No.9
ZOLA JESUS
— Those are my people I love them — Plus:
NO AGE CEO TWIN SHADOW CROCODILES MATTHEW DEAR DAS RACIST ANTONY SALEM TIM HARRINGTON MICHAEL GIRA
Zola Jesus photography Bryan Sheffield
Editor-in-Chief / Publisher Andrew Parks, Pop Mart Media aparks@self-titledmag.com Art Director / Senior Editor Aaron Richter (M.R.S.) arichter@self-titledmag.com Managing Editor Arye Dworken adworken@self-titledmag.com Photo Editor Sarah Maxwell smaxwell@self-titledmag.com Staff Photographer Travis Huggett Contributing Writers Peter Aaron, Scott T. Sterling, Michael Tedder Contributing Photographers Shawn Brackbill, Marco Gonzalez, Nick Helderman, Hobo, J, Brian Sheffield, Turkishomework, Alexander Wagner Intern Ezra J. Teboul Advertising, Submissions & Other Inquiries Andrew Parks / self-titled 685 Metropolitan Ave. #1 Brooklyn, NY 11211 718-499-3983 aparks@self-titledmag.com
Display through forever—we’re digital, remember? Published by Pop Mart Media. All self-titled content is property of Pop Mart Media. Please do not use without permission. Copyright 2010, Pop Mart Media.
BLOG CHATTER
the 16 best comments on self-titledmag.com — Turn the world into darkness! — So what kind of music do you like, tough guy? Green Day? Limp Bizkit? — “Achilles Last Stand” is easily my fave Zeppelin song too. — ’mazin. so many big ones on this. — JOHN SCHMERSAAALLLLLLLLLL. — Dead Snow sucked balls and I thought those who likened it to Evil Dead should be dropped into a cabin in the woods surrounded by deadites…real zombie talk. — I want to see them make some songs with Sage Francis or Sadistik. — Nice to see the US dark electronic scene growing and supporting one another. — I did the work for you since Google doesn’t seems to help. — I hadn’t seen that since 1991. Yikers. But, shit, I was a HOT FOX. Not that I’m not still. — P.P.S. How would a cover of “Hollow Man” by Boris sound? — Look at how alternative it is! — LOL @ that COAC story. Never happened though. — Hope. — As per that quote, I guess we can assume this is weed coffee? — Who else besides God can Prince feel inferior/vulnerable to?
CONTRIBUTORS
Nick Helderman is a music and portrait photographer from Leeuwarden, the Netherlands, whose work has been published in the British Journal of Photography, Vice and XLR8R. This past January, Nick, who now lives in Amsterdam, was one of the 10 nominees for the Popview/Lex van Rossen Award, which honors the best European music photographer, for his photo essay of Dutch punk/improv group the Ex and Ethiopian musician Getatchew Mekuria. Nick was born in 1987. Now doesn’t that just make you feel old? Cheers, dude.
Brooklyn photographer Shawn Brackbill gets incredibly, insanely busy at least twice a year, during New York Fashion Week, which he’s documented for the likes of Dazed & Confused, Polaroid and Dossier. We couldn’t think of a better time than when Shawn’s juggling swarms of beautiful women and countless backstage obligations to offer him a shoot with Michael Gira, himself busy with rehearsals for the latest string of Swans shows. Expect the photos to become part of Shawn’s ongoing black-andwhite portraits project.
Born, bred and musically educated in Detroit, Scott T. Sterling has spent the past decade in LA. He has written for LA Times, The Fader and 944, and as varying degrees of “Editor” at URB, he attempted to recreate his own version of Creem magazine. Citing TV on the Radio, OutKast and Atmosphere among his favorite subjects, Scott notes that a week on the coast with Radiohead stands as his “Almost Famous moment.” Scott is now quietly scheming to emulate Peter Saville by moving home to become the “Creative Director of Detroit.”
Andrew’s “Getting Shit Done” Playlist
350 WORDS OR LESS From the Editor: Here’s the first thing you should understand about Zola Jesus: She’s supposed to sound melodramatic. We’re talking about a classically trained opera singer/misanthropic philosophy major here—a hardcore noise and industrial scholar who appreciates the inner workings of Throbbing Gristle and Lady Gaga. And those seemingly simple love-and-loss lyrics of hers? As she told us during South by Southwest earlier this year, “The music’s so theatrical that if I had over-the-top lyrics, it’d be cabaret basically. I’d rather they be like old folk songs—where you say what you need to say flat out. You know: ‘It’s not easy to fall in love.’ That’s true, isn’t it? I don’t know what else to tell you. I’m from the Midwest and very straight about everything.” Well, Zola Jesus was from the Midwest, until a recent marriage-sparked move from middle America to Melrose. Not that she’s gone all cosmopolitan on us. As Zola Jesus’ new Valusia EP (Sacred Bones) proves, the singer–soundsculptor is an album away from nailing her buzz-
1. Mount Kimble, “Tunnelvision” 2. Palms, “Der Koenig” 3. Abe Vigoda, “Throwing Shade” 4. Wild Nothing, “Chinatown” 5. Superpitcher, “Joanna”
stirring blend of black-lit pop hooks, mirrorcracking melodies and brutalized beats. Since self-titled can’t quite contain our excitement for said album, we figured we’d catch Zola Jesus in the middle of her most drastic transition yet—from burning the midnight oil at the University of Wisconsin to owning the studio and coveted opening slots on major tours with the xx, Wolf Parade and Fever Ray. Meanwhile, we’re psyched to share our first issue that’s available in two new formats: (1) a free, embeddable Issuu-based edition and (2) an enhanced iPad transfer that challenges our Corporate America competitors (Spin, Rolling Stone, The Fader) to a duel, with a ton of interactive elements and such random but revealing features as ceo’s essay on tennis, No Age’s guide to classic album covers, Das Racist’s tour of Queens, Antony’s discussion of art and the environment, a thorough overview of Michael Gira’s personal record collection and Salem being Salem. See you again in a few months, when all of our favorite artists give us a complete guide to 2010’s best albums—because who cares about the yearend lists of music critics anyway?
Andrew Parks, Editor-in-Chief / Publisher
The Carpark Family of Labels www.carparkrecords.com www.paw-tracks.com www.acuterecords.com
Coming Soon Ear Pwr, Panda Bear, Toro Y Moi, Deakin, Casino Versus Japan
Prince Rama Shadow Temple CD/LP/digital An ethereal chorus of voices and anthemic melodies creates sonic artifacts drawing from southeast Asian rituals, krautrock legacies, hallucinatory operas, and dance hall psychedelia. Out now on Paw Tracks
Avey Tare Down There CD/LP/digital Animal Collective member Avey Tare’s first official solo full length carries you through a murky realm of sound, an alien death world of soul grooves that is both honest and otherworldly. Out now on Paw Tracks
Cloud Nothings Turning On CD/digital These thirteen songs (a collection of out of print singles) are the perfect introduction to the taut catchy lo-fi indie rock world of Cloud Nothings. Out now on Carpark
Les Sins Lina 12�/digital Les Sins is the dance alter ego of Toro Y Moi (a.k.a. Chaz Bundick). Out November on Carpark
1MM
The proper way to enter a McKibbin Photography
tu
loft party / Brooklyn, NYC / 08.02.10
urkishomework
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The Tallest Man on Earth / Katowice, Poland / 08.08.10 Photography
Nick Helderman
The Flaming Lips / OFF Festival, Poland / 08.08.10 Photography
Nick Helderman
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Bear in Heaven / Melkweg, Amsterdam / 08.15.10 Photography
NICK HELDERMAN
1MM Deerhoof / The Republik, Calgary / 06.01.10 Photography
nick helderman
The Books / Proper Fools, NYC / 06.30.10 Photography
travis huggett
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Surfer Blood / Lowlands Festival, the Netherlands / 08.22.10 Photography
Nick helderman
No age Photography Nick Helderman
No Age’s latest full-length, Everything in Between, is available now via Sub Pop Records.
The LA duo remembers its favorite album covers.
RANDY RANDALL
Paul McCartney: RAM This is a beautiful cover, hand-painted with photos by Linda. It looks fun and playful, and it totally gives an insight to the feeling of the songs on this record.
Captain Beefheart: Trout Mask Replica So powerful and commanding. If this was done today, it would be all Photoshopped, but back then you had to really wear a fish on your face. Sonic Youth: Experimental Jet Set, Youth and No Star This CD came with cards that you could shuffle and change what the cover image was. Each member of the band had their own card. My favorite was Lee’s because it had this awesome ’70s photo on it. Such a great package design. Lou Reed: Transformer Lou looks like he is playing a Gibson ES-335. I play an Epiphone Sherraton II now, and it harkens back to how cool Lou looked on that cover. When I first started playing semi-hollow bodies I was conflicted ’cause I didn’t think they looked punk enough, but I have grown to love the classic appeal of them.
DEAN SPUNT
Crass: 10 Notes on a Summer’s Day I was so used to the blackand-white album art from the other records that it made me listen in a different way. That to me is heavy design. Geto Boys: We Can’t Be Stopped When I was a kid, I would look at this tape for hours, wondering what happened to Bushwick Bill’s eye. I also remember thinking he was rich because he had that big gray cellphone. My parents had one of those bad boys. Napalm Death: Scum My mom didn’t like this tape. One day I went in my room, and she had taken a bunch of my tapes and threw them away, or hid them. I never figured out which, but she never gave them back. Hüsker Dü: Metal Circus So cool. Picture of Mao, those cool chairs, backwards band name and title. This cover very much influenced the Weirdo Rippers cover we made. I really love it.
C E O Photography J
ceo’s Eric Berglund offers an essay on his love of tennis. Once upon a time, not too long ago, when I was drifting somewhere between my mom’s lap in Gothenburg, Sweden, and what you may call hell, I pronounced a wish that I could live inside tennis. I didn’t know what I was talking about. I just knew I felt it so bad that my body was shaking. I think Mom wondered if I imagined being the ball, a player, the lines. It was such a vague desire. I just wished with all my heart that I could let my mind and its chaos go and transcend into what at the time seemed like another dimension. Into the order. Into the purity. Into the presence. It hurt like a bitch because it seemed so far away. It was nothing but a dream that I couldn’t reach. And I didn’t have a clue of how to wake up. Sometime later, when I was drifting between Åsa—what you may call heaven and what you may call hell—watching the 2008 Wimbledon final between Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer, my dad kinda had enough. His words (“Eric, this really isn’t good for you”) hit me hard, but at the same time held me gently and whispered it would be okay. Two feelings, two entities. The mind and the heart. I was being drawn deeper and deeper into a fairy tale—away from my heart, away from life, into my mind—and got so intense that my dad
freaked out. My anxiety had the room shaking. I really felt that if Nadal would win, love and beauty and all hope would die. Rafa was pure evil; Federer was the savior. You need to breathe to live, and I had been holding my breath for so long. And if you live life in a fantasy, you will suffer. I needed good and evil; I needed something to believe in. And since I hadn’t met life for real, I had to create a fairy tale. However, Nadal did win, and even though I was mentally dead for a while, hope gradually came back pulsing inside. My dad articulated what my heart knew so well—what my mind hated to hear ’cause it would end its iron-handed reign disguised as a romance once and for all. It would be reduced to the tool it should be. Then I slowly but surely started breathing. I knew the fantasy had died when I realized Nadal was approaching my heart. He became my friend. He became Rafa. And it felt so inconceivably beautiful. Life was winning in the end. Of course. My heart just sang. No words, just flowing supernatural melodies of victory. I now see tennis as a simple reflection of my life situation. The constant perfect metaphor. It used to be something unattainable, something whose beauty kept me alive but also kept me away from real life. Now it’s just a beautiful game, like everything else in real life. Joy. Energy flows from deep inside of life, through that game, through me and then back again. In eternity. Nothing has to be. Except life. It’s all okay. And not even Serena Williams can’t mess with that. Peace out. PS. This also applies to nature and music and everything else I care about. PPS. This thing with my mind is not all over. Sometimes I get caught up in it and let it hurt me. But most of the time we’re getting along well, and it helps me when I need to think. PPPS. Those tears after the semifinal in New York in September were just death throes or something, okay? ceo’s debut album, White Magic, is available now on Modular Records.
Twin PRIMER Photography HOBO
Shadow The Brooklyn singer shares his best-loved B-movies.
“Russ Meyer’s films for sometimes havin like you’re not Rawhead Rex
I was a freshman in high school when some of the upperclassmen in the theater department invited me over to Ben’s house to watch “the most fucked movie of all time.” Ben was my in to the “in crowd” of theater kids (which it turned out was not very in at all). Enter Rawhead Rex. All week the guys would tease me saying, “Your not in the club till you see this movie.” So it was pretty built up when Friday came and we rolled down to Ben’s house in one off-white Honda, a Plymouth Duster, a Lincoln Town Car and Jeep. I road with Justin in the Lincoln the whole way down to Venice—him talking about Jesus, cigars, tobacco pipes, nude mags, and how Ben’s parents were out of town for the weekend and some girls might be over. The girls never came, but everything else was there waiting for us—Playboy, Hustler, Penthouse, pipes, cigars, cigarettes and Bud Light. Everyone found a spot in the circle of brown couches and La-Z-Boys. I was directly in line with the TV and puffing on a nauseating corncob given to me earlier in the night. I remember the movie starting with shots of the Irish (Scottish?) countryside and some of the guys talking about how they had been to these places. I remember scenes of people at churches and farmers trying to move a stone out of the ground. I remember thinking, “I’ve been tricked into watching some theater-kid Camelot bullshit.” And then I remember lightning and a wave of
tense strings and horns, and out of the ground pops up Rawhead Rex. I immediately became so excited. The special effects were noticeably bad and, at the same time, so appealing. It was like the Ninja Turtles movie had been remade for my teenage eyes. This was the first time in my mind I made the distinction of what makes a B-movie aesthetically a B-movie. I never made it into the club, by the way. One of the guys stole my girlfriend, and I made them enemies very quickly.
Motor Psycho
I saw Motor Psycho while living in Boston. My band at the time had a little practice space with a TV and a cot in it, so I used to watch a lot of movies there—stuff borrowed from a friend who worked at the old Tower Records. I became interested in Motor Psycho when thinking about a Dylan lyric (“Motor psycho / Black Madonna”). I don’t even know if there is a connection. I had seen Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! and been pretty bored watching it, but my interest in motorcycles was peaking, and I thought the babes in it were the best-looking women on earth. (Russ Meyer’s films make you feel okay for sometimes having sleazy thoughts, like you’re not the only one.) Motor Psycho is exciting because it’s so overacted. In one scene, the male lead is bitten by a snake and forces the woman who he’s protecting from a gang of killers to suck the poison from his leg. We have all seen the scene in which a man and a woman have to suck poison from the other’s arm, leg, ass, etc., but never
make you feel okay ng sleezy thoughts, the only one.” has it been scripted the way this scene was... Speaking from memory, it went something like this: “Take my knife! Make an X! Make two X’s! Now suck it! Some more! Suck it! Some more, some more, some more!” So intense. The ’60s surf rock seemed so fitting for this desert terror flick. No water in sight with beach music playing all the time gives the killers a sense of supreme carelessness. Russ Meyer’s movies make me want to push the extreme in what I do. I’d like to think it goes beyond camp and you see these exaggerated moments as being very real.
Targets
I watched this while working on Forget. I’m not sure it’s classified as a B-movie, but it seems like it was made under tight pockets. And there is certainly nothing Hollywood about it beyond the fact that Boris Karloff plays a fading image of himself (The Body Snatcher equals big B-movie). Targets takes place in three main locations: a house, a one-mile strip of highway and a drivein—something I really wanted to have in my life but didn’t. (My experience with drive-ins was seeing them be torn down.) So much happens in these three key places. The whole time you are witnessing a true carelessness for life. The main character—a young man—becomes a true God or true Death by taking the lives of people who have no way of defending themselves. He has made himself into a sniper with everyone in the world in his crosshairs. The movie really makes you freak. So much with so little—that’s what I think of with B-movies. During the making of my record, I
had very little, and I tried to do a lot. I felt that lyrically I had power, and everything else had to make a place for the words.
The Wild Angels
This movie and The Trip are pretty downright sleepy-time. But there is something about seeing the guys move the motorcycles so recklessly that makes me wish for that time. I just can’t believe these guys were given a budget to make the film that they wanted to make. It’s amazing. The sense that this movie is a document of a real group of people living in a transitional time is very present, and the way you see the modern world eat at these people is challenging. I got this feeling when I watched it that so many of my friends back home who are stuck are like these characters—people stuck in a room with a ceiling that is very low. Makes me wonder about how attractive simple happiness is and how it’s something I can’t have because I can see it but am outside of it. When Peter Fonda gives the classic “We wanna be free to ride our machines!” speech with so much discomfort, you realize he is you and you wonder if you are leading a pack of people who aren’t you. I felt this way a lot of my life. Writing songs can put you in the position Fonda’s character is in. You want to be a voice for people around you, but there is a lot of truth that has to be set aside for you to laugh face first into a changing world. Twin Shadow’s own filmic full-length, Forget, is available now through Terrible Records.
crocodiles
The San Diego duo reveals what really inspired its new record, Sleep Forever.
Photography marco gonzalez
RECORDING UNDER THE INFLUENCE BRANDON WELCHEZ (VOCALS)
1. Rancho de la Luna Studios often have a very clinical air to them. It sucks a lot of the fun and creativity out of recording. Fortunately, the studio in Joshua Tree was completely the opposite. Rancho de la Luna is actually a house; the tracking is done in the den and a bedroom, the mixing is done in the living room, and the house is filled with amazing vintage equipment. Literally everywhere we looked we’d find a rad toy to fuck around with. You’d look under the bed and find some amazing little amp from the ’60s, or you’d open a closet and some crazy analog synthesizer would fall out. The property the studio is on also has a few other houses, and we were allowed to stay in one. This was great because it let us turn the recording process into a party. We’d start playing around noon, and at around 9 at night, we’d start cracking open beers and indulging in other fun stuff. And when we were done for the night, we could just stumble back up 100 yards to the house we were staying at. I feel like if we recorded in a city, there’d be so many other distractions and temptations, but in Joshua Tree we were able to just be completely absorbed in the songs. And I think looking out the window and just seeing sand and cactuses and Joshua trees fucks with a person’s head in a really good way. 2. San Diego Our hometown is a beautiful place, but it can also be incredibly boring. We’re not exactly rolling in money, either, and like most places, a lot of the fun things to do here cost money. So we find ourselves with a lot of time to hang out at one of our houses, get stoned and horse around on guitars or keyboards. I think that if I lived in a more exciting city, I’d probably never write music.
3. My wife I saw that Andy Burr from Woven Bones listed [my wife] Dee Dee from Dum Dum Girls as an influence, and she definitely has a profound influence on me, as well. Her work ethic is very inspiring. I’ll run to the supermarket and be gone for half an hour, and I’ll get home and she’ll have written an incredible pop song. She is very prolific, and the level of quality astounds me at times. It definitely makes me scrutinize my own work a lot harder. She is one of the best contemporary songwriters around, and living under the same roof as her makes me try harder with my melodies and lyrics.
CHARLES ROWELL (GUITAR)
4. James Ford, Sleep Forever producer Though I don’t know him any better now than I did before we went out to the desert, I do think that he has an exceptional mind for the fabric of music. His talent lies in the act of spreading sound as far as it can—into every corner of the room, like a psychedelic symphony. Without him, I don’t think the album would be as convincing in its attempt to assault the listener with sheets of primal melodic noise. 5. Willy Graves Willy, a dear friend of ours who passed away several years ago—and who we had made nearly every musical step with—was on our minds a lot in Joshua Tree. The landscape alone conjures up feelings of mortality, both inspirational and depressing. When you lose someone at a young age—when you need true friends the most—you never really get over it. We should all be living right now.
Photography aaron richter
matthew dear
Photography turkishomework
r a c d i as st
IN THE CITY The NYC hiphop group takes us on a tour of Queens. Himanshu Suri: What can I say about Queens that wasn’t already said in Coming to America? It’s a great place. My first place of residence, I had a parking lot to play in. Then I moved and had a courtyard to play in. Then I moved and had a backyard to play in. In elementary school, I hung out with a Chinese kid, a Haitian kid, a Puerto Rican kid and a bunch of Indian kids. Then in junior high, I hung out with a bunch of Korean kids and a bunch of Indian kids. Then I went to high school in Manhattan, met some white kids, and it was all downhill from there. Ashok “Dap” Kondabolu: I was born in Flushing Hospital. At that time, my family lived in an apartment on 72nd Street and 32nd Avenue in Jackson Heights. We were the first (and to this day, the only) Indian people to live in Jackson Heights. Then we moved to the Dunnolly Gardens apartment complex on 79th. I became a member of the Guardian Angels fake children’s gang. My brother kept a notebook listing our
Patel Brothers
“One dude walking out of looked like the brown Bur
f this store rt Reynolds.�
aliases and special powers. Then I moved to 257th Street in Floral Park, across the street from the middle school I went to [MS 172]. I would spend summers in the playgrounds attached to PS 115 and MS 172 with a group of Indian, Filipino, Chinese and white people. We would mostly play basketball and ride our bikes around aimlessly, although we also played stickball and “plastic-bat tennis-ball,” which was a corked plastic bat (top cut open, stuffed with newspaper and re-sealed) and a tennis ball. There was a Pizza Hut and a 7-Eleven on Hillside Avenue we’d ride to for processed-food consumption. I later moved to the Holliswood section of Queens, which is a very boring but pretty neighborhood between Jamaica and Flushing. Then I went to high school in Manhattan, where I met Hima and a bunch of white kids, and I was all-city after that. Victor Vazquez: I’m not from Queens. What up?!?
AN ALLEY NEAR THE F TRAIN
Suri: Ashok and I used to hang out in this alleyway near the Jamaica–179 Street F train stop. Kondabolu: We’d smoke cigarettes and drink coffee here before heading into the train directly next to it. I still take this train when I have to go places from my parents’ house. Vazquez: I used to smoke weed (ever heard of it?) in an alley near my high school on the way to buy french fries at the combination Chinese food
spot/donut shop/burger joint. Those are pretty specific to the Bay Area, as far as I know.
JAMAICA STREET CORNER
Suri: This is a block I’ve probably been on five times but never really hung out at. The brick road a couple blocks away, especially the Coliseum Mall and Punjabi-owned (discount!) Vibez across the street, I did used to kick it at. I’d buy my fitted hats here too. Dap would buy bootleg jeans to sell to future gentrifiers on eBay. Kondabolu: Me and my friend Adityo would buy bootleg Rocawear, Phat Farm and FUBU jeans on the brick road to sell to (presumably) white kids in parts of the country where it was difficult to get “urban” clothing. This scheme worked out well until I started collecting the money but not sending the jeans. Vazquez: I bought a shish kebab here and ate it. Not bad.
PATEL BROTHERS
Suri: This is our Pathmark. Kondabolu: My mother goes here to purchase “Hindoo” vegetables and spices from the “Far East” to make into curries and chutneys for my family to eat. They also sell various hair oils (peace to neem oil), metalware and Amar Chitra Katha children’s comic books.
Hindu center
Hima’s home
Vazquez: One dude walking out of this store looked like the brown Burt Reynolds but with an even more intense mustache. Imagine that!
DAP’S HOME
Kondabolu: This is the house across from my middle school I had mentioned earlier. The Indians who moved in after us didn’t take care of many of the awesome things we planted when we lived there, but the new neighbors seem to be doing a good job, which is awesome. There was a tree I stared at as a child that the former owners cut down almost immediately after they moved in. Vazquez: Pretty decent masonry.
HIMA’S HOME
Suri: My teenage bedroom was in this home. This is where the magic never happened. Kondabolu: Spent some time here during high school. It was, indeed, a house. Vazquez: I came here one time. I think I drank a vitaminwater.
HINDU CENTER
Suri: When my first relatives came here in 1979, it was to Flushing. At one time, something like 17 of my relatives—including my parents before I was born—lived in a tiny-ass one-bedroom apartment not far from here. I’ve been coming here since I
was born. I still pray here. The priests have seen me grow into the portly man I am today with their own eyes. Best live, chanty, droney Indian music venue this side of Prince Rama at Glasslands. Kondabolu: When I go to the temple, which is rare (my parents and brother go more often than me), it’s to the Ganesh Temple that South Indians go to (on Holly Avenue in Flushing, only a few blocks away from the temple Hima goes to). It’s also home to the Temple Canteen, which has the best dosas in New York City. Vazquez: When we were walking around in here, we all kept saying, “I go hard in da muhfuckin’ paint,”as dude was stringing together dozens of beautiful flower garlands. Don’t know why.
DOSA HUT
Suri: Myself and a bunch of well-known indie-ans will be coming back to Flushing to shoot our documentary on the search for New York’s best dosa soon. Follow @dosahunt in the meantime... Kondabolu: Dope spot, with a very funny and slightly incompetent Tamil staff. Will definitely be a stop on the Dosa Hunt, which I’d like to see go Tri-State. Vazquez: The masala dosa is pretty bangarang. //
antony
Words andrew parks Photography Shawn Brackbill
The singer reflects on his first art book, and why he isn’t willing to let the world end just yet.
T
he first and last thing most listeners notice about Antony Hegarty is his voice—an androgynous, angelic presence that’s been known to warm the blackest of hearts. What many miss is Hegarty’s relationship with the environment, present on songs such as “Another World,” which opens with the lines “I need another place / Will there be peace / I need another world / This one’s nearly gone.” “If there’s anything I can offer,” says Hegarty, “it’s adding to a dialogue around the dinner table about our relationship to the future, the past and the environment. What does it mean for us? We shouldn’t feel powerless.” The singer elevates these ideas to a much more visceral level in a limited companion volume—a hardcover collection of collages, photographs and illustrations (what Hegarty refers to as “little gestures”)—to the recently released LP Swanlights. The following interview was edited from a 90-minute conversation about Hegarty’s artwork. self-titled: Were music and art equally important to you when you were growing up? When I was a kid, I wanted to draw. But when I hit puberty, I decided I was going to sing because I identified with singers like Marc Almond and Boy George. I was also attracted to the expressiveness of singing, whereas visual work seemed much more contained. Now [art and music] satisfy different impulses. Doing visual work is much more solitary. You don’t have to negotiate any of it, especially with this [book]. I never intended it to have any application. The only dialogue was with myself. Have you been doing this kind of work all along? I have trunks of diaries and scribbling. This project started after I finished touring behind I Am a Bird Now. I was exhausted and couldn’t approach the piano, so I started doing collages from old magazines I’d bought online. There was something restorative about being preoccupied with a piece of paper. Meanwhile, I was illustrating some of the ideas about my changing relationship toward the environment.
Cut Away the Bad n. 1
Cut Away the Bad n. 2
It’s easy to find vintage photographs and magazines online now. Did you get obsessive about collecting? It’s something I got more confident about after seeing people like Devendra [Banhart] work with found materials. I’ve always loved the resonance of them, how something can be imbued with an energy or history that you don’t even know. There’s a potential for alchemy there that’s beyond our grasp.
As your music and art address the environment more, do you feel hopeful or hopeless? I’m writing an article for the Guardian where I ask artists what they think the environment will look like in 100 years. We don’t talk about it much beyond commenting on the weather because most of us feel like it’s beyond our grasp and too frightening. Meanwhile, institutions and governments are thinking about it on a scale we can’t even imagine.
What we’re facing is unprecedented—this notion that our earth might not be there in the future. We’re not programed to process something like that, except for the Evangelicals who have been banging on the door of the apocalypse. And the scientists who have been talking about this are mostly old men, people like James Lovelock or David Attenborough. You can hear a sense of hopelessness in the edges of the scientific community now. Did you see that exhibition at MoMA a couple months ago, about new plans for New York City in 2100 [“Rising Currents: Projects for New York’s Waterfront”], when the sea level is supposed to reach dangerous levels? I found it totally shocking, and other people were looking at it with total disbelief, like, “Have we really gone from complete cultural denial to the possibilities of development?” It’s like when the polar caps started melting and a Norwegian company started bottling iceberg water. We’re already being told that we should be accepting [climate change] and moving on to the idea that it’s going to be a positive development economically. There’s “business opportunities to be had,” you know? We’re not looking at it from the perspective of the rest of the world. It’s as if we think we’ll always be this fortified country, like how the hole in the ozone layer supposedly stopped at the border between America and Canada 10 years ago. Or this idea of building a massive sea wall around Manhattan. What about the rest of the coastline? And where are we going to grow crops? Where will the oxygen come from if the forests are all dead? All of the life forces for humanity will be in jeopardy or have collapsed, and yet here’s this deck-chairs-on-the-Titanic exhibition about how great our quality of life is going to be. Do you think it was meant to be ironic? No, it was dead serious. This kind of thinking is already happening—even in the most mundane and inept levels of the government.
I took a boat trip around a Norwegian island in the Arctic Circle once; that had a big impact on me. In fact, it’s a theme in the book. I really got seduced by the cold, resonant world out there. I’m curious about the cover of your book and album [at left, inset]—the picture of a polar bear that you modified. It’s from a photo essay about hunting and trapping. I did a series of pictures called “Cut Away the Bad,” and this was one of them, where a picture seems to have a psychic conflict and you try to relieve the pressure. Take away the negative energy, basically? Yeah, cut away the worst parts of it. First, you’d remove the hunter standing on top of the bear. Then you can focus on the spirit and integrity of the animal. It becomes less about the triumph of the hunter and more about how the animal actually feels. Or how it’s having this transformative experience. There’s a glint in the bear’s eye. It’s full of soul and spirit, like a photograph of a person as they’re dying. And the other parts of the “Cut Away the Bad” series are from the same photo essay? There’s one more from that group—a blue one of some trees [at left, main]. A hunter was standing there, and I removed her from the landscape. [Nervous laughter] It’s kinda childish in a way. It doesn’t have any influence on anything. It’s just, like, a spell. Did you already have the album title in mind when you started working on this? Yeah, Swanlights is the idea of seeing a spirit reflected in the water at night. Which is kinda what’s in the bear’s eye—a mystic vision.
You’ve lived in New York for a while now; do you ever find yourself going upstate to get away? I stay [in Manhattan]. I don’t even go to Brooklyn.
A couple of the pieces in your book include the title “I Want to Help.” Does that mean you’re trying to find ways to fix the environment? In a way, it’s me grappling with my sense of powerlessness and trying to change something I feel is wrong. I know it’s an infantile gesture…
But you get to travel. That must put things into perspective.
How so? Because it feels so ineffective. Like, “You wanna
< The Creek (For My Father) Whether it’s a plant, animal or mineral, it all has an energetic weight to it. One of the ideas I kept playing with was that everything contains a memory of all its history within its physical structure. Like the water in our blood may have a psychic memory of every animal it’s been a part of, every tree, every ocean. And that could be a pool of imagery that one could draw from in a creative process. That’s a cool idea, but it could also drive you crazy. I keep going back to that Rorschach idea—that things only mean one thing when you’re really determined for them to do so. “Cut Away the Bad” is one-dimensional in that regard. It’s very conceptual. help? Oh great.” I felt like I had to suspend that judgment, and let me be myself. There’s a part of me that needs to be innocent. One piece that stood out to is The Creek (For My Father) [above]. Is that actually a creek from your family home in California? No, that’s a found picture. It’s a lot older than me. I imagined all of the things that had happened there, or were going to happen. And the drawing itself is very free-form? I have some parameters. The impulse to draw a line could be coming from something that’s happening there, or it could be what I call an “unconscious line.” I don’t want it to be too representational—like I know that there was a war happening [in the Creek piece] and dead bodies in the river. There’s also a stone in there, and if you hold a piece of stone in your hand, there’s a compressed history to it—maybe a bunch of living things or a psychic presence.
Is the piece Blue Ghost [right] an homage to Devendra? [Laughs] He actually looked at that picture and said, “Did I draw that?” And I was like, “Fuck.” I love Devendra’s work. Those obsessive, recurring lines are actually something I’ve been doing since I was a kid, but organizing them in that way could be viewed as an homage to Devendra. Sure. He’s one of my favorite visual artists. He’s the opposite of me in a lot of ways because what he does is so controlled, crafted and careful. And you feel like there’s a lot of imperfection in what you do? I used to draw really perfect lines when I was 19. I was obsessed with it. It drove me crazy, so I went in the opposite direction. It used to be that the line had to be perfect or it wouldn’t be expressive. But now it’s the opposite, really. Why the obsession with lines? It’s not the number of them for me. It’s the
Blue Ghost
pursuit of it and what a rewarding creative process it can be. The book includes photos of Johanna Constantine, one of the people who co-founded the Blacklips performance art troupe with you in the early ’90s. How would you describe your creative relationship? We’ve had a symbiotic relationship since we were in our teens. Our work often changes in relation to one another. Right now, she thinks my outlook on life is dark, and she has more empathy for the children of humanity. And I feel like humanity needs to find its rightful place in relation to our ecology. We feel like we were separated at birth,
but we’re never going to leave the womb of this world. If we destroy the womb, we’ll die. A few weeks ago, Stephen Hawking said in the Guardian that the future of humanity lies in space since we’ve almost depleted all of the world’s resources. And I’m thinking, “Even he doesn’t get it.” Don’t you think some people are just throwing their hands in the air at this point? Maybe Stephen Hawking really thinks there’s no future for the earth, that it’s all a done deal. But it’s not a done deal. There’s still animals here; there’s still fish in the sea.
If the best male minds in the world are saying it’s all a done deal, I have to wonder what the best female minds think. We’ve done many experiments over the years, but we’ve never tried transferring world governments over to our feminine body. I think if we did that, we’d have a chance. Everyone laughs and says that’s impossible. More impossible than the end of the environment as we know it? Which brings us to your God’s Vagina piece. I was raised Catholic, but I’ve always considered myself pagan or a witch or something. The earth is my creator in a way. I’m made up of the material of the natural world—oxygen and the elements. I also trust [a feminine creator] more than some big, scary sky god that I prayed to my whole life and never got an answer from. The earth is just so rich and generous. She’s pouring out food, beauty, animals and the most divine pastures of life. It’s like how Christians believe they were cast out of the Garden of Eden, and some Native Americans believe we were born into it. To me, it’s another smart, basic tenet to live by—that this place is worth saving—though I’ll ask some artists about the future and even they will say, “Well, nothing lasts forever. The mass extinction of man is part of a natural cycle.” I’ve also asked artists where they believe they’re going when they die; a lot of them think they’re going to the stars, that they’re not coming back here. Even some famous artists—they think they’re going to be bouncing around other solar systems and they’re going to wash their hands of this place. I think that’s really weird. //
I Want to Help n. 1
I Want to Help n. 2 >
“We’re never going to leave the womb of this world.”
God’s Vagina
From left: John Holland, Heather Marlatt and Jack Donoghue
Free AssocIation
I
Words andrew parks Photography Alexander wagner
f you’ve ever lived in the Midwest or a blue-collar town like Buffalo, then you’ve met Salem before. You’ve witnessed how long winters and lots of free time with nothing to do can transform a person—how it breeds special bonds and the kind of battered human beings you might find in a distorted midnight screening of Deliverance, Gummo or Blue Velvet. In other words, Salem’s long-awaited debut LP, King Night, is the sound of sleepy towns with a sordid past, a suffocating blend of sizzurpsipping hip-hop, narcotic pop and nihilistic 4AD-isms that scares the living shit out of us. Especially now that we’ve heard band members John Holland, Jack Donoghue and Meather Marlatt explain their album; their words are cryptic, yet revealing if you read between the lines and focus on the important details—the church bells, car crashes and campfires that light the way to where Salem’s really coming from.
“KING NIGHT”
John Holland: Part of this song was inspired by the music played at a funeral for someone very special who was loved very much. It is also about the ocean. Jack Donoghue: What John said. Heather Marlatt: Religious anthems are pretty inspiring. When I was a child, we would sing this song in church with all the lights off, and everyone would light candles off each other.
“ASIA”
Holland: After hearing church bells on a Sunday while thinking of someone in a different country, the lyrics for this song were written. It was in the springtime, but a lot of it has to do with the time when the snow is melting, when winter turns to spring and all the dirty snow and slush is shining in the sun.
salem
“CARS INNA CIRCLE LITTL LAMB INNA MIDDLE.”
“FROST”
Holland: This is one of the only songs on the album that was written in NY. It was a song that fastened a bond. Donoghue: This beat makes me :-) Marlatt: I wrote this song ’bout protecting someone close to me. It’s like when someone thinks you can’t live without them but you know you can.
“SICK”
Holland: This song is about cars at night. Cars driving. Someone looking out a tinted window— someone looking out and no one looking in. It’s about a pileup of cars after an accident. CARS INNA CIRCLE LITTL LAMB INNA MIDDLE. Donoghue: Part of this song is about how in a time of weakness or vulnerability, an accident evil can slip into someone’s life and cause worse damage. Marlatt: Like when you hear a traffic report on the radio and people are telling you what is up ahead.
“RELEASE DA BOAR”
Holland: This song is about how kids think when they are young and about walking on planks near the ocean. Donoghue: It’s like when you hold your breath underwater with your eyes open and the silence in the water somehow seems really loud. It also reminds me of an undertow. Marlatt: I really like this beat. It reminds me of a freight train. Sometimes crashing waves also have that rhythm. I don’t know if other people do this, but me and John always talk about the music we hear in our heads. This song reminds me of that. We used to hang out in this junkyard on the grounds of our boarding school and race cars on the airplane field nearby. It feels like that.
“TRAPDOOR”
Holland: This song was written in 2007. We were all in a very bad way. Donoghue: This song is about needing to stay moving to keep from thinking. Marlatt: This one actually makes me really happy, like when we all used to hang out for days and have fun. John used to have this thing happen to him where he would lose his vision. It was so freaky; I would always read things for him.
â&#x20AC;&#x153;We used to hang out grounds of o
t in this junkyard on the our boarding school and race cars on the airplane field nearby.” “REDLIGHTS”
Holland: This song is about the winter and fires in the snow. Marlatt: I wrote the lyric for this song when I was all alone in NY. People were treating me really bad, and John and Jack would come out to make me feel better. It was easy for me to leave that place when I had my boys on my side.
“HOUND”
Holland: This song was written in the summer of 2008. It is about fields of very tall grass and abandoned campgrounds. Donoghue: This song is about two people who would die for each other facing something.
“TRAXX”
Holland: This song is a secret. Marlatt: I got the idea for this when we were all in Michigan last summer. I was trying to find this special Willow, and I was leading Jack, John and some young kids around the woods searching for it. It was really dark and hard to see landmarks, but eventually I found it. I was wearing really high heels, and they got so muddy. Later I thought that experience was a good metaphor for losing your virginity. I was leading all of these people uphill to a place none of them had ever been before.
“TAIR”
Holland: This song is about someone outside a house, watching it with all the lights on at night. Donoghue: This song is about someone on a bluff overlooking a town. It’s also about breaking into a home, and about when water rushes through pipes in a house and it sounds like someone is yelling. Marlatt: I think Jack was inspired to write this when over on a small island.
“KILLER”
Holland: This song is about a journey. Marlatt: There was a time when John wouldn’t leave our apartment in Bushwick for days. This song is really personal. I wouldn’t want to say too much about it. Donoghue: There is something about this song that makes jack :( //
BEACHY
HY HEAD Words scott t. sterling Photography bryan sheffield
LAâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s latest valley girl, Zola Jesus, is a Throbbing Gristle fan from the woods of Wisconsin.
When Danilova’s band took the stage as a slight three-piece, the musicians framed her supple voice with morose waves of minor-key synthesizers and softly thudding beats. While many gifted singers lose themselves in high notes, Danilova’s power comes from restraint and massive, clear hooks. Dressed in black, she paced the small stage alongside a small forest of keyboards and mic stands. That voice, focused on tracks from her Stridulum EP, cut through the cloudy strings and industrial melodies. In the tiny confines of the Echo, it was almost overwhelming. The set seemed to end as soon as it began, but the deafening buzz spilling onto Sunset Boulevard. The woman with the flower in her hair smiled blissfully, smoking what could have easily been mistaken for a post-coital cigarette.
HOT ON THE HEELS OF LOVE
N
ika Rosa Danilova, her face accented by platinum blond locks and sizable sunglasses, looks like any another lost Angeleno caught in the middle of Melrose’s boutiqueclogged strip. She doesn’t sound like one, though. Not once you’ve heard that voice—a haunting presence that has, in the past year, earned her a cult following, from Fever Ray to the high priestess of twisted pop herself, Lady Gaga. self-titled experienced that voice a couple weeks prior to sitting down with Danilova, when LA’s weekly Part Time Punks party at the Echo welcomed Danilova’s act, Zola Jesus, as its headliner. The venue was crowded, and the singer was the obvious attraction. One enthusiastic woman—a huge red flower tucked in her hair—from time to time shrieked “Zola!” at the top of her lungs, reminding everyone why she was there.
Just a few days ago, Danilova got married. “Falling in love has really changed how I approach my art,” she admits. At 21, the singer doesn’t drive, so we’ve met near her place by the hectic, shopper’s orgy end of Melrose. “Before, I was cold and distant,” she continues. “I felt alienated from most people. When I fell in love—which I never thought would happen—it really opened me up. I figured I better marry this guy because it’s the only time I’m going to feel this way about anyone.” After graduating from the University of Wisconsin earlier this year (she studied philosophy and French), Danilova moved to Los Angeles. “My husband loves it here, and I’m traveling so much it doesn’t really matter where I live,” she says, referencing her black-sheep spots on tours with Fever Ray, Wolf Parade and the xx. “It’s been a bit of a culture shock, though. I don’t participate in a lot of stereotypical LA culture. But you don’t have to. It’s such a big city.” Danilova grew up in Merrill, Wisconsin, a remote rural town with a population just more than 10,000, and started taking opera lessons when she was 10. She holds a love for the “huge, powerful voice” of Etta James, and as Danilova got older, she leavened her musical education by mining the darker recesses of modern music with the discovery of such acts as Throbbing Gristle, SPK and Whitehouse.
“You turn on the radio, and pop music is what you hear. There are some really good beats in those songs.”
“If you’re going to be looking, you might as well look hardcore, you know?” she says. “When you start seeking things out, you realize there’s just so much out there, so I just went as deeply as I could go. There was a lot of going to the library for literature. You pick up references from things you like. Nirvana would reference the Melvins and Flipper—that kind of thing.”
DISCIPLINE
Some of Danilova’s earliest fans are also her most influential. Karin Andersson, of the Knife and Fever Ray, was so captivated by early Zola Jesus releases that she asked the singer to open one of the first Fever Ray tours. College responsibilities forced her to decline. So when Andersson inquired about a Fever Ray outing this fall, Danilova was quick to say yes—and quick to learn from Andersson’s high artistic standards firsthand. “I think the public has to make a bit of a compromise,” she says, “because the artist is here to contribute something to society. If you’re not willing to accept that, you’re not helping society progress. In a sense, you’re stunting it from progressing because you’re content with what you [already] have. It’s important for the public to be aware and open to change, even if you have to kind of slip it in their drink a little.” The sonic progression from Zola Jesus’ distortion-doused debut (The Spoils) to the mistshrouded melodies of her recently released Valusia EP is glaring, as if she just emerged from a blizzard to reveal the pop hooks that have been there all along. Its lead single (“Sea Talk”) was produced by Chris Coady (TV on the Radio, Yeah Yeah Yeahs) and marked a change of pace for Danilova, who’d previously cut all of her songs at home with beehive backing tracks. “I’d talked to Chris a couple of times before,” says Danilova, “but it was weird. I was nervous. I think I came across as defensive, worried that he would take away my creative control. But we had that talk where he reassured me that wasn’t the case, and everything was fine after that.” Danilova is vague about the next Zola Jesus album (“I have some ideas, but that’s about all I can say about it”), though she intends to spend a lot of time sharpening its songs once she’s done with three months of touring behind Valusia. “It will be interesting to see where I find
“Those fans just aren’t equipped... They’re just not ready. What I do is not their thing.” inspiration out here,” she says, referring to LA. “I can never really bring anyone [else] into Zola Jesus, though. I have too much of a [specific] vision with it.” Outside of Zola Jesus, however, Danilova readily indulges her collaborative impulses. She’s recorded a down-beat version of Dawn Penn’s reggae classic “You Don’t Know Me (No No No)” with former Pochaunted frontwoman LA Vampires; sung on the limited single “Year of the Ox” with the hardcore band Fucked Up; contributed to the Former Ghosts project with Xiu Xiu’s Jamie Stewart; and tracked twisted, Top 30–bred pop tracks with Zola Jesus’ keyboard player Rory Kane, under the moniker Nika+Rory. “I’d known Nika around Madison for a few years when she approached me about being in her backing band,” Kane explains via e-mail during the Fever Ray tour. “We had already made our first Nika+Rory track, ‘LA SUXXX,’ so we knew we had a musical connection. For our first show after I joined, she basically played me four notes on my synth bass and that was the song.” “Nika+Rory is an alter ego,” adds Danilova. “It’s not a laugh at all. I’m in America; you turn on the radio, and pop music is what you hear. There are some really good beats in those songs. Rory and I would bond over Lady Gaga and Keri Hilson songs and take it from there.”
DIGITALIS AMBIGUA
Set to begin a string of early fall dates opening for the xx, Danilova says she’s prepared to
perform for people who might not be ready—or care—for her theatrics, the sort of stage-prowling, note-nailing behavior we’ve come to expect from drama-club dropouts or the goth kid they never show you on Glee. “That happened when I opened for Wolf Parade,” she says. “We played some pretty big venues, and a lot of those fans just aren’t equipped... They’re just not ready. What I do is not their thing. “It was kind of funny sometimes. Some people didn’t like it just because I didn’t have drums. Those are the people I want to talk to. People that listen to Diamanda Galas and Throbbing Gristle already get it. Those are my people. I love them. But I love the challenge of convincing people that there’s more than just what you know.” When Zola Jesus opened a sold-out, 4,000-capacity xx show at the Hollywood Palladium, Danilova had added a third keyboard player, as well as a drummer. The singer emerged in a black shroud, swaying in front of a single orange spotlight, but her voice commanded attention from the packed room. The torrential tones eluded any of the easy comparisons that have followed Zola Jesus thus far. Referencing everything from moody classical music to the sweeping psychedelic rock of Jefferson Airplane, she worked the stage, finishing the show perched precariously over the first few rows of fans by balancing on the outstretched arm of a bouncer. Somewhere in the maelstrom of bodies and flashbulbs, Zola Jesus ended her set with a single piercing shriek. //
Tim harrington
the self-titled interview Words michael tedder Photography aaron richter
W
hen selecting a proper venue to speak with Les Savy Fav’s Tim Harrington, one must consider the singer’s hedonistic reputation, and the fact that he’s a bit of a gourmand, with an appreciation for unusual meat. Although Harrington insisted on Medieval Times (the nearest location is in Jersey), self-titled eventually selected Brooklyn’s St. Anselm—where our subject could potentially get some brain. Dressed in an unbuttoned cop-informant-ina-’70s-TV-show shirt, his eyebrows devilishly pointed, Harrington joked during our meal that the veal-heart jerky would have to serve has our truffle fries while discussing Les Savy Fav’s longevity, the birth of Beardo and the fine art of remaining resolutely unrefined on the band’s new record, Root for Ruin. self-titled: So what is this [sipping Tim’s beer]? I asked for “drinky beer.” I was like, “It’s hot out. Nothing fancy.” Everyone in Les Savy Fav likes shitty beer. And not necessarily novelty shitty. So you’re not into microbrews? I like fancy stuff galore, but beer is just a drink. I think I can talk about that in terms of our record—how it’s willfully lacking in connoisseurship.
You have been doing this for a while. Is it tough to keep the energy up so you can to go for it full-blast each time you perform or record an album? It’s not so much that it’s tough, but on this album we wanted to go in one particular direction rather than be a “maturing band” that starts “to get lush”—and out come the cellos. We really focused on not over-thinking or second-guessing things. It seems sacrilegious in this day and this world currently, but it’s a bunch of fucking songs. Is it difficult to let yourself rely on instincts? Well, I think it’s easy.... I think you get to a point where your instinct is sharp and knows what to do, and you start being like, “No-no-no, no, no, no. I’m going to outsmart it.” “Let’s take a different approach to this song.” Yeah, or just asking things like, “Is it done?” or, “Are you deliberately doing a departure?” One of the things I wanted to do on this album was learn how to write less didactically. I love lyrics. I love words. I’m not particularly good at singing. I’m not particularly good at music. So I tend to find solace in going crazy live or obsessing over little haikus and secret double meanings in the studio. I want to try and just strip that away and write something that’s really simple and really direct.
“You want your rock star to be a rock star, and I’m far from it. I’m weird and uncomfortable.”
When your band started, you were all about nervous energy and spazzy rhythms. And you’ve kept that, but added bigger hooks and more intricate melodies as you’ve gone along. Was that something Les Savy Fav was always progressing toward? We tend to just follow our guts and try to focus neither on continuity or novelty. Maybe we are myopic in our interests, but I still feel passionate about the music that influences us. I’m always like, “We have fucking amazing taste.”
I see your point, but you are quite the rock star. But you see what I mean? It’s not like “rock star.” It’s like a garbage pail on your head. Seth is a guitar hero. He can’t help it. He’s just that good. But my job is undoing that. Fuck our skill, fuck our practice—all that you need to know right now is a beer is about to land on me.
What are the staples? All-time classics are Six-Finger Satellite, Archers of Loaf, Pavement. [Bassist] Syd [Butler] has forever loved Built to Spill. Old Gang of Four. We were definitely enamored of disco-y stuff. The launching point for everyone in the band was hardcore. I love all of Trance Syndicate, across the board. I just missed, two weeks ago, Universal Order of Armageddon. But it was a late show, and I got really tired. The night before was [guitarist] Seth [Jabour]’s bachelor party. We did a free show—ladies only—at Union Pool.
Yeah, you guys are OG Brooklyn. I remember going on tour in the ’90s and people would be like, “What’s it like in Brooklyn? Are there any bands in New York?” And I love that. When we formed in Providence [Rhode Island], it was around the same time as Load Records, Lightning Bolt and Arab on Radar. We were the wimpiest band in the scene. And I can remember saying, “I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be in a place where we all play for each other.” New York is supposed to be big enough to absorb everything, and there’s no such thing as a big deal. So when Brooklyn and Williamsburg got stamped as a scene, it was disappointing. It had a lot to do with us laying low for a number of years and putting out 7-inches only. Whenever there’s a wave, we do everything we can not to catch it. I don’t know why. It seems stupid. Maybe it’s because we’re insanely noncommittal, but I think it’s this desire to be super insular.
How was that? It was 50 percent dudes. Still, 50 percent women is a lot better than normal. I love Union Pool. The space is just so beautiful, and I got notably shitfaced. I normally like the adrenaline of looking around and figuring out what to do no next. My brain thinks really fast, but if you’re wasted, you can’t do that. You just become a sloppy mess. I have two vague, flashing memories from that night: it pouring at 3 in the morning, and me sitting outside in a shed with the sound guy smoking weed and me being like, “This is exactly like in Romancing the Stone...” What?!? I stumbled home in fishnets with my face horrifically scabbed over with an entire tube of lipstick. I’m pretty sure this elderly lady screamed and crossed the street [when she saw me]. It’s funny that you think the perfect venue for a ladies-only show would be tiny Union Pool. It’s not fashion music. Part of the reason people like our band is the lack of theatricality. I’m super theatrical onstage, but it’s not in the way that most people want. You want your rock star to be a rock star, and I’m far from it. I’m weird and uncomfortable.
It’s interesting to hear from a Brooklyn indie band. We were from Brooklyn for a long time, though.
Do you feel any kind of connection to the Williamsburg scene? As a progenitor, perhaps? I’ve lived here for 15 years. When Yeah Yeahs Yeah—who are awesome, by the way—and all those bands were getting tons of attention, it was more of an “Oh, my gosh, this thing is happening.” Now we’re so out of it. I’m like, “I don’t know; it’s just my neighborhood.” I do walk around with my two kids, and it’s my dream for somebody to be like, “Get your kids out of this neighborhood.” So I can use a line that I’m always trying to fit in a song, but none of the other guys in the band want. It goes, “We smoked this place to ashes / Back while you were in Vassar / Practicing being bisexual.” Has taking time off helped the band’s longevity? Yeah, I feel like the band—especially after [2001’s] Go Forth, when we were working on getting [the singles compilation] Inches finished—has spent
a lot of time figuring out how to [evolve] without entering some infantile stasis or turning it into a job. Right now, the band is more like what I thought being in an awesome band would be like when I was 15 than it ever has been. I’ve never thought about myself as a musician; I just like to do cool things, and this is a cool thing to do. It kind of shortchanges the rest of the guys who play instruments and are really good at what they do, but in general, we started the band because it’s fun. And it is important to us—the band working for us rather than us working for it. The people who come see us, I feel like they really like the band, and it makes the shows feel special—as opposed to they heard about us or it’s really good to work out to. “I heard these guys are cool.” We’re kind of an uncool band—in a way that I personally think is cool. And I think the people who like our band like that about it. There’s no bullshit. Let’s talk about Beardo. Have you always been into comedy? And how did this persona come about? Not always. I increasingly got really interested in it. Somebody asked me to do some writing for this Onion-y Web-video thing. I really liked doing it, but the project ended up not happening. And then when Pitchfork TV started [the site’s founder, Ryan Schreiber] asked me to do this thing with Fred Armisen—this short video where we did a casting call and harassed people. When they asked me about doing my own show, I was pretty excited. I really like writing stuff. I would love to do that more and get a group of people to work with and make it more of a steady thing. It’s something I’m passionate about, but it’s something I’m squeezing in between design work, the band, having a family and everything else I do. Did you do sketch comedy in college or ever try stand-up? No, I just fancy myself funny, and I’m a show-off. And because I work in design, I don’t get as many opportunities as I’d like to just straight-up write. Syd and I both studied film in college, and I like to make funny stuff. My aesthetic is not so totally obtuse that it drives everyone but snobs away. It’s kind of like just left of center.
Speaking of college days and comedy, I found a video of you with [Family Guy creator] Seth MacFarlane on YouTube. How did that happen? Seth MacFarlane went to school at the same time... Syd made that video. Where did you see that? It’s on YouTube. Is it a film with us as comedians? Mmmhmm. That’s Syd’s video. I haven’t seen it. Seth was a year older than us, and was into film and video, and was completely fucking annoying. Shocker. [He was] totally not funny. I remember saying, “You’re in art school, and you’re doing the blazer, brick wall stand-up comedy night.” It’s so depressing. But hey, look at him and look at me. He nailed it, and I’m a fucking jackass. To bring things back to my poetry-versuslyrics thing, I have one other succinct, I believe insightful, summation. The Simpsons undercuts mainstream values; Family Guy reinforces them. For a long time, I was like, “What is it? Why is Family Guy not funny?” And it’s not because he’s sitting pretty and can do whatever he wants and it used to be somebody I knew. And it’s more than just being a hater and more than just not thinking it’s funny. There’s this subtle difference that’s hard to articulate on a blow-by-blow basis, but I think it’s completely true. Before I even heard your music, I would read live-show reviews that would talk about how you would wear a leotard that would expose your junk when your parents were in the audience. You’ll kiss dudes; you’ll wring out a rag of sweat in someone’s mouth. Do you ever get in trouble with audience members after the show for the stuff you pull? Not really. I fancy I have a pretty good track record of picking who’s game and who’s not. I tend not to want to make somebody miserable, but I don’t mind taking someone out of their comfort zone. I think I radiate a good-natured jolliness that is hopefully disarming. But, my mom periodically asks if there’s a way to take pictures off Google Image Search. I don’t think there is. You have to find the guy who is thrilled to have your sweat rung into his mouth. They like it. //
M i chael G i r a Swansâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; bandleader shares the stories behind the records that shaped his sound.
THE SOUNDTRACK OF OUR LIVES Words Peter Aaron Photography shawn brackbill
Swans 2010, from left: Christoph Hahn, Chris Pravdica, Michael Gira, Phil Puleo, Norman Westberg (Thor Harris not pictured)
W
hen Michael Gira disbanded Swans—one of the most influential underground bands of the past three decades—in 1999, he was done. Done with 15 long years of pouring his soul into some of the loudest, hardest and, at times, most starkly beautiful music of a generation for scant reward. Done with fronting a New York band both revered and feared for its caustic and physically demanding live shows. Done with creating singular, groundbreaking albums like Cop, Greed, Children of God and White Light from the Mouth of Infinity. To assume the message of their final live album, Swans were dead. Or so the world—and Gira—thought. After the split, he spent the next decade with two different projects: the short-lived Body Lovers and the Angels of Light, with five albums that culminated in 2007’s stunning We Are Him. He also toured as a solo acoustic artist and started a family and record label, Young God, on which he’s released his own music and early recordings by Devendra Banhart, Lisa Germano, Akron/Family and others. It was all gratifying, but a far different beast than the cathartic, crushing juggernaut that was Swans. And then during an Angels of Light performance with Akron/Family as his backing band, something reemerged. “The guitar was sustaining one open chord (very loudly), rising to a peak, then crashing down again,” explains Gira.
“The whole band swayed with this arc. It was like riding waves of sound. I thought, ‘You know, Michael, Swans wasn’t so bad after all.’ ” So Swans were not dead. Gira decided to reactivate the band in 2009, though he released the message, “THIS IS NOT A REUNION. It is not repeating the past.” My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky, the band’s first studio release in 14 years, shows he’s not kidding. It encompasses the varied sounds Gira has made and absorbed in the intervening years, as well as Swans’ legendarily unbridled volume and ferocity. Here Gira guides us through recordings that have affected him greatly throughout the years.
The album that blew my mind as an impressionable teenager
“The Mothers of Invention’s Freak Out! Beautiful, vile, all enveloping and, at the time, a nasty affront to repressed consumer America. The antithesis of ‘peace and love’ hippies—much closer to punk rock, in fact. ‘Who Are the Brain Police?’ and especially ‘Trouble Every Day’ are menacing and ripe with lunacy and rage. “Hungry Freaks, Daddy” still brings to mind a pleasant vision of marauding, filthy, smelly, dumpster-diving hippies taking to the suburbs in search of choice middleclass child-meat. Bravo! The albums that followed, Absolutely Free and We’re Only in It for the Money, are superb as well, but after that, in my view, Zappa made a swift decline.”
The album that drew me to New York
“It’s a tie between [Brian Eno’s seminal 1978 compilation] No New York and the first [selftitled] Suicide album. I was in LA in 1979, and even the Germs seemed conventional and tame by comparison. It seemed like New York was the place to be if you wanted to make something truly severe and apocalyptic happen. But once I arrived I found the most popular music was horrible English new-wave dance music. Ha ha! It was the time of Hurrah, Danceteria, the Mudd Club—very trendy and style-oriented. Both Swans and Sonic Youth were completely counter to that notion, and it took us a long time to build up an audience of our own in that environment.”
“I don’t really have any heroes and don’t want any.” The album that made me want to make loud, hard, heavy music
“Volume was only a tool to reach a certain state so that the music became a physical, overwhelming experience. ‘Hard’ meant uncompromising. But ‘heavy’ wasn’t, and isn’t, a term that has ever appealed to me. In fact, I hate that term. It’s lunk-headed, implying a music for people with low foreheads—simian grunters. “Thinking back to the time, a couple of songs, not albums, come to mind, where I can view myself thinking, ‘I want to achieve something that reaches that high.’ The two pieces would be: the intro to the title track of David Bowie’s Station to Station and Brian Eno’s ‘Baby’s on Fire’ from Here Come the Warm Jets. Then, of course, there’s Pink Floyd’s ‘Careful with That Axe, Eugene’ from Ummagumma.”
The album that made want to make quiet, soft, beautiful music
“Donovan’s A Gift from a Flower to a Garden, which I listened to hundreds of times as a teenager on acid, and Nick Drake’s Pink Moon, which I discovered through [ex-Swans member] Jarboe in the mid-’80s. Both of their voices, just thinking about them, make my solar plexus flutter. I can feel myself dissolving—utterly exquisite, delicate and as powerful as can be, simultaneously. I am cursed with a crude voice, by comparison, and it’s a major life disappointment that I’ll never be able to sing a beautiful song.”
The album that made me want to release others’ music on my own label
“There’s no particular album. When I decided I’d had enough and wanted to take control of my own music and maybe release other people’s music (using a fair and simple business model), I thought of Factory Records and Impulse! Records—labels with a clear identity that implied a unique world inside their auspices. “When I first made Devendra’s music available to the world through Young God, I felt that I was doing something truly worthwhile as a business. Working with him remains among my most gratifying experiences. Sadly, with the way things are going in the so-called music business, I’m winding down the label, in respect to other artists’ music. I’m just carrying on with what’s already on the label but not pursuing anything new (with maybe the exception of an occasional one-off release). It’s hard to stomach investing so much time, energy and money into music when people somehow feel it’s no longer necessary to buy the product of your labor. So I give up.”
The album I once loved but now hope I never hear again
“Any straight-down-the-line punk rock. Anything by the Clash. Ha ha! I hate the fucking Clash! I’m sure they are (or were) nice fellows, but they always seemed like temporary rebellion music for college students. And Gang of Four—don’t get me started on them. Blaaarrrgggghhhhh! Give me the Cramps any day.
“Anyway, I think, ultimately, though it erupted at the right time and was an assault on complacency initially, and at least nominally aggressive and virulent—all qualities I applaud— punk rock was music for joiners, for people who needed to be a part of something, and inevitably it became very claustrophobic and stylized. True punk rock would be Throbbing Gristle or SPK. “Then again, to contradict myself, I liked— though I couldn’t listen to them now—Black Flag, the Dead Kennedys, the Germs, and later even the Buzzcocks, Magazine, Wire, the Fall, etc. Hardcore??? [It’s] veiled homo music for jocks.”
horrible memory because I betrayed myself on that record, by allowing myself to be seduced by the potential for money and a decent life. After years of working crummy jobs and hammering your head against the wall, it’s not surprising that the prospect of making a decent living is alluring. Still, there’s other, better ways to go about it, and I wish I’d have had the foresight to shrug this experience off and persist. Oh well. As Stalin said, ‘We learn; we always learn...’ “
The album I once hated but now love (or at least don’t hate anymore)
“Elton John. I listened to Elton John, David Bowie and Roxy Music obsessively when they came out. I haven’t heard it in years, but the austerity of that second Elton John album stands out. In the early days he was more earnest and low-key, but I like the way he turned into Liberace. “I love great entertainers—Tom Jones, Neil Diamond, Bette Midler and now the fantastique Lady Gaga. Even Jack White of the White Stripes fits in this category, in my opinion. He’s a true pro, a master showman. I’m not a consumer of his music, but I totally respect his showmanship. “Anyway, I saw a special on Elton John on TV maybe a decade ago, and I was in awe. Creatures like him are what make the rest of us retreat and slink away into the murk of daily existence, cowering and furtive, only to emerge again when the light and sound and magic of an Elton John lures us, hypnotized, out of our dismal caves.”
“Yes’s Tales from Topographic Oceans. Ha ha! I saw them play at the same festival I saw Pink Floyd at in 1969 and then again opening for Black Sabbath. They were great! When punk came along, that stuff seemed like drinking gallons of marmalade by comparison, and I rejected it out of hand. Now, I’d rather hear Yes than just about anything ‘punk rock.’ Ha ha! I don’t particularly care for the technique-pyrotechnics of the individual musicians, but I like the aspirations, trying to make a great sonic journey happen. “Back in my day, the best albums were a world in which you could immerse yourself, and of course this notion is directly related to the influence of LSD and the psychedelic experience on modern culture. I also like the fact that Jon Anderson is so fucking twee, such an un-macho persona. It makes the whole experience even more exotic.”
The album people might be surprised I like
The albums I want my children to have
“Bob Dylan’s John Wesley Harding and Blood on the Tracks. These contain the qualities of craft— The album I made but wish I searing imagination, lyrical genius, and complex emotions, pain mingled with irony mingled with hadn’t nostalgia—that constitute high art in songwriting. “Swans’ The Burning World. A true nadir. A few “I don’t get why people say Dylan’s not a good songs on it, though. I sang like a troll in great singer. His singing on Blood on the Tracks is most cases, and it remains a singularly painful spectacular, like ripping out his intestines from memory in that it almost ruined the career of his throat, then suddenly woeful or tender. There myself and Swans permanently. A total disaster are few people I’d be intimidated to meet—I aesthetically and commercially. don’t really have any heroes and don’t want “Paradoxically, one of the best songs I ever any—but if I met Dylan or Willie Nelson, I’d wrote is on it—‘God Damn the Sun’—but my stutter like a fanboy and say something stupid. vocals are portentous and overstated. I was still learning to actually ‘sing,’ as opposed to shouting, These people were delivered onto this planet by God, no question.” // cajoling and declaiming. The whole thing is one
PhotoGRAPHER William Widmer shot and designed the album art of How To Dress Well’s Love Remains LP. This photo by William was inspired by Gold Panda’s Lucky Shiner album.
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