we were doing or just a reflection in general. I don’t feel like the people… Pavement was like a big band in the 90s, but I don’t feel like it has the same sort of general mainstream quality to it that someone like Animal Collective has probably now to people at the shows. It seems like a very different culture.

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Well, early in the band’s career, it’s been said that you guys tried to distance yourself from the New York City rock scene, though. So, you move to New York; you try to distance yourself from the scene. Was that partially behind your moving to Harlem?

No, I think it was when our band started. At that point, when we started The Walkmen, we thought the weirdest thing to do would be to keep making garage rock music because it seemed like that was the last thing anyone wanted to hear, and we were trying to avoid that. We were just trying to do our own thing. I think it was sort of being arrogant and young, and people would say, “You sound like The Strokes” blah blah. And we’d be like, screw that; we sound like our band. You didn’t want to be second to anybody. It was nothing against those bands. I like The Strokes a lot; I like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs a lot. I guess we felt we just wanted to stand on our own, which is probably stupid, and we probably missed out on a lot of things because of it, but that’s sort of what we’ve always done. [laughs] Now, looking back, it’s nicer to see that we were sort of part of something that was interesting and special to other people.

So when Spin describes an album like You & Me as an “emboldened fairy tale of New York City rock,” that doesn’t piss you off or anything?

No, not at all. It’s awesome to be considered anything to do with the biggest in the world, or in America. It’s a nice feeling to be a part of that, whatever lore, even if it’s in a small way.

I definitely think The Walkmen have their own atmosphere and unique sound to automatically distance themselves a little bit from the city you happened to be rooted in.

Our experience when we did Everyone Who Pretended to Like Me Is Gone was very New York heavy, and then after that, we were in Memphis making Bows + Arrows, and Mississippi. We started becoming a traveling, touring band, and so that was sort of our experience. It wasn’t like going to some bar in New York and your experience changes from there.

I’ve noticed that you do tend to bounce around the country when you’re making your albums. This latest one was recorded in Seattle and, like you said, Bows + Arrows was in Tennessee. How do you guys make your decision as to where you want to go and record?

It’s always kind of like who you’re with. We go to Sweet Tea because we really like that studio in Mississippi. Other than that, this one was just because Phil Elk lives in Seattle and likes working in Seattle, and we’ve found it’s better to have the engineer be some place they’re comfortable. It was great out there.

Why did you want to work with Phil Elk?

We really loved the way Helplessness Blues sounded, and then he called us out of the blue, and so it was just a nice synchronistic sort of thing that happened.

What was behind covering Harry Nilsson’s Pussy Cats album?

That was just sort of a… mistake. I think we just sort of fell into it just for fun, and we thought it was fun, and it was fun; it was a lot of fun. Just because our studio was closing and we were out of our minds from having recorded A Hundred Miles Off, which was just an absolute drag to record. We wanted to do something that was fun.

Why was that?

I don’t know. I think that we had been on tour for a long time, and we were getting used to this weird lifestyle that we had that we weren’t quite sure how to do, and growing up and not wanting to do what we’re doing. It was just weird. It was an odd time for everybody, and we all lost our minds briefly… I don’t know. It was a weird record.

I noticed D.C. legend Ian Svenonius is on it.

Right. We just wanted to get our friends and acquaintances together and get them on there and have some special guests.

Have you guys ever done anything with Ian before? Or The Make-Up or any of his other bands? Nation of Ulysses…

No. We’ve known them for a long time, and actually, the people in The Make-Up we know somewhat well, at least Michelle [Mae, bass player] and Ian. They’re from the same town as us and everything.

You mentioned A Hundred Miles Off being kind of a drag, but I noticed on that album you and your organist Walter Martin switch instruments.

That’s right. That’s when we started doing that. That was hectic for a while, for me. I thought it was a drag.

Why did you decide to switch instruments? Was it just for the novelty, to see if you could do it?

I think Walt was bored doing what he was doing, and I was totally down to try something new, but I hadn’t actually played piano at that point. It took me a couple of years of really battling to keep up, which is fun, a sort of trial-by-fire routine.

So, when you play those songs live now, you don’t hop on the keys?

No, I play the organ the whole time pretty much. I haven’t played bass in four years, five years. I play guitar mostly on this record.

So, how was that for you? Do you like playing the guitar?

It was a lot more fun. You get to stand up. My legs were getting huge while I was sitting down.

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Am I correct in thinking The Walkmen have recorded songs originally meant for your old band The Recoys?

We did, we redid a couple.

So, any thought about doing a tour of The Recoys and Jonathan Fire Eater?

I think there would be a couple of missing links for that, people that would definitely not want to join. [laughs]

We can leave that at that. On a happier note, your 2002 debut, Everyone Who Pretended to Like Me Is Gone, is now out on vinyl. Was this the only album previously unavailable on vinyl?

I think so, yeah. Well, no. It was available in this weird form, but this is the first time it’s available properly on vinyl. That was just the one where we couldn’t convince anyone to put it out.

You don’t usually hand out MVPs this early in the season, but let’s guarantee El-P a spot on the short list. He recently wrapped up a Company Flow reunion. He produced Killer Mike‘s unbeatable R.A.P. Music and not a week later dropped his first album in over five years, Cancer 4 Cure. He’s heading out an A-list tour with Killer Mike, Mr. Muthafuckin’ eXquire, and Despot in a couple weeks. King Midas ain’t got shit on him.

El-P talked to us over the phone about all of his recent projects, about what his paranoia and the lenses through which he views the world, the current state of hip-hop, how to survive in the world today, and how Top Secret is an underrated comedy masterpiece. It was early in the morning, but El didn’t seem to have a problem putting the bellows to his fire.

–

One of my favorite tracks of last year was that eXquire track, “The Last Huzzah”, and you had Despot, Das Racist, Danny Brown and a lot of those guys appear on Cancer for Cure. How did that collaboration come about?

We had all just become cool with eX, ya know? A couple of us saw eX’s video for “Huzzah” and no one had really seen it apart from a small group of people cause he just kinda put it out himself, and I had him out here and I was like, “Hey man I like that song,” and I didn’t realize that he had actually used a bunch of my music for his mixtape. Turned out he was a fan and we just became friends and we just all liked him. Everyone thought he was dope and then he stepped to all of us like, “Hey you wanna jump on this shit?” and he thought it would be a cool thing to happen and everyone was like “hell yeah.” I had already been friends with Das [Racist] and Despot. It was just one of those things that just happened over a course of a year or so, and when it came time to do my record I called for those guys.

I remember I think I read a tweet that you wrote that said, “that awkward thing when you put Danny Brown on a track and it’s almost too good you wanna take him off.”

Definitely. When it’s your album and you put someone else on it’s their time to be the star. On that one song when it’s finally not your voice it’s like it’s such a dope slot,and everyone murdered it, I was really happy with what everybody brought to the table. Everyone just really brought their A games and you’re just looking at it like “Damn, mother fucker went in! You bastard, I’m doing a record and that was a crazy 20 bars!”. I wanted from everybody to come out swinging and everyone really did so I’m excited.

When you have a guest on your record, do you direct them a little or do you give them full creative license like, “here’s 20, here’s the beat, do it”?

I kinda direct them a little bit. Just because I usually have some sort of idea or structure or something, but at the end of the day of course it’s really up to them with what they say and how they say it. With eX we were actually in the studio together and what happened was eX had his verse and I had my verse and he heard my verse and I heard his verse and then Danny did his verse. I like to give a little bit of a direction because I think it’s important when you’re doing collaborations that the song will come out in some way with real emotion and it doesn’t sound like random guest spots.

You just got off tour and finished up with Company Flow. It’s interesting because even doing some of your early work you’re still focused on the future and doing an album with Killer Mike. What is it like to go back to the past on a show and still have your mind be focused on an album coming out?

It was great to be honest. We had a really good time and it was pretty natural and easy for us. Once we started rehearsing we were like, wow, all of this is really ingrained in us so it wasn’t difficult for us. It is a little weird though, like here I am playing Coachella with songs from 1997 and I’m on the verge of putting out a new record. But it has all really been working for me. We try to always be classy about the way that we handle ourselves. With Company Flow, we never wanted to be a nostalgia group and call it quits, we thought it was the right time to call it quits, and we got back together at the right time when it felt right for us. It feels good, it feels right.

Did going back to Company Flow inform you in your current way of writing or way of producing?

No it’s really not. I mean if anything when I listen to that stuff I’m like, “Wow, I don’t think this way anymore” or “I don’t approach music the same way” or “I don’t write the same way anymore.” I love that time, and I love that album – it’s important to me now, but I kinda have a different trajectory. I kinda always stay on my path. There’s an energy for sure that I was reminded of that this felt good and I’m glad I did it. I think it was just a coincidence that I was coming back to that energy again, having fun with that raw, in-your-face kind of attitude. I think that’s a big part of my new record.

El-P – “The Full Retard”

You mentioned in some interviews and Twitter conversations here and there that you think that the lines in hip-hop are kind of dissolving. The line between “indie” and “mainstream” and back when Company Flow was starting it was like clearly that could have a label of indie hip-hop and now those lines are dissolving.

Well, let’s be honest, Company Flow started the label of indie hip-hop. At the time it was necessary, but yeah, I do believe that.

I think that it’s dissolving but I also think that there are still more lines forming because now you have stuff like “blog rap” and “street rap.”

I think that’s all bullshit to be honest. I guarantee you that you’ll never meet a rapper who said those words. I actually don’t feel that more lines are being drawn. It’s just another generation and everybody’s influenced by a lot of different things and because of the fact that over the past five years there has really been no one way to do anything. There’s been no infrastructure. No one knew how to put their music out, they just did whatever they wanted and put their music on the Internet. Then you got eXquire who deservedly got a big major label deal, but he did that doing just whatever the fuck he wanted to do. I just think that people are having fun making music again.

There has been some really positive growth in terms of the way that people see shit. A lot of rap has gone and influenced a lot of other types of art and current music and vice versa so their attitude is a little more open. I think it’s a good time now because everyone is kinda doing their thing and I never hear so much about you’re either this or that so much anymore. It’s there, but I think it’s on its way out. It’s amazing because I always thought that this should be like that

I think that makes sense and that for someone like yourself who has probably seen those lines dissolve that makes sense.

Well I saw the lines go up and I saw the lines be drawn too. I remember when the lines weren’t there. I feel like it’s changing the way people think about shit, ya know? I honestly think that for me this is an exciting time for hip-hop music.

And in the end it’s not even about any of that bullshit anyway, it’s about the music.

Absolutely! I don’t care what other people think about my music because it has gone to weird places. There’s no easy way to just point at me and just be like, “You’re one chain!” And I think that, for me, I’ve always listened to everything. I’m a fan of everything that’s good, no matter where it comes from or how it’s delivered. So it was annoying for me cause no one else thought like I did and just said, “Hey that’s a dope new song”.

You sampled Rush earlier and that was great. It’s just a cool song and it worked really well on that track.

“Tom Sawyer” is my shit.

On Cancer for Cure, there’s an underling theme of paranoia, which isn’t a totally common trope in hip-hop. Is that idea of a sort of wariness of others and not being insecure of yourself but questioning the others around you, is that something that’s compounded in your years you’ve been doing this?

Isn’t this a fertile time for a healthy dose of paranoia? I’ve been trained to be paranoid, ya know? I think that we’re living in a time where paranoia is encouraged. So, even at your best, even when you’re trying to be the most alive or most open, it’s very common and natural to feel tension and question what’s going on around you. That’s really what I’m saying in the record, about that paranoia. It’s not even paranoia, it’s more like, “I don’t believe you.” I don’t think it’s paranoia to say that we’re being watched on a daily basis.

It’s just you no longer buy into what they’re selling.

And never have been really. I think at this point it’s like throwing your arms up like, “Oh fuck this shit.”

Do you feel like that’s directed towards more of an abstract societal thing or a political thing or even a personal thing – do any of these things reflect on a personal level or is this more of a societal thing with you?

It’s all on a personal and societal level. You walk around and go through your personal life and we’re all trying to change things or whatever strange destinies you may have. You kind of walk around and you make these conscious decisions to ignore certain things and pay attention to other things that please you. It’s personal because it affects you on a physical and spiritual level. Everything that happens and everything that’s said and has gone on and is beamed into us is engineered to effect you. When you hear me talk about it, I’m more examining it than trying to explain it. I’m talking as a dude who’s affected by all this stuff , but I’m not sure what to make of all of this. It’s just the truth of how I feel. I don’t know if that makes any sense.

No, it does. Do you have a specific example that recently has come up that had just sort of pushed you over the edge?

No man. Every time you turn on the fucking news, every time you walk outside and see an advertisement, every time you have a conversation with somebody who thinks that they know more about life than you do because of politics or whatever. There’s a lot that we’re all kind of up against and we’re all being asked constantly to buy in to certain things and those things change and we’re all being asked to pay attention to certain things and ignore other things, and there at a certain point it goes against your subconscious and your subconscious is like, “What the fuck you talking about? None of this is real, this is all fucking constructed and made up by us.” I think that it has a damaging effect on your soul and it has an effect on your mind, and I’m not getting on records and trying to preach about anything, I don’t know anything more than anyone else. I’m just trying to express as eloquently to paint a picture of how I feel because I feel like I can’t be the only one who feels like this.

I think it’s telling that though the lines of how we define, how we talk about hip-hop are being dissolved, the lines of how we deal with society are still very binary and still very, “You’re either this or you’re that, if you think this way you must be against them.”

Right, and that’s not natural human thought. That’s something that we came up with pretty recently.

It’s a survival technique for a lot of people, though.

And I think it’s a manipulation technique, too. And I think as you’re listening to a guy who is basically immune to the  manipulation but completely associates with it at the same time. In my mind I see through the curtain. But at the same time, I’m just as much as a dumb motherfucker as anyone else walking around. My arrogance in terms of me thinking that I know what’s going on or that I know that something is off doesn’t help me that much, it really doesn’t.

Does the anger come out of the futility of this situation or the fact that you’re aware of the situation or both?

I think it’s all those things, ya know? I’m not trying to paint any one picture, but multiple pictures with perspectives of someone who’s just trying to walk uphill in a snowstorm.

As opposed to having this album being a very sort of heavy handed manifesto or anything like that, it really just sort of presents itself in a lot of ways of like, “Here are some questions that I’m facing and I think you should all realize that these are questions to question things and here are the answers.”

Yeah, it’s a lot of that. The only way that I’ve ever lived and do shit is to go inward and ask those questions. And the reason why I think that works is because we’re not unique little snowflakes that don’t feel the same thing. The closer you get to being to your own inner dialogue, the close you are to relating to everyone else – we are all the same thing, no matter what anyone says. So that’s my approach, I’m going to write something that I think is really only about me and I’m going to treat it that way and hopefully that will then connect to you. And I think when people go out of their way to tell you that this is how you should think or that you should be listening to me because I know something you don’t know. That’s when it doesn’t relate; I don’t want to talk to that guy like, “Fuck you man.” Make something that gets me emotionally and I’ll follow you. No one wants to be lectured. But beyond that no politics, I have no interest in manipulation nor am I political or am I smarter or better than anyone. I just kind of got to get this shit off my chest is what all this means.

And I think that’s what makes none of Cancer for Cure come off as being preachy, but I think a lot of what hampers that from being is that you have this way of injecting humor into a lot of what you do. Some of the best political statements and some of the best movies are always these dark comedies who look at Dr. Strangelove or something like that.

Absolutely man, I think once you realize scope of the absurdity of everything that we’re wrapped up in, it’s really hard not to have a little bit of a sense of humor about it, and it is kind of tragically hilarious in a lot of ways. That’s just me man. You have to have a little bit of leather. And even if you feel like you’re fucking dying it’s really difficult for me in some way not to find the whole thing hilarious.

Right, and that’s the real survival technique.

It is, absolutely. Maybe that’s a crass one, maybe that’s the cynic’s technique, you know what I mean? Maybe I’m a cynic but what I actually think I am is a romantic who’s having a difficult time dealing with reality.

You reference a couple of things, like you have that line, “I guess I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue” which is from Airplane! and you have a little sample from Top Secret which are these two…

It actually wasn’t a sample.

Did you grab it from that movie?

Nah, I was watching that movie and I wanted to use this. I sampled it originally, but there was music in the background and it didn’t worked in the music, so I ended up just saying it. If you listen to it it’s actually my voice.

Do you like those screwball comedies or was it just sort of a thing you were watching randomly?

Oh I grew up on those comedies. You talk about absurdity… Of course when you look back on them now they’re actually like oddly racist and you’re like, “Oh, wow, I didn’t realize how racist Airplane! was,” but as a child how wicked Airplane! was. There’s so much in there that is brilliant, and Top Secret is a very under-appreciated gem I believe.

Yup.

What’s that fucking Quentin Tarantino movie? Inglorious Bastards? I felt like Top Secret was better than that. I really think they tried to remake Top Secret and it wasn’t as good.

LA quartet HEALTH rely on contradictions. Equal parts grit and shine, chaos and control, destruction and fragility, the band’s blend of noise and dance music is a rare beast. After two excellent LPs, the group was tapped to soundtrack the third installment of Rockstar Games’ Max Payne series. Recently, Consequence of Sound had the chance to chat with bassist/noisemaker John Famiglietti about the surprise project, the challenge of writing for a narrative, and the band’s upcoming third album.

How did your work for Max Payne 3 come about? Did they contact you out of the blue? .

“Rockstar Games wants to take you to dinner.”

Were you guys gamers before this project? Were video games on your radar?

Currently, I’m still the only gamer in the band. I was before the project. But all the other guys are getting consoles to play this fucker now.

Did you see or play the game before coming up with your soundtrack? 

Yes, everything we did was based off of video captures of the game being played. However, we didn’t get to play the game until much later in the project.

[soundcloud url="http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/46462506" iframe="true" /]

“TEARS” is a massive, evocative, fully-formed “song” that doesn’t seem too far off from stuff on your albums. Did your work on the game naturally come out as songs? Was there an effort to create incidental, or less “song-like” material?

Definitely less “song-like.” We really wanted to “score” the game appropriately and support the action as tastefully and effectively as we could. We also created a lot of non-musical audio cues in our style, synced up to events onscreen. With the exception of “TEARS” of course. They wanted us to write a single that would work with the game.

Have you played the game now that your music is in it? 

Yes. Late in the process we went to the offices and I played through the whole game so we could give input on how we thought levels should be scripted in regards to music cues. We’ve spent so many months and working hours with the game intensely, the novelty of seeing our music in a game was long gone months ago. The game is fucking awesome though, I’ve been playing it a ton.

Did Rockstar have any suggestions for the way things should sound? Or did they just let you go?

They really hired us to do our thing. In the beginning, their only suggestions were references to our own catalog, so we just went for it based on what the level looked and felt like, and where it took place in the story. Then they would give us notes based on how it was working with the game/level.

How different was it composing music for a specific narrative as opposed to the way you typically write?

Completely different. With our own music, it’s completely to please the our fans and ourselves. Everything we did here we synced up to the game, and if it didn’t work, we chucked it. Gameplay was the primary concern. Also, Rockstar had to be pleased as well; with our music, there’s no boss.

The soundtrack is going to be released stand-alone. Is this something you’d consider a HEALTH record, or is it something else?

Its definitely not your typical HEALTH record. It’s HEALTH in soundtrack form (plus a track from Brazilian rapper EMICIDA). We tried to make as good of a listening experience as we could while being true to how the music appeared in-game.

Has there been any work towards a third LP?

Yes, we were half finished with our third record when contacted by Rockstar many months ago. Now that we’re finally done with Max, its the only thing we will be working on. I’m getting a testosterone implant to supercharge creativity.

Photography by Renata Raksha.

Who is Reggie Watts? If we can pin anything on him, its that he’s a 40-year-old man with massive hair. Deeper still: he’s close to 100 trillion cells organized biologically to form a human body. But having not met him in person to confirm this, let’s stick to what we know for sure: he’s a musician and he’s funny, but not a comedy musician. He doesn’t roll with “Weird Al” or Flight of the Conchords. As a solo performer, he noodles, loops, speaks, and sings in a stream-of-consciousness blur that’s just as hilarious as it is surreal. His performances and subsequent recordings consist of beat-boxed acid jazz about noble gasses… or fucking… or probably both. His comedy is a byproduct of introducing unlikely words and sounds to an audience. It’s about breaking your brain. Applying some fast and loose empirical evidence, let’s call him a performance artist.

This week, Watts’ released his third comedy-centric record, a CD/DVD called Reggie Watts: A Live At Central Park. Recorded on June 22, 2011, the set aired on Comedy Central this past week. His U.S. tour also started this week, with 16 dates announced so far. Then, next month, IFC will begin airing Comedy Bang! Bang!, a talk show which sees Watts play Paul Shaffer to Scott Aukerman’s off-beat Letterman. Last Friday, Consequence of Sound and Nerdy Show’s Cap Blackard dialed up Watts just before this explosion of new content and appearances to talk with him about the TV show, collaborations, freestyle, and mid-’80s fantasy films.

Most recently, you caught my attention with the news that you performed your own soundtrack to Ridley Scott’s Legend at SXSW. I’m a huge fan of Legend, so that was awesome for me. I was wondering how that project came about.

It was [originally] for San Francisco Sketchfest. They wanted to do this kind of residency thing that they called a “Reggidency.” One of the ideas was that they wanted me to score music to a silent film, and so I thought it would be funny to score music to a non-silent film. Certainly not a new idea by any means, but I thought Legend would be really fun, just because it’s so crazy, fantastic image-wise, and kind of nonsensically a good thing to go for. Plus, the soundtrack, at least the second soundtrack, by Tangerine Dream, was fantastic, and I loved it as a kid. So, I just wanted to do a take of it.

Is that why you chose the U.S. Theatrical cut over the extended Director’s Cut for the presentation?

Well, I think that’s just the movie they got. I didn’t really request the other one, but it was actually better, I think, because an audience’s patience with something like that… I wanted to make it as painless as possible.

I’m kicking myself for not being at South By this year, and this is one of many reasons. I was listening to the recording of the performance you put on your web site and you seem to have a really good memory for all the lines. In preparation for this, how many times did you watch the film?

I think I watched it recently, like within the last year. But as a kid, when that movie came out, I think I saw it like 13 times, so I have a lot of recollection.

You’re doing a show with IFC coming up called Comedy Bang! Bang!, and then there’s this sort of spin-off or sister show that’s goes along with it called Reggie Makes Music. I was wondering what you could tell me about your involvement with those projects.

Scott Aukerman has a show, called Comedy Bang! Bang!, which is a podcast. I did the theme song for it, and then on occasion he’d have me be on the show as a guest. When IFC approached them about making a TV show, they wanted me to be attached to it because of my musical involvement, and I’d be perfect for the “musical dude.” So that was the deal. It was pretty simple, just a visualized continuation of what we were doing. The Makes Music part was just kind of an addendum thing that we would add at the end of each filming day.

The way Reggie Makes Music is presented online is that it’s kind of a gauntlet that guests have to run before they can actually get onto the show.

In the show world, yes, that’s the concept. Although, that was new to me when I read it. I was like, “Oh, that’s cool.” [laughs]

But in reality the guests have already been warmed up by the full recording, that’s the last thing that they do?

Yeah, basically. They just know that they have to do it at some point. And sometimes people didn’t know. They’d just spring it on ‘em, which is really awesome.

There’s a clip online right now with you and Jon Hamm, and he’s doing sort of a freestyle about the show, Taxi. He definitely seems a bit… uncomfortable and unsure of what he’s doing. Did you guys discuss that before, or was that sprung on him?

[laughs] That was just sprung on him. I was thinking…as far as I know he’s not known as a musician, so I wanted to do something kinda simple. It was at the end of the day, and they’d done a lot. He was on the show the whole time. It was a lot of filming, and he was tired. Everyone was tired. But, at the end of the day, he was like, “sure, let’s do something.” I had that Taxi theme in my head all day long. I couldn’t stop playing it, so I just decided to use it as part of the loop. Sometimes I have an idea and I’ll just start doing something… maybe it doesn’t work, and I’ll try something else, and it’ll catch on fire. This was just the first idea, and he just started talking. And I was like, “Well, I guess that’s what this is.” [laughs]

Who do you feel had the most profound musical experience on Reggie Makes Music?

Gosh that’s a hard one… I guess impromptu-wise I would have to say maybe… Michael Cera.

Nice. I look forward to seeing how that one turns out.

Yeah, he’s awesome.

Last July, you talked about a collaboration with James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem, possibly a 7” record. It’s been almost a year, and I was wondering if you had an update on that project.

It’s on hold. He’s a busy dude, and he’d just gotten done with LCD at that time. He’s definitely game and he threw me some ideas. We started talking about stuff back and forth, but I think now he’s just figuring out his thing, you know? Just getting settled. So, I think when it’s the right time it’ll happen, but there’s no specific date set in stone or anything.

Is there any chance of seeing a CD or digital release of your hair record from Third Man Records?

Gosh… yes…maybe? I don’t know! [laughs] I’ll talk to Jack [White]. I’ll ask him. I’ll say, “Please, there’s been a huge demand. And by ‘huge’ I mean one person.”

I just really want to hear what all that hair sounds like, man.

I know man. I do too. I do too… [laughs]

In the video for it, Jack said the hair was collected from ten or so barber shops. Is any of the hair yours, or is it all strangers?

I think it’s all strangers, I would imagine. But, obviously, auditioned strangers.

During your performances, I get the impression that a lot of your freestyle and improv acts as a window into what you’ve been reading recently, and it’s really varied. So I was wondering, how much do you read on average?

It depends on the type of reading you’re talking about. I definitely love reading about things informationally and just reciting information-a lot. But it’s mostly me just researching products and articles on science, achievements in design and technology mostly. Some political stuff, but that’s not as interesting to me.

Do you have any particular scientific fascinations? Like, say, if you see an article about…string theory, you’re always gonna be like, “Oh shit, string theory! I’m checking that out right now.”

Yeah, anything about nuclear or physics oriented, or astronomy, or… basically physics of any kind. And chemical science, bio-tech, computer tech… anything scientific at all, pretty much. Behavior of animals… It doesn’t matter. I just look at the Google science thing and expand it to its maximum and just go through all of those articles.

Do you get into any comic books?

I haven’t read any in a while. I was reading the Marvel Comics app, some Iron Man. As a kid, I read comics a little bit. I was more into the cartoons about the comic book heroes, or the TV shows that were made about them, or the movies. My friend Wally is a super comic nerd, and he’ll tell me the entire universe history. Also, my other friend, Tommy, also a huge “historian,” if you will, he’ll tell me all these crazy details. Now I’ll just go through each character in a comic book series, research their Wiki, and so that’s kinda how I’m into them.

That’s really how most writers of modern day comics get into the characters that they’re assigned to write anyway, so…

That’s true. Unfortunately, that’s true.

Well, when you’re dealing with continuity that extensive, how else can you do it, right?

Yeah, I guess so. I mean, in an ideal world it’d be like someone who’s a huge fan, who happens to also be a good writer, could write something like that. But it’s always hard to find all of that in one package.

It’s true. Do you have any recommended reading? What’s a book that everybody should check out?

I haven’t read a book in a long time, but I really enjoyed The Dancing Wu Li Masters by Gary Zukav. He kind of blends physics and Eastern mysticism together in an interesting way. It’s a really beautiful book, and it’s based off the idea of quantum physics applied as philosophy and then compared to Eastern mysticism.

Baltimore dream-rock band Lower Dens’ sophomore album, Nootropics, eschews traditional pop themes (love, death, overcoming adversity, etc.) for more cerebrally challenging confines. The album, whose title refers to substances that enhance a human’s cognitive powers, focuses heavily (but not solely) on transhumanism, a scientific movement that calls for technology to improve mankind’s phsyical, emotional, and psychological capabilities. This may not result in easily absorbed romantic odes, but this context is perfectly suited for the band’s swirling, expansive blend of darkly tinged pop music.

However, the album (out now via Ribbon Music) was more than just a chance for the group to flex their collective grey matter. It afforded them a chance to build on the work they started with 2010′s Twin-Hand Movement and further strike a balance between the dark and menacing and the enchanting and beautiful. That sonic expansion impacted every aspect of the band, who are undergoing their own evolution in front of our very eyes and ears.

Recently, CoS News Editor Chris Coplan and front woman Jana Hunter met to discuss that growth and its impact on the band’s creative and recording processes, the state of their live show and touring efforts, and much more.

According to a press release, the album explores the concept of transhumanism. How did the whole initial concept become of interest? Would you possibly consider this a concept album, even of the most tangential variety?

Friends of ours in Baltimore have been interested in, and sometimes proponents of, transhumanism for a while. It was a hot topic on a local message board, as well. We’re in the habit of buying books for the van, passing them around, and using them for fodder during otherwise long and sometimes tedious drives, so we bought Kurzweil’s The Singularity Is Near after hearing it (and him) much discussed. It fit well into conversations we were having already about society as we traveled through lots of communities and waxed pseudo-intellectual about humankind’s relationship to itself. The record isn’t about transhumanism; that’s just one of the only things that people seem to have latched on to.

Our conversation became a broad and passionate discussion about the conflict between our still ever-present animal instincts and motivations versus the times, the near-future we seem to be always present in, the epic and sweeping movement towards technological embrace. It’s still, then, very much a record about our experience in our world, an observational one, and doesn’t propose concepts so much as examine them. Oftentimes those examinations are made through personal experience and never in judgment of others.

On a related note, how do you think the album’s overall concept, exploring the relationship between man and machine, played out through the course of the record? It seems from listening to the record, the concept is subtle, almost hidden, through a lot of the effort. How do you think the concept, an idea you wanted to explore, shifted or changed, if at all, your approach to creating the album?

The intention in using these ideas was to have them be more of a thematic guide than a conceptual basis. In other words, these ideas were the topic of much band discussion during the writing of the record, and I used them as inspiration for lyrics, but those lyrics either reflect my personal feelings on a subject or my observations of other people’s ideas about them. For instance, “Lamb”‘s narrator has a bit of my own fear of immortality, whereas “Brains” reflects more of the epidemic fear of technology versus the downhill snowball pace of its grip on all of us.

In a recent interview, once again discussing the album’s concept, you noted that “technology atomizes at such an astonishing rate that we can barely process it as it happens in front of us.” Do you feel like this record is a means to merely explore that concept, or are you trying to perhaps “do battle” and make people more aware of the ever-changing technological landscape?

With the record, I am, we are, only exploring – conceptually and sonically. That is what we do best as a group; we do it well, and it’s very deeply satisfying for us. I do welcome the opportunity to go further with it in venues such as this one, to perhaps confront things like the dangerous and detrimental alignment of technology and commerce. However, Lower Dens is a music project, and its purpose isn’t to judge or battle.

I like to ask this of every band/project set to release their sophomore LP: How was the songcrafting and recording process this time around? Easier, more streamlined perhaps? Any observations you made, or any strengths or weaknesses in the band/project that came up with this second go-around?

Initially, during the first few months of touring for Twin-Hand Movement, it was very frustrating. I’d always record at home in the middle of night and had grown very attached to having a lot of free time and my own space in which to totally isolate myself. On tour, there’s nothing like this; there’s no time, no personal space, no isolation. You can’t even jerk off, let alone spend hours alone in your own stink at only your own expense. Making the transition to cans (headphones), laptop, and Midi keyboard might have seemed like a compromise when we first considered it, but instantly it became not just a solution to a problem, but an opportunity to expand. It seems like a small thing when I describe to people moving from one instrument to another, but for me, the instrument in my hand can be my main source of motivation, because I am above all a player, and I love it more than anything.

So, welcoming in keys and synthesized sound changed everything for writing for me. The band adapted really, really well to this, taking in songs that were much more skeletal than ones I’d written on guitar and developing them from a textural and atmospheric aspect, developing whole new palettes of sounds. In that way, it highlighted our ability to change as drastically as we’d want or need to and our ability to do it together. It really also allowed for our two new members, Nate and Carter, to show us what they were capable of, and accordingly, they’ve provided some of my favorite moments on the record.

“Propagation”:

After touring so much behind Twin-Hand Movement, do you foresee as much support behind Nootropics? Having played the tracks from Nootropics at least some shows by now, how do you think they’ve held up live? Do you think they reveal anything new onstage, be it a different meaning or new pacing or whatever, that they didn’t in the studio?

I was always fretting in the studio about what we were or weren’t going to be able to translate live, and Carter, in particular, encouraged me/us to abandon that and work towards making exactly what we wanted to hear. Because of Drew Brown’s aesthetic choices as much as our own, we ended up with something that is, even by our standards, very restrained. I love it, and I love that it’s left us so much room for live shows. These songs are in most cases something else entirely live. On record, they’re very thoughtful; live, they are very present and, for me, quite intense.

I’ve been surprised. I guess I anticipated more reservation from people who’ve come to see us given that we’re moving somewhat away from being guitar-based and hence less rocker, if we ever were, towards something that might require more attention and less action, but there’s been none. No reservations. Audiences have been very generous; shows have been amazing and fun. I think we’ll tour as much as we can and as many places as we can, but we might need to be more cautious than we’ve been. That carelessness in booking endless shows nearly cost us Will. No tour is worth that.

Staying with the whole live show bit, I’ve read in a few reviews that, at least with the material from Nootropics, the songs are more cohesive, with less room for individual tracks to stand out on their own. Is that something you’ve noticed/a conscious decision made to present a whole, united musical experience?

In writing, the songs we decided to use for the record were grouped for their seeming ability to make a whole, although this process was a least somewhat arbitrary. Any somewhat confessional songs were scrapped, and any that left a lot of room for thought and exploration were pushed to the fore for consideration. I think I can speak on behalf of everyone else in the band and say that there is a general preference for albums that have a cohesive aesthetic or theme. We wanted to make a record, something that is a body of work, not just a group of songs.

One of the more dominant notions/concepts I noticed between album #1 and album #2 is that this second effort has less variety to it, that the emotional setting tends to hover around cold or distant. There are tinges of warmth and happiness, but the centerpiece seems to be more focused on depressing elements. Do you feel as if you focused the emotional content more, or do you see the sentiments on this record just as varied? Does the whole transhumanism concept almost box one in to a more removed/barren emotional framework?

There seems to be a tendency in people’s reactions to associate distance with sadness. For me, this is not a sad record, just a contemplative one. The objects or subjects of contemplation aren’t inherently depressing, though they are heavy. While music obviously has, of all the arts, the best means to express pure emotion, it also has the characteristic of pushing all non-relevant thoughts aside, clearing the mind and making space to consider things apart from emotion, or with emotions that are more tied to global concerns than personal ones. I think the human inability to reconcile our natures with our desires might be tragic, but it’s also funny and beautiful.

You’ve mentioned in other interviews that the new record was recorded at Michigan’s Key Club, far away from the usual home setting of past work. What was the process like working “off the beaten path” as opposed to in a more familiar setting? Is it an experience you’d want to explore more? Or do you think that “professional” recording situations might take away something from the homespun material?

There’s not a whole lot to the town we recorded in, and that’s no slag. It’s just very simple, and there are farm stands and a beautiful, great lake nearby. Fewer distractions meant more focus. The studio itself is very thoughtfully put together, a well-constructed playground run by two very smart, funny, kind people, and very comfortable. We slept nights in bunk beds above the studio. It was, in many ways, perfect.

In talking to others who have heard the record, there seems to be a consensus about the loads of metaphors strewn throughout. Would you tend to agree with that, or do you think maybe there’s more direct grains of truth or observation being laid out? Again, has the whole concept or focal point of the LP forced the album into a box of slightly involved lyrical constructs? Is there one basic, unwavering emotional statement that the album’s trying to get across?

I guess I’d want to know more about this consensus, but I feel that the distance between the lyrics and plainspoken observation isn’t based in metaphor but rather my tendency to obscure details. I do this because I’d rather not force literal meaning down any throats; I’d like things to remain open to interpretation, and if people want, I’d like them to be able to associate certain words or phrases with their own lives and experiences. As much as I am interested in the heady ideas behind some of the lyrics, I know the feeling of wanting the music you like to be a vehicle for unrestricted emotional release of whatever sort you need. For me, the album is about optimism. Believe it or not.

While the album’s just coming out and you’re undoubtedly focused heavily on it, what’s next musically for Lower Dens? Where do you think you can go with the sound after exploring such lofty notions and creating such succinct tunes? Is that even part of the process, to continually work at such a rapid-fire pace? Or, going back to the whole atomization model, do you want to take your time with albums/releases?

I think we followed exactly the path that we needed to, took the time we needed. It’s become important to me that I follow a sort of internal guided path. Sometimes it takes a while; sometimes it is immediate. Since we’ve only just gotten the record out, I can’t say at all where we’ll end up on the next one, but I’m very much looking forward to going down that road.

“Brains”:

OFF! is a hardcore supergroup with members from Black Flag and the Circle Jerks (Keith Morris, vox), Redd Kross (Steven Shane McDonald, bass), Burning Brides (Dimitri Coats, guitar), and Rocket From the Crypt and Hot Snakes (Mario Rubalcaba, drums). After four EPs, the band finally released its first full-length, OFF!, on May 8^th.

Recently, Consequence of Sound spoke with Morris about the band, its formation, and how they don’t have the time for songs filled with pomp and circumstance. We also chatted about riding the party train that was the Circle Jerks, checking egos at the studio door, what it means to sell out, and how much he loves the Dream Syndicate’s Days of Wine and Roses.

I used to believe that if a punk band was around long enough, they simply became a rock band. You seemed to have proven me wrong.

We could just as easily be a rock band, because the guys in this band, they love… two of them, I think maybe three of them, were members of the KISS Army.

Nice! So I guess when you say “three of them,” that means you weren’t one of them.

I’m not one of them. I’ve probably seen more KISS shows than all three of them put together. I’m a fan, but a faraway fan, a fair-weather fan.

Yeah, I caught them on the ’95 reunion, when the four originals got back together.

Yeah, and they’ve since gotten rid of Ace Frehley and Peter Criss. Which is typical. It’s like Black Sabbath is gonna tour without Bill Ward. I’m not going. I saw Black Sabbath on the Master of Reality tour and Volume Four. So, I don’t need to go see the Rick Rubin-produced Black Sabbath.

Did you ever catch them with Dio?

No, no, no. I’m not a fan of Dio. Dio was in a band called Elf, which was like a rock & roll band. That was cool. But getting back to all of our rock & roll heroes, Dimitri’s guitar god is Billy Gibbons. So, I guess it doesn’t get any bluesier, more rock & roll than that.

But I can’t imagine you guys breaking out “La Grange” during a set.

That would never happen. That would not happen, no.

Talk to me about how OFF! came to be; it’s my understanding that it came out of a failed Circle Jerks reformation?

Failure after failure. Bad decision after bad decision led to the firing of one of my favorite guitar players [Greg Hetson]. One of the other guitar players that I’ve played in a band with for over thirty years, who is a full-time member of another band called Bad Religion, and I just had enough. Here we are, like two weeks away from recording a new album for us. When I say “us,” I mean the other band. Plan A, we’ll call them Plan A. We’re two weeks away from getting ready to record an album, and they decided, “No, we don’t want to work with Dimitri.” Because Dimitri was going to produce the album. And, in my mind, Dimitri was the only one who was going to get us in the studio. Dimitri was the only one who was going to really make it happen. He was making things happen, and consequently, because of that, he’s “overstepping his bounds,” he’s “arrogant,” he’s “egotistical.” He’s doing all of these things that should have been done in the first place. And because they were being done in the way that they were being done, the other guys didn’t want to work with him, and that’s fine. I couldn’t be happier.

Well, that sounds like a clash of egos. How did you manage to get around that with OFF!? You’re in a supergroup with members of some of the most influential punk acts ever.

Well, there’s some egos. But we actually know… you know in Japan, you can’t enter a house without taking your shoes off. And at the ABC studios where we rehearse, you can’t enter the rehearsal space with your ego stuck in your head. So, consequently, because of our lineage, a couple of the guys, the newest members of the band, which would be Stephen McDonald and Mario Rubalcaba… we call him Mario Speedwagon. That seems to be a really great nickname for him. He doesn’t like any of his other nicknames. John Reis from Rocket From the Crypt, in Mario’s stint with Rocket From the Crypt, Reis called him Ruby Mars. That was his moniker in Rocket From the Crypt. Mario doesn’t like that, so sometimes we’ll call him Mario Speedwagon. And he’s the biggest guy in the band, so if he wanted to punch somebody in the face, he could (laughs). Those fuckin’ drummers. Throwin’ their weight around; they all want to be front men. He fronts his own band called Spider Fever, who are going to play some shows with us here on the West Coast. That was my idea to have Mario do double-duty; let’s see how he holds up.

There’s this thing where they say that everybody’s on the same page. And that cliché applies to us. Here’s another part of our situation: All of these guys have played in other bands; all of these guys play in other bands. All of these guys, with the exception of myself, are parents. And, consequently, they can’t spread themselves out thin; they’ve got a lot of stuff goin’ on. When we get together, we don’t know the next time that we’re going to get together. I mean, we do, but there’s going to be some kind of a break in between, so you better go out and do what you need to get done. The same applies for this band. We get in the room; it’s very compact. All the fat’s trimmed, and we’re running a marathon, and we gotta run as fast as we can.

Well, the new album comes in at a whopping 960 seconds, or 16 minutes.

You’ve really been doing your homework. You busted out your calculator? Or your abacus?

Abacus, my man. I’m just a few years younger than you (*well, more than a few). But 16 songs in as many minutes. Why the brevity?

The situation with that is that we live in times where the average attention span is a little bit larger than an ashtray or a garbage compactor or a blue recycle bin, an empty bottle.

You can get everything out before anyone realizes they’re not paying attention anymore?

We understand that we can only grab somebody’s attention for so long, so we need to put as much into as little space as possible. And I don’t mean everybody playing on top of everybody else’s parts. The guys in my band, they like Van Halen and a couple of them like Rush.

David Lee Roth Van Halen or Sammy Hagar?

No, when we’re talking about these bands, we’re not talking about the vocalists. We’re talking about the music and the guitar player and the drummer; and everybody’s playing a zillion notes. And a lot of it’s just meaningless. A lot of it’s just showboating. A lot of it’s just Las Vegas glitz and glamor and hambone, and we don’t have time for that. It’s great that you listen to that music. I’m not putting it down, because I have bits and pieces of that. I do own the first Rush album. I own a couple of Van Halen singles. But there’s no room for that; there’s no time for that. That’s not our mentality.

If you include all the material from this full-length, and then all four of your first four EPs, that is still just barely a half hour, a little over. During your live sets, is there any consideration to playing material from any of the other bands or covers, or do you just play the 30 minutes and that’s it?

I’ve had the same inquiry a couple of dozen times. Ya know, “When ya gonna cover Black Flag? When are you gonna play Nervous Breakdown?”

I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to insult you, if you were insulted by that question.

I’m not insulted in the least, because it comes with the territory, and the people that will be listening or reading or paying attention to what you’re going to present to them, and what I’m telling you [is you] deserve to have that answered because they might not have read anything else where I might’ve said this. The people that pay attention to you might not necessarily pay attention to somebody else. So, if the question’s asked, like my dad says, “No question is too stupid or dumb.” If you have a question to ask, you ask it.

My answer to your inquiry is that I love the Circle Jerks, and I love Black Flag. And my band that I’m in with Dimitri, Stephen McDonald, Mario Speedwagon, borrows, lifts, steals, takes… Did I say borrow? Did I say swipe? Here’s the bottom line, it’s music, and it’s all been played somewhere else, by somebody else, and even before them, somebody else played it before them. And even before the person that played it before them, somebody else played it. We’re going all the way back to the guy that’s pulled a branch off of a tree and he’s banging the bottom of the tree. And he’s pissing people off, and they’re going, “Ooga! Booga wooga!” And it’s irritating people. This music is irritating, I know that. But the fact of the matter is, all the notes, there’s only so many things you can play on the guitar; there’s only so many notes you can play on the piano. The orchestra, they can only play so many notes. It’s all been played before, and all you can do is put your personality into it.

Like I said, I love Black Flag, and I love the Circle Jerks. I might not particularly care for some of the members that were in the bands, but that’s a story for another day. The fact of the matter is, no, we’re not going to be playing any Black Flag songs, and we’re not going to be playing any Circle Jerks songs. And there will be people that listen to OFF!, and they’ll go, “They took that bit from the Circle Jerks,” [or] “it sounds a lot like Black Flag during this period. Greg Ginn was doing this, and Greg Hetson was doing that.” All that’s fine and wonderful and part of the fun of listening to music. One of my favorite bands, one of my favorite artists, one of my favorite characters is a guy named Robert Pollard, who’s in a band called Guided by Voices. Part of the fun of listening to all of the music that this guy has created… the guy has made enough records to last him for the rest of his life.

Prolific doesn’t even begin to describe it.

This is a guy, when he sits down to eat, he walks away with an album. He goes in to take a dump, and he comes out with a double fucking album. “I hear The Who; there’s some Kinks.” Ok. “That one was kind of like The Beatles. That one,“Bulldog Skin”? That kinda sounds like somewhere between Keith Richards and The Rolling Stones and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and Black Crowes…” Ya know?

That’s part of the fun of listening to some of this music. It’s all been played before. One of my favorite bands is a band from Sweden called the Soundtrack of Our Lives. You listen to one of their records and you go, “God, that sounds like Arthur Lee in Love. Isn’t that kind of a slowed down, mellower Deep Purple riff? There’s some Pink Floyd.” What they do is that they’re going through my record collection, and they’re pulling bits and pieces out of my record collection, and they’re putting it all together in a song on an album. I appreciate that. It’s stuff that I grew up with; it’s stuff that I love.

Even if it’s not theirs, though? What if they’re just saying it because they think it’s there, but it’s not? Wouldn’t that insult you and your work?

No, because having done this for so long, it’s like the little duck diving in the water to get something to eat, then it comes back to the surface, and it shakes its tail feathers, and it just keeps paddling along in the water. You just get along with it.

Well, speaking of getting along, you made a comment in 2011 about how OFF! was going to open for the Red Hot Chili Peppers despite pissing off some of your younger fans. Does that really matter to you that they would have been pissed off? And what about your older fans, people that grew up with you in the Circle Jerks?

This is a really profound answer to your question: It is what it is. Or, who cares? Or, is it really that big of a deal? We should be, as a band, with the certain amount of freedom we have (or we should have), we should be able to go out and play with whoever we want to play with. With the lineage that we have, with the amount of time that we’ve spent in vans traveling to get from city to city to play shows, sometimes in front of six people, sometimes in front of a pile of sand and a guy with a broom sweeping it into the parking lot and a couple of bartenders.

I agree. To say you’ve paid your dues would be an understatement.

To say that we should be able to just go out there and do whatever we want and play wherever we want, whenever we want , that too would be an understatement.

How’d that tour end up, with the Chili Peppers?

It never happened. We didn’t have to deflect any of those naysayers, the detractors. We actually have been invited to perform on stage with, well, not with them while they’re playing, but before they play, in front of a very large audience, two nights, here in Los Angeles. And we’re gonna do it, because it doesn’t matter. We’re sell-outs. That’s what we’re gonna be accused of. I’m 56 years old. For me, it’s a little bit past that. Our bassist worked at Warner Brothers Records.

But Warner Brothers has been pretty friendly to a lot of rock acts compared to other labels, right?

Warner Brothers has been pretty friendly to people like Alice Cooper and Deep Purple and Black Sabbath, yeah. Jethro Tull, yeah. The Kinks and Neil Young. Yeah, over the course of the years they’ve been pretty friendly to a lot of rock acts.

I’ve gotten the chance to talk to a couple bands like LP and Built to Spill–they’re on Warner Brothers–and Warner Brothers in recent years seemed to pretty much let them record what they want to record. It seemed counter to the way most big labels have been so heavy-handed with their artists.

Ok, but their deals could be that maybe Warner Brothers isn’t giving them a lot of money. Maybe these are bands that don’t have the multi-million-dollar record deals, where if you put out a record and it only sells like 75,000 copies, you would be gone. But if we only gave you like $50,000, $80,000 to make a record, then you get to stick around. The whole thing got inflated and overblown. And we hear all of these stories about these record labels, and they’re all shaking in their shoes, and they’re all scrambling to keep their jobs. The fact of the matter is that most of those people don’t deserve to be there in the first place. They should be flipping burgers and scrubbing toilets at Union Station, what have you.

But our bass player worked A&R at Warner Brothers, and we somehow got attached to Warner Brothers because Vice Records, Vice Music, the people that put out our music signed a deal with Warner Brothers. But just because our record label signed a deal with Warner Brothers doesn’t mean that all of those millions and millions and millions of dollars, or whatever the transaction, whatever monetary thing happens, that doesn’t mean that it’s going to come our way.

Of course not.

Yeah, but see, you know that. But a lot of people that would be reading this or listening to this or what have you might not know that. They hear the words Warner Brothers and OFF!, and all of a sudden it’s like, “Oh, these guys, they sold out. They’re part of this ultra-mega-corporate whatever it is.” Hey, all that happens for us, it guarantees that our records are going to be a little easier to purchase. That’s all that that means.

Well, now you are getting ready to tour with a newly reformed Refused, another band that has political and social commentaries, though I think they’re a bit more Marxist than you. How did you guys connect with them?

We’re very fortunate in that a lot of people know who we are. A lot of people that pay attention to this kind of music know who we are. We’re loved everywhere, from Deerhunter and Queens of the Stone Age, TV on the Radio. A lot of people know about us, so we have a lot of opportunities to play with a lot of different people.

Regarding the time when you left Black Flag, you cited “freaking out on cocaine and speed.” So, did you clean up when you started the Circle Jerks? And what was it that you were able to accomplish with the Circle Jerks that you couldn’t do with Black Flag? Is it like how you were able to accomplish stuff with OFF! that you couldn’t do with Circle Jerks?

When it comes to my sobriety, I’m supposed to remain anonymous, but I’m not, because I don’t adhere to any of that AA rulebook crap, “God saved your life,” and all of that shit. You’re the one with the problem; you’re the one that’s got to solve it. You go and listen to some stories. You surround yourself with people who are like-minded. I didn’t sober up. The Circle Jerks, that was a fucking party train. Dude, not only were we looking for the coke dealer and the speed dealer, we were looking for the pot dealer, we were looking for the liquor store, we were looking for the guy with the biggest keg in his backyard. That was a party train, and my party train derailed at another party in Beverly Hills. I got in a fight with a girlfriend. I’m not that person, I’m a good guy. I’m a small guy. I don’t have a lot of weight to throw around, so I’m not supposed to be doing things like fighting with people. I hit my wall; I became sober. I’ve been sober for probably 24 years.

Is it hard being on the road, seeing that all the time?

No, it’s not, because I look at everybody and go, “I was just like them.” I take the time-traveling device, and it’s like, “There I am; I see myself,” and I’m like, “How fucking idiotic is that? What a waste.” So, I quit Black Flag, started the Circle Jerks. The Circle Jerks provided me the opportunity to party and go out and see parts of the world–travel across America several dozen times, and it ran its course. We talked about it early on, how one bad decision leads to another bad decision leads to another bad decision leads to a 56-year-old guy saying, “You know what? Fuck this.” I’m too old to have these moronic choices made for me. I’m quite capable of making choices on my own. I’m quite capable of screwing up my own life, and I don’t need a bunch of other screwups to screw up my screwed-up life. So, with the Circle Jerks, there were more opportunities than there were with Black Flag.

I was going to get kicked out of Black Flag anyways. There were a couple of guys in Black Flag who I continue to be friends with, and they were beyond crushed after I left, but they weren’t going to say anything because they were fully into it.

You’re still friends with Pettibone [Raymond Pettibone, artist for SST Records], because he’s doing the artwork for you guys.

Well, Pettibone was one of my party bros. Pettibone got screwed over just like a lot of the other guys got screwed over. Corporate rock still sucks. I equate that to, if you’re gonna get fucked, you might as well get fucked by a dick that’s lubed and a larger dick.

Just before the interview, I was talking with Karl Precoda; he stopped by the station real fast. [Note: Len Comaratta records from WUVT-FM at Virginia Tech.] He said I should ask you, “Where’s Lucky?”

Karl Precoda? The guitar player from The Dream Syndicate? What happened to Karl Precoda? Where’s Lucky? What’s Karl Precoda doing musically?

Nothing. He was in Last Days of May for a little while, but he teaches here at the university. He doesn’t play music that much anymore.

Oh, well. At least he’s got a good gig. Tell him “hello” for me, and tell him that I am a fan. Lucky decided that he would play drums part time.

Yeah, Karl said that he looked like a guy that was going to become a lawyer.

Well, he eventually, because the California State bar exam is one of the most difficult to pass, decided to take the bar exam in Texas or Colorado or Hawaii. You know, I’ll pass all of these bar exams, and that’ll set me up to pass the California bar exam, but the thing with the California bar exam is that you don’t get to take it every time that it comes up. They do it once a year, but if you fail, you don’t get to come back the next year and take it. You gotta wait like three or four years. You gotta do your homework. You gotta do your studying. You gotta take some more courses. Lucky’s dad owns one of the world’s largest eyeglass frame manufacturers, and they have like five factories around the world. They’ve got one in Manila, in the Philippines. They’ve got one outside of Moscow. They just built a new one out here by Las Vegas, and I think they’ve got one over here somewhere on the west coast. So, he oversees the company; he’s the guy that makes sure the factories are being run the way they’re supposed to be run, and that everything’s cool and everything’s kosher.

Well, the tour is opening at the Whiskey. That’s going to have a lot of memories for you, I’m sure.

That’s the idea of playing the Whiskey, because nobody plays there anymore. It’s pay to play. The last time I was in the Whiskey, I think I was working A&R for V2 Records, and I had to go see this kid’s band, and they were called Slytherin. They wanted to be Marilyn Manson and Nine Inch Nails and Metallica, and they were cute. Let’s just say they all wore their little costumes, and there was a little bit of makeup, and I think the oldest guy in the band was about 15.

You can’t fault a guy for being young. Your bass player was a pre-teen when he first opened for you in his band Redd Kross.

Eleven years old, that’s right.

Well, Keith, I’m gonna let you go, so you can get on with your day. Thank you very much for your time. I loved your candor and your honesty.

Well, when you see Karl Precoda, please let him know that The Days of Wine and Roses… fucking awesome.

He made that record. Yeah, he doesn’t like talking about those days that much. He’s got some bad memories from back then.

That’s too bad. That record’s really fucking cool.

Photography courtesy of Aaron Farley. Feature photo by Meghan Brosnan.

Recently, Consequence of Sound caught up with Saulnier to discuss the new album, its bigger sound, and his own style of songwriting.

I remember seeing you guys in one of our video hangouts last year, record shopping in New York, right? Did you get to Record Store Day this year?

Yeah, we did that. Uh, yeah, kinda. I mean, not too much exciting stuff happens in my city. I worked all day, so it wasn’t that big a deal.

You’re still up in Kingston [Ontario, the band's hometown]?

Yeah.

It’s been said that your debut was about being from Kingston, and that maybe your new album is about being away from Kingston, essentially referencing your tour in support of Meet Me at the Muster Station. When you were touring, was that the first time that you guys had ever left home for an extended period?

Yep, pretty much… for months at a time, yeah. Aside from upstate New York.

“Everyday life becomes more important when in your dreams you’re already dead.” Now, that’s a bit dark and heavy; but listening to the album, the songs don’t seem to carry that weight musically. A lot of the songs (aside from the opener) are kind of up-tempo and upbeat.

I try to stay upbeat even when I’m dealing with heavy problems.

That’s a good way of approaching it. So, what was going on? Apparently, on the last tour you had recurring dreams around your own mortality. What was leading to that?

I don’t know what was leading to that. It was just this obsession in my mind that was sort of growing, and I ended up writing a bunch of songs about it.

Do you dwell on mortality often?

No. That’s why it was unusual.

Were you able to purge it all by writing, or was it more a matter of once you got off the tour the dreams stopped?

I think a bit of both.

How do you remember your dreams? I can’t remember any of my dreams, much less being able to remember songs in my dreams.

Oh, really? I remember them all the time. The last thing that occurs, I suppose.

This album definitely has a fuller sound to it, especially relative to some of the EPs and singles you’ve done before. Intricate, complex. I’m sure some people have even said unpredictable. Is this a result of your experiences on the road and touring the world?

That didn’t really have that much influence on songs. I think we just wanted to make a bigger-sounding album this time.

Well, you’ve returned with Matt Rogalski, who produced the last album. If you wanted a bigger sound, what was he contributing this time around?

I don’t know; it’s hard to say. He’s kind of a master with sound, and he just made it sound bigger, more complex. I don’t really… I just trust him to do that; I don’t really know exactly what he did.

So, the full-lengths with him, is that the only stuff he’s done with you, or did he produce your EPs and singles as well?

He’s done most of our stuff, almost all of it. He’s a prominent figure in Kingston. He’s a professor of experimental music at the university. He’s in a large ensemble folk-rock band called The Gertrudes. He records a lot of other bands in town. He knows his stuff, and he’s a good guy to work with.

You’ve released two proper full-lengths, but you’ve been prolific with singles and EPs. Was all of that collected on Figure It Out?

Yeah, pretty much. Instead of printing new 7”s and CD singles, we did the one record.

[soundcloud url="http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/42948762" iframe="true" /]

I have yet to get the opportunity to see you live, so pardon any naivete with this question: Songs like “Don’t Go”… that sounds like an epic number begging to be played in large arenas. With this bigger sound, how would you carry it over to the live setting? Do you plan on adding players to the band?

We do have another player that we’ve added for a couple shows. His name is Tim, and he’s really great at playing guitar and playing keyboards. He is not always available, but hopefully he will be for at least our first North American tour this year. For that song he’ll be playing keyboards, and I’ll be playing 12-string guitar. It’ll sound big.

Do you think that you’d ever add an actual permanent member?

Uh, I don’t know. I don’t think we really… I think that would be tricky because of the way that I write music.

How do you mean?

I do all the instruments except for drums; Benjamin does the drums. It’s like this problem where you have a song in your head and you have to do everything you can to get it recorded the way you hear it in your head. And I think that having someone else doing instruments with me, it would obscure that too much.

I love playing with other musicians. I play bass in another band called Try Harder. I like collaborating in that way, but when it’s my PS I Love You songs, I have this sort of obsessive-compulsive thing where I have to do it all.

Well, then why did you recruit Ben?

I played in a different band with Ben for a while, and I liked his drumming a lot. I was playing solo shows. I thought they’d be better with a drummer. He just kind of filled in for my drum machine, at first. I started showing him some new songs, and I liked what he was doing, so… that became a really interesting collaboration ever since.

You guys have been together, what, six years now?

Well, Ben’s been playing with me since 2008.

Do you still write on your Casio?

I loaned it to Ben a few years ago, and I never got it back. I write on keyboards sometimes.

The tour so far seems pretty short, only 12 dates, mostly up north. You’re gonna have a bigger tour, right?

Yeah, we will. Nothing’s really confirmed yet, so we haven’t announced anything.

Even die-hard Deerhunter fans sometimes ask, “Lotus who?”, but that’s poised to change this year for guitarist Lockett Pundt. The calm and collected multi-instrumentalist released one solid helping of dream-rock earlier this year under his Lotus Plaza moniker in the form of Spooky Action at a Distance, his second solo album. Sitting down at a tea lounge to talk with Consequence of Sound before his Brooklyn show with Disappears, Pundt opened up a bit about the ideas behind his new record, traveling the world, and his love-hate relationship with guitars. He rightly admits he’s not as verbose as certain Deerhunter bandmates, but his humble observations fit earnestly with his brand of contemplative, introspective musical creations.

Congratulations on the new record. It’s dedicated to Doris Fields; who is Doris Fields?

My grandmother. She passed away while I was writing this album, and “Remember Our Days” is actually about her. It really doesn’t allude to that, but I didn’t want to write a… I didn’t want it to be sad. I didn’t get to be around at the end because she didn’t want people to see her. She wasn’t how… She wanted everyone to remember how she was, you know… not being the same person. Those were her wishes. The song is about having that memory of her.

How do you feel about people interpreting songs differently than your intended meaning?

Oh, I do the same. I think everyone does that. You could read into any lyrical subject and pull your own meaning out of it, which I think is cool.

You’ve listed Roxy Music and My Bloody Valentine as early influences. What were you listening to this time around while you were writing?

A lot of Gary Numan. I’m sort of getting into a lot of synth stuff. I think that’s my next… jam. I want to go in that direction. I’m just kind of sick of guitars. But I wanted to do a very guitar-y album. I mean, I wrote everything on guitar anyway. It was a long, spread out time, two years of writing, pretty much. Three years ago, we only had one show, but I wanted to do a tour now, and the guys were all excited when I asked.

So, who are the guys?

Fellow Atlantians. Dan [Wakefield], TJ [Blake], Allen [Taylor], and Frankie [Broyles]. Frankie toured with Atlas Sound; they’re all super-talented. Dan and Allen are in a band called Mirror Mode, and they’re going to be doing some shows when we’re done.

Speaking of your bandmate and good friend Bradford Cox, how did you feel about Parallax last year? Did you feel inspired while writing your own album?

No, well, I heard a lot of his stuff afterward. He shows me songs here and there, but I heard all of it at once while he was recording. I’d already written my record at that point. He’s always been a massive influence; he’s sort of a muse to me, in a way, and has always been a large musical part of my life, with technique and everything. I think what we do is unique to us. I’ve never played with another person like that.

You’ve been playing all these new songs, and there’s a lot of imagery of traveling and movement. How does traveling influence you?

[Deerhunter] had done this tour in Europe, and we somehow ended up in Iceland, and that’s where the idea for “Jet Out of the Tundra” comes from. And at the end of another tour, I traveled to Patagonia by myself, and I was basically inspired there [laughs]. It was a really great time, and I felt I figured some things out.

A lot of the songs romanticize that whole idea. I’m especially lucky being in a band that get to do this and make a living off of it. I feel guilty a lot of times, because I get to see as much as I do, but it’s a huge part of what makes me write music.

Your lyrics always appear esoteric and very personal to you, but they used to be more obscured. From Floodlight Collective to Spooky Action, why the switch from embracing vocal reverb to dialing it down?

I didn’t want to do the same thing again… I just wanted the songs not to be hidden. I felt all the songs on the first album are sabotaged in a way. I was very insecure at the time about singing and reeling out subject matter. It wasn’t all about that, but I still feel better about this one.

Well, after your first album came out, you went on a massive tour with Deerhunter for Halcyon Digest, where you’d open up a lot of shows singing “Desire Lines”. Do you think that made you more comfortable?

Yeah, it was probably what made me want to do… Well, when I recorded this album, I had a live band in mind. I wanted to do shows. If I hadn’t gotten experience like that [I don't think] I’d be willing to give it a shot. I still get petrified, but it’s getting less and less.

Along with the favorites you’ve previously mentioned on your new record, is there a certain Deerhunter song you feel most connected to while performing?

[long pause] In a weird way, I would say “Nothing Ever Happened”, but not even in a lyrical way, because I don’t know if I would latch on to anything lyrically there. But it’s a song where I feel we’re talking to each other the most; [its] kind of like our centerpiece, our mission statement, as a band. We have something that’s so neat, and I think it comes out then. It came from an unlikely place, how it all got written together.

A lot of stuff on Cryptograms, too, I’d say, is very special. That was a very exciting time in the band. We were all dumb kids making music, making mistakes. “Nothing Ever Happened” is probably the apex of that, because Halcyon Digest, to me, is very… pro [laughs]. It’s a different era of the band.

You don’t seem like a raucous guy. What do you get out of the noise and cacophony that comes out of playing with your Lotus Plaza band and Deerhunter?

There’s something about the chemistry you can have as a band, like making up a song in the middle of a song, having never discussed it, when to start it, stop it, make it softer, louder… Just knowing is the neatest and weirdest thing, and it almost freaks me out a little bit. That, to me, is so worth it. I don’t care about notoriety. It’s just been a wild ride with people that are now my family. It’s been a long, strange trip. I feel like I’m rambling now [laughs].

Last month, prog-rock stalwarts The Mars Volta released their sixth full-length album, Noctourniquet, via Warner Bros. One of TMV’s most accessible efforts to date, the album sees band figureheads Omar Rodríguez-López and Cedric Bixler-Zavala reining in their respective talents as composer and lyricist. For his part, Bixler-Zavala explains how some of that came about in a new track-by-track video interview. Over 11 minutes, he details how his personal life affected the album, which lyrics he penned while on the toilet, his homage to director Peter Greenaway, and which track Rodríguez-López wrote him as a gift. Gain some insight and watch the clip below.

The Dandy Warhols’ latest album, This Machine, has been called the band’s goth-iest by their friends and the grungiest by band front man Courtney Taylor-Taylor. Recently, Consequence of Sound spoke with Taylor-Taylor about the group’s eighth album, working with David J of Love and Rockets, and what it means to have songs on the album written entirely by someone other than himself.

You’ve described your new album, This Machine, as “stripped-down and extremely guitar-centric,” but you’ve also described it as “woody.” What did you mean by that?

Guitars are made of wood, ya know. So are drums. Real drums. I don’t really think about onomatopoeic descriptions, the whys or wherefores. It’s woody, but it’s not soft. It’s not particularly metallic-y, but there is something there. Yeah, it’s a woody, crunchy, dirty thing. It’s beautiful.

On your past albums, you’ve never shied away from revealing your influences, especially with regard to The Velvet Underground and Ride. You never sit still. It seems like you prefer to bounce between sounds and ideas throughout the whole of the album, but I notice there’s more of a commonality between all the songs on this new disc.

You felt like there was a commonality to all the songs on this record?

I thought so. When I was listening to it this morning and just walking around the house… I don’t know, I felt like…

Oh my God… Our records, we generally feel, are kind of all over the place before we put them in the song order. This one we really just sat and looked at each other when they were just a pile of songs in no order. There’s 11 finished, individual tracks. We looked at each other and just went, “What in the fuck are we going to do with this?” We felt that it had never been so… You know, the difference between “Sixteen Tons” and “The Autumn Carnival”, it was like, “Oh my God, what are we going to do?” The thing that does sound alike about them is having Tchad Blake, who’s a very interesting mixer, just left alone to do his thing and mix them.

Maybe that’s what it was, because when I was walking around the house and had it just playing, it just felt like there was some kind of connection between all the songs.

Well, that’s great. There’s a million connections. It’s basically the same four people on every one of them (laughs) and one guy mixing at the end of the thing without anybody in there fucking with him. Which is what I used to do during the mixing process. I’d hire these super-talented mixers, and then I’d sit there and micromanage them. So, this was a great thing. This was also the third record Tchad’s mixed for us.

So, you guys understand each other really well by now.

I think so, yeah.

You mentioned “Autumn Carnival”. That was co-written with David J of Love and Rockets (and formerly of Bauhaus). You said that someone told you that it was your goth-iest, but you thought it was your grungiest.

The record and the song and everything.

That’s what I thought. I am sure the quote was referencing the song, but after I listened to the album, I thought that that applies to the whole album.

Yeah, it’s really dark. Everyone keeps telling us, even dudes from The Warlocks are saying this is a dark, goth-y record. It definitely has this Northwest-y thing to it. I’m really glad we got Hickory Mertsching to do that cover, which is really the Northwest-iest painting that you could possibly ever have. It’s that old style John James Audubon style thing but with a landscape in there, too, not just a log and the owl or whatever.

Since you said it was the same four people on this album, I guess David J doesn’t play on the song.

No, no. I’m not a prolific writer; I never have been. Every song I’ve ever written is recorded on a Dandy Warhols record. I don’t have extra songs laying around. There are no “trapped” songs that didn’t make it on the record. I just don’t write much. I don’t actually write at all. I have to wait for them to happen to me, is more like how all of this has been done.

It’s been interesting. I’ve found other people who I am super-impressed with what they do, and I’ve tried writing with them on occasion. It’s nice. It’s a great relief to know–to be able to go in to write a song and know confidently that you are going to come out with something. It’s a great relief to know that I can. I can actually write a song on command if I have someone there to work with and keep each other… I think most of it is just keeping each other focused, because I’ll just get up and wander off and do something else if I tried to write. I’ll get disappointed that everything that comes out of me seems really cliché and obvious, and then I’ll get up and wander off and go, “Fuck it.”

It’s nice writing with other people, and David has certainly written some great stuff. “No New Tale to Tell” is lyrically one of the most amazing songs ever written. Do you remember that one? “You cannot go against nature, because if you do go against nature, it’s part of nature, too.”

When I got a chance to see Bauhaus a few years ago up in Maryland, it was just amazing. I felt like they hadn’t stopped from 1983. It was amazing seeing the same four members again.

Wow. When I saw them they were on tour with Trent [Reznor], and something happened. The light rig went out, so they were playing with the work lights, the white flood lights on. And we were on the back of the stage. Peter Murphy was just having a bald-headed, fucking gothic, old man tantrum. He was livid. And then Daniel Ash was having a pissy cross-dressing tantrum. It was just a mess. It was a mess, so I didn’t really, ya know…

That’s a shame. When I saw them, they were great. But I’ve never had a chance to see Love and Rockets.

That was one of our first tours, was Love and Rockets. So, I got to sing “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” with them. That was the closest to me seeing Bauhaus, actually being the singer for Bauhaus (laughs), for four and a half minutes. That was fucking awesome. And what’s really absurd, you know how Peter [Murphy, Bauhaus vocalist] would take the mic in one fist and the cord in the other and stretch his arms out, pointing his thumbs away from him, holding the cord as far as he could, his arms perfectly stretched out to the sides, and then kind of work his shoulders back and forth and lean forward and do a bow, but with his shoulders right-left-right-left, bobbing forward? That move? I had all of them, because in high school, I learned every Peter Murphy move off of the Shadows and Light collection, and I could do Peter Murphy all the time. So, I had every Peter Murphy move down, so when I sang “Bela Lugosi” with them, they were ready to kick me out of the band by the end (laughs). Gratuitously fucking copying that dude. Peter Murphy is probably the favorite singer of my entire life. He or Andrew Eldridge.

Wow, yeah, Sisters of Mercy.

Fuckin’ A, we played with Andrew Eldridge. We played with Sisters last year in Belgium. I got to stand there on the side of the stage and watch that guy sing. Watching him sing is like watching fucking Baryshnikov dance.  It’s like you just sit there and wait for the next spectacular feat of human genius or transcendence. He just walks around; he dresses like an Army/US Marine Corps drill sergeant now; that’s his new look. And the wrap-around sunglasses. And he walks around, and he just points. He’ll pick some weirdo out of the crowd and tilt his head with his asshole wrap-around sunglasses on and point at the dude. Scary guy. The mic comes up to his face, and he goes [makes noise], and it’s fucking amazing. The most amazing thing comes out of his throat, through his mouth, into the microphone, broadcast out to thousands of people, and you see the speakers, and it’s like your spine goes numb, the hair stands up on your arms, and it’s like, “Fuck, this is incredible; this person is not quite like a human.”

Did you get a chance to come up onstage with them?

No. I didn’t meet the guy. Well, I met him a little bit. We were just lucky to get a soundcheck. I got to hang out with him a little bit afterwards. Andrew Eldridge is one of those self-taught, brilliant guys where he speaks like nine languages now, and he fancies himself a gentleman, although he wasn’t a posh kid or anything like that. He’s just made himself into the man he wants to be. He’s aged really well. He’s a cool, cool guy. And he’s fun, too. He wants to be real wise and worldly, and he is, but he’s also a goofy nerd, a goofy, super-smart nerd, too. He’s awesome. I love him. I was really impressed with that guy.

You’ve played with Bowie, too, right?

Uh-hmm. Yeah, I actually… when I got onstage with Bowie, he said, “You know, there’s only one other time in the history of Bowie that another person has come onto my stage and sang with me. The weirdest thing occurred to me, that it was about 30 years ago to the week, in this same room, the Royal Festival Hall. And Courtney… two months ago, when I said what are we going to do, what song are we going to do, he picked the same song that I picked 30 years ago when Lou Reed came up and sang with me. Ladies and gentlemen, ‘White Light, White Heat’.”

And fuckin’, we slayed that shit. It was incredible. And nobody filmed it. Not one person got their cell phone out or anything. Everybody was up on their chairs. It was a madhouse for three and a half… for three minutes it was a madhouse in there. People were going fucking bananas in the Royal Festival Hall. And then it was over, and there was nothing on the internet. It was nuts. I emailed David, “Did you get that? Did any of your guys get that?” Not one fucking person got it.

Once it happened, that was it. At least you have the memory. Why that song? What was it about that song?

I just didn’t know what song you’d do with Bowie. What do you do? Do you do one of Bowie’s songs? No. We certainly don’t do one of my songs. He would just go, “God, you’re a fucking vain weirdo.” What do you do? Who else do you do? A Beatles song? No. Well, maybe. Then I was somewhere… Oh, I was at a lighting guy’s girlfriend’s at the time, at her restaurant, and they were playing Bowie’s covers record, and “White Light, White Heat” was on it. And I was like, “Ah! Ah! There ya go!” He already knows it, he loves it, I love it. We used to get called a Velvet Underground rip-off band.

The Dandy Warhols – “Well They’re Gone”

That’s awesome.

It was. And it’s super-fun to play live. Fathead [drummer Brent DeBoer] was playing congas, and Zia [McCabe, keyboardist] on shakers, and I think Pete [Holmstrom, guitarist] might have even had a guitar plugged in. Who knows. It was kind of like–get on, sing with him. My guitar was in; I was in the mix and all that shit. I’m not sure what else was going on, but it was a pretty crazy three minutes of my life. Standing there, looking over at David Bowie onstage and singing to him. At one point, I’m singing in the mic, looking at him, and he’s singing in the mic looking at me. And it’s crazy. We’re doing that Run-DMC “White light buh buh buh buh. White heat…” And I was doing the “white light, white heat” part, and he was doing the stuff in between. And it was just like, “Shit, this is really working.”

Did you have any prep time, or was the only thing you knew in advance the song?

No. Backstage we talked about it, and what key it’s in. His band had a slightly different version than the VU version, so I said, “We’ll just do your version, and I’ll watch Earl Slick’s hand to watch where the chords are going, so don’t pull anything weird.” And, yeah, that was fine. No flubber. God, that was something. Wow. I haven’t relived that moment for a long time. Thanks.

On this album, I’ve noticed, this is one of the first times that you’ve had songs written entirely by other band members.

Yeah. That’s pretty awesome.

Is that something we’re going to see more of in the future?

God, I hope so. I guess I could write with other people, but, hopefully Fathead and Zia will just kind of produce more stuff. “Sad Vacation” wasn’t written by me and Fathead. It was written by Fathead, but Zia didn’t like the lyrics, so she wanted me to fix some of them. So, I just went in and reworked the lyrics and kind of strengthened the emotional content of it. Took it away from being bitter to being more defiant, I suppose… or more confident, more strength in aloneness rather than the bitterness. Because Fathead tends to go into a bitter, comfortably bitter language in songs. So that was just a tinkering.

Fathead has really got some great music in him. We’ve all just gotten so good at the studio process and getting it out and da, da-da, da-da. What the possibilities are once you have sort of a melody and words and stuff. Monkeyhouse [Welcome to the Monkeyhouse, 2003], for example, was a standard wall of guitars Dandy Warhols record. I was, “I’m tired of this. I’m tired of this sound. I’m tired of vintage guitars.” The Strokes and the White Stripes and Jet were huge, and I was like, “Look at all these young fucking amazing guitar bands. The world doesn’t need one more,” and the “new wave” hadn’t happened yet.

I stripped out every fucking guitar and every instrument that was playing a chord for more than an 1/8 note. Anything long or thick got reduced and made a minimalist, experimental record out of just pushing buttons in a studio, muting, and gating, and EQ-ing. I sat there with that thing one night, stayed up all night with Bjorn Thorsrud, who was engineering at the time, and we just started muting and muting and muting and muting and muting and muting. I just wanted to see if these songs would be whole songs with just drums and vocals. Was that enough? It was pretty damn close. Sometimes, I’d let the bass come in and go “boo… boo… boo,” and that’s it. Everybody in the band now knows you can do that. You can write a country song, and if you diddle with it enough in the studio and have enough inspiration and focus and luck, it can end up being like a Peaches track by 3 o’clock in the morning. Pete’s not really into writing songs, but Zia and Fathead, they love it. They’re into it. We can all edit each other’s lyrics if we need help. Things are looking good.

The other members are also in side projects, two country bands and a psychedelic rock band.  Has there been any thought to bringing those bands on the road with The Dandy Warhols?

We keep that all separate, because it would get weird. Personally, I wouldn’t want to perform for that long, and the psychology of having to do that, then get my head back into it… That’s a bad idea anyway. But when we’re on tour, we’re there because we’re this band. We’re The Dandy Warhols at the end of the day.

What about One Model Nation? You made a fake greatest hits album for the band you wrote about in your graphic novel.

Yeah, yeah, Totalwerks, Vol. 1.

Would you ever actually consider making a little band and touring that around?

I wouldn’t [laughs]. That’s the book. The book could go out as though that’s a tour.

Any plans to write a follow-up book?

Oh, I don’t know that I have another story in me. If I have another writer who wants to write, maybe then they go to South America and get involved in some political arts thing in an emerging third world country. Argentina, lots of German ex-pats, 1980. Pick up a year and a half later. Maybe they went to Mars. Maybe they get abducted by aliens. Maybe they fall into a wrinkle in time and a black hole and come out in a different time. They come out in Roman times.

You have ideas. You can do this. You can do it while you’re on the tour bus. Are you excited for the tour?

Yeah, pretty stoked.

You’re going all over Europe. When do you come back to the States?

Well, we’re going out for a couple and a half weeks, then we come back for a couple and a half weeks. And then we do America for a month. Then come home for a few weeks, and then, hopefully, we get to go live in the French countryside for a couple months. And just play shows in Europe and play little arts festivals all over France and Belgium or wherever. Just have a French country lifestyle for a couple months. That’s what we’re trying to do next.

Sounds like a nice reward for all the hard work.

Yeah, totally.

The band’s smoke-and-mirrors songwriting found a perfect venue in Webster Hall on Thursday night. Aided by a light show not unlike the one in this video, Patterson and co. occupied the entirety of the stage and filled the Hall’s cavernous ceilings with the force of their muscle-riffs and dual drum hits. Every member of White Rabbits was deadly serious onstage, moving seamlessly between songs (and occasionally, instruments) sampled mostly from their last two albums, with a few off Fort Nightly. In particular, vocalist and guitarist Gregory Roberts’ sweet-voiced howls made “The Plot” one of the set’s highlights.

But it’s Patterson’s expression, by turns sinister and coaxing, that consistently makes White Rabbits a band that demands your attention. After watching him whimper and growl through the meandering Radiohead-like jam “Danny Come Inside” and “Heavy Metal”’s eerily reversed loops—not to mention “Temporary”, which began with a red herring drum machine that unexpectedly blew up into the song’s very real two-drum cacophony—I realized that Patterson does, in fact, channel Beyonce’s diversity on 4, which he revealed in an interview that he sought to emulate on Milk Famous.

A couple of days before the show, Patterson took a few minutes from the “most intense tour they’ve ever had” to answer some questions over the phone. It’s hard not to get caught up in Stephen’s emphatic, superlative-laden tangents, which answered questions I didn’t even know I had.

How has the tour been going?

It’s been long. South by Southwest was right in the middle of it, and the three days we were there felt like a tour in and of itself. It’s just a lot of driving. It’s funny how much sitting and doing nothing for eight hours in a van can wear you out.

You said that performing on TV is “nerve-racking” and “stressful.” Is it more so than live shows?

The last time we played Letterman was not only the most nerve-racking performance I’ve ever given on late-night TV, but it was the most nerve-racking experience I’ve ever had as a musician in my life.

Wow. Why?

It was our first performance after the record came out, and we hadn’t performed live in a while. Also, [“Temporary”] is just a really, really hard song. Kimmel’s great because they set it up like a club show. That was the first time I had played guitar on TV. Last night we did Fallon, and they had the best green room of any late-night show that I’ve ever done: They had a piano back there. There’s never a piano backstage. To answer your question, I wasn’t nervous before Fallon because we’re so out of our minds from being on the road that I don’t think we had the energy to be nervous. But it’s very simple why: You have one shot to get it right. When you see it live, everyone’s kind of there in the moment and there’s sympathy there as opposed to being at home watching a band on TV.

It seems like you made a conscious effort to dissociate yourself from Spoon by saying you were influenced by Beyonce. When I was listening to 4, I have to say I didn’t really hear Beyonce in your new record.

I never said that I was trying to dissociate myself from Spoon. I said I was influenced by Beyonce because I was influenced by Beyonce. I’m not actively trying to pursue a disassociation from the decisions people make to tie us to Spoon, whatever they want to infer. I don’t say something like that to get a rise out of people. I don’t think it’s funny. I don’t think it’s ironic. It’s a sincere appreciation.

When I listened to her latest record, what I really loved about it was that track “I Miss You”. That track is incredible. I love that song! I’m not really a fan of “Best Thing I Never Had”, which is the next track, but it still is so different from the track before it, you know? Like, the first two tracks on Milk Famous, “Heavy Metal” and “I’m Not Me”, have nothing to do with each other.

The way she convincingly gets inside each of these songs that each have certain emotions they’re trying to convey… it’s something every singer should be doing. She doesn’t only get into the emotion of it all, and you can feel that she’s inside the song, but she also has these soundscapes that are in Destiny’s Child party mode, but also accomplishing a lot of things.

I read in the same SPIN interview in which Beyonce was mentioned that you were “fed-up with trying to avoid being yourself,” but I still noticed these same kinds of lyrical self-disavowals. Like, “I’m not me,” talking about hiding your smile, etc. Do you think certain themes will always be present in your songwriting?

Yeah, just by nature of the way I write lyrics, which is often improvised. I often sit and record myself playing for an hour or so and oftentimes I’ll be singing nonsense words that lead to me finding a melody or a lyric, or finding a good chord change. It’s very hard for me to sit down and think, “I am inspired by this at this very moment and I am going to write these lyrics for this song.”

Is there a reason that you titled one of the tracks on Milk Famous “It’s Frightening”? Does that have anything to do with the album?

The title came second. That was one of the first songs I wrote after we got off the road touring It’s Frightening, and I just thought that the title worked really well with the song. Sometimes the title comes first. I really love it whenever the title does come first, but more often there will be some stupid working title that we use for months and months and months. And we still usually call those songs by their working title.

Until more recently than I would care to admit, I didn’t realize that you have two drummers. How did that come to be?

When we started recording Fort Nightly, that was the first time we had ever spent significant time recording material in a studio that had so much equipment. And we kept adding more drums, and more drums, and more drums. I started out as a drummer for the band, Matt is obviously a drummer, and the guy we were working with on Fort Nightly is also a drummer. So there were a lot of people thinking that way. And then (current drummer) Jamie, who was our manager at the time—I use that term loosely—approached us and said it would be a great idea. It worked out because we had no idea how we were going to pull this off live. Plus, it makes writing a lot more fun.

You shared the stage with Bradford Cox at Coachella a few years ago, and you guys play a lot of covers at your live shows, so what did you think of the whole Minneapolis “My Sharona” debacle?

That was amazing! My first reaction to the Bradford thing was that I was immediately jealous I didn’t think of that idea. It’s so funny. We were in Salt Lake City, and somebody requested that we play “The Beehive State” by Randy Newman and we played that, but we already knew that song, so that’s much different than what Bradford did.

You also met Britt Daniel in Minneapolis. How did you first approach him?

I met Eric Harvey [Spoon’s keyboardist] first. We were opening for the National in Ithaca, and there was a torrential, apocalyptic storm, so we got trapped in one of the buildings at the university. Eric and I ended up hanging out for that whole time, and we all wound up staying in touch. They were passing through Minneapolis the same time we were there, and he invited the whole band to come see us.

I’m glad to hear you were intimidated by Britt Daniel. When I interviewed Daniel Pujol, he said he wasn’t intimidated by Jack White in the recording studio, and I didn’t believe him.

I have a lot of respect for those guys, but we’re all just dudes. (Or girls.) It was much scarier going into a collaboration, and going into a studio, and sending demos the first time around.

Was recording with Mike McCarthy different than recording with Britt Daniel?

Mike is much more demanding and difficult in the way that a producer should be. When we were working with Britt, we were working with somebody who had a very similar personality to all of us, which is why we were excited about working with him. With Mike, we eventually came to a good friendship, but he takes a much more—for lack of a better term—spiritual approach to recording music. It’s easy for me to get into the small things and forget to see the big picture, which is why you have to bring a producer in the first place. He was aware of all the little things, but when we were recording, he wasn’t necessarily concerned about them. He was content to just sit back and let the music hit him, and however he was feeling, that’s what we were going to do, even if that wasn’t the plan. He’s a really particular guy and he has high expectations of the musicians that he’s working with. That’s a good thing, for all of us, to work with someone who was going to whip us into shape.

“It’s a weird, awesome homecoming,” the Chicago native turned wandering bard says, “which are the best kind!” He’s played other Chicago venues, but the Metro’s stage is a first. The rugged front man of These United States, Elliott has been crisscrossing the country with his band mates, leaving trails of magnificent folk rock and narrative ballads in their wake. During a given tour year, These United States can accrue as many as 200 shows and 60,000 miles in travel between plane rides and their second van, affectionately known as “Evangalina II”. They used to split their time between Kentucky and Washington, D.C., but these days the members hail from Brooklyn, North Carolina, Kentucky, and Chicago. These sprawling roots have always contributed to the band’s traveling aesthetic; a great number of their songs center on frontier-esque poetry.

Five albums in, These United States have built a solid discography and fan base, but this tour they’re supporting good friends Trampled by Turtles. Their new album, a self-titled work, is due out June 12th and features appearances from members of Deer Tick, Frontier Ruckus, the Mynabirds, and more. These collaborations spawned from their constant touring and friendly network of genre peers.

“Whenever somebody would be in town, we would have them sing a part,” Elliott says. “Basically, we just got to the point where we were like, ‘Oh, this is just becoming a collaborative album, and we like all of these recordings enough. Let’s keep these people that were very much a part of this process.’ It was a pretty natural evolution and grew out of our knowing most of them for four or five years and traveling all over the country and making music together.”

This collaborative spirit was alive and well Friday night at the Metro in Chicago. These United States blazed through their set of old and new cuts, sampling gems from their debut, A Picture of the Three of Us…, critically acclaimed third offering Everything Touches Everything, and their forthcoming album. Trampled by Turtles’ mandolin player Eric Berry and fiddler Ryan Young appeared onstage to fold in some furiously fingerpicked bluegrass to These United States’ rowdy brand of folk. The group effort on “Everything Touches Everything” was an aural upsurge of tangled mandolin, bright guitar, and supporting chorus from the crowd.

Constant travelers that they are, the members of These United States hardly look road weary but carry an air of troubadour wanderlust. Their songs are expansive, tightly wound stories that unwind across the whine of J. Tom Hnatow’s pedal steel, Justin Craig’s rambling guitar, Anna Morsett’s ambling bass, and Aaron Latos’ insistent drums. Each album has maintained a feeling of a desire to travel but consistently approaches the sound of sinewy highway routes fresh at every turn. “It’s definitely some of the same themes,” Elliott says, “The new album focuses on travel and landscapes and that kind of lonely life out in the desert.”

When I asked him how many miles a typical song might garner from inception to recording, Elliott’s eyes grew wide. “Holy shit,” he said. “That’s something. I probably traveled back and forth 50 or 60,000 miles just between the touring and the recording itself. The band: probably 20 or 30,000 of those miles. The demoing and the writing sort of became, or was already a part of, the touring and became part of the album. So it all sort of became a seamless mess of going back and forth.”

Movement is These United States’ creative fodder. Elliott writes in motion, leaving band mates and touring friends to improvise and write parts as they pin city after city on their maps over and over again. To shed light on this well-traveled writing process, they even offer a spliced together version of their lead single from These United States, “Dead and Gone”, tracing the song from a demo to a polished finish.

Near the close of their Friday set, These United States launched into “When You’re Traveling at the Speed of Light”, the final track from sophomore album, Crimes. Morsett nodded toward Elliott with the punching beats of the song as Trampled by Turtle’s Young unleash a choppy fiddle breakdown. Elliott fell to his knees, still pealing away with guitar in hand while the rest of the band pulsed with the tension of the song. The crowd was bumping with energy as These United States tore down the proverbial curtains by bringing out Trampled by Turtles’ lead singer Dave Simonett to the packed stage for a song before his own headlining set. It was a crashing end to what felt like the main event. The live fury and energy of These United States did not disappoint as Elliott and his band left the Metro stage, a successful seamless mess.

But band member Gaspard Augé will never tell you this. In partnership with fellow Frenchman Xavier de Rosnay, Augé only wants to appeal to human emotion, to the romanticism and imagery of everyday life. Producing music is less about the interpretations of journalists and critics, but more importantly a form of self-preservation, a means to protect the band’s innocence, youth, and therefore the freedom of their music.

And fresh from performing at this year’s Ultra Music Festival in Miami, Justice is now off to the west coast to promote their sophomore album, Audio, Video, Disco. Next stop: the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, whose attendees hold high hopes for the French duo’s performance. Consequence of Sound had a chance to chat with the mystical Monsieur Augé while he was taking a breather before the next leg of touring.

So, to start off, how was Ultra? I heard you guys played an epic performance, brought a whole new swag to the stage.

Well, it was good fun, though we found the crowd a tiny bit quiet. But with the extra lighting we got from the Ultra stage, we were able to enhance a few moments.

I watched A Cross the Universe last night, and it seems like you portrayed the audience in the film to be much more enthusiastic. How has the tour for your sophomore album [Audio, Video, Disco.] been different?

We were very happy this time around, because we didn’t know what to expect from the U.S. crowd, and it’s been crazier than the first tour so far.

Also, the music for your sophomore album is considerably more rock-influenced, more experimental. How does that change the elements of your live performance? Does it change the face of your audience as well?

Onstage, it doesn’t make much of a difference. We simplified everything, but the core of the tracks are very similar to the new record versions. The crowd is quite similar, even younger in some cities.

Are you bringing in a live band, singing the vocals live? Or is it all pre-recorded?

No, it’s just the two of us. It’s not time-coded. We have all the split parts of the tracks, a few keyboards, pianos to play the leads and the solos, and we’re trying to make the best hour-and-a-half sequence with it.

Let’s move on to your next stop, Coachella! Excited to get over to the west coast?

Definitely excited. It’s the best part of the year for us to go there.

How does it feel to be one of the most anticipated acts at Coachella? And how about that lineup?

I guess Snoop and Dre are the most anticipated acts, but if we can fit somewhere in between, that’s great.

So, bringing it back to comparing your A Cross the Universe tour and this one… how have you grown from your first album to your second album?

We’ve grown up like everybody does, but we still have the same concerns and influences. We didn’t try to renew ourselves or radically change our style; to us, it’s a natural evolution from the first album.

You guys are arguably the modern rock stars, living the “sex, drugs, & electronica” lifestyle. What are your influences, and how much do you feel like you yourself are influencing music?

We’re just trying to make epic, romantic, melancholic pop music – and we don’t feel like modern rock stars either. We try to stay as naive as possible and not know too much about “technicity” to keep the magic.

Humility is key, and your music is incredibly powerful and definitely speaks for itself. I do have another question about your imagery, though, as I believe you and Xavier used to be graphic designers, correct?

Yes, we like to think about videos and artwork.

Part of your and Xavier’s style is to cultivate this imagery around your personas, your music, and the Cross. So, how much is your music dictated by the imagination, by the concepts you’re trying to convey? Versus, how much is your music shaping these larger, philosophical messages you’re trying to communicate to the audience?

There is no other message than simple emotions, from epicness to melancholy. And so the visual side of Justice is there to support those emotions and to propose something we find relevant. Or not propose, but give to people.

So, would you say your goal is to merely speak to our emotions – to speak to what makes us inherently human?

Lyrics-wise, we try to be universal without being too stupid, like “get your ass on the dance floor.” But we’re not Bob Dylan either — that’s a thin line. The best definition of our lyrics is something we read on the Internet; some guy said it looked like they were written by some 14-year-old in the back of the classroom.

So, you’re like teenage angst for the 21st century!

We’re not trying too hard. We just make music in a very naive and romantic way.

Well, I like the subtle romanticism. I can say for me, your music has held many special moments… traveling on a train in Amsterdam listening to “Planisphere”… road-tripping to Yosemite rocking out to “Valentine”…

[Laughs] You do know how to listen to our music. Those places are perfect to listen to it.

So, one last question… a fun one. Can you give me a good story from your tour? Or maybe just recount some of the people you’ve met? It seems your travels in A Cross the Universe were part antics, part satire of Americans. I’m sure this tour has been just as interesting.

Well, every night is a funny story, because we’re 14 French guys stuck in the same tour bus. It’s almost like a traveling sect.

Planning to get married again during your time in Vegas [the 4/19 show]?

It will depend on how drunk I am… or if you’re around, who knows?

Photography by Cap Blackard and Michael Zonenashvili.

Your album Ugly is already being heralded as one of the best albums of the year.

Dougherty: Is it? I hope so.

Everything I’ve been reading online, everyone is loving it, and I’m loving it as well. It definitely seems to represent an expansion of your sound, building upon what you’ve done on your previous albums. I’m assuming that this is going to carry over to the live aspect as well.

Dougherty: Live, we’ve always kind of tried to do the same thing, which is have fun every night. I don’t think too much is going to change with what we do live. I think the only thing that has changed with what we do live is… at different parts of our career, we’ve had moments where we either like playing more improvised, longer versions of songs or just go in and just play a straight-ahead set. We kind of go through phases of melding all the songs together into one noisy thing or doing distinct pop songs, but I don’t think too much is going to change with our live sound.

Production-wise, this album definitely builds upon what you did on Power Move and Castle Talk, making your sound sharper, a little heavier and more confident. You’ve always been very involved with your music’s production. Steve Albini aside, what did you hope to accomplish with this album? Did you have most of it planned out prior to entering the studio, or did you let it happen more organically once you guys began recording?

Dougherty: We definitely had this record planned out before we went into the studio. We did more pre-production for this record than anything we’ve ever done. We demoed all the songs two or three times–let Marissa have a lot of time with the songs to kind of try different guitar overdubs and different vocal arrangements, you know, harmonies and this and that and doubling. So, by the time we went in there, we had a really good idea of what was working and not working for each of the songs.

Some of the songs we did a couple different times at different tempos to get an idea of what would feel good on the recording as opposed to playing live, because sometimes songs will feel better faster or slower live, but then you hear them recorded, and you realize they come across better at a different tempo. So, we did all that ahead of time, so by the time we got to the studio, we didn’t have to play to a click track or metronome. We didn’t have to really worry about what we were doing, and it actually ended up working particularly well with the way Albini works, because he wanted us to list exactly all the overdubs that we were considering doing ahead of time and then determine which ones had similar sounds, and it really helped the recording process move along quickly. It allowed him to excel at what he does.

I think our working styles ended up working together very, very well. We had a great time working with him. I know people have been harping on this thing I said where I didn’t want to talk about Steve Albini. I have no problem talking about Steve Albini. At that point in a particular interview someone had asked like three questions about Steve Albini, and I was like, “I don’t really know what the guy eats for breakfast.” That was kind of a little bit more of where I was going. Our comments as far as that were really like we don’t care to talk about the rumors of whether Steve’s a good guy or a bad guy. To us, he was a great engineer who we had a ton of fun with.

I was more interested in why you chose to work with him, because you guys have been so involved with your own production in years past that I didn’t think you needed to have an additional hand, and I was just wondering what you were trying to get with this new album, what sound you were trying to develop.

Dougherty: I think that… I mean, obviously, Albini’s records sound amazing particularly for loud rock bands, even though that’s not his sole area of expertise. He did a great Joanna Newsome record, which is obviously not a power trio kind of record. It’s always been within reach. For years now, we’ve been talking about the next record, whether it be Power Move or Castle Talk, whether we should go do it with someone like Albini. And really, it’s been within our grasp. There’s not many engineers and studios out there that have recorded such amazing records that are within our grasp, not only financially, but communications-wise. I wouldn’t know how to get in touch with somebody like Rick Rubin or Brendan O’Brien, Butch Vig or somebody like that.

But you can call up their studio, and someone answers the phone, and it might be Steve Albini. You call the studio, and their rates are reasonable. And I think that all of that stuff not only makes it a possibility, but you really know where they’re coming from, which is that they care about making good records for bands that don’t have the connections to the huge music industry, to big crazy expensive studios. And I think part of that… we were hoping going in that we had a little bit of a mutual understanding as far as ideologies go. I think it was on multiple levels.

We walked in there, and we were laughing at the same jokes; we’re telling stories about different eras of punk rock but not too far off from each other and also very diligent and ready to make a really good-sounding record. So, I think that it actually ended up everything we could hope for, in that we’ve always been involved with how our records came out and how they were recorded. That was no different this time around except we just had an even better studio and a world-class engineer.

The songs on this album seem to distill over 50 years of guitar, garage, and punk rock into one cohesive album. I even hear surf elements in “High” and “Expire”. Where do you all draw your inspiration from? Because it’s one thing for critics to cite Dinosaur Jr. and Fugazi, but as individuals, who did you look up to while learning your craft? I know it’s deeper than the early 90s.

Dougherty: I think about this stuff all the time. I think that we have pretty diverse influences as far as the individual members of our band, and now we’re together so often that we end up kind of transferring bands; everybody knows what bands the other people listen to but going back thinking about in high school, I was listening to some awful nu-metal. But at the same time, really what I was delving into more often was jazz and world music, free-jazz, freaked-out stuff like Sun Ra. Stuff like that. People may listen to our music now and think Dinosaur Jr. and Fugazi, which I understand; I get those references. But for me, I’m trying to think about what Fela Kuti’s drummer might play to this beat if he was in this band. What kind of beat would he play?

Man, if you had Tony Allen playing with you guys, that would be awesome.

Dougherty: I’m gonna pass the phone off to Marissa, so she can give her input.

This is your longest album, clocking in at just under an hour–almost double what you’ve done before. And “Doom 84” alone is over seven minutes long. When it comes to crafting your songs and choosing what to include on your album, what is your process?

Paternoster: We had a lot of songs ready to record when we went to the studio. I think we went in there originally with the intent of keeping a few of them for splits or 7”, so when it came down to it, we just kind of decided that they all had a space on the record. I think it was too difficult for us to edit out what might be perceived as the extraneous songs. It is a long record, I know. I feel like people are always kind of pressing us to either, when we’re playing live, to play for longer. I know that a lot of reviews of our other records would always be like this record is only a half-hour long, a brisk record or something. And now everyone’s critique is that this record is long. So, it’s kind of like a superficial observation–the length of this record. Yeah, that’s true, and we did take that into account. I think all of the songs have worth in them, have a spot on the album. If for some reason the length of the record is a burden to the listener, they should just get up and take a break.

I have no problem with the length; I just noticed that a lot of people were talking about it. Looking over your past recording history, a seven-minute song is a rarity, and I was just curious, did that happen because you were just jamming out in the studio and you didn’t want to stop?

Paternoster: Do you mean why that song in particular is that length? We wrote the song before we recorded it, and it was that length. When we talked about arranging it and making references to other bands that we think sound like that particular song… a lot of them write really long songs. And we were talking about Sleep and Witch.

You’ve done acoustic tracks before like “Deluxe” on Castle Talk. I love “It’s Nice”, the song that you have ending the album, especially how it lets the listener focus on your voice. The strings are kind of cool, too. Regarding the “ill-fated” piano track that you were trying to work on–that you left off the album–do you think you’ll ever revisit that and maybe try to develop something out of it?

Paternoster: The pictures of me playing piano… this photographer came in one day to take pictures, and it was almost this odd day where we were done tracking, and I was just singing. We were trying out this staccato piano thing, which would have… if you really want to know the nitty-gritty, the details… it was going to be on the intro to the song “Rotten Apple”. It was literally like four measures of just me playing A on the piano. It was really like the most boring thing ever, and then it got cut.

So, I take it that you’re not going to try and develop that? (laughs)

Paternoster: No. No, I don’t think we’ll ever revisit that particular part, but perhaps the piano will find its way onto a future recording. We archived that moment by taking many a photograph of me playing that piano.

I also live in a college town with very few venues and a big house show scene. Are you still actively involved with the New Brunswick house scene?

Paternoster: Yeah, I went to a couple shows while we were home for the past two weeks. And then helping a feminist collective in New Brunswick organize this annual festival called C.L.I.T. Fest. It’s the word “clit” serving as an acronym (I didn’t name it) for Combating Lady Inequality Together. It’s like a radical feminist music festival that’s been running for like eight years; it started in 2004 in Minneapolis, and it moves from city to city.

What’s the New Brunswick scene like right now?

Paternoster: Pretty much the way it was when we found it, still in basements.

Is being near New York a plus or a minus? Does it help your scene or overshadow it?

Paternoster: It’s a definite plus. I mean, I don’t think the house shows in New Brunswick suffer at all because New York is in close proximity. In fact, a lot of those bands in New York seem pretty keen on coming to New Brunswick to play.

I have a question for Mike regarding his bass playing.

Paternoster: Did you want me to ask him the question and then tell you the answer? We’re in traffic now, actually. (passes phone to “King” Mike Abbate)

Abbate: Hey, this is illegal, so if a cop comes up, I’m gonna put the phone down real fast ok. (laughing in background)

Ok. Your bass playing doesn’t sound like a typical bass role. It’s a bit crunchier this time, but I think that I hear you riffing it up more than just playing or walking the rhythm in sync with the drums. Is your approach on bass different than on a traditional role? Because I’m thinking I am hearing you play bass differently than a traditional bass player would.

Abbate: Yeah, I guess you’re right about that. I’ve only ever played bass (aside from getting high with my friends and fucking around); I’ve only ever played bass with Marissa. And Marissa, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, has a very unconventional guitar-playing style, so I can’t just be… I can’t do what most other bass players (mouths bass sounds). I have to play riffs or else it doesn’t work.

Photography by Heather Kaplan.

How do you find Brooklyn compares to the South, where you’re from? Does it inform your songwriting totally differently?

Yeah, I would have to say that if I had stayed in Atlanta, I think I’d still be doing some other something. Probably making, like, jazz music or something. [chuckles]

Really? Why do you say that?

I mean, like, jazz or probably just, like, super ambient music. I don’t know why. Or it would be, like, heavy rock. But that’s just kinda like what’s goin’ on in Atlanta. There’s this weird Atlanta thing. It’s, like, loud and powerful or bassy-trippy. And there’s a lot of jazz there, too.

So, the new album is called I Love You, It’s Cool. That came from a note that you found from your former band member Sadek [Bazarra, keyboards and bass] after he left the band, correct?

Sadek slipped it under my mixer [chuckles]. Joe [ Stickney, drums] found it. Joe got one, too. It said, “I Love You, It’s Great,” and then mine said, “Jon I love you, it’s cool” and had this cool little drawing. It was kind of a funny thing… we were kicking around a lot of ideas for record titles for a while, and for some reason that just kinda…

So, you had already been working on the album by the time you found that note?

Yeah, yeah. Actually, we had a writing room. We rented a room where we could set up all our stuff and record whenever we wanted and write and all that. Basically, people would come by and hang out, and one of the nights neither Joe or I was there, but Adam [Wills, guitar and bass] and Sadek were hanging out, and that’s what happened. It’s not like that big of a deal. It’s just kind of a funny thing to write. I think it’s a funny thing to write to somebody. I like it. It’s very sweet.

It’s good to see that his departure was amicable. Was there a dynamic shift in the band when you became a three-piece?

Yeah. Now that we’re a three-piece, there’s a lot more that each of us has to do with all of our limbs and stuff. I feel like with every record I’ve had to switch what I’m playing. I think I pretty much switched with every record. Like, I either play a little bit of guitar and a little bit of synthesizer, or all synthesizer, and now I’m playing samplers on this record. Mostly that all developed out of Sadek leaving the band right before we went on tour for our last record. We were just like, “Holy crap, what do we do?” We don’t have money to hire anybody, so we just figured it out as a three-piece, learned some tricks, and it’s kind of informed what we do now in a lot of ways.

So you weren’t already in the process of writing a new album with him when he left?

No. Everything happened so fast. Before we knew it, we were on the road. Our main struggle was just trying to figure out how to play the songs we had, you know, because that record was written as a four-piece, and it was like, “Alright, how can we do this?” And we figured it out. We worked at it, and it worked out okay. It was cool.

So, the deal with Dead Oceans, was that a result of the success of the last album, or was that already in the works? How did that relationship come about with Hometapes and Dead Oceans?

I think it has something to do definitely with us having made a little wave with our last record. And then there’s a strange connection, actually, between Dead Oceans and myself. Phil Waldorf and I went to college together. He’s the guy that runs Dead Oceans. But that didn’t necessarily influence, I don’t think, his desire to collaborate with Hometapes or anything like that. I mean, I think he’s genuinely a fan. He and Sara [Sara Padgett Heathcott] and Adam, who run Hometapes, are buddies, and they just kind of came up with the idea, because they know on this record in particular we wanted to take a step forward with our production, and we needed some money to kinda make it happen. So, Phil really was a champ and stepped in, and the two of them came together, so it’s like the best of both worlds. We get to have our old awesome label… we get to keep working with them. We love them; they’re great people.  And we also get Phil, too, which is like an old college friend. So, it’s kinda great.

Was there any influence by the label on the album, or did they give you total freedom outside of helping you get studio access?

They really are pretty open to what we’re doing. We were a little scared, too, because we kinda felt like we were making a… not necessarily a weird record, but it was like, “I don’t know if we’re making the record people are expecting us to make.” We had no idea what people wanted us to do. I think there was definitely… when we were writing and recording, there was a certain amount of pressure, because we had made some kind of wave in the world, and I feared that everybody wanted us to write a 10-song record that sounded like “Lovesick Teenagers” and “You Do You” from our last record… which we didn’t do. We wrote some other stuff, and they were into it.

With us, we’re always pushing forward as much as possible, and maybe sometimes to our own detriment we’re doing that, but there’s not really any kind of standing still with us.

That can be good for the artist and the fans. No one’s gonna get too tired or too bored.

Yeah, none of that.

Since you mentioned “Lovesick Teenagers”… the last album definitely had a lot of attention focused on that song. Was there a conscious desire this time to avoid a singular force on the album like that, or are you guys of the mindset that if a song becomes a hit, so be it, yay for us? Are you trying to avoid any specific singles to avoid distraction from the entire album?

No. We’re not actively avoiding trying to make a single. That song happened by accident… not by accident. It just sort of happened. We wrote the last song on the record first and then “Lovesick Teenagers”. I just thought it’d be really cool to make a song out of it, because I liked the ending of that song so much. We made a song out of it, and it just happened to be well received, which is very cool.

But this record, I don’t know if there is necessarily going to be a singular force kind of song on this record or not. I don’t think you know until it hits the world and people respond to it. It’s weird with us. We definitely try and ruin our songs.

I read that one of your methods of composition is subtractive, where you pile a ton of crap on and start picking away the stuff that doesn’t need to be there.

Yeah, we definitely do work subtractively. It’s pretty fun to work that way. It definitely is fun to weed out the bullshit or leave the bullshit. If a song on this record is universal, then it’ll be great. If not, we’ll still make music. With us, it’s just kind of like a part of the big package of making music for the rest of our lives.

Working with expensive microphones instead of your bedroom recording setup would have to affect the sound of the album, but did it affect how you approached the songwriting? Do you have a method to writing your music, or is it more like the three of you come in and organically see what happens?

It was really just kind of see what happens. Each song was written differently. Some songs started as drumbeats; some songs started as vocals or piano or guitars or bass. Each one started off differently, and then we just let them shape-shift into what they were. For me, that’s kind of like my favorite thing about writing music, especially collaboratively, where somebody can kinda say almost something that’s like they don’t understand what they’re saying. They make a suggestion, and then you do something, and it’s interpreted to the best of your ability or understanding what they are trying to say, and these songs just evolve on their own. They grow like these strange bacteria.

Let’s talk about working with David Wrench. I read that the reason you chose him was because while you were Skyping him on an interview, he had a conga in the background. Why did you want to work with him, and what did he bring to the party?

His blonde hair – and the conga. It played a big role. There’s some bongos on this record. I hope you’re prepared for that.

That’s awesome. Did he play them?

No, he didn’t [chuckling]. Joe played all of them. But, yeah, there are some bongos and congas on this record. It’s pretty exciting. They’re not super in the front, but they’re there.

But why did you decide to go with a producer rather than produce it yourself, as on the last album?

Well, we’ve never done it before, so might as well try something new. It’s hard. It’s harder.

Working with a producer?

How can I say this? It’s not harder necessarily, because when you’re recording all your stuff there’s a lot of legwork… setting up mics, editing shit, and doing all the comping and all that. It’s a lot of work. But when you’re working with somebody else, there’s a whole different other layer of expectations or something like that.

You got a big studio and expensive gear. There’s a lot of pressure performing these songs that you’re not necessarily super familiar with, because you’re in the process of writing them, and you’re trying to perform it as best you can in front of people. It’s a whole new set of challenges, but one that I’m glad that we took. I really had a lot of doubts at the beginning.

Why?

I was…”This is bull… why are we spending money when we could just do this ourselves?” But I think it was really worth it, because the stuff, at least to me, I think it sounds pretty neat. Definitely, I don’t think we could have done that ourselves. I’m actually certain we couldn’t have done that ourselves.

Well, you’ve described the album as more up-tempo, less moody-broody, a lot bigger but less masculine than Beast Rest Forth Mouth. Why do you think that is? 

I think over time we have an understanding that it’s possible to make music that isn’t… it’s kind of tough. That’s one of the things when we’re exchanging words; we’ve gotta make it sound tough.The stuff is heavy, but I think that there is a dynamic that we’ve kind of received from playing shows and people responding to music. And also, we did this cover of the Lindstrom song “Lovesick”, sort of seeing how we could make people dance and have that interaction with the crowd. It’s rewarding in a way… just freaking people out and making loud music. It’s different.

Our music is still going to be loud and probably intense, but I think that we are trying to take chances with seeing how far we could push a little bit in one direction to the left or to the right and see if it’s ok. We often talk about some of the folks that like our heavier songs like “Destiny’s Love”. Those kind of folks that just really want loud noise, heavy, pounding stuff. When they hear our new stuff, are they gonna be like, “These guys… these guys wussed out. What the hell?”

Do you ever write songs one way for the album with the understanding that when you play it live you can totally do what you’re talking about, just amp it up and give the people that in-the-face song that they’re looking for?

Yeah, that’s all about time. There’s never really enough time. The thing about us, by the end of tour, our songs will evolve in a certain direction. They’ll be twisted in some weird way. It would work better live than it would work on a record. I’m not really a big fan anyway of, like, super-heavy, crazy-sounding records, necessarily. I mean, I am, but at least with us, I think that it’s kind of nice for us to record records that are mellower, and then when you come to the show you get a little bit of a slap in the face.

Well, speaking of slap in the face and big sounds, you have Rhys Chatham on this album, right? And Agatha Max as well. I know that band members have played with Chatham before, but how did you go about getting them on this album? Did you write parts specifically for those two, or was it more like while you guys were writing your songs you’re like, “There’s something missing here… hey wait a minute, I know exactly what can fill this,” and they filled the void?

No, I think it was Adam just chatting with Rhys, and it just happened that he was in town while we were recording. Adam was like, “Why don’t you come by the studio, and we’ll record some stuff.” It was really that simple. It wasn’t a big plan, and he improvised his parts, and it turned out cool. He actually played trumpet, which is different. You know, we know him as the guitar player or the crazy guy that’s composing and screaming in front of a roomful of people playing guitar really loud. We’ve never seen him play trumpet, so we were like, “What the hell is this…” All of us knew that he’d been doing that. Then he’d just go up there and had a couple of delay pedals and some other thing and a few expression pedals, and he was doing something… a few looper pedals too I think… and he ended up making these weird sounds. They don’t sound like trumpet.

Are he and Agatha on the same songs?

No, they’re on different songs.

Let’s talk about the promotion of the album. Right now, the album is playing in its entirety, slowed down so it’s one giant, huge play, and it ends on the day the album is released?

Yeah.

400,000 times slower…

Yeah.

Who came up with that, and was the rate of playback determined by what you all thought it sounded like, or was it based on the date of release?

It was based on the date of release. It was just like an idea that we had. At some point, when we were discussing making this record, we were talking about making an ambient piece to go along with a double-disc. And then we just got so bogged down making the actual record, and we were like, “Man, nothing is going to happen.” We all love drone music, and when that “Nine Beat Stretch” by Leafing came out, we went to Atlanta, and a lot of us stayed up pretty darned late listening to the 24-Hour Beethoven thing, and the Bieber stretched.

I was going to ask you about Justin Bieber.

That was our introduction to Paul Stretch, and it’s a pretty genius little program.

I love the Bieber song because it sounds like Sigur Ros.

Yeah, it does. I think his track is so great. It really is super beautiful. We listened to that in the van. I think it came out when we were in the U.K., and we listened to that thing a lot, especially after having played a bunch of shows, and you’re rolling around the van, and you need something a little bit to take the edge off the loud rock shows one after another.

You said it was also meant as commentary on the current state of album promotion.

It definitely says something. It’s funny that people are doing all these things to hype and tease videos and what not. I know you gotta do it, but it’s all about the music, you know. In the end, it’s about the music. You just gotta make good music. It doesn’t really matter what kind of cool T-shirt you’re wearing; just make some cool tunes.

It’s the 10^th anniversary of your debut full length, I Get Wet. On the tour, is the idea to play the album from A to Z, or simply play all the material from the album regardless of sequence?

We don’t have that many songs on the album, so we won’t be able to play A to Z, but we can play A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L. A to L. There’s 12 songs, and we will play them in that order, album order, front to back, the I Get Wet album in its entirety, which we have never done before. It’s been a really interesting experience.

Are you only going to be playing music from that era and before, or are you going to play other stuff too?

Yes, we will [play other material]. We will. Because it’s just too much fun not to play. Wait, no sorry. It’s not fun to not play the other stuff. It’s too much fun to resist playing the other music as well. We’ll play all of I Get Wet in album order, and then we’ll play songs from all the other albums. It’s a full-blown show.

This is your first headlining tour in seven years, right?

Well we’ve been touring, but it’s the first full band headlining world tour in, jeez, I mean, for some countries, even longer than seven years. Fortunately, the band and I have found ways to keep active whether it’s doing the entire Warped Tour or doing special tours; but, as far as a world-wide tour, this is the first one in a long time. And that’s fully my fault. I take responsibility. I made some very poor…well not poor…business decisions, but personal and business decisions that had fine print and requirements that I didn’t fully understand. But the good thing is that they’ve all been resolved, and now look at us–we are bigger, back, and better than ever.

How does it feel to be back on the road?

I’ve never enjoyed playing concerts more. I think when you don’t get to do something you love, and then you get to do it again, your appreciation, and gratitude, and your general understanding of the entire experience really goes through the roof. I think it’s the best shows that I’ve ever played. I feel stronger and better than ever. And I think the band that I have been privileged to play with, has never been sounding better or playing better either. There’s just more energy and dance moves than ever before, more headbanging than I’ve ever done.

Are you going to hurt yourself? Are you going to have to take insurance out for this tour?

Well, we have a lot of insurance, but I have a lot of guardian angels as well.

Nice. When you play live, have you ever included the rare material you’ve done, like the J-Pop songs you covered back in 2008?

That’s a great question. I’ve played some of the Japanese specific songs in Japan, but most folks outside of Japan aren’t familiar with those songs or that material. I’m amazed and very excited that you are.

I was kind of surprised how much you’ve done just in Japan. You’ve released a lot of things solely in Japan. In fact, what was it? I’m blanking on the album name. But, you just released one album that was only available on vinyl in the US that finally came out in 2010 on CD. But it was available for years…

Correct! You’re absolutely right. The album is called Close Calls With Brick Walls.  The really easy explanation as to why we’ve done so much stuff there versus the rest of the globe: it’s because in that contract I signed, that was left out. It was almost a mistake on behalf of my handlers that they didn’t even notice it. But it allowed us to keep active and keep releasing music. Fortunately, once we resolved all these issues around 2009…working on those issues since 2005 when I was brought in. The beauty of it is, now that album is released the entire worldwide, Close Calls With Brick Walls. And it comes with a bonus disc, Mother of Mankind. You get 39 songs between those two discs. It was my way of making up, hopefully, for the delay there.

Wow. That’s a great gift for somebody, especially for a long-time fan.

Thank you, sir.

Many people who know you only know you as the party rockin’ dude, so they might be surprised to learn as a child you were actually trained in classical and jazz piano. When did you shift your focus? Was it just the teenage years and punk rock?

Well, definitely, I was very lucky and still am. Just very, very, very fortunate. I’ve been humbled by my good fortune throughout my entire life. Starting with my parents, they introduced me and almost forced me to learn piano at a very young age, and that gave me that foundation and appreciation, an understanding of music that sent me on this destined path. And, also, I get to blame them whenever they wonder what the hell I’m doing with my life. I say, “Well, hey, you shouldn’t have taught me music if you didn’t want me to do it.”

And, yeah, as I got older I found out about rock music and other instruments, like electric guitar and drums, and met all kinds of amazing people. I’ve had a lot of amazing mentors that introduced the world to me and blew my mind basically. And then I got hooked. I got completely addicted to that feeling of having your mind blown, and that’s what basically led to the invention of Andrew W.K., and started this whole adventure. I moved to New York City, signed up with some people, and they made my dreams come true for a very fair trade.

Do you think it was the success as Andrew W.K. that allowed you to do things like 55 Cadillac which was you improvising on piano?

Well, for sure. That album was many things. One, it was the first album that we ever released where it wasn’t carefully recorded, or carefully assembled and worked over. I mean, most of the albums take at least a year, if not two years, to record. It’s just a very slow process overdubbing all those tracks. This album was recorded in two hours. I had my hands tied legally during that time. It is possible, though, to play piano with your hands tied, just not very well (laughs). Here, on the piano there, it’s my best playing, just making up stuff as I go along.

But it was also a very embarrassing album to have people hear, because I didn’t think (and don’t think) it’s that good. I actually just heard it the other day. There are some parts in there that I think are really great, but I had to put out an album because of a contract, and it was sort of a middle finger to some of the people I had been working with…but that was all a bunch of drama. Fortunately, we are all friends again.

That’s kind of sad that you did it only as a middle finger, because I think it’s kind of interesting, the whole concept of you playing improvisational piano.

I was playing on the piano only using my middle finger…

Are you serious? (laughing)

As you can hear. Well, it’s quite limited, the abilities on display there.

With 55 Cadillac and your working with avant-garde musicians like To Live and Shave in LA and the Calder String Quartet, would you consider those interactions a way for you to stay connected with your classical and jazz roots?

It’s just a way for me to stay connected to my own soul…which has not been easy. I also like to do things that feel good to me, and getting to play with To Live and Shave in LA has been one of the great dreams and privileges of my life. When I was thirteen, I heard the first To Live and Shave album, and it literally destroyed my brain. I knew from that point on it was going to be, somehow, a part of my life.

That’s how life is supposed to work. You get such strong feelings from certain things. It could be a person, it could be a book, it could be a painting, it could be a song, it could be a place; it could be any experience. You get a lot of different feelings, but there’s that certain feeling that goes beyond liking something, and goes beyond enjoying something that is really your future giving you a little sneak preview of what is going to unfold for you. That’s something that I’ve gotten to experience more than most people have a right to. It’s also so satisfying and so fulfilling that it allows me to, hopefully, give back a lot of energy to the world, give that to people that can then make their dreams come true the way that I’ve gotten to.

Well, that leads up to one of my next questions. I consider you somewhat of a renaissance man. You play and write music, you’re classically trained, you’ve written jingles for commercials, you’ve appeared on TV in a variety of roles, and you’re a producer. What was behind your decision to actually go and do the self-help and the motivational talks? With all respect, how did you manage to get people like Ivy Leaguers to take you seriously?

I don’t know, it still blows my mind that I was ever even let into Yale at all, on that campus, or Harvard, or any of these places. The fact that anybody wants to listen to anything I have to say, let alone 60 or 70 year old professors, was very intimidating and very nerve-wracking, especially since I never prepared for any of that, the lectures. I’m very interested in new-age self-help and self-help philosophy in general, and wanted to further that.

My managers encouraged it and gave me the idea to begin doing lectures as an extension of the same kind of feeling we’re trying to get across through all the work. You’re very flattering to me when you call me a “renaissance man,” but really, all I’m doing is just working in the entertainment industry, and there’s a lot of beautiful, different realms within that umbrella. But, a true renaissance man would probably be also good at math, able to fix a car, or at least fix a flat tire, or write good. You know, that kind of stuff. I use the best skills that I’ve developed within the limited, but very, very exciting, and in some ways, infinite, world of show business.

Do you continue to contribute to Rockin’ On with your advice columns, in Japan?

Yes, yes! I’ve been doing that–holy smokes. We have been doing the advice column in Rockin’ On magazine (which is probably the best international rock magazine in Japan), and it hadn’t even dawned on me now, it’s been since 2002. So, we are pretty much at 10 years there. Wow. I didn’t realize that. We did a book too. After the five year anniversary, we released a compilation book. So, maybe it’s time to do another book. There’s a lot of advice in there.

In addition to playing with others, you’ve also produced a few acts, including Wolf Eyes and Lee “Scratch” Perry.  What was it like working with Perry? Are there more plans in the future for you to do more reggae?

Working with Lee “Scratch” Perry – I’ve had no more powerful and rewarding experience in my life. Being in his presence, let alone getting to facilitate his vision or serve him in any way has been one of the great privileges and honors in my life. And I don’t really like saying the word “honor,” but I just don’t know how else to say it. He is as advanced as a person can possibly be, as self-realized as an individual an artist can ever get. And the older that he’s gotten, the more advanced he’s gotten. He’s a true magician, and a true master. Just getting to even speak about him now is making my life more rich. If he would ever allow me to work with again, that would be great. Reggae music is one thing, and Lee “Scratch” Perry is a whole ‘nother.

Were you surprised with the Grammy nomination [Best Reggae Album, 2009]?

Oh, absolutely, but not entirely. He’s been nominated and had won Best Reggae Album before. But it certainly was exciting for me.

Let’s switch off of music for a second, if we can. How did you get involved with Destroy, Build, Destroy and do you have any plans to return to television?

Well…yeah. I want to do as much TV as possible. I love television, I love the atmosphere, especially creating it. Working with this incredible team of people to make something that doesn’t even really exist, much like music. It’s a moment in time; it’s experiential. You can build a house and then live in it, but when you build a TV show, or build a song, all you’re doing is putting sounds and lights up on a screen, or sound waves out of a speaker. You’re just trying to make someone feel some certain way.

That, to me, is like the future of humanity. We’ve already seen it happening with technology, and, of course, the computer, which I consider a very direct extension of the human spirit as it is. But you don’t even need to buy a physical object in terms of a CD, or a DVD, or VHS tape, or anything now to get this experience. It can be purely information traveling over different devices and different modes of delivering that. I consider it the greatest field or industry to work in because we’re not making stuff, we’re just making feelings.

Unless, of course you destroy them before you build them.

Well, that’s true. We do destroy a lot of stuff, and we’ve piled a lot of garbage and things into the landfill, but we always use our stuff as efficiently as possible and re-use it. On Destroy, Build, Destroy, whatever car we blew up, that was already a junked car. All that weaponry and all that TNT and all the destruction on there, at least it’s done for the sake of joy and entertainment and making young people feel excited, rather than trying to hurt someone or fight a war or something. I hope that in the future all weapons and all explosions will happen just in the movies and on TV.

With regards to the legal matters: you did an “Ask Andrew WK Anything” night. Is there any plan for you to do that again or was that just as a means for you to clear the air regarding your legal issues at the time?

I’m continually impressed with your preparation and research and knowledge with all this. Thank you, first of all. That was basically a press conference that I was encouraged to do by some of the folks that I had been working with. And that was during an extremely stressful time for me personally, and with Andrew W.K. And I think it ended up being a mistake to do that talk, and to try to answer the questions the way that I was advised to.

Of course, I’m not trying to blame anybody else. I’m not being controlled; I think for myself. But I do take advice, like anybody would, from people that I’ve worked with for a long time, and that was just a situation that we were trying to deal with: essentially, everything from little rumors and myths to full-blown accusations and lies. Over the years, I’ve tried many different ways of dealing with that, like anybody who has people accusing them of stuff. Sometimes ignoring it works, sometimes confronting it head on works, and sometimes trying to twist it back works, or doesn’t work. I’ve tried every which way. That was one of those ways. It did not work, so now I’m back into the ignoring it.

So, you would not want to ever entertain another night where you would just have people come up and ask you questions regarding stuff?

Well, we could definitely always ask me anything anyone would ever want, but I’m not gonna answer the way I did that night. Someone had told me that might be a good way to do it, but it only made things much, much worse. But I’ve learned. That’s the beautiful thing about life. That old saying “if it doesn’t kill you, it makes you stronger,” not only that, it’s what doesn’t kill you teaches you something.

You worked on a film called Poltergeist years ago where the soundtrack had been lost, but recently I read that it had been found. Are there any plans to actually release that?

Actually, it wasn’t that soundtrack that was lost. I have been in possession of that recording the whole time. It was an album called You Are What You Eat that I had lost. But that did get re-found. I’ve done my best to save, and archive, and keep track of everything. It’s very stressful. I had the entire recording of the I Get Wet album documented on video, and then the video and all the tapes were stolen out of our van in New York City one night. It was just devastating. And, obviously, the gods did not want that to be seen or exist. Maybe somewhere out there someone watched those tapes, but I imagine they just wound up in the trash. And there’s other things that I’ve lost or misplaced over the years or have been erased that it’s so painful to think about. The only comfort I can find is to just have faith they weren’t meant to exist, and that the guardian angel did not want me to do that, or didn’t want people to hear it, or didn’t want it to be around anymore.

Other than that, I do have the Poltergeist recording and I’m amazed that you’re familiar with it. Have you seen that movie?

No, I haven’t.

Ok, maybe we should release that movie and the soundtrack. I really like the music a lot. I think it’s really cool. I would love to put it out. That’s a great idea.

Is the movie available to watch?

I know Aaron Dilloway has the movie. I don’t own…I may have a DVD copy of it. Aaron Dilloway’s a solo musician. He was also a founding member of the band Wolf Eyes. He was a kid I grew up with in Michigan and idolized, who was only so kind to take me under his wing, so to speak, and really mentor me, and introduce me to all kinds of stuff. He’s an incredible, incredible, incredible person. One of his many skills is that he’s an incredible archivist. Really, like a real archivist, like a librarian-level archivist. So, he has that movie and all kinds of other stuff. Some stuff he’ll show me when I go to his house that I don’t even remember making. It’s just incredible. I’m endlessly grateful to him in millions of ways, not least of which is his archiving skills.

Photography by Joshua Mellin.

St. Patty’s Day Weekend have you stricken with a severe case of the Mondays? For Chicagoans, just power through the workday, then head to Schubas Tavern for some aural therapy courtesy of the brothers Yost and the rest of The Kickback. For everyone else, we suggest a comfortable night on the couch customizing your settings for the recently launched CoS mobile app.

The third installment of the March residency welcomes Chicago’s own Pet Lions, Panda Riot, and Cali’s Mister Loveless. Tickets are still available for only $6 via Schubas online ticketing system.

The residency concludes March 26th with opening performances by Portland’s Dirty Pigeons, Tin Tin Can, and Truman & His Trophy. Grab your tickets early here.

Now that you have all the deets on the residency, get to know The Kickback a little more intimately through our recent conversation with founder Billy Yost below. Not only is the dude one hell of a songwriter, he’s also a pretty nice guy – taking time away from some dog sitting duties to give us insights into his influences, forming The Kickback alongside his brother, and who he would most like to share a tour bus with. The answers may surprise you.

What were some of the strong musical influences on both you and your brother (drummer Danny Yost) growing up in South Dakota leading to the formation of The Kickback? 

Randy Newman is one of my favorite people ever. I really try and channel his approach to songwriting into a more guitar-based band. I’ve always loved his ability to get crowds to sing these soaring choruses of stuff that otherwise people wouldn’t even really consider. His lyrics have this menacing undertone, but he is able to put it to happy, sort of hopeful music… like a clever trick that he is able to pull over and over again.

Danny and I grew up heavily on late 60’s and early 70’s oldies radio. Saying ‘Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys influenced my band’ is the “in” thing right now, and has been for awhile, so I don’t want to say that he is everything we are trying to be, but you can’t help but gleam as much as you can from him or old Phil Spector recordings. They were both trying to create what I think Brian Wilson called “Pocket Syphonies” under three minutes. Granted we aren’t doing that, but I like to keep that in mind when we are writing our stuff, and try and keep in constrained. Otherwise, it just goes haywire.

Danny actually played in a number of groups before I started. He’s older by a few years, we actually have four older brothers who were all heavily involved in bands growing up, and had been playing in bands since he was 13 and gigging since about 14 until now. A lot of that just seemed normal to me, and when I started playing Danny really helped and encouraged me, even when I was taking part in genres he might have found repugnant. When I was learning Blink-182 songs he was not too thrilled, but still he encouraged me to keep progressing.

Initially, the band was a loose group I formed during college in late 2006, and people moved in and out as they graduated. Danny joined a while later when he transferred to the school I was at, and he and I started playing and taking it more seriously than either of us had planned. Ever since then we have been pushing about as hard as we can.

So, what spurred the relocation from South Dakota to Chicago?

There were several reasons. We were four-and-a-half hours from Minneapolis and three hours from Omaha, both meccas when compared to our town of 2,000 people, and we wanted to be somewhere that seemed a little more like a city and closer to places that we could travel to.

Another thing, and the more blatantly apparent one, was my girlfriend at the time – who is now my wife – had moved here a year before for a job. For as much as I love music, I don’t particularly enjoy hanging out with musicians, so moving to a city run entirely by musicians and artists, like Portland or New York, just didn’t seem really appealing. We kind of wanted to be somewhere that was still on the ground in reality. So, following our graduation in 2009, we packed up and moved.

Did the main nucleus come from South Dakota, or have you recruited in Chicago?

Danny and I are both from South Dakota, and those roots are not something we are willing to let go of. Eamonn our bass player is from the D.C. area, and Jonny our new guitar player is from Mexico.

Since relocating to Chicago, what have been some of your greatest experiences leading to your current Schubas Residency?

We spent our first year in Chicago trying to get Schubas to return our email. So playing at Schubas, even before this residency, is kind of a special deal for us. Partly because of that delayed gratification.

Neither Schubas nor Lincoln Hall make you feel ashamed for being a musician. I feel a lot of clubs are good at making the bands feel guilty for being there, which I can understand because people work. There you are not only tolerated, but also regarded, ever-so-slightly, as an equal.

So what does The Kickback have on the horizon?

Coming up in a couple months, we will be touring more than we ever have been. We are doing a Daytrotter Session next month, which our manager Brian has been hassling them about since about the time we moved here.

We are still working on our first full-length LP that we hope to be out sometime late this summer. But who knows? Danny and I are recording most of that ourselves. And we will hopefully be traveling as much as possible without losing our day gigs.

So how does the writing process work between you and your brother?

I typically write about 90% of a song, then bring it to the group. Danny is able to poke a few holes in it, and see some of the weaknesses. Then we rebuild from there until it feels more like a full group kind of song, instead of just everybody playing what I ask them to. If I didn’t have Danny, I feel we would just be playing almost half-finished songs, because he is absolutely essential to finishing up the tracks.

You and your brother each have college degrees, so what do you think you would be doing if you weren’t playing music?

We both have degrees, but if tomorrow we were told that we couldn’t make this work, we would probably commit some sort of sensational Hara Kiri publicly. This is a happy sickness, we just cannot not do it. For both of us, there isn’t a lot of choice. A lot of people don’t know what they want to do, and at the very least we know that.

Any thoughts for the CoS readers?

The running joke for the band is, ‘If you will come and see us, you will like us.’ All you have to do is come, and we will finish it for you. I know that this is an arrogant and belligerent claim, but it is a very cathartic show and we get some sort of release from every experience. That goes for the audience as well. Each show is an exorcism, and we just want people to be there.

Now that you are about to hit the road, who would The Kickback like to share the tour bus with?

If Dr. Keith and The Electric Mayhem from the Muppets want to tour they are our ideal candidates for sure.

I guess they are having bit of a resurgence with the movie recently coming out.

I honestly don’t think they got enough screen time, but I do not know who to petition for that.

In an interview with Consequence of Sound’s Paul de Revere, Sprangers talked about how Free Energy’s brand of rock is out of place in today’s “post-Nirvana” rock landscape, he called it– one focused mostly on angst, navel gazing and tired music formulas– but that in itself also makes it totally essential.

“When [Free Energy guitarist] Scott [Wells] and I collaborate on music, that’s what comes out,” Sprangers said, “that triumphant energy and sound. I think both of us on our own create music that’s melodic. But for some reason, when we make music, it’s drawn toward this anthemic, righteous area… We’re able to go deeper and deeper into the canon of rock and embrace things that are [now considered] cheesy.”

He lists off a litany of cornball influences: Steve Winwood, Billy Ocean and Shania Twain and her ex-husband, producer Robert John “Mutt” Lange (who produced many a fist-pumping, butt-rock single in his day) among them.

“A lot of this stuff conventionally is considered cheesy only because it was so big and shoved down everyone’s throats,” Sprangers said, “that you kind of get this [unfavorable] reaction culturally… But I think given enough time, you look back and go, ‘Holy shit, this stuff has a lot of truth in it.’”

So maybe it makes sense that Love Sign, the band’s forthcoming follow up to its 2010 debut full length Stuck on Nothing, hasn’t yet found a proper label for release. Sprangers said Free Energy parted ways amicably with its previous label, DFA Records, and that the band was looking for a new direction. He wouldn’t speak to ongoing label talks, but Sprangers doesn’t seem deterred creatively or ethically from the same idea present on Stuck on Nothing: earnest, simple rock ‘n’ roll.

What I liked about Stuck on Nothing was that if it weren’t for the modern production sound and DFA putting it out, you’d have no idea it wasn’t a genuine article from the ’70s. It was that true of a tribute to that rock sound. With Love Sign, did you expand your boundaries out a bit more musically?

Yeah, generally. I look at it more as a continuous refining of ideas. Any aesthetic growth is more like a refining of our process and being able to more clearly articulate ideas, lyrically or in a guitar riff. [On Love Sign], the drums are much more clearly articulated even than the last record. That comes with confidence and experience, I think. Certainly, the dance songs we’ve done on this record are dancier than anything we’ve ever done. There’s a song that sounds like a Go-Gos pop song. Everything is much more clear and amplified. The rock songs are dumber and bigger. Like, fuck it, we have nothing to lose. If it’s going to be big and dumb, it should be the biggest and dumbest it ever could be.

Like, dumb as fuck.

Actually, that was an early working title for the record, Dumb as Fuck.

Really? Was it?

No, I’m kidding.

Is DFA putting out Love Sign as well, like it did with Stuck on Nothing?

I don’t think they are. It’s still kind of up in the air.

Are there any labels you’re looking at?

I don’t know how much I should say. We’re talking to a few. I’m not positive [our style] made sense on DFA. I mean it did, because the guys there really care about it. But for the world, it wasn’t a perfect fit. Maybe we need to be on a label that has more of a foot in the rock world.

“Electric Fever”:

[soundcloud width="500"]http://soundcloud.com/freeenergymusic/electric-fever[/soundcloud]

One of the things I noticed in Love Sign’s single “Electric Fever” that was different from the songs on Stuck on Nothing is that it seems like you’re pulling from ’70s funk and disco as much as you are from ’70s rock ‘n’ roll.

Yeah, with the chicken-scratch guitar. We’ve been listening to ‘80s stuff like Graceland or Peter Gabriel, guys that are referencing world music but drawing it through pop. A lot of that has been inspiring to us. It’s all very dirty and woven-in. Also, like mid-career [Rolling] Stones off Some Girls, where it’s really funky.

Photo by Heather Kaplan

That’s interesting because most of the music you named up until world music and The Stones were American influences, and I think you guys are a distinctly American-sounding rock band, really positive and bright with an independent spirit.

Don’t you think it’s weird that there isn’t more music like that? [Tom] Petty is a huge influence on this record, too. He wrote some of the catchiest songs in the canon of American rock. I wonder why more people don’t try to emulate it or use it as a starting point, at the very least. I tend to agree with a lot of people who say “Rock is dead,” because it is, you know?

It occurred to me listening to your music that the last band to take a full inventory of American rock like you guys have was The Hold Steady. I think a lot of what you guys do is like that band but looking more on the bright side of things.

I know those guys and I love them. But a lot of Hold Steady is like, as [singer/guitarist] Craig [Finn] has said, admittedly, “bar rock.” A lot of times it’s too generic for me. They do take inventory of American rock but in this way that’s slightly less inspired than what I want to hear. I’m fine with saying that [with our band] the riffs are derivative and that it sounds like stuff that’s come before it. But the difference is that there’s so much love and care put into it. It doesn’t matter what the music is, I think when you have that passion, you’re going to have some degree of success in what you’re making.

I kinda like the idea that rock is dead because I can prove the point that when you put love and care into something– even if it’s a dead, shitty form where fuckin’ Nickelback or whatever is considered rock– it can be resurrected.

Free Energy headlines Consequence of Sound’s official South by Southwest Showcase alongside Thomas Dolby this Wednesday, March 14th at The Jr., with a lineup featuring Emily Wells, Ezra Furman, Hey Marseilles, and Miracles of Modern Science. 

Jennifer Clavin and her younger sister Jessica grew up in Los Angeles and started making music together as Bleached last year after Jennifer disbanded her post-punk group Mika Miko and finished a year-long stint performing with Cold Cave. The duo writes sunny pop-punk songs with irresistible, shout-y ’60s harmonies. So far, Bleached has released a few 7-inches and are currently mapping out a full-length album. Having finished touring with Smith Westerns, Black Belles, and then Veronica Falls, the Clavins now have South by Southwest ahead of them, and more specifically, our big CoSigns event.

When Consequence of Sound called, the Clavin sisters were at a Del Taco in Las Vegas mixing soda pop cocktails. (Sample recipe: Diet Coke, Coke, and Sprite.) They talked about imagery, their dad’s musical influence, Spice Girls, and why you get what you give when you go see them perform.

What’s the recording been like for the 7-inches you’ve released so far, and how do you achieve that old-fashioned sound?
Jessica: We usually record live. Jen on guitar, I’m on bass, and then we have a drummer, and we all play together. The first 7-inch was actually done on tape, and the next two 7-inches were on Logic. They’re mixed down on an old keyboard, so it kind of gave it that sound.

Have you been paying attention to the SOPA/PIPA debate? How do you feel about internet piracy, selling vs. giving away music?
Jennifer: Well, OK, I was never bothered by it, and maybe that’s because our band is so new, but then I was talking to one of my friends who’s in a band that’s way bigger than us, and he had a different view on it. It took me by surprise, ’cause, in my mind, right now I don’t care about that at all. If people can’t afford it, I’d still want them to be able to have the music. But then my friend was like, “Well, I could have made thousands of more dollars on my last album.” I never really thought of it like that. It kind of sucks because we do this to make a living, but at the same time, I feel like music is art, and everyone should be able to access it.

And then you make your money with shows and touring?
Jennifer: Yeah. But I do see the other side of it, that you don’t just want to give it away for free. I guess I’m just kind of torn.

Jen, you studied design?
Jennifer: Yeah. I just went to Pasadena City College to do a semester in fashion.

So, who are your style icons?
Jennifer: My top, ultimate two are Deborah Harry and Siouxsie. And Stevie Nicks.

When you’re designing clothes or sewing, do you feel like you’re using the same creative portion of your brain as when you’re writing music?
Jennifer: They’re similar, but they’re also different. Fashion involves so much math, like making the patterns, sizing them and everything, and scaling them. And, music is just more like something that almost comes to me naturally. It almost feels like it’s just really organic, I guess? I can just sit down with a guitar, and a song will come to me. But when I’m doing design work, it’s different. I have to take measurements and I kinda freak out and get stressed out.

What’s the story behind the photo of the man and woman hugging naked on the cover of the “Carter” 7-inch?
Jennifer: It’s, like, a still from this movie, called, oh my god, what is the name of that movie? This Swedish movie. I’m just really obsessed with that image. I really like The Smiths covers, like how all of them use really good pictures and always have the same font. It stands out. When we first started doing our 7-inches, I said, “I want to make the first one how we make all of them, so they all relate.” So, that’s when we started picking out images we liked.

Images of bodies?
Jennifer: Yeah, like, kind of risque, but also beautiful and also [about] love. And also dark.

Those are the words you’re thinking of when you’re looking at photos?
Jennifer: Yeah.

What about the photo of knees on “Searching Through the Past” 7-inch? There’s something about knees that’s kind of grotesque but also beautiful.
Jennifer: Totally. When I first saw that picture, I was like, “Oh my god, this is amazing.”

So, you just found it randomly?
Jennifer: That one, well, my friend who was laying out the second 7-inch, she has this collection of all these old art magazines from the ’80s. I saw this one photo, and it’s so cool.

And, actually, when I found that photo, I thought “Electric Chair” was gonna be the A-side, so I thought this was a perfect image for the song, but then we ended up going with “Searching Through the Past” for the A-side. Which still works, because I like the way she put it in a circle. I feel like you’re looking through a viewfinder.

Can you tell me about the first time you guys played together?
Jennifer: We were in high school, living in the Valley. [It was] in our garage. Jessie had played bass for a year or more on her own. Our dad had a lot of guitars laying around, and we used to go to shows, so we were just one day, like, “Why don’t we try to play?” I picked up my dad’s guitar, and she taught me some notes. We tried covering the Slits.

Your dad plays guitar, too?
Jennifer: Yeah, he’s a guitar player. He always has played music on the side. He was in a band in college in the ’60s. Actually, he says it was a noise band.

That’s pretty avant-garde for the ’60s.
Jennifer: I know, right? I mean, he didn’t know it was noise then, but now he’s like, “Oh, my band was noise.” (Laughs.)

What advice does he give you guys for music?
Jennifer: Actually, his main advice every time we play a show is “Kick out the jams.” Uh huh.

I read you guys used to do dance routines to Spice Girls. Can you elaborate?
Jennifer: My sister was really into Baby Spice. So, I used to try to dress her up like Baby Spice and make her do dance routines. We had this big staircase, and she would have on the big platforms they wear, like the big sneaker platforms, and she’d come down the stairs doing the dance routine. One day, I remember I was filming her, and she fell down the stairs. So funny. I never connected with one of them, so I could never pick one, but she was obviously Baby Spice.

How would you describe what you both bring to the band, musically and personally?
Jennifer: Well, musically, I feel like we both split the writing so perfectly. I do parts that she can’t do, and she does parts that I can’t do. She does the harmonizing to my singing part. It works really well like that. But, personality? I guess my sister’s a little more tomboy, right? And I’m a little more into fashion. She says she looks up to me for fashion.

Do you have any dream collaborations?
Jennifer: I feel it’d be fun to write a song with Black Lips. Wouldn’t that be fun? Yeah, I think that’d be a fun band to do something with.

Any recommendations of some more obscure old bands you’ve discovered on vinyl?
(The sisters confer.) Jennifer: There’s this band Eroch; they’re this krautrock German band from the ’70s.

Why should people come see your show?
Jessica: I feel like our performance has, like, so much to do with, like, people that come and see us. When they get really excited, we get really excited. The other day we had a show and, like, our friends were, like, crowd surfing. It makes us really excited and we get really into it.

Basically, the more the audience gives you, the more you give back, and vice versa?
Jessica: Exactly, exactly.

This Wednesday, March 14th, Bleached will perform at our inaugural CoSigns event, which takes place at Austin’s The Beauty Bar from 12-6 p.m. – RSVP now!

There was a lot of personal drama, including physical and emotional ailments, in all of your lives in between 2009’s Upper Air and your new album, The Clearing. What kind of effect did that have on the process?

It’s hard to say exactly how all the drama and the interpersonal relationships in the band affected the music. We kind of just plugged away. I would say it was mostly just difficult being in an indie rock band and not necessarily making a bunch of money, and yet we’re dedicating so much time and energy into this one thing that it’s more likely to affect our interpersonal relationships. I think we all work hard and care so much about the music that we make that things end up getting done regardless of the circumstance.

The rustic sound you guys have been known for is still present on this album, but it’s a lot bigger. You wrote a lot of it in the same place you wrote most of your other material, the woods of North Carolina, so why is this record different?

I would say that living out in the country gives me, and has given me for a long time, the space to concentrate. It’s hard for me to concentrate and get down to actually doing something creative unless I personally have a lot of space. City noises kind of bum me out. That’s one thing why I’m not in the city anymore. I didn’t create anything. Maybe it’s like attention deficit disorder, I just can’t stay on the same track.

Do you like taking time between the records?

I don’t like taking as much time. To be honest, I really love the creating part of the album. And I love the touring part of the album. It’s the parts that we aren’t responsible for, like the printing records, and publicity parts where you have to just wait for so long. That’s always difficult for a band that just wants to create the music and get out there and show people as soon as possible. If it were up to me, I’d probably do an album every year. Not even do an album, just do little EPs. I guess that it is up to me, but there’s kind of like this involvement in a record release, and people tend to pay more attention if you’re actually releasing a record. People get behind that a little more.

You recorded this album, parts of it, in Bon Iver’s studio, April Base, in Wisconsin. Why didn’t you just go ahead and record the entire thing up there? You split it up between your cabin in North Carolina and Wisconsin, right?

Yeah. I think what happened was that we were going to record everything there. We had a bunch of demos, and it was all ready. We were really super proud of the arrangements they were in. Then we went up there to record, and things just started sounding different. Like, all the little quirks of the demos that were real and dear to me… some of them didn’t make it onto the album, and some of the songs just sounded totally different, and we had to make up for that by redoing the songs back at home, making them a little bit lo-fi, actually. It ended up being a little lo-fi and dirtier, but there’s, like, a base layer of really well-recorded stuff.

And then we had the release pushed back because we were trying to force an album out, turning it in by May. And we had recorded in April. Turning it in by May, that never happened, and it was never going to happen. So, we had all this time, and we were listening to our songs, and we were like, “Wait, you know what? This would be awesome if this were more, like, expansive or landscape-y” or whatever.

Do you think you’re going to change the songs even more when you play them live?

Yeah. Actually, that’s an idea we’re having… kicking around… especially for video performances and things like that. We want to make those special.

I noticed that the first single, “Tuck the Darkness In”, got elected as BBC’s song of the day, and it’s been charting in the UK. I’ve found that the Brits have an affection for alt-folk and folk music.

Totally.

Can you compare the receptions the Bowerbirds have received in the UK and in the US?

Well, it’s hard to say. They’re totally two different… markets… I guess. And I would honestly say that we’ve gotten a pretty good reception in both the US and the UK, and Europe, too. But, I wouldn’t say, for us at least, we’re not like David Hasselhoff over there blowing up. But, I think it’s pretty equal honestly, our fans here and there. I see that love, and I think there’s something about American music…

I’ve noticed listening to The Clearing that the songs flow together. I kind of felt like it created one large listening experience, and it capped off with the beautiful “Now We Hurry On”. Was there a conscious decision behind the album’s sequencing?

Yeah, we definitely put a lot of time into the sequencing. We went to friends, and of course there’s the people in the band, and deliberated on that for quite a while, for like a month and a half or so. We were very conscious… we cut songs from the album.

Do you have enough to do a B-sides release?

Yeah, we’re gonna have a b-side… one of them we just had to cut. We fixed a couple that just didn’t fit on the album, and actually we re-recorded one of the songs that was going on the album but just didn’t fit at all. That’ll be a b-side, too. We recorded in that interim time from April ’til September. We ended up doing a lot of editing, re-recording, and experimenting for months and months… on one tiny little guitar part for a day and completely scrapping it. Things like that. We have several versions of the same song, which is something we’ve never done before but was awesome.

You’ve released all three of your albums through Dead Oceans. What is it about that label that attracted you to work with them, rather than, say, a hometown label like Merge?

Well, you know, I think at the time if Merge would have come up to us and asked us to be on their label, we probably would have said, “Hell yes,” because I’ve loved Merge for years. But we actually had a local label that was a really small upstart label that was run by members of Megafaun and Grayson Current, who writes for The Independent. We were kinda, like, on that label, and then we dropped them. Then we were floating around by ourselves, and we wanted to get on a label who could actually do some things that we needed to have done.

Is there a sentimental reason to starting your tour off in Chapel Hill/Carrboro?

Oh, it’s just nice to have friends around when you’re starting off sometimes.

Do you try to make sure and play a hometown show on every tour?

Yeah, we definitely try. I think a hometown crowd is one of our most forgiving crowds.

I stopped Deheza and Curtis to tell them how much I loved their music and share pictures of the U2 show with them. I showed Deheza a small slip of paper printed in Spanish given to me by Catholic missionaries outside the U2 show. Deheza, half-Costa Rican, half-Bolivian, and born in Guatemala, translated. Without getting a close look at it, she picked out the phrase, “Feel the spirit coursing through you.”

We exchanged a few laughs and pleasantries, and I asked what time they’d start spinning after some opening acts. I went to get coffee to stay awake for their set and, as a polite follow-up (and, yes, a humblebrag to my Twitter followers), I tweeted at School of Seven Bells, “They’re good peeps.”

Their account tweeted back, in classic Bill Murray fashion, “They’ll never believe you.”

Reflecting on that fleeting interaction in terms of the duo’s new record, Ghostory, so much of that silly little moment gains greater significance. So much about School of Seven Bells and Ghostory, particularly through the lens of Deheza’s lyrics, is about belief, spirits, and the moments, experiences, and people that stick with (or haunt) you.

I sat down with Deheza months after that first meet to talk about Ghostory, her superstitions about the supernatural, dream interpretation, and the music scene in her native South Florida.

School of Seven Bells’ music through your lyrics feels intensely spiritual, romantic, and devotional to me. Where do you pull that intensity from?

I remember when I was first experimenting with writing, I would never notice that it was any more emotional than, say, something that I’d read or whatever. It wasn’t until I would give people [my lyrics] to read, and they’d feel like they walked in on something and they’d be like, “Whoa. Girl, what are you going through?” I wouldn’t even think twice about it. I never really noticed that it was more emotional than maybe usual.

It’s kind of hard to say where it comes from because it’s just very natural to me. I feel like I’ve always been like that, for better or for worse. Writing lyrics and melodies is a really good way for me to keep balanced. I tend to feel things really intensely, and I feel like writing kind of evens it out.

Where did the lyrical fixation and theme of ghosts come from for Ghostory? What brought you to that?

For me, ghosts are what I call those people and situations that you carry with you everywhere. Because they remind me of ghosts. They’re these entities that are whispering to you constantly and reminding you of things. Sometimes you’ll go into a situation, and it’ll remind you of five different people at five different points in your life. Maybe the situation is you run into someone that you’re uncomfortable being around or even somebody that you miss, you know? It’s just the way that I see those kind of mixed emotions. They do remind me of people that follow you around everywhere.

A friend of mine has a huge aversion to ghosts, so much so that you can’t even say the word “ghost” to her come nightfall or before she goes to bed. She normally keeps a rosary or some kind of religious object by her bed as a way to ward them off. Do you have any superstitions like that? Does anything haunt you in that way?

I remember growing up that my parents were intensely religious, so there’s a whole mess of superstitions that comes with that. When I was little, I remember being intensely terrified of mirrors. Oh my God, God forbid I had to go into any room that was dark and there was a mirror in the room; it would just freak me out. I guess I’ve always been like that. Growing up in a religious household, it’s all about demons and “Oh, the Devil’s going to make you do something!” I do remember that affecting me a lot. I was really, really scared of the dark as a kid and probably even into high school. I always thought there was some demon out there waiting to pounce on me or something.

Now, I don’t have those feelings. [That’s] not to say that I won’t watch something like Paranormal Activity and it doesn’t scare the shit out of me, for sure. But it’s fun now, you know? Now, I’ve kind of translated those things into being extra jumpy or extra scared of something I can’t see; it’s usually rooted in something emotional. I kind of relate it to some part of myself I don’t want to see or some situation I don’t want to look at. And more often than not, that is exactly the case.

So, you’re more willing to trace it back in a psychoanalytic way?

Yeah, yeah. It’s definitely a way to sort it out. And, you know, with dreaming–every aspect of your dream: the location, the mood of it, this scary person in it– that is all you. I’ve definitely been able to sort out a lot of things in my head and in my life through my dreams. Like, “Why am I having dreams about this room? What’s in that room that I’m so scared of? Is that room a certain part of my mind that I’m scared of visiting right now because maybe there’s some emotions there right now that are really hard to deal with?” I analyze things a lot that way.

Which has a lot to do with the record. The fact that ghosts are such a strong way for me to describe things–these things that you can’t see but that obviously affect you, that you can hear, that will enter a room and wreak havoc or calm you. It has everything to do with that.

The ghost fixation as a theme on Ghostory is so integral to the record, I kind of equate it to goth music. I definitely see that influence a lot on this record. The title “Lafaye” sounds like something out of a Neil Gaiman graphic novel or a Sisters of Mercy song. Can you talk about the goth influence?

I can definitely talk about that. When I was nine, my parents moved to South Florida. So, I basically did all my growing up there, as far as where I got into music and started to have a social life and things like that. There’s this very big goth scene in South Florida and the cool thing about it is that there’s so much other music that’s really appreciated there. It’s more acceptable there, let’s say, to be into goth and to also be really into hip-hop, freestyle, or Miami bass. It was very mixed. So, if you did go to a goth night, you were also hearing a lot of New Wave. You were also probably hearing freestyle in another room. I feel like it was all very mixed and that had a really huge influence on me. I never had friends that were solely into one thing.

Everybody is really affected by music down there. It’s definitely a Latin thing, which I’m really proud of. Latin culture and music is a huge part of your daily life. I think that has a lot to do with the way that kids appreciate music down there on a crazy, crazy, deep level.

I think ghosts seem like an essential part of Latin culture, too. Would you agree?

Definitely. My family was centered more around Christian ghosts [laughs], but especially in South Florida, you have a lot of Santeria, and even a lot of Catholicism, with the saints, is based on ghosts.

Probably the most haunting moment of Ghostory is “Low Times”, when you spell out “predator” over a punctuated, almost aggressive beat. I’m wondering where that moment fits into the song and what “Low Times” is about?

It’s definitely an aggressive song. It’s realizing that sometimes certain people when they show up in your life, and you think it’s a random happening, you begin to realize in hindsight that those people are sometimes just there to take advantage of [sighs] certain situations. Sometimes when you’re feeling shitty, you may end up in situations you normally would never find yourself in. And you realize that a lot of times, those motives are devious. Which is not to take away personal accountability, but it’s also addressing the other side of it. “If I’m going to be accountable, so are you.” That’s where the “predator” thing comes from.

How do all these songs work into the story of Ghostory? Can you spell that out a little bit for us?

It’s basically Lafaye, and each song is a conversation she’s having with someone from her past. These are all the people that follow her every day. It can be from five or 10 years ago; it can be from childhood. It’s kinda hard to say that all the songs are in an order that way. They are in an order where one story will relate to the next story. It’s the way that these different girls see different situations and relationships that she’s had with people. And not just romantic, they can be any kind of relationship. They all bleed into each other. They all affect every relationship that she has.

Is Lafaye, in some sense, you?

Definitely. It’s all from me.

You mentioned “conversation,” and it made me think of “My Cabal” from the band’s first record, Alpinisms, and “Camarilla” from Disconnect from Desire, the second record, which is two spirits in conversation. Throughout School of Seven Bells’ music, the lyrics seem like a constant conversation between spirits, spirit and self, or talking to yourself. Was that the intent in Ghostory?

With this record, this is the first time I’ve set out to do it. Before, it was just the way that I write, and I guess I never noticed what I was doing. It’s funny you mention those songs. I guess that’s the only thing I really know how to write about 100 percent truthfully, knowing that it’s coming from a place that’s 100 percent mine, is if I’m writing from personal experience. All of those characters are me. “My Cabal”, that’s definitely me. And it is having a conversation with someone… Is that what you were asking me?

What I was really getting at was, are there any conversations with your twin sister Claudia, who left the band while touring between Disconnect from Desire and Ghostory, on this record? Are there any lyrics you wrote for this record that are things you might say to her or think about her?

Not intentionally. I wasn’t really thinking about that. Not on the surface, anyway. I’m not ruling it out. I know the subconscious is really strong. I also know that, in my life, the way I’ve approached any relationship, there’s always some sort of of pattern happening at the same time, whether it be romantic relationship, a relationship with family or with friends or whoever. I didn’t set out to write a song about my sister, definitely not.

Ghostory does sound distinctly different from the last two records. Some of these songs sound like goth-y dance floor fillers, like graver stuff.

[laughs] Oh my God, I haven’t heard that word in so long. Wow.

I’m wondering what brought that sonic change on? It seems like you guys added a whole different set of influences and sounds.

I feel like this is our answer every time, but this is truly the case every time: It’s just from being on tour, the different sounds that come up on tour, the different crowds that inspire different musical ideas. But I have to say, we did write this record in between the two tours that we did with Interpol. The music doesn’t sound anything like that, but I feel like that kind of darkness, that kind of… It’s crazy if you’ve ever been to one of their shows because you have this huge room of people, and they’re all bouncing up and down to the beat. It’s the craziest thing. And they’re screaming back every word. And that energy is really powerful.

I feel like I’m kind of rambling because I’m trying to piece this thought together, and it’s not working out for me. [laughs]

Take your time.

…We were listening to so much music in the van, and I’m sure that affected it somehow. I know definitely the high energy of the crowds that we were playing with every night did affect it. I feel like their energy was really contagious, and I feel like that probably affected the tempo of the record, definitely, as far as making something that kids could dance to and having that conversation with people live, which has always been really important to me.

I know you played in Latin America some of those dates with Interpol, right? Talk about dedication and energy.

Yes! Holy wow, it’s amazing! It’s like a religious experience. It’s beautiful.

First off, big fan of the new album…

Oh, great. Thanks.

Where did the development of the concept of the album start?

Really, we just started working on songs. From the inception, I didn’t have story ideas just yet, but I had the feeling I wanted to write something about schizophrenia. We were writing the music to complement that. I thought of that just because that tends to be our favorite way to write: take hard lefts and hopefully surprise the listener. Other than that, we just started writing the songs and I developed more of an actual story. Essentially, it’s just kind of an internal argument, the conflicting voices in one’s head, and kind of fictionalizing it all, and characterizing them and placing them in a situation.

On this album you become more of an outside observer, rather than an actual character, really. It’s kind of a change from previous albums, where it seems you as the writer are firmly inside of it, whereas this album is a step back away from it. Was that a conscious effort?

Yeah, it was something that I was a little bit concerned about while writing, and I kept aware of it. It all started from something personal, so it is really intimate to me as far as how I hear the story. It still sounds like myself. But again, it’s so fictionalized. Then there was the concern, “Well, there is the tendency that people want me to continue down a similar path as the past.”

I stayed aware of that on any given song where I wanted to make sure that, while I was having a good time with it being so fantastical, that it still stayed grounded in something that would resonate with people. Even though it sounds like a fantastic tale of these twins, it’s actually not that hard to see all the subtext and realize it’s a way of telling a story of any person’s struggle.

Once the idea and the story came through, did it become more complicated of a process? Was there a lot more diagramming of songs on this album than previous albums?

Yeah. That kind of a process can come off as daunting, and that’s why I’ve never really done it to this extent. I usually don’t have enough faith, or it’s too silly, or too pretentious. Or, the next thing that can happen is what you’re kind of suggesting, where that art becomes too difficult or seems too taxing. But I’m not gonna say, “Ooh it’s so difficult to do this.” Really, the reason we wrote it this way was because it kept falling together well. Any type of impasse that may have occurred, there was always enough momentum to keep moving forward.

I still have to question whether that was a good idea or not. But, now that it’s finished, whether it’s good or bad, I just really have a nice sense of accomplishment that I finally saw something like this through, since it’s something that I’ve wanted to do for so many years.

I would imagine having the full story basically laid out while you guys were going through it definitely helped keep it a full, cohesive, start-to-finish, “concept” album. Did you find that it helped having that basis to go back to?

Yeah, actually, I guess I can go back, since I got sidetracked, and finish answering that question. [Laughs] Everything was diagrammed lyrically. We did write all the songs, and I went ahead and laid the story out and sequenced the songs by diagramming each one and recognizing what part they would entail and how they would drive the story forward. I then presented it to the band and asked permission, basically, to give it a shot. They hesitantly said, “Yeah, as long as we can change it.” So, they were open to it.

In some ways, it was easier, because since it was diagrammed and since each song had to have certain subject matter and had to get from A to C, it made it easier to write in that sense. It kind of rid me of weeks of trying to decide what each song is going to be about, or trying to get some inspiration. Instead, the story was already written. But at the same time it was kind of a pain in the ass, because the songs didn’t want to conform to a subject matter at all. Maybe I’m saying…it took longer but wasn’t necessarily more difficult than any other record.

With the booklet that comes with it, and all the stage directions in it, you could see this on a stage?

Yeah, when I first finished the story I had big daydreams of, “We’ll get the album done first, but I should start talking to producers and see if I can get this made!” [Laughs] But I set that aside and stood back and told myself, “What you’re doing is making an album. You’re not making a production of some day dream in your head.” I’m glad I did that, because I wanted to remind myself that I need to make sure I do the album right, and that the story is told through the album. That’s all I think of it as now. I don’t think of it as a grander production.

It definitely shows that there was a lot of care and precise decisions made in regards to the music. Was it a sort of happy accident that the music you wrote initially fit with the idea? Or was it something you had in mind while the music was being written?

Earlier on, even though I didn’t have the story written, I made the effort to make the songs have twist and turns. I think I was preparing things just in case, knowing that if the songs took enough twists and turns it would be an effective way to propel the story line. But again, it was pretty big at that point. It was just a hunch just in case, if we chose to go in that direction, we’d have a lot to work with.

As far as you personally, your solo album a couple of years ago went over really well. Are there plans for a second one?

I’ve been starting to work on a couple of ideas. I’m going to keep writing songs for those and see how they go. I definitely want to have something ready so when the cycle for this record finishes I’ll be ready with something else.

Emerging from two years of carefully crafted buzz with a well-received debut album, Jack White protégés and Third Man Records label denizens The Black Belles are Nashville’s preeminent gothic garage rock export. Their post-Valentine’s day show at Chicago’s Empty Bottle proved that word has spread extraordinarily well about the mysterious ladies. Sandwiched between a bill consisting of local act Hollows and tour mates Bleached, The Black Belles packed the L-shaped venue to its grimy gills, drawing all types from the curious interlopers to a trio of fans dressed in signature Black Belles uniform: full ebony-hued garb and wide brim felt hats.

Because the quartet has been so hyped and buzzed about, there is always an element of surprise when such a widely-discussed act exceeds expectations. As most anyone familiar with the group knows, their aesthetics are key in their overall brand: form fitting vintage black lace and velvet dresses seemingly pulled from the Addams Family attic, pale face contrasted with black lipstick, straight black hairdos, and their distinguishable hats. These combined elements made for a looming presence on the Empty Bottle’s corner stage.

As the Belles launched into opener “Leave You With a Letter”, drummer Shelby Lynne became a blur of raven hair and fair-skinned limbs (sans hat), setting a raucous pace for Olivia Jean’s sultry, trilling vocals. The underlying rhythm burst from Ruby Rogers’ jet black bass (matching the other instruments on stage in true Third Man Records form), lighting the path for Tina NoGood’s synthy organ punctuations. The sound that emerged captivated the at-capacity crowd for the entire set. Standouts from their self-titled LP such as “Honky Tonk Horror” and “Knocking on the Wrong Door” scorched the venue with a green-flamed rockabilly tone. A few B-sides to their various seven inches worked their way into the set as well, “Miss Black Boots” and “Dead Shoe” serving up ambling, eerie tones to flesh out their live material.

One concert goer mused in between songs, “If Hell had a house band, this would be it.” A high compliment to The Black Belles, their drudge graveyard rock was precise, unrelenting, and (dare I say) bewitching. After just nine songs, the set felt wickedly short as Olivia Jean cracked a wide grin, thanked the crowd, and hustled off stage with her band mates.

While touring to support their self-titled debut, the quartet took a moment to answer our burning questions about their influences, tour rituals, and mysterious backgrounds. Always coy with their responses, the members still maintain a shroud of mystery. Their first LP, The Black Belles, is available from Third Man Records, in addition to a variety of 7’’ singles. You can also catch their spooky pipes on the theme song for Elvira’s new horror movie digest show, Movie Macabre.

With White behind the boards as producer and Queen of Rockabilly/label mate Wanda Jackson’s influence heard throughout the album, your influences go back pretty clearly. What was the listening regimen while recording The Black Belles?

Olivia: We listened to a lot of Os Mutantes and The Damned, but mainly we were completely immersed in the album and finding our own sound. We listened to our own tracks a lot.

 On the subject of legends, what are some essential albums on your turntable?

Olivia: Black Monk Time by The Monks, and the B-52s debut album.
Tina: Trogglodynamite by The Troggs, Odessey and Oracle by the Zombies.
Shelby: Fire of Love by The Gun Club
Ruby: House Rockin by The Gories. Bo Diddly and Buddy Holly are also essential!

Olivia’s background cites formative years in Detroit, also home to the White Stripes. So what do you think is in the water in Detroit that give people a strange, spooky musical prowess?

Olivia: Detroit has a really open-minded music scene. It seems that cities that are downtrodden have a lot more angst, and this can come through in the music.

 On your first tour this spring, what’s the pre-show ritual? Witchcraft?

Tina: We like to turn on The Cramps and have a dance party before we go on.
Olivia: Poof our hair, paint our lips, shake our hips, make some tips.

You’ve generated a cauldron-full of blog buzz and were named Vogue’s Band of the Week in November. Is the all-black wardrobe label-mandated or pulled from your personal closets?

Shelby: Our personal closets. I bought the dress I’m wearing at a garage sale for a dollar.
Ruby: We are all vintage fans, but also like the retro reproductions that are popular right now. American Gold hooked us up with some beautiful dresses and crazy bell bottoms that were inspired by vintage ’60s and ’70s styles. We love them!

What’s on the horizon after you kick off your heels and rest from the tour? Any more Colbert collaborations or the like in the future?

Olivia: We’re looking forward to touring and promoting the album. We want to head to the West Coast and Europe. No future plans with Colbert.
Tina: We’ve also got a new music video in the works.

Alright, your bios and TMR press seemed to have kept your back-stories under closely monitored enigma. Can you divulge a teeny bit of background story of the members in the band?

Ruby: We wrote our bios on the Black Belles Web site ourselves… [note:  spooky excerpts below]

Shelby Lynne: “from sunny California. Unfortunately… expelled from public school for performing exorcism on fellow [unwilling] classmates.”

Ruby Rogers: “an atypical Mississippi belle…rumored to be a practitioner of witchcraft.”

Olivia Jean: “a creature native to Detroit, MI…a notorious creature that’s feared throughout the world and generally has a bad reputation of being very aggressive and highly venomous.”

Tina NoGood: “Grew up in Nashville, TN…inducted into the group during a candlelit midnight ceremony.”

Just out of curiosity, how much black eyeliner do you go through a month?

Shelby: We don’t use eyeliner, we just look like this.

 Photography by Wallo Villacorta. 

What are your plans for after the tour?

After the dates we currently have scheduled, we plan on hitting a bunch of festivals this summer. After that, hopefully September, we’ll hit the studio to record our next album. [Young the Giant has] been living together in California, and we’ve been working hard to get a lot of writing for the new album done now, before we get too busy with touring.

Young the Giant was recorded, at least by and large, live. How did that help the band’s live set?

It definitely made it tighter and more solid overall, just because there was so much repetition in the studio.

You’ve been quoted as saying that “My Body”, probably YTG’s most popular song, was written in about 15 minutes. What caused the song to come together that fast?

It had been a really slow day of writing, so (producer) Joe (Chicarelli) started talking to us about this songwriting approach called anti-writing, which he said had been very successful when he was working with Jack White. Anti-writing is characterized by doing something that wouldn’t normally be done by the writer. In the case of “My Body”, we decided to just come up with a really big hook–something that we hadn’t really tried before. Actually, the song was almost a sort of joke to us at fist, but then our manager was like, “This is the one,”  so we went with it.

Is the song still something of a joke to you guys?

Not at all. We’re very proud of it now.

Photo by Heather Kaplan

YTG has played on TV shows like The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Later… with Jools Holland, and Jimmy Kimmel Live! What’s different about how you guys approach a TV performance versus how you approach a relatively small club gig?

We’re a little more meticulous about how we rehearse and set up before a TV performance, because we’re totally aware that even the smallest mistake will be amplified. And there’s always nerves, so we might have a few drinks beforehand to loosen up. But, fortunately, we’re getting used to playing on TV, so it’s not as big a deal as it was at first.

After YTG played Later… last May, Morrissey had some very flattering words for the band, saying, “I could break down with happiness at the new debut CD from Young the Giant. It is the whole thing… It is the perfect tone…and Sameer‘s voice is unbreakable.” How did that feel?

Whenever a musician compliments you, especially when it’s from a guy like Morrissey, it feels great. It’s nice to get positive reviews, don’t get me wrong, but when the praise is coming from someone who’s been in the same situation, in the studio and writing, it’s really satisfying and affirming.

Has Morrissey reached out to you guys?

He’s asked us two or three times if we’d like put together a tour with him, but the timing has always been an issue.

“Rolling in the Deep” (Adele cover)

YTG covered Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep” last February. What drew the band to the song?

Well, obviously, it’s an incredible song, and Adele’s voice is amazing on it. At the time, it didn’t seem like anybody else had done a serious cover of it, so we thought we’d take it and try to do something different with it.

It’s apparent within a minute or so of any YTG song that you have an extraordinarily pure voice. How did you develop your vocals?

I never took vocal lessons, but I was in choirs in high school and college. I was actually in this really cool African choir when I was in college, which was a great experience. It took me a while get the tone I wanted, but I’ve been pretty comfortable with my voice for the last two or three years.

Last year, Spin reported that you were two years away from receiving a degree in biology, but in another interview you were quoted as saying you were putting school on hold. What’s the current status on your formal education?

I haven’t been to school for a couple of years now. I intend to go back eventually, but things are going too well for the band right now for that to happen within the next year or so.

After the last tour, you took a series of road trips around the country, which you said ended up being reflected in your songs. You also said your last album, The Mountain (2009), was rooted in the aftermath of a longterm relationship and that your new album, Arrow, is you being comfortable again. I’ve also read that you suffered from writer’s block. Were your trips meant to be a form of therapy?

I get ideas in my head all the time, so I don’t get writer’s block in a sense of musical ideas. My writer’s block comes when I have to sit down and put words to the melodies that are in my head. That’s always been a difficult process for me. I think it’s because I write from a very personal part of myself, and I think it just takes me a while to feel comfortable with putting those thoughts out there for people to hear. So, that’s just a kind of very time-consuming, difficult process for me, and that’s what I get writer’s block with. When I went on that road trip, I already had most of the songs for the album in my head. It was just a matter of, I needed to focus and try to force myself to get those thoughts out of my head.

When you were on the road trip, was that meant more as just a traveling thing, or did you actually play shows while driving around?

No, I didn’t play any shows or gigs. I just wanted to focus on writing new material.

You’ve always seemed to be able to balance the gritty, more rocking guitar with the mellower acoustic numbers. There are a few mellow songs on this album (and I say mellow just for lack of a better word) that still hit you over the head. The first single, “Parted Ways”… my initial impression, for some reason, was that it reminded me a lot of early 70′s Stones. But then while I was walking into the studio tonight, I was humming “Parted Ways” a little bit, and I kept breaking into Social Distortion’s “Ball and Chain”.  

You know, the inspiration for that song is actually Thin Lizzy’s cover of the old traditional song “Whiskey in the Jar”. That song used to be on the jukebox when I bartended in Cincinnati all the time, and I always loved it. I never got sick of that song. When the melody for “Parted Ways” came in my head, I knew I wanted to approach the song in that way, because that song is rocking, but it’s got acoustic guitar in it. And that’s kind of almost every song on this album, other than three. So, seven of the songs are on acoustic guitar, but a lot of them are rock and roll songs, though, like, “Gotta Have Rock and Roll” is acoustic, too. And T. Rex does that same thing; they’ll put an acoustic guitar to, like, a rock sound. I like the percussive elements. It’s a different way of approaching songs than I have in the past, something new for me.

Was that a conscious decision to write differently, or is that just how things worked out?

I think it’s sort of just how things work out. Like, I get these melodies in my head, and I don’t even know where the ideas come from. The melodies are there, and I don’t record them. I tell myself if they’re any good, I won’t forget them. And so I just carry these ideas around with me for long periods of time, and then eventually I have to sit down and force myself to work them out and focus. So, a lot of the ideas I had in my head over the three-year period of The Mountain… er, two-year period, I guess, between when The Mountain came out and we recorded. And some of these ideas… like “Marathon” was actually meant to be on the last album, but we ran out of time. “Down in the Canyon” I started writing in 2007, started writing it possibly for All This Time, but I just didn’t feel like it was coming together right. I think sometimes if you’re not feeling quite right about how the idea’s coming together, it’s better to just shelve it for a while and get back to it later and hope that something sort of gels eventually.

With that in mind, the Heartless Bastards have had numerous lineup changes over the years. I was looking at the interaction of all the players, and it was almost like a game of Mastermind where you’re trying to find the perfect combination. The three that you’re playing with now – Dave Colvin, Jesse Ebaugh, and Mark Nathan – you’ve all recorded with in the past, yes?

Dave’s from my hometown in Dayton, and then I was living in Cincinnati when I started working on Heartless Bastards, the ideas. And it was a recording project, so Dave recorded on that. And Jesse. And then when I moved to Austin, I happened to run into Dave here. He was going to UT. So, I just kind of happened to run into him, and I needed to find a band, and I asked him if he was interested in playing drums. And then I called up Jesse. He was living in Covington, Kentucky, which is pretty much Cincinnati. I called him up and asked if he’d consider moving down to Austin to join the band. I’ve known Jesse for years and always thought he was a great bass player. He was on the demo as well. I just had a good feeling that he’d be a great fit for the band. But Mark… I recorded The Mountain, and then we did a fall tour before its release–Dave, Jesse, and myself as a three-piece–and we brought Mark on. We met him through a friend, and he did sound for that tour. We got along really well. We had similar tastes in music. We had been hearing that he was a really good guitarist, and when we were looking to add a fourth member for the release of the album at the beginning of 2009, we asked Mark if he was interested, and he said, yeah. We didn’t even try him out. He just joined the band. So, Mark wasn’t on the demo.

You said that you felt a connectivity with these guys that helped make Arrow the strongest record you’ve ever done. Would it be safe to say that after all these years you’ve actually found your four-piece? 

Yeah, I think so. I don’t have intentions of changing musicians all the time. It’s kind of how life happens. When I first started the band, Dave was even in the original live lineup, but he got an opportunity for work or something in San Francisco, and he moved away. And Jesse was busy in another band at the time, so I didn’t ask him. Sometimes you just make things work, and I don’t mean that in any reflection of the previous band on the records. I don’t mean it didn’t work. When Mike Lamping, my ex-boyfriend, and Kevin Vaughan came into the band, we worked together for two albums. But when Mike and I split up, it was really painful. It was really hard to continue working together. So, I moved to Austin, and I just sort of needed to start over. There were session musicians on The Mountain because I hadn’t begun the process of looking for a new band yet. Mike McCarthy, who produced it, suggested that I go ahead and just concentrate on writing the songs and that he had people in mind, and then if it didn’t work out, we could cross that bridge when we came to it. Moving to a new place and everything, I just kind of went with that. But I don’t have any intention of changing band members all the time. Sometimes things come up in people’s lives. Dave just became a father, but he’s making it work with the band. I guess I just mean that people’s lives are some of the other elements that… if anybody ever needs to leave because they need to do something for themselves, then that’s okay, but I have no intentions of looking for any other new members.

I kind of viewed Heartless Bastards as your project, and the artists were chosen to fulfill what vision you had.

Yeah, although now I really feel like with everybody I’m playing with right now, that we all have such diverse tastes, but we have similar tastes. I feel like I could want to go in any direction, and we would be able to do it as a band. When we toured on The Mountain, Jesse was playing banjo; he plays peddle steal. Dave has a Master’s degree in Jazz Studies and can totally play jazz drums, which are very complex. I mean, maybe one of these days I’ll want to do a jazz album or something. I don’t know. But I feel like everybody’s got very diverse styles. If I want to go in a certain direction, I think they’ll be just as into trying something new for themselves as well, so we can kind of go there together.

The Mountain was produced by Mike McCarthy, who’s produced Spoon, and Arrow is produced by Jim Eno, Spoon’s drummer. Is this a result of you moving to Austin, or are you just really big Spoon fans?

Well, I actually moved to Austin because I have family here, and my management at the time was here. When I moved here, I was sort of starting over, and it just seemed like a good place to go. I mean, I’ve always liked the town as well, touring through, but I didn’t really move here for the music scene, although it’s a nice plus. Yeah, I’m definitely a fan of Spoon, but I chose Jim Eno because I think he’s just got a great temperament. I knew we would work together really well. We have mutual friends here in town. At one point, I think, Jim expressed some interest in recording an album, and we really like what he’s done with his own band. He also produced Black Joe Lewis’s album… I’m drawing blanks, but he’s produced several other albums as well. I just heard really good things about how he produces, and it worked out really well. He came to a couple of practices, and he sat, and he listened to the songs and made some suggestions here and there, which we would try out. Some of the things definitely worked out, and we agreed that they were good changes to be made. We really just decided we liked working with him. Jim also has really diverse tastes. A lot of the approach of the album, as far as recording it, he was like, “What are some of your inspirations for these songs? What would you want it to sound like if you recorded it?”

For instance, “Gotta Have Rock and Roll” is T. Rex-inspired, so I was like, “I’d really love to get that T. Rex sound.” That’s one of my favorite bands ever. And then I mentioned “Whiskey in the Jar”, the Thin Lizzy cover, so we took the recording process and kind of went for the sounds. I felt like Jim really helped us figure out how to get the sounds that we wanted. We worked together really well as a team. Like on “The Arrow Killed the Beast”, I was like, “I’m thinking something like Ennio Morricone meets Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazelwood, like them singing over an Ennio Morricone song.” Their voices together, they always record them really reverbed out, like it’s in a canyon or something. I’ve been really inspired over the last several years by Ennio Morricone, and that was like, to me, the song was approaching a cross between the two. But I feel like Jim was really good at helping us get those sounds that we’re looking for. It was just a really great process. I enjoyed the whole thing.

I read that you said you were “really, really happy” with this album.

I am. I feel like it’s the closest I’ve gotten to where I was trying to go with ideas. I felt like it was a combination of working with a band. On “Only for You”, I was trying to make myself sound like Curtis Mayfield. I was inspired by… I love the way he sings real close to the mic. But when I was talking to the band about it, they were just as into going in that direction of, like, 70′s soul and R&B. It was something different for them and me. And then Jim has similar tastes and diverse styles of music that he likes. I just felt like the band and Jim, we all just worked together and got to these places. It’s just been a great experience.

For this album, you’ve changed lineups, changed producers, and you’ve also changed labels. Your first three full-lengths were all released on Fat Possum; The Arrow will be released on Partisan Records. What was behind switching labels?

I just thought at this point that maybe it would be good to try somewhere else. We didn’t have a big falling out or anything, as far as Fat Possum. I certainly wouldn’t say anything negative about them, but Fat Possum’s been the only label I’ve ever been on. But I felt like… one thing about Partisan, they’re sort of a new label, and I feel like they’re still growing and wanting to, in a sense, grow and progress as a label. I feel like with Heartless Bastards and this project, I just feel like there’s room for the band to grow as well, and I feel like with Partisan, we’re kind of… I keep on using that word team, but as far as with Jim and the band, I feel like we’re going to be a good team. We’re working together.

Considering the first single is titled “Parted Ways”, is there anything behind the Valentine’s Day release, or did that just happen to be happenstance?

It’s sort of happenstance. I had planned on naming the album Arrow, and Partisan didn’t even realize it yet, because I just hadn’t told them the title, and then they came up with this idea. They were like, “We thought it’d be really funny to release a Heartless Bastards album on Valentine’s Day.” I agree. I totally concur. I was like, “So you know, I was planning on calling the album Arrow.”

I hope people don’t think I’m naming the album based on a marketing plan, releasing it on Valentine’s Day. It was just a total coincidence, and then somebody from Partisan was like, “Most people don’t ever remember the date an album’s released.” Maybe because it is funny, and Heartless Bastards and Valentine’s Day, maybe people will remember for a while. But I could not tell you the release date of any album I’ve ever purchased in my life, other than, I remember always the release dates of my own albums.

When do you go on tour?

We leave Monday [February 5, 2012], so like, six days from now.

How long is it going to be?

I think it’s right around five weeks. Then we get back to Austin, and it’s South By [South By Southwest]. I almost feel like we’ll get home, but it’s kind of a continuation of the tour there for a little bit.

Well, good luck on the road and with the album. I was listening to it today, and I really, really enjoyed it.  I have to say “Simple Feeling” is one of my favorite tracks. It reminds me a lot of The Beatles’ “Tomorrow Never Knows”.

Yeah, actually, that’s definitely an inspiration for it, or when we were writing it. I brought the idea in, and that was probably one of the least formed songs that I brought into the band. Dave and Jesse were there that day, and I was like, “I have this idea and this melody and kind of an idea of structure, but…” Yeah, that one just kind of came together. We were at first, “Does that sound too much like that,” and we decided that it was different enough.

Today, of Montreal releases its latest collection of pop cacophony, Paralytic Stalks. This time around, musical brewmeister Kevin Barnes mixes things up, intermingling the influences of 20th century classical composers like Partch and Ligeti, experimenting with through-composition, and using session players for the first time. Paralytic Stalks also marks the first time in quite awhile that Barnes has written or recorded without the use of an alternate persona or character. Consequence of Sound‘s Research Editor Len Comaratta caught up with Barnes while he was at home in Athens, GA as he and the group finalized preparations for their upcoming tour.

We can just jump right into it if you want. I assume you’re down in Athens right now.

Yeah.

The tour begins… in two weeks?

Well, we’re starting… our first show is in Athens on the 17th, I think, of February, but then we have a couple of weeks before the tour kicks off for real.

Okay, so you’re just doing a hometown show to kind of kick things off, see how it goes?

Yeah, kind of… well, the record will have already been out. We’re attempting some stuff that we’ve never tried before visually, so it’s good to get one run through.

Visually, do you mean like the theatrics that you have or like in a new light show?

Yeah, it’s new. What we basically are doing is we’re trying to have as many projectable spaces onstage as possible, so basically, visually it’s going to be sort of a sensory overload. It’s going to be all these different layers of different kinds of animations and different kinds of lighting. At least that’s the way we visualize it; it’s going to be really extreme at times and really powerful.

So are you going to have warnings regarding seizures?

That’s a good idea, actually.

With the sound of this album, you have all these strings. Are you going to have the string players on tour with you, or are you going to do that via different methods?

It’s going to be a combination ‘cause we do have the guy who actually played all the parts on the record, Kishi Bashi; he’s in the band, too. So he’s going to be playing parts, but they’re so densely orchestrated you can’t really pull that off just as one person, so there will be some things in the backing tracks, or some things will be played by other instruments. Yeah, that’s kind of a challenge that we’ve been working with right now. We’ve been in rehearsals for two weeks now just trying to figure out a way to reproduce those arrangements live. It’s been a real challenge, but I think it’s going to sound really cool. I’m excited.

A lot of people may have felt that you “changed directions” on the last few albums, but I’ve always kind of felt like you have this direction you’re going in, and the albums are the albums as they are; you’re not going back or forward or anything like that. It’s just this new… a new album. I don’t know what people were worried about with this one.

[chuckles] Yeah, I don’t know. I’m definitely incorporating some elements that maybe I haven’t in the past. But as far as the songs being structured in this way, it’s definitely something I have done with records like The Gay Parade and Coquelicot [Asleep in the Poppies: A Variety of Whimsical Verse] and Skeletal Lamping, as far as having songs that contain different movements within one song, so it’s not just like an obvious pop arrangement. That’s definitely something that I’ve been interested in for a while just because when you’re writing songs, when you’re writing pop songs, there’s a tendency to follow the template that other people have already established as far as having verses repeating and choruses repeating and all that stuff. It’s not very challenging. Once you’ve written the verse and the chorus, then the song’s almost done. So, there’s not that much you can say beyond that. I like the approach of writing a section of music and then using that as inspiration for the next section and then using that as inspiration for the next section but not really worrying so much about having things come back, not worrying so much about repeating sections.

And that was your experimentation with the through-compositions?

Yeah. That’s something that appeals to me just because I find it more challenging and more exciting and more fulfilling. I have worked with the typical pop template a lot just because sometimes I’ll try to chase that idea trying to write the perfect pop song. But with this new record, I’ve been more interested in extending the songs and having it be more transportive, more a journey of sorts.

False Priest marked you returning to organic instruments. And Paralytic Stalks takes it even further now with the inclusion of session players. Why did you decide to bring in session players, especially considering that you’ve been pretty much a one-man band in the studio for the better part of this decade? And how come you never bring in the live touring band to record the albums?

Well, I guess what it really comes down to is that the people that I got to play on the record play instruments that I can’t play, whereas the touring band has had fairly common instrumentation as far as keyboards and basses and guitars and drums and things that I can play. I like to do the bulk of the work myself. So when it comes to something… when I hear something that I just can’t produce on my own or I can’t realize on my own, then I’ll bring in other people. Getting Kishi Bashi involved and getting Zac Colwell involved was great because they were able to contribute something that I could have never contributed on my own, and they were able to help steer the songs into a direction that I wouldn’t have come up with on my own. They’re in the band now, so I guess it is like having band members involved.

With that in mind, were those parts strictly written out, or did you leave room for the players to move within the framework? For example, “Wintered Debts” sounds a bit more structured than the avant nature of “Exorcismic Breeding Knife”.

Yeah, those, “Wintered Debts”, “Ye, Renew the Plaintiff”, and “Authentic Pyrrhic Remission”, those three have extended instrumental sections that were definitely more collaborative in nature as far as I maybe have a concept, I want it to be this length of time, and I want to have this sort of vibe, and then I would send it to K, or I would send it to Zac. K is Kishi Bashi. So, I’d send it to them to see what they heard or what they could contribute. Then they’d send me their parts, and then I would use that to help create a structure, and then I would add my own parts to that and affect the things that they sent me. It was definitely a lot of back-and-forth and collaboration for those moments.

So was that after you’d written the song, or was that actually during the songwriting process?

It was within the songwriting process just because I had written the first couple sections and then got to the point where I knew I wanted to have a certain musical emotion or whatever. I wanted to have something in these sections that was different from the other sounds I had created. And then from there, like with “Wintered Debts”, for example. And then I wrote that tag at the end, the piano thing at the end. I mean, I could have just kept writing. The songs didn’t ever really have to end. I could have made each one of them 30 minutes long or whatever. But I sort of, I guess, got to the point where I was at seven minutes or eight minutes or 13 minutes or whatever, and it could just be done. I could just work on something else now.

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I noticed the last four songs on the album are almost 2/3 the album length. You’re not a stranger to having long songs. “The Past Is a Grotesque Animal” is over 12 minutes long. But it’s usually one song that stands out, whereas on this album, it seems to be all weighted towards the end there. When you were sequencing the album, were you conscious of all that? Was there a method to your madness?

No. And actually most of the songs are sort of alphabetical as far as their working titles went, the sequence of them for the most part. I changed all the titles after the fact, but the working titles pretty much placed them in that order, in that sequence. So it was almost alphabetical. I did experiment a little bit. Initially, I was going to put “Exorcismic Breeding Knife” as the opening track, and then I thought better of it because I thought maybe it would alienate some people and they wouldn’t really get to that point. They’d just listen to that one song and throw the CD in the trash.

That’s not much faith in your own work is it?

No, but I understand how people are. I understand that certain people, some people aren’t interested in that they don’t really look to music to provide that kind of stimulation or whatever it is. So, I can appreciate that there’s some people like that… it’s not for everybody obviously, and I don’t really want to antagonize people. I just want my art to communicate with people, and hopefully it does.

Let’s go back to “Wintered Debts” real fast. Parts of that and parts of “Exorcismic Breeding Knife”… I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of the piano player Sakis Papadimitriou…

Uh-huh.

You know Nosferatu?

Yeah.

…A few years ago, they did a contemporary soundtrack to it, where they had the movie playing, and then [Papadimitriou] and his avant European jazz group did a contemporary soundtrack to it. It’s very haunting like some of the elements that you’ve been incorporating, like in “Wintered Debts”. I noticed that “Wintered Debts” was also released on Soundcloud back in the fall rather than releasing it as a single. Because of the fact that song is so different, so dark and so complex… is that why you released it on Soundcloud? To sort of test the waters? “Dour Percentage” is being released as an official single. And when you listen to “Dour Percentage”, it makes sense. It’s a poppy song. It sounds like a single. But what was the logic or the reasoning behind the Soundcloud release?

I think we just wanted to give people a taste of the new direction that we were going in. And that seemed sort of more indicative of the overall album. I guess with “Dour Percentage” the label is in the business to sell things, so I guess they want to release it as an official single or whatever and charge… I don’t know… it’s just a strange, murky territory now because you can get anything you want musically for free anyways, so it’s kind of just like wishful thinking in a way to even officially release anything or charge anything ever. You just kind of hope that maybe some people still care to buy it, or maybe they’re like intimidated enough by their cable company to resist stealing things.

With that in mind and, I guess, with the decline in sales, in recent years, of Montreal has lent its songs to other commercials and television shows and whatnot. In the age of dwindling sales, I find it totally understandable, and considering in the past much of your proceeds you’ve actually used to funnel back into your own tours. It’s not like you guys are just trying to sell out and makes tons of money. How do you choose whom you’re willing to work with when it comes to that?

I haven’t really done much of that over the last couple of albums. Maybe it’s because the songs aren’t as commercial or something. But what initially happened… I had been so broke for so long, and no one had ever even asked me if I wanted to have a song in a commercial or anything. I was so green. I had no idea what any of that stuff was about. I didn’t realize how… what a big effect it can have on people’s perception of your music, because it always just seemed kind of absurd. You feel like you live in this world, this small little indie world or whatever, and that things that are on television don’t have any sort of connection to that world at all, and then when somebody from some big mainstream company contacts you and asks you to use one of your songs, it almost feels totally surreal and totally unbelievable. Like, why in the world would that company want to use one of my songs? That doesn’t make any sense.

And it’s really hard I think for artists to say “no” when they’re offered more money than they’d make in a year just for allowing them to use your song for however many commercials. I kind of was on the really extreme side of it because I had the Outback Steakhouse commercials that lasted for like four years because I had no idea what kind of contract I was signing. With no representation, I just got totally fucked. But most artists, I think, are a little bit more savvy and can weigh it in their heads, the pros and cons. Like, there’s gonna be this Taco Bell commercial with my song in it, and I’m gonna get a lot of backlash, but I am going to be able to keep making music for the next year without having to go back to my telemarketing job or whatever. The backlash is coming from a strange place because people don’t really realize that even though they own the record and they’ve seen the band play and they seem like they’re pretty popular, most indie bands, they can’t really survive more than three, four, five years at best, and then everybody has to go back to their day job or whatever.

Well, how do you account for your success? You’ve said with this album you weren’t necessarily trying to make a commercial album. In my opinion, you’ve never tried to make a commercial album. I don’t think any of of Montreal’s stuff, though it is successful and you have a really good following… I’ve never seen any of your albums as intentionally commercial. Maybe The Sunlandic Twins, probably could be, in my opinion, the most available commercially. But I never really thought that that’d be an issue for you. I thought that you’d be more like that you were going to go out and play your music and do what was in your heart, in your mind, and in your soul. With that said, how do you account for of Montreal’s success?

I guess just good fortune and just luck, because everybody for the most part is doing it for the right reasons. There aren’t that many people unless you’re part of the major label machine, and they sort of handpick people because they look a certain way and they might appeal to a certain demographic or whatever. But most, I would think like 99.9% of musicians, people in bands, are doing it because they get some fulfillment out of it and because they love it, and it’s coming from a pure place. As far as us being successful, we were so unsuccessful for the first six or seven years of our existence. We know firsthand. We know all too well.

It’s really traumatizing in a way to spend six years driving around in a van and sleeping on floors and eating McDonald’s because that’s all you can afford and just dealing with that world for so long and caring just as much about your music and wanting to reach an audience and not feel completely irrelevant. And then it sort of turned around for us around Satanic Panic [in the Attic] and Sunlandic Twins and Hissing Fauna [Are You the Destroyer?]. We sort of were able to pay our dues; I mean, we paid too many dues in a lot of ways because it can be kind of really traumatizing to live that life as long as we did it. But we did it because we’re so passionate about it, and I’m so passionate about making music. I’m just driven to do it; there’s no real reason for me to do it other than I just get so much fulfillment out of it and because my whole life is centered around that – the creative process. But I can’t really say why we’ve been successful. We could easily just be still just as unknown as we were in 1997. Luckily, thank God, something clicked, and people started paying attention.

You said, speaking with New Music Express, “Paralytic Stalks is different from my previous few albums, in that none of the songs were written from the perspective of a persona, all of the songs are directly inspired by my personal life and my psychic/emotional/spiritual state.” What was it this time around that allowed you to express without the need of a mask, especially considering you yourself said that you were going through a “really fucked-up period of mental anguish and self-hatred” during this time?

I think it was one of those situations where I just couldn’t even get into the state of mind where I could write from a persona. I guess it came to be a more therapeutic process. I was trying to redirect this really heavy, really intense depression, anxiety, psychosis, whatever you want to call it, into something more positive, and I couldn’t… I wasn’t in a light enough mood to even create a persona. It had to come directly from the core of my being. I think that usually when I write from persona I’m usually in a happier state of mind.

Why is that?

Maybe I’m feeling a bit friskier and more lighthearted. Most of my personas, all of the personas I’ve created, have been really kind of light and more positive figures.

So does that mean on this tour we won’t see Georgie Fruit?

[chuckles] Well, you know, I don’t think so. I don’t even know what that means, though. [chuckles] We’re definitely going to try… we’re definitely doing something different. It’s not going to be as glammy, or it’s not going to be what we were doing in the past. It’s not going to be like False Priest, the False Priest tour; it’s going to be different.

Regarding Georgie Fruit and his “history”, if you will, has there ever been any serious contention of actually doing an Arousal album?

Yeah. I think about it a lot actually. I’d have to be in the right state of mind.

Yeah, obviously to get into the character, and to do it right, it would definitely be a process, but I think that that would be an awesome side project.

Yeah. And I think that I have the right people to help me do it, too.

On many of the tours, you seemed reluctant to play older songs. Now, I understand most tours promote current releases, but do you have a personal expiration date as to when you play songs live? For example, is it too late now to hear “The Past Is a Grotesque Animal”? Is that too old of a song?

No, actually we’re going to play it on this next tour. But really it just comes down to if I still feel connected to it, personally connected to the song. Because a lot of stuff, a lot of the older stuff like The Gay Parade-Coquelicot-era stuff, even Aldhils and things like that… I just feel so disconnected from it. I feel like it’s almost a different person, and maybe I’ll come around; maybe in like 20 years I’ll be nostalgic for that time period and feel good about playing those songs. But now I feel just really charged and really excited about the present moment, and the things that I wrote eight or nine years ago I don’t really feel as excited about, so I don’t just want to get up there, and there’s only like a small handful of people anyways that would even recognize a Gay Parade song or care about it. They’d just be, “What the hell is this goofy song they’re playing?”

With the through-composition featured a lot on this album and how you were saying that you could have written these songs forever and they could have just gone on and on and on, will that be taken into account when you are playing it live? Will you allow for the freedom of the jam, if you will, to just take a song, or are you going to try and maintain some kind of control around that?

It’s hard to say where things will go once we’ve been on the road for a couple of weeks, but at least as a starting point, we’re sticking pretty much with the general arrangements of the record.

In an interview with NPR, you revealed that the concept of the CD could be going the way of the 8-track in favor of mP3 downloads. With that in mind, what was the logic behind the Cassette Box?

It’s funny how things like cassettes have more value now just because, I guess, it’s a bit of a novelty or maybe it’s a nostalgic thing for people who grew up with cassettes. Or maybe it’s people who didn’t grow up with cassettes, so they have some sort of romanticism or whatever.

I still have crates of cassettes in my closet.

Yeah. The label that put out the cassette box, that’s what their thing is. They’re sort of a boutique label that does these limited runs, interesting packaging. It’s cool just to see all the records like that in cassette form; it’s really kind of cool. My brother designed the box. I met the guy who handmade all the boxes. For them, it’s like a total labor of love. They just want to do something; they just wanted to contribute something special to the world.

Since your brother is involved with a lot of the artwork, will he be involved with a lot of the visual aspects of the tour?

Yeah, he and my wife, Nina, the two of them are working on all the animation and all the visual content. And Nick Gould, who’s our video guy, the three of them are working 10-hour days. They’ve been working 10-hour days for the last month and a half or so just trying to create all the content and figure out all the logistics of it. It’s definitely a very ambitious endeavor, and we’re very excited about it. The music is very visual, I think, and so to create a corresponding element that will hopefully draw people in and make it a more engaging sensory experience.

I’m always impressed with how you make your music come alive. Off topic a little bit. How did the collaboration with Os Mutantes come together, and what was it like working with those guys?

I just worked with Sergio [Dias]. He was the only one that was really involved. I guess it came about because the compilation was pairing up Brazilian groups, like tropicalia groups mostly and indie artists that were inspired by them. I’m a huge Os Mutantes fan. I definitely think of their first three records as easily in the top 10 greatest records of all time, so it was really a great thrill to work with him. It wasn’t really… like I didn’t even meet him. I created the basic track and did everything. I did the vocals and stuff and then emailed it to him. He went into another studio and did the guitar solo. We did have a short email correspondence back and forth, which was very exciting, but as far as that goes, it didn’t go any further.

Any thoughts to throwing in an Os Mutantes song in your set?

It’s hard. I don’t speak Portuguese to sing their songs.

You produced Solange Knowles’ album, right?

You know, it’s funny. A lot of people are under that impression, but I don’t really know why. I haven’t produced really. I worked with her. We spent like 10 days at my studio working on some of her material. I think maybe she’s going to use some of the stuff that we worked with, but I am definitely not the official producer of anything. I kind of just helped her get her ideas out. I guess she’s working on her record now, but I really don’t know any of the details. It’s definitely an exaggeration to say that I produced her record.

I read a rumor that you may be working with Phoenix. Care to confirm or deny that?

That’s another false. I wish. I’d love to work with them.

So what direction are you going with your new EP, Onwards to the Wall?

We’ve just been focusing on sort of honing in on what A Place to Bury Strangers is all about. Just kind of perfecting what we’re doing as much as we can to get that sort of extreme sound coming across.

What does A Place to Bury Strangers mean to you?

For me, I don’t know. I guess it depends on what context that question maybe is in. I mean, to me it’s an outlet for my music, but I guess it’s also kind of an outlet for something that represents that whole kind of music completely, which is, I don’t know, I guess kind of really messed up pop music.

Any sort of stylistic changes on Onwards to the Wall?

Definitely. You sort of get tired of what you were doing in the past and always want to move forward to something new and exciting that’s kind of different from what you’ve ever heard before. Also, on this EP, a lot of it was written when Dion Lunadon came in – [it became] more of a collaborative effort.

What does Dion Lunadon bring to the mix?

He comes from a garage kind of background, and so I think he’s a really good player and just someone I can shoot back and forth ideas with. I can work on things with someone with a different perspective. He didn’t grow up listening to, I don’t know, Ministry or The Jesus and Mary Chain and whatnot, maybe what I grew up listening to. So, it’s sort of taking a different element and kind of music and combining it with the stuff we’ve been doing in the past. We’re still going for the same kind of goals, but it just adds a whole sort of weight to the whole thing.

A Place to Bury Strangers have been hailed as the “loudest band in New York.” That’s saying a lot considering the competition.

I guess people say that. Sometimes we’re louder than other times, and we play each show sort of differently, and then sometimes you can be as loud as you can. It’s not necessarily for the sake of being loud. I don’t know what it’s like going to loud concerts, but I do kind of work on what we’re doing with A Place to Bury Strangers so that it’s a beast; it’s intense. To build up that intensity, sometimes you use volume, and we’re not afraid to get crazy loud if that’s what seems appropriate at the time.

Does this reputation draw attention away from the other aspects of your music?

I think so, but if you’re a music listener and not someone who is totally paying attention to what you read and actually listen to what’s going on, I think that you should come up with your own conclusions. Hopefully people are liking music that they actually like and not just because someone told them it was going to be cool or something. You know, whatever. If someone says that’s the best techno band in the world and they’re an awesome reggae band, whatever, it doesn’t matter. It’s hyped up. It’s all talk and maybe that gets people hyped up; that’s kind of cool, I suppose. It’s not, like, the focus of the band at all.

I notice there’s quite an unpredictable aspect to the music, and there’s complexity to and beneath the loudness.

Definitely, yeah. We’re just trying to focus on making stuff that we think sounds really cool, so especially the sound aspect and what it sounds in a live sort of sense. It’s just too big–something that’s kind of otherworldly, awesome, and sort of transforming. I guess that has to do with volume at times.

Your live shows are intense, and there’s an improvisational aspect to the wall of sound manipulations. Does this factor into the writing and recording process?

Definitely. I think a lot of what we’re doing is constantly experimenting and trying to do new and exciting things and come up with new ways to record. Since we’re recording everything on our own–we have our own studio–we have the luxury of creating something with tools we don’t always know how to use, and we’re always even creating tools that we’re using, so it’s kind of constant experimentation. And I think that a lot of times [it’s] much more awesome than something you can exactly plan out and something that really happens out of an accident. You just have to be constantly listening. It’s like, you can almost try to make some sort of sound exactly, but that’s not as exciting as when something sort of pops up out of nowhere.

More organically?

Yeah, definitely. I think it’s kind of like you give in to those moments beyond your control, and using those things to work towards your advantage, and that makes it cool, I think.

So what was it like opening for Nine Inch Nails? I understand their crowds are notorious for not wanting to hear any openers. How was that experience?

It was pretty awesome. There was definitely a lot of people who would seem like they were pissed off right when we started, but for the most part, people were pretty into it once the show started going on. I remember one moment when someone was giving me the middle finger out of the crowd, and I stared this dude down, and then he turned his middle finger into the devil horn rock sign, so who knows.

Sophie’s Choice time. Death by Audio or A Place to Bury Strangers: Which do you save?

You know, it’s going to make me look bad to my friends, but I guess I would have to choose A Place to Bury Strangers. I mean, that’s kind of even why the effects pedal company was started a long time ago. It’s just sort of an augmentation, or that’s kind of a way for me to further create the music that I wanted. I started building effects to make music. Ultimately that’s what I wanted to do: to create music. I guess the effects pedal company I feel really good about because it’s kind of helping people create the music that they want to do. I don’t know. Maybe it would be smart to go with Death by Audio to help out more people make music and not be concerned with my own music, but I don’t know. I guess the thing I would be most passionate about is to create music, so I would go with the band.

Porcelain Raft is the solo project of one Mauro Remiddi, a humble, energetic man living in London with origins in Rome. His bewitching blend of psych rock and ambient pop is a cut above that of his peers, and is reminiscent of the ’09/’10 resurgence of electro-pop in every way but one – Remiddi is 37. Most bands in his category, that is to say upstarts out of say Brooklyn or L.A. that play catchy synth tunes, are in their early 20s. This fact alone makes him a fascinating enigma, and also begs the question: “Where has this dude been?”

Well, that can be answered easily enough: the man’s been around. A musician most of his life, Remiddi has done everything from scoring independent Italian films to fronting indie bands like Sunny Day Sets Fire. But it wasn’t until last year when some of his singles under the Porcelain Raft moniker started making a fuss in the indie blogosphere that he took center stage. His debut album, Strange Weekend, was released earlier this week and is streaming in its entirety (that’s your cue to listen to the album for free while you read the remainder of this article). He describes his music as “Sleepwalking Pop”, which is an incredibly apt tag. As music fluctuates between full scale psych rock and ambient electronic a la Neon Indian and Toro y Moi, it’s truly a lethargic feeling. Blissfully lethargic.

We had the chance to pick at Mauro Remiddi’s brain this week, and the yield was as full of insight as it was energy. It’s a wonderful thing to meet a man in his late thirties who still maintains so much respect for the work he’s doing. That doesn’t happen in any field, whether you’re running a law firm or playing bass in a garage band. But, like we said, the man’s an enigma, a complete exception to the rule, and as perplexing as it might sound, a fair bit younger in spirit than many of the artists in his league. That purity is one of the most alluring parts of Porcelain Raft, and it really can’t be explained in a brief summation by a cynical writer, so I’ll stop. Let Remiddi explain the rest, and continue onward with my personal promise that you’re gonna like what you hear.

The Porcelain Raft project is fairly new, but for the past year you’ve been releasing great singles and EPs that have all led to the eventual release of Strange Weekend. Now, everyone is their own harshest critic, so you might be the best person to gauge how the album stacks up against former releases. Is it up to snuff? Where you’d like it to be?

I always like to record songs which didn’t have to be part of anything. It comes natural to me, like a diary of a day. The album was a challenge and I like challenges. I decided to record and compose everything in two months, it’s about me in this moment of my life. All the thought and things that happened to me in a weekend, that was the little concept behind it. I wanted to frame the album with a short time span, like showing a little detail of a big painting.

In a similar vein, I’d hate to pigeonhole your sound and call it “chillwave” or “electro-indie”, but it is very distinct and has a psychedelic element to it that’s fantastically capturing. Going into recording Weekend, who were your inspirations, either conscious or subconscious?

Just call it Sleepwalking Pop, that would do. There’s a dreamy element but surely I’m walking and not standing still. If an inspiration is conscious that would suck big time, like imitating something that someone did already, self-conscious records are the worst, if the inspiration was subconscious how would I know it? Unless my subconscious would just come alone and say, “Hey feeling like having a talk?”

 So, you’ve got these years of experience in the sometimes brutal music world. I for one would consider that a major blessing were roles reversed. Do you often tap into that well of experience to use for Porcelain Raft? How so?

My experience in music can be summed up like this: I’ve been carrying amps and equipment around for long time, before using a trolly and getting the underground, now it’s the same but with a tour van, all I remember is amps and equipment to move from one spot to another. And I never complained.

What did you honestly expect to come from this bedroom project?

This isn’t a bedroom project. Would you ever ask to The National what would you aspect to come out from your studio recording project? Flaming Lips last record was recorded in a room, in Steven Drodz’s house. Why that wasn’t a bedroom project album? The important thing is to use the space you record in as an instrument, use the space, whatever that is, as an instrument. The rest are just talks for academics.

Very well put. I apologize for generalizing. Other than Porcelain Raft, what would you consider your greatest musical achievement at 37?

Surely, the achievement is to be able to share this.

I can’t help but draw two comparisons when I think about the position you’re in – one’s semi-relevant, the other’s wildly absurd, but they’re a means to an end. The first is LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy, who also got a late start as a performer in the industry and hung up his hat after three albums. And he always had this ability to use cautionary hindsight and foresight that carved out a perfect niche for his band and made his run successful. Would you say that you’re approaching cautiously from here on out because of what you’ve learned about the music business over the years?

No really, nothing to do with the industry. I think I’ve been searching for my own voice, for my own world to be formed and now it feels solid enough to be out and visible. Sometimes it just take long time to get things right. Magazines and ads focus on youth and you start to feel weird if you don’t achieve something straight away when you are young. I don’t see it in that way. Youth is overrated.

The second is Dennis Quaid’s character in The Rookie, which is a ridiculous comparison at a glance, I realize, but the premise of that movie is a much older man enters Major League Baseball alongside a bunch of younger actual rookies. He’s hasn’t got that fresh, eagerness of most rookies, but he’s got this wizened ability to look around him and appreciate it all, what it all means. Would you say that you fit that role in a way?

If only music was a sport, that would be a great role, but… If you see me in that role, I just trust you!

Well, that’s a lot of responsibility to take on! (laughs) But I think I’m up to it. Now, no one ever truly knows what the rookies of a new year will bring in the world of music, but 2012 looks to be very promising. You’ve got one of the first albums released this year as one of the hyped artists of 2012, and you’ve got the industry buzzing. The ball is in your court, now, so to speak. How do you plan to approach this year in terms of touring/releasing new music/getting the Porcelain Raft vessel up off the ground?

I just want to create an amazing live show, I just started touring full on and this is a great chance to focus on the live aspect of things. I feel I should never think too much ahead, let the music bring you where it belongs.

The album’s been streaming now for over a week. I know the feedback has been pretty positive thus far, but I’m a world away with an isolated vantage point as a critic. How’s the feedback been as you’ve talked with other artists/fans/reviewers/etc.?

I like the fact that this isn’t an album full of hits or doesn’t have any bold statement, it has brilliant moments and other moment less shiny, but never on your face. Just like real life in a way. To create an album that reflects that without fearing mediocrity, without feeling the pressure to be perfect all the time, that is my real achievement. To create something close to real life, and my life isn’t always brilliant. Why not showcase it?! Our life has moments of failure and moments of grandiosity, if I want to tell a story, I better tell it all.

Recently, Consequence of Sound‘s own Research Editor Len Comaratta spoke with singer-songwriter Dylan Baldi to discuss the new effort, the evolution of his music, and the pitfalls of typecasting and how one should avoid them.

I guess this is a reference to your last album, but do you still feel like you’re getting old fast?

[chuckles] Not exactly. I feel like I’m doing a lot… in a short amount of time but not necessarily getting old quickly.

Well you’ve definitely been prolific. I guess that’s an understatement. On your previous releases, you did all the instrumentation yourself. When did you feel it was time to actually get a band?

It’s the band I’ve had for a long time. I got a band immediately after I made the first record just ‘cause I needed someone to play live with; but I felt like recording with a band just made more sense with this album just because we kinda wrote the songs together as a band. And for me to go on and take what they created away from them and go and record it on my own seemed like a bad idea.

In the very beginning, it was more that you wanted to transfer it to the live scene, but nowadays has the sound evolved to a point where you need a band rather than write it all yourself?

Yeah, and also it’s more fun to play with a band. It’s more fun to write songs with a band, and yeah, it’s just sorta more fun for everybody when we do it that way.

From the lo-fi fuzz on Turning On and the frantic, almost spastic pop punk fusion that you had on Cloud Nothings, I found that this album is continuing this evolving sound where you’re shedding a lot of layers–kind of like focusing and sharpening. A lot of people have been saying that you’re changing your sound so much probably because you’re “so young”… your youth, 18 at one time, 20 now. I think that’s too easy and a cop-out on their part. What do you feel is responsible for your sound, especially considering how prolific you’ve been in the past two years?

I think the thing that’s responsible for the fact that it’s changing so constantly is just because the songs that are on the first album are the first songs I ever wrote. I didn’t know what I was doing. I had never written a song or recorded anything before, so they sound like that to me; they sound like the first things I ever did. And with each album, I’ve progressed–in my opinion, I’ve progressed–as a writer to be able to try different things and do new things. So, every time I write a song I try to write a song that does something different than the last song I wrote just to keep myself from getting bored or something. So, I guess the fact that it’s changing so much is because I’m just finding I’m comfortable writing different types of songs every time I sit down and say, “gotta make an album now.” It’s just coming out different every time.

“No Future, No Past”

Well there’s definitely a change in sound on this album but I didn’t think that it was incompatible or unfamiliar with what you have done before.  I just kind of felt like when I was listening to the beginning of it, especially with “No Future, No Past”, that there was a lot of Unwound or Fugazi inside there, and then on “Wasted Days”, I felt like there was some Wipers influence. Once again, I could be taking a cop-out on that. Were you listening to a lot of heavier material while writing this new album?

Yeah, I was. And I wrote it with the band, and they all listen to stuff like that all the time. Like our drummer only listens to noisy music that has crazy drummers, and that’s just how he plays. The fact that I wrote it with everyone and they all made their own parts brought in a bunch of influences that I might not necessarily think about when I’m just writing on my own..

Two things I’ve noticed on this album that are a little different. One, you have an almost nine-minute track, and then you have an instrumental. How did those two come about?

The nine-minute one… I just knew I wanted a song where we could do something like that.  The thing that happens in the middle of that song that’s sort of long… because it’s not something I would do on my own; again, because it doesn’t sound fun to me at all to sit there and record myself soloing over myself. That just sounds like a really horrible way to spend my time. But to do it with a live band is sort of exciting because you don’t know what’s gonna happen, really. So, I wanted something like that… where we could change it every time and mix things up. And the instrumental song is only instrumental because I couldn’t’ think of anything to sing. Up until the very last minute trying to think of words or something to do over that and I just finally gave up and decided it was going to be an instrumental.

That’s funny. At least you’re honest. I read that you wanted to create some of the arrangements that would allow for more improvisation and variability when played on the road. Do you have any special plans for playing live or promoting the release?

Yeah. We’ve played this record a couple times here and there at some local shows and stuff.  And we have it organized so that we don’t ever really stop playing; it’s just sort of a constant stream of music or whatever, so there’s a lot of things we’ve added to the record that aren’t on the recording of it but that we do live to sort of segue between songs and stuff, so we’re trying to create more of a live experience than just playing eight songs in a row with breaks and talking to the audience in between because we’re not really into that.

Did a lot of this shift in your dynamic come about from working with Steve Albini, or did Steve Albini come into the picture after you decided how you wanted to make the album?

He was after. We had all these songs, and we were trying to figure out who would work as a producer to make these sound the best they could. And we ended up deciding on Steve just because I like the way the records he produces sound. And I knew that he kinda stayed out of the way. He didn’t really make any suggestions or anything the entire time we were recording, and he just let us do….

Yeah, he’s pretty much known for that right? He sets up the microphones and hits record?

Yep.

“Stay Useless”

So, how long did it take to record the album?

Four days.

Wow. I guess very little overdubbing then?

Yeah, there’s almost nothing on there that isn’t a first take kind of thing.

That’s awesome. So, do you prefer to record live in that sense?

Yeah, definitely I prefer to get things done pretty quickly.

So, when you’re working with him, did you guys play the music as a band, or did you play your individual parts, record them, and then put them all together?

Live as a band.

What are you hoping that fans and listeners can take away from Attack on Memory?

I just hope that they realize that they’re not able to pigeonhole us necessarily to a certain genre. We’re a band that has our own aesthetic rather than a band that ascribes to maybe trends or something that people might have thought we did based on our last couple of records.