Issue V

Swoon:

muc levant. How re ir y ll a ic g come biolo e?

Men have be rchy continu ia tr a p ll o -r d the rock-an

h longer can

Swoon: It’s true, you don’t hear that many castrati these days. I’m glad you mentioned the vocal aspect of it, because there are certain vocal sounds that pretty much only women are capable of making, and you guys really exploit that. It seems like you play around a lot, experimenting with certain vocal sounds. Is that something you consciously set out to do? How did you come up with these very spontaneous-sounding vocals?

Swoon: You guys sing, and it’s really pretty, but there are also a lot of screams, grunts, etc. Do you feel like women are expected to make “pretty” vocal sounds, and therefore most shy away from a singing style that could be perceived as unfeminine? Or is it just a matter of personal preference?

Swoon: But she’s the exception.

Swoon: Confusion can be good.

Swoon: You guys seem to have a lot of fun when you’re playing, but you also must’ve worked very hard to progress as much as you have over the last few years. Can you describe the changes the band has gone through?

Swoon: I’ve seen you guys go through a few incarnations, but I don’t think I witnessed that one!

But what about more recently, adding Andy to the band?

Swoon: It seems like there’s a dancey feel to some of the new songs. Are people dancing at Lights shows?

Swoon:

k about the alb Madchester! Do you want to tal

um that you just recorded?

Swoon:

a part of—San Francisco, How does that compare to other music communities you’ve been tious and focused on for instance? To me, it seems like people here are a lot more ambi supportive. “making it,” and sometimes that can translate into being less

Swoon: I was going to ask you about tha t, because you reference a lot of sixties psychedelia, And the seventies stuff like Fleetwood Mac, but at the same time there’s a much more aggressive aspect. Were you punk-rock kid s growing up?

Swoon: With MP3s and downloading, there’s all this accessibility, and people are discovering all this crazy music, but one of the downsides is that, the more the sheer volume of music there is, the more the tendency exists to place it into narrower and narrower genres...

Swoon: How did Wizard Smoke become involved with the band? Can you talk about her apprenticeship with the Joshua Light Show? How does she take things to the next level?

Swoon: You guys all have connections to the art world. How do you feel the art world and the music world overlap in New York?

Swoon: With visual art, its value is based on the uniqueness of the object. So it’s only open to a relative elite. But the difficulty with music, especially in the MP3 era, Is how do you make a living off this commodity that can be mass-produced and downloaded by anyone for free?

Swoon: It’s hard to really have perspective unless you’re older, but what you hear are finding it about the old New York versus the new—it seems a lot of people you have impossible to live as an artist or creative person here, because s to spend so much time making a living. Clearly, the way thing are going, people are going to have to get more resourceful.

Swoon:

So to finish up, I just wanted to ask Sophia... What’s your favor

ite guitar pedal?

46

The author circa 1988