Ghost’s version of the Albigensian Heresy surfaced in 2010 when the band’s first album, Opus Eponymous, cut through the underworld of the Scandinavian metal scene with a sense of bold purpose. Beyond the psycho-religious trappings, their riffs ‘n rhythms were precise and catapulting, leavened with a sense of harmony as inventive as Blue Oyster Cult and not sparing the crunching horror show of Iron Maiden or Helloween. Their newest release, Infestissumam, brings them to the Jerusalem that is Nashville, where they recorded with producer Nick Raskulinecz; and as the band approached their venue for this night’s human sacrifice in San Francisco, I made contact through the ether with a Nameless Ghoul — who, if I’m not mistaken, did sound a lot like Papa Emeritus II.

If the first record is about prophesizing the Antichrist, and the second heralding arrival, it seems to mirror your own movement as a band, now undertaking your first headlining U.S. tour and a major label album release.

I never thought of it like that, but that would make sense. Obviously for a band that was for quite some time considered a hype, or by many as a fluke, what we have managed to do is announce ourselves to the world with this record.

This may be a chicken-or-egg question, but which came first, the band or the theatrical concept?

Myself and the other guys are musicians, and we’ve been in several groups together in the past. And while being together in another band, Ghost started when I played a riff to everybody else. I said that this is probably the most heavy metal riff that has ever existed. Then I showed them the opening riff to “Stand By Him.” When the chorus came to me, it haunted my dreams. Every time I picked up the guitar, I ended up playing that progression, and when I fit the words in, it seemed to cry out for a Satanically-oriented lyric. This was in 2006. When we came up with the name Ghost, it seemed only natural to build on the foundation of this heavy imagery. Within that concept we were able to combine our love of horror films, and of course, the traditions of Scandinavian metal.

The shock-horror lyrics, the celebration of devil worship, the guttural vocals and massed slabs of guitar — they’re practically part of Swedish folklore now. The complex overlay of vocal harmonies and the predominance of the keyboards seems to broaden your appeal.

I think on the new record we’re not stepping away from it, but trying to expand on the classical themes of where we come from. When we began we were in an embryonic state, without knowing anyone was listening. Now we seem to be growing along with our audience’s expectations of what we are capable of.

There is a definitely a different feel to this new album than the first. It seems more expansive and inclusive. When you went into the studio with producer Nick Raskulinecz, what kinds of goals did you have in mind, ways in which you hoped the music would develop and grow?

All the songs on the new album, with the exception of “Ghuleh,” were written and demoed in 2011. We knew pretty well what we wanted to do, and going to Nashville was a way in which we could feel a sense of dislocation, of being outsiders. It was almost as if you were a Star Wars fanatic going to a Star Trek convention. Being so out of sync with the city left us to our own devices, like we were on an alien planet, and I think in some ways it pushed us farther out, allowed us to take chances we might not otherwise have were we in our homeland. We are certainly not a country band.

I’d surely agree. In fact, one might say you’re the Anticountry. Speaking of which, how much does the religious imagery you use reflect your own beliefs? Is it more of a theatrical concept, or do you spiritually believe in the dark side?

Let’s put it this way. My whole upbringing was within the extreme metal scene, where diabolical imagery is a way of communicating alienation and otherness. I have been a fan of music like that ever since I was 10, 11. That whole language, that whole way of thinking comes very natural to me. You can view it from different angles, and with Ghost we are attempting to fashion an aesthetic work of art, reflecting the artistic entertainment values of a Biblical linear anti-Christian Satanism. From a personal point of view, we are basically making a mockery of linear religion because it’s such a simplified way of looking at divinity. I think of philosophy and theology as so much grander.

It does seem that your staging and presentation is more for spectacle than hardcore devil worship. No one thought that Alice Cooper was really cutting heads off babies after the show; or that Black Sabbath was drinking the blood of virgins. What are some of the bands you take inspiration from?

We’re influenced by everything ranging from classic rock to the extreme underground metal bands of the ’80s to film scores to the grandeur of emotional harmonic music; that combination gives us a lot of freedom to move our music and staging anywhere. We don’t want to be confined to being any one thing.

So can we expect a Papa Emeritus III with the next album?

Well, I can’t reveal the future. Anything can happen in the antichurch, as within the church itself. In the days of the Avignon schism, back in the 14th century, there were once three Popes fighting for the right to lead the church, excommunicating each other. And that was before the Borgias. There may be a bloody war of succession to come.

That explains why guest vocalist Justin Vernon ventures down paths both familiar (the harmonies that carry “And in Truth” to such great heights) and freakish (the guttural agony of “Brute,” which could double as a Pig Destroyer scratch track) on the trilogy’s third and final installment, To See More Light. Meanwhile, the record itself revolves around Stetson’s strictly analog — no overdubs, no loop pedals, nothing — approach to attacking his alto sax. In many ways, it’s not all that different from the devotion he had for a year-round sports regiment in high school.

“Wrestling encapsulates most of my physical discipline,” explains Stetson. “Ultimately, I had to quit the sport because it was so destructive — dropping 12 pounds in water weight before you go in and compete, then competing well [Laughs]. It was extreme, but it was one of the things that made me.”

Speaking of extremes, we asked Stetson to discuss some of his favorite metal songs down below. Sure enough, they’re all about as dizzying and dynamic as Stetson’s own records.

Metallica, “For Whom the Bell Tolls”

Why were you drawn to Metallica’s early records? Because they were thrash-y but still had a strong melodic sense to them?

Exactly. It’s such powerful music — angst-ridden, but educated. These are guys who did their homework, and are contextualizing what they learned in the world that they see. So you’ve got all of that youthful rage and aggression, but there’s also a nuance to it. And compositionally, I feel like a lot of that was coming from classical traditions in that it was very symphonic.

So you had this convergence of all these strains of music. Metallica was the first one to bring in a pop sense, in terms of how they delivered vocals. Not how the songs were structured though, because they were still doing things their own way. Because of the age I was and the background I had — largely in melodic music — I latched onto them. In my early teens, there was a lot of gaming with my shop friends, and so we would listen to those records. I remember Ride the Lightning was huge with my wrestling team when I was 12, too.

You used it to psyche you up then?

Oh god yeah. I still do that shit.

Before shows?

Yeah, it depends on what I feel I need before a show. Sometimes I need to be very peaceful and level out feelings, and other times I need to conjure up more of that aggression so that’s something that’s been with me since I was a kid. Like, I remember listening to Tool before I’d compete [in wrestling].

Why did you pick “For Whom the Bell Tolls”?

I was running the other day and listening to that record. When it got to that song, it was as if I was listening to the lyrics for the very first time. It was really crazy realizing that, thematically and image wise, there’s this whole thing in the new record with an eagle that’s basically the angel, or spectre, of death. It has these cracked eyes that prevent it from seeing in the light of day or the dark of night, so it can only hunt at the break of dawn or as the sun sets [Laughs].

There’s this death imagery with the main character in my narrative, and so “Who the Waves Are Roaring For” is really “For Whom the Bell Tolls.” There are a lot of weird parallels to the lyrics of that song, and I did not notice that until now. Which is always interesting to me — how things can be filtered through the creative process.

You mentioned gaming before. What kind of games are you talking about?

Oh, when I say “gaming,” I assume everyone knows I’m talking about role-playing games. This was back in the days of Dungeons & Dragons, before everything got complex. This was the mid-to-late-’80s [Laughs].

Were you hanging out with the jocks just so you wouldn’t get beat up for playing Dungeons & Dragons?

I was never a fighter, but I got bigger and more physically imposing by the time I was 11 or 12. It all happened kinda quickly, so no one fucked with me or my friends after that. I guess if you intimidate the jocks, they’ll leave you alone, no matter how many games you play.

Slayer, “Angel of Death”

So this song makes perfect sense now that you mentioned that storyline with the eagle.

Yep. They were working in broad, archetypal stuff too; they were all drinking from the same fountain.

Slayer was obviously a part of thrash’s Big Four, along with Metallica, but what sets them apart?

The scales are tipped towards the thrash, towards the speed and aggression. It’s, I don’t want to say “messier,” but the edges are definitely frayed and it’s more rooted in punk than rock. I don’t know; they’re extremely similar, yet completely different — worlds, in a way. Back then, and still now, I’ve always been driven and excited by songs with such an impassioned, aggressive delivery of something that’s so immaculately structured and precise. It’s riding the fine line between control and oblivion. I feel like that’s what bands like Slayer are all about.

Did you realize what “Angel of Death” was about Josef Mengele when you were a kid?

I’ve lived my life almost entirely oblivious to words. In music, especially. Not that I’m not a reader; I’ve always read a lot. But I’ve never really focused on the language aspect of music. It’s as if I’ve viewed the lyrics and vocals as shapes rather than delivering language and poetry.

That’s something that’s changed for me over the years. It’s one of the bigger shifts I’ve found as I’ve gotten older. At some point in the past five years, I found myself wondering, “When did I start listening to NPR a lot?” Because when I was in my 20s, I’d listen to music a lot in the car, but I wouldn’t sit and listen to the news or want to hear the language that they’re speaking. It made me wonder if my father experienced the same shift as he got older. Because I remember he always wanted to listen to some form of talk radio when I was a kid. And I kept thinking, “Why the fuck does he want to listen to more people talking?” I could never understand it. There must be something to how our brains intellectually relate to words as we get older. I don’t know if that makes sense, but they get brought into play more over time.

It makes sense; as people get older, they basically find peace in NPR or sitcoms. It’s all about having that sound of voices around. It’s comforting in a way.

Yes! Why is that?

Rainbow, “Man on the Silver Mountain”

So let’s talk Dio…

Oh man, I always wanted there to be a compilation of “castle rock” in the same way there used to be ones for things like ’80s rock ballads. Like there’d be Rush with all of those wizard voices…

And Zeppelin!

In a huge way, yeah. If we expanded what we are talking about here, Zeppelin was definitely a huge influence on me in high school. They just fit seamlessly into what I’d been listening to, particularly because of those elf and magic references.

But yeah, Dio — he was a big one for me.

So if you had to choose between hearing Black Sabbath with Dio or Ozzy, you’d choose Dio?

Oh, I don’t know if I’d do that! They’re two different beasts, and I’ve had much more exposure to the Ozzy Sabbath. I don’t know why that was, but Ozzy Sabbath…it fucking had Ozzy’s voice, in the same that Morrissey only has Morrissey’s voice. There’s something about the timbre, and the color of the vocal chords coming out of his mouth that shifts the space in a way. It’s so unique. I could never disparage Ozzy.

Why did you pick this Rainbow song in particular?

“Man on the Silver Mountain”? There’s some overlap in the imagery of [that song] and this record — something shining on top of this mountain, and we’re in search of it, trying to find our way up to that point. What’s up there is this fortress that’s old and made of mirrors. And there’s a man up there, so [laughs]…

Meshuggah, “Soul Burn”

Meshuggah was very much a “thinking man’s metal band” in the ’90s. Is that how you got into them — through how technical they are? Did Destroy Erase Improve blow your mind?

Blew my mind, yeah. And I came to them late. The mid ’90s was college for me, and I wasn’t doing an enormous amount of metal listening then. I was learning so much about so many different things in music school instead — things like European folk music, minimalist composers, jazz, funk, soul and R&B. It wasn’t a hiatus, but it was definitely a point where I wasn’t keeping up with what was popular in the world of rock.

But in ’99, or maybe it was 2000, a friend gave me that record and it rekindled my love for all of that. Now I listen to Meshuggah almost exclusively when I run. I find the way they write incredibly meditative. No matter how odd and intricate the forms are, everything is driving around that [drummer's] pulse.

Did you pick “Soul Burn” for any reason in particular?

“Soul Burn” is one of the ones I landed on when I was writing “Brute.” I gave it to Justin when he asked me, “Where in metal am I looking for inspiration?” He sent me a “Fuck, yeah” back.

Wolves in the Throne Room, “Dia Artio”

What elements of Wolves in the Throne Room’s music are you most attracted to — the black-metal elements, the ambient ones, or the more operatic?

The black metal thing is something I’ve only had a relationship with over the past few years. They’re one of the ones I gravitated toward immediately, probably because of all the elements you just touched upon. There’s something that’s so gorgeous about the way they write, almost this clichéd longing to all of the chord progressions. And there’s a multiplicity in the way they deliver the music. It’s not just one singular voice or style; it’s more symphonic, at least in terms of the sounds and structures they use. But overall, there’s a beauty to it that’s pretty undeniable.

What’s up with this song?

“Dia Artio” is one of their more ambient songs, with a slower pulse. I could recommend any song on this record, but I thought I’d pick this one to set it apart from the other songs on this list. There’s a real patience in this piece, like there is with Sunn O))) or something. Everything is able to breathe, which is something I tried to explore on this record with pieces like “To See More Light” and “Part of Me Apart From You.” There’s this stasis of forcibly slowed down progressions so you can wander through the minutiae.

Krallice, “The Clearing”

In some ways, Krallice is the total opposite of the Wolves track you picked; they’re both capable of really long songs, but Krallice is much more relentless about it.

I find that density very satisfying, the fact that so much can stimulate your mind within it. A lot of different layers are happening sonically. It is very relentless and exact, and it’s surgical, but it has this thick, dense atmosphere around it. They also juxtapose the super low bark-metal man with the Skeletor voice, which I like [laughs].

What do you get out of a newer band like Krallice that you maybe didn’t get out of Metallica when you were younger? Or do they both provide you with the same thing?

Well they’re doing what Metallica was doing then, now — forging new ground. You almost never hear something like that. Like, the first time I heard Liturgy, everything just stopped. A lot of the black metal bands I’m into are not traditional ones. There’s crossover elements to what they’re doing, and that’s what brought me to have such affection for it. There’s a parallel between what I wanted to do with my music and what they were doing with theirs that almost made me say ‘Eureka!’ the first time I heard it. Here’s what I’ve always wanted to do, and these guys are doing it already. It was inspiring, but it also made me buck up and get back into the game. There’s moments where I hit brick walls and wonder if I can push it much farther. But then, when I hear bands like this, I think I can push it much farther.

Don’t you feel like you’ve pushed things as far as they can go sometimes, especially since you perform in such a physical way, without pedals or overdubbing?

Well I haven’t reached a breaking point yet. That said, I went on vacation for a week in March, and when I got back, the chances of pulling off most of the music I’d normally play were absolutely nil. It goes away in a second — the endurance of face muscles, and the fluidity of the tendons in my hands and arms. When there’s a lack of discernible progress in something, I can get pretty sad, so you just have to turn it up. It’s not like you have to play more and more hours; you just have to push things further and further within those hours.

Liturgy, “Generation”

You already talked about Liturgy a bit. To someone who’s maybe not so familiar with them and Krallice, what are some main differences between the two?

That’s a good question. Shit. There’s something about the way Hunter [Hunt-Hendrix] sings that is melodic in a similar way as to how I used to relate to Metallica. Something about the color and timbre of his voice puts that Skeletor thing into a place that, for me at least, is filled with such longing and beauty. At the same time, there’s this churning, aggressive, Wagnerian density happening through all the guitars and drums. The key difference between any band and Liturgy is that they don’t have [drummer] Greg Fox in it — and now Liturgy doesn’t either, which is fucking tragic. But yeah, sometimes there’s these key combinations of players and personalities that are maybe fleeting, but when they combine, it’s something intangible that no one can replicate.

You’re someone who actually has a classical background, so when Hunter says he’s inspired by someone like, say, Steve Reich, can you actually hear that in the music?

[Laughs] I wouldn’t be surprised if he said that. So much of that is happening in music and art these days — this grand, obvious swipe back at the hyper-paced life we’re all living. Everything’s back to the earth and out of the city, a return to the contemplative and meditation. So you could find your way to Liturgy through something other than musical means.

Before you go, can you explain the notion of “ambient grindcore” that supposedly inspired one song on your album?

[Laughs] In all honesty, that was Ian over at Constellation [Records]. I won’t take credit for that one. But “Hunted” was my attempt at, after hearing Aesthetica specifically, dealing with things…I remember I wrote the song “The End of Your Suffering” because I was going to cover a song from Aesthetica but realized I wanted to do something that was more of a nod to that and went so much further. I did think about how blast beats and that density would relate to the bass, so basically it is taking those textures and that sentiment and slowing it down, filtering it through this other medium. I probably would have called it something a lot less awesome. But in the end, his description was apt [laughs].

They clearly know the blues masters well, but their most obvious inspiration is the Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band that in 1972 released Spotlight Kid and Clear Spot, the two “accessible” albums that preceded Beefheart’s hapless attempt to “go commercial” with Unconditionally Guaranteed. But despite some of the sprung rhythms, clanking guitar and singer Joe Doerr’s voice, this band doesn’t really sound that much like Beefheart; the biggest thing they took from him is the understanding that the only way most white kids can play blues credibly and keep ‘em sounding fresh is by using blues only as a taking-off point — and that having done that, you’d damn well better have something to say or you’re just wanking in the wind. Doerr was a founding member of Austin’s Leroi Brothers, a harder-than-hard-edged roots band that played every song like it was trying to stay one step ahead of the police. Churchwood has much the same approach: You can practically feel the sweat pouring out of your speakers, except it’s much thicker — swampier — than real sweat. Doerr rides it like some weird water-park attraction. His voice has Beefheart’s power and gruffness, with a little Tom Waits mixed in there too, and when he breaks into one of his versions of Howlin Wolf’s nonverbal semi-yodeling articulations he is without affectation. He sounds really cool.

Doerr quit music in the ’80s for nearly two decades to go back to college, ultimately winning his doctorate from Notre Dame and then returning to Austin to teach writing and literature at a local private college. The lyrics he writes for Churchwood are a sort of gutter poetry in which French symbolism meets American beats’ free verse, stirred up by a bit of a Screaming Jay Hawkins gross-out. He is not the type who wakes up in the morning and looks around for his shoes because he has those mean ol’ blues. On “Keels Be Damned,” he bellows, “I’m coughing bullshit through my fists/ Crossing fables off my list.” Those lines are more like the bellows of Muddy Waters in “Mannish Boy” and “Seventh Son,” Bo Diddley in “Who Do You Love.” Plus, they’ve got terrific rhythm. Don’t always rhyme, but that’s okay.

Slide guitarist Billysteve Korpi is perhaps better known for his work with the Crack Pipes, arguably Austin’s top garage band. Guitarist Bill Anderson first made his name with the local post-punk roots band Poison 13. There’s no apparent reason why they should sound as stirring as they do, because they don’t really play off each other the way you’d expect; usually it’s more like they’re both soloing at the same time but both soloes work together sublimely. Check out this interplay on the likes of the swampy “Weedeye” or the vehement “Fake This One.”

The other thing the band does to keep things interesting is change tempo several times in one song. The rhythm section doesn’t lay down a blues groove in the conventional sense; they maraud through three or so grooves in one song. That can’t help but keep things from becoming too predictable in that white blooz way. You’re never quite sure what’s coming next, but you know it’s worth sticking around to find out. Until he joined Churchwood, drummer Julien Peterson had been a bass player. But he had the notion that the drummer of this band had to be able to play just behind the behind. Not coincidentally, that’s where you’ll find all the great blues band rhythm sections, and it allows the other players to slide in and out of the groove like Chuck Berry’s cool breeze. In the case of Churchwood, it gives the other players the opening they need to take the sound wherever they wish to while still remaining anchored. And that’s what they do on this album, much more than on their first. This one marks a significant growth over their debut, while leaving plenty of room for further growth on (what will presumably be) Churchwood 3.

Nothing will ever replace the great old bluesmen, and nothing should try. Because this band in fact doesn’t try, it sounds and feels pretty good alongside them. Similar, but different, it occupies its own little niche. Most listeners will describe them as a rock band rather than a blues band, but there’s nothing saying you have to believe that.

Dance-punkers drop us back to the mid-'00s

Considering all the factors working against !!! over the past 15 years — major lineup changes, members who live on opposite coasts, the questionable expiration date of “dance punk” — you’d think they’d be a part-time prospect by now. But no, here they are, delivering a filler-free album that feels like a carefully-curated DJ set, including the disco inferno diatribes of “Get That Rhythm Right,” the convulsive funk of “Station (Meet Me At the)” and the locked grooves of “Fine Fine Fine,” which washes its chest-caving drum circle down with disembodied harmonies. And then there’s the peak house-party hooks of “Slyd,” a runaway single that raises the bar on the rest of the record by pairing flesh-and-blood beats and carefully constructed samples with the call-and-response choruses of Molly Schnick. A longtime friend of the band, Schnick used to play in the !!! side project Out Hud; if there’s any reason for them to reunite in the near future, it’s this floor-filler.

Now that the dance scene’s dominated by laptop-tethered EDM producers and the robot-rock of Daft Punk, it’s almost quaint to hear a record that drops us right back in the mid-’00s, a time dominated by club-ready bands like Bloc Party and LCD Soundsystem. Next thing you know, James Murphy will be hosting a “Losing My Edge” package tour, featuring long-lost pioneers like Liquid Liquid performing their prized 12-inches in full. We can only hope, right?

A little less bleak, but still as ugly as ever

Doom metal is a cathartic outlet for depression and loneliness and, yeah, it sounds pretty great under the influence of recreational pharmaceuticals, since the rhythms are generally slow and repetitive enough to separate the individual instruments and sink into the full, echoing effect of their sound. Howl’s 2010 full-length debut Full of Hell was an angry stoner’s paradise, a feast of trudging riffs, plodding beats, serpentine guitars and tumbling drums that appealed equally to fans of Black Sabbath and Mastodon.

Who knows if frontman Vincent Hausman stopped smoking weed or if he’s merely evolved as a songwriter and musician, but Howl’s second album Bloodlines is far more intricate and diverse. Some of that might be because the band hired a second guitarist, Josh Durocher-Jones, who adds counter-melodies and extra heft to Hausman’s leaden chugs (Since recording the album, Hausman has actually focused strictly on vocals and handed his guitar over to new member Jonathan Hall).

Clearly, vocals have become a priority to Hausman. On Bloodlines he expands his parameters, spewing various flavors of venom, including Lamb of God-style roars (“Attrition,” “Demonic”), shouty growls (“Your Hell Begins, “Of War”) and even moody melodic baritone crooning (“One Last Nail,” “Down So Long”).

The abundant musical flourishes are even more impressive. Howl can still stomp and drone, but they’ve added new tricks to their arsenal, including southern power-groove riffs, twin-guitar harmonies and unexpected shifts in rhythm; the tempos range from mid-paced (“Embrace Your Nerve”) to double-time (“Your Hell Begins”). Clearly, Howl worked exhaustively to overhaul their sound (captured expertly by producer Zeuss and they’ve done so without sounding like a completely different band than the one that recorded Full of Hell.

Maybe that has something to do with their overall aesthetic. No matter how much they’ve strayed from their roots, Howl are still filled with animosity and contempt. Just check out the album art, which depicts a naked woman bleeding from her eyes, a spurting heart, a skeleton with a spear, a wolf and ravens, all of them swimming in an ocean of blood. “I will tear limb from limb/this is where your hell begins,” sings Hausman on “Your Hell Begins.” “Drink up the blood you maggot/spit on the open wound,” he rails in “The Mouth of Madness.” Howl’s music may sound a little less bleak and a bit more multifaceted than they did two year ago, but at the core they remain as ugly as ever.

Iggy’s subsequent decision to reconvene the band’s second line-up — and coax legendary guitarist James Williamson out of retirement — was less expected. While the original combo had never enjoyed any success during its fleeting existence, the infamous second incarnation of The Stooges, born circa 1972, was doomed from the outset and soon became a byword for druggy self-destruction. Although all just about escaped with their lives, this was the unlikeliest reunion.

Back in the day, The Stooges Mk 2 were augmented by James Williamson, a fabulously talented guitarist, whose savage, mangled riffing on the band’s lone album, 1973′s Raw Power, was a perfect foil for Iggy’s incandescent lyricism. Their brutality was way ahead of its time: only once they’d imploded, and Iggy had checked himself into a Californian psychiatric unit, would both incarnations of the band become a key influence on punk rock.

Their story is singular enough, even without the added spice that Williamson quit music altogether circa 1980, and spent the intervening 30 years working successfully as an electrical engineer in Silicon Valley in California. His return in 2009 couldn’t have been less foreseeable, but subsequent tours showcasing Raw Power and 1975′s Pop/Williamson collaboration, Kill City, found his playing remarkably unspoiled — and undiluted.

It remains as such on Iggy & The Stooges’ remarkable comeback record, whose title, Ready to Die, is a fittingly gnarly statement from unrepentant rockers in their mid 60s. Its 10 tracks balance swinging riffage with near-the-knuckle balladry, while Iggy holds forth on gun control, underpaid labor, abundant female breasts and, indeed, death. In exclusive conversation with eMusic’s Andrew Perry, these legends are implausibly invigorated.

For a peek into the Stooges’ record collection, click here.

Iggy, how did you persuade James to rejoin the band, after so long out of the game?

Iggy Pop: After Ron Asheton passed away in 2009, I talked to James about possibly coming in for some gigs that we had booked already, and I also talked to a friend of Ron’s who was in a Stooges tribute band, [Radio Birdman's] Deniz Tek. I ended up canceling the gigs, but James and I stayed in touch, and toward the end of that year, I had an offer that was too good to refuse. And James was up for it.

James had to do a lot of rehearsal to relearn how to play the guitar after 37 years, and in the course of doing so he sent me a very nice piece of dobro blues music — he called it “Ron’s Tune.” And he began and ended the tune with a slide-guitar rendition of “I Wanna Be Your Dog,” which is Ron’s greatest and best known riff.

James, you’d not been playing in public for all that time, but had you been doing music privately, just for your own enjoyment?

James Williamson: Not really, no. I wrote one song when we were doing New Values [Iggy's 1979 solo album], and that was it. After the really bad experience we had on Soldier [Iggy's 1980 solo album], I just said, “Screw this, I’ve gotta focus on technology.” I just put the guitar down. There was the odd time or two, when I’d pull it out and try and impress my son, but by then I was pretty rusty, so he was kinda like, [skeptical] “Really, dad?!” So I just stopped altogether.

But then, about a year and a half before I got the call to rejoin the band, I happened to be at a flea market, and came across this old guitar. I didn’t know what [brand] it was, but it sounded amazing, and I bought it for a song basically, because the guy who was selling it didn’t know what it was either. It turned out to be made by a guy from the 1920s and ’30s, named Hermann Weissenborn. He made Spanish-necked guitars, as well as lap steels, back in the heyday of Hawaian music, and was really a master.

So that inspired me to play a little bit. Granted, that was acoustic, so it was not the same as playing in The Stooges, although I wrote most of the songs [for The Stooges] on acoustic.

So did it take quite a bit of practice to get “match fit” for those first shows in ’09?

Williamson: It’s funny, if you ever could play guitar in the first place, you have the same synapses and muscle memory and all that stuff — it all comes back. I did have to work pretty hard to get it up to a kind of professional level, but I had six months to do it. We rehearsed a lot, and I did one show with a local band, just to get the feel of it. Almost all of our set is my stuff, and then the earlier Stooges stuff is pretty simple.

But in terms of writing, I had not done that at all, so going into this album was a little daunting at first, but then things got going so well, you couldn’t hardly stop it.

Some reactivated bands, like the Pixies, believe that it’s okay for them to play shows for people to enjoy the old material, but that they shouldn’t make new records, because they can never match up — they can only tarnish their own legacy. You obviously disagree…

Pop: My motivation in making any record with a group at this point is no longer personal, it’s just a pigheaded fucking thing I have, that a real fucking group, when they’re an older group, they also make fucking records. They don’t just twiddle around onstage to just make a bunch of money and then go, “Oh, it wouldn’t be as good.” This is not the fucking Smashing Pumpkins, you know? No. So this is the key, the only thing I really have left to say is, The Stooges are a real group.

Williamson: The first priority when we reformed was to get the band cracking, and in tour shape. And I think you saw the results of that. Then after about 2011 or so, we started thinking, Well, you know, shouldn’t we make a record? But we weren’t sure we could do it. The previous album, The Weirdness [released by The Stooges Mk 1 in '07] didn’t come out too well, or at least the critics didn’t like it much, and so I was determined that we would make a record that we felt was really representative of us, and that we liked.

So I started writing with Ig, and that was the first revelation — it’s funny, but we have some kind of chemistry, for lack of a better word, where we can actually write songs fairly quickly. So we started doing that when we had time, and little by little some of them started sounding pretty good. It took quite a long time, because we were still touring, but we made a concerted effort in 2012, and eventually we came up with 15 songs, and then pared them down to 10 that went on the album.

Were there any ground rules for making it? Anything you wanted to avoid? Or was it just the music that came out?

Williamson: It was pretty much just the music that came out. We really were keenly aware that, this being the 40th anniversary of Raw Power, all this stuff would get compared. So we didn’t wanna write in the rearview mirror, if you will. If you fall into that trap, you start to be a caricature of yourself. We wanted to be authentic, as we are now, and that’s what you’ve got — songs about today, and I think it ended up being some very topical material, that covers gun control, immigration, sex, money — you know, all the keen topics. And the music sounds like us. I think we couldn’t help but be us really.

We kinda still maintained the old school way. We used tape on a lot of stuff, and a lot of analogue outboard equipment, like Neave 10-73 pre-amps. That’s the killer sound, maybe a little bit of a throwback to the ’70s, but I think Ig stepped up and really sang his ass off. And I played hard.

Have you felt any obligation maybe to reinhabit your state of mind as you remember it from the early ’70s, to be true to the original Stooges, to be the “streetwalking cheetah” from the classic song “Search & Destroy,” but updated for today? On several songs you actually seem in quite a dark place: on ‘Unfriendly World’, you sing, “Fame and fortune make me sick, and I can’t get out.” In short, not the streetwalking cheetah…

Pop: Well, unfortunately for me, I’ve hit a point in my life where I’m kinda famous, and I’m not used to that, ’cause I couldn’t get arrested my whole fucking life. Nobody knew who I was, except for a few crazy people. So I got to be like 50 and still living like outside of crappy areas in New York City, and nobody knew who I was. I got used to that, so, no, I’m not used to who I am now, and it’s not in my interest to express myself, some days. I’m not like most people, I don’t share the acceptable thoughts on society; mine are unacceptable. So it’s become harder and harder for me to give in a lyric. Also I may just be out of things [to say] — as you get older you notice your vocabulary stays the same.

So I have to be careful because if I say what’s really on my mind I might get laughed at or locked up, or cause other problems around me. And the world has changed and I’m a person who’s very fortunate to be walking around healthy, free, and respectable; in terms of what I did, way back when, and I know it, I have this mentality.

Looking back at Raw Power, it was always doomed to commercial failure, at the time at least. You came in on guitar, James, and Ron Asheton came back in at the last minute, but relegated to bass, with his brother Scott on drums. Any human resources manager would’ve told you, that’s not a band that’s going to thrive and conquer the world, there will be arguments…

Williamson: And that’s exactly what our management thought! [The Stooges were signed up by David Bowie's management company, at the behest of Bowie, who was obsessed with Iggy. —Ed.] Going over to London, just me and Iggy at first, at that particular time — it was sort of ground zero for the glam thing, and here we are, some midwestern US guys who’d never been out of the US before, and we got parachuted in to Bowie’s world, and T Rex’s world — Marc Bolan was on fire when we got there.

We’d never seen anything like that since The Beatles. The girls were flinging themselves against the chain-link fences, and crying and screaming, and we were thinking, “Wow, okay, this is pretty cool,” but when we went to find musicians, it was like we just couldn’t relate to the guys. There was guys ruffled cuffs and collars and flowers and stuff, and it wasn’t us.

Our management wanted us to be like pop stars, like Bowie. That was the model they had, and in fact they didn’t even want me to come over. They just wanted Iggy, so they kind of begrudgingly let this surly-looking, pimply, long-haired guy come along with him, and then pretty soon there were four of us [when the Ashetons arrived], haha! So every time we’d bring a demo to MainMan, the management, they would reject it. “I Got A Right,” “I’m Sick Of You” — all those great songs were done before Raw Power, and they didn’t like them.

So our job was to try to come up with some material that they would like, but the real break we got was that David Bowie suddenly started getting very popular, so that took all the focus off of us, and they just didn’t have time to deal with us. But we owed an album to CBS, so they let us just go in the studio on our own, and make it. I don’t think Raw Power would’ve been made otherwise, or at least it certainly wouldn’t have been the same.

In the end, though, MainMan, took Bowie into the studio to remix the album, in the hope of making something palatable out of it, and the released version came out pretty tinny. Did that upset you?

Williamson: The good news was, we were left alone without any adult supervision. The bad news is, this is my first album, so I assumed Iggy knew what he was doing, but Iggy’s not a technical guy, and so I think we made the engineer do a lot of things he didn’t really wanna do. The basic tracks — bass and drums, and probably some guitar — were all done live in the room together, so the isolation wasn’t very good, so there’s a lot of bass in the drums.

It’s a mess really, in some ways, so I think when David Bowie went to mix it, he didn’t have much to work with. He probably had to take the bass and drums down quite a bit, like he did, in order not to hear all that stuff. But of course he made me sound great, because basically it’s just guitars and vocals — which is what Jack White has made a career out of, by the way! So it’s not all lost.

Steve Jones of The Sex Pistols always says he learnt to play guitar by playing along to Raw Power in his bedroom (on speed!). When you first heard British punk rock, did you think, “Hang on, they’re ripping us off”?

Pop: Williamson has such a strong energy, he’s a Scorpio, and he has powerful waves of negative repellent energy in his playing. So it’s no accident that it was his playing that ignited certain sparks that led to English punk rock, no accident at all.

Williamson: I hear him say that, and I’m like, “Really?! Because I consider myself a positive force.” The only way I can interpret that is he’s saying I’m like a bad-ass guitar player, in which case I consider it a compliment.

Pop: Someone put it this way in a recent book, that the original Stooges with Ron, Scott, myself and Dave, were like lone artisans, working away in isolation, crafting away the templates for the content of punk rock. But nobody knew the tree was falling in the forest. It took a combination of James Williamson and David Bowie. They both served similar roles in my life and it took the platform that we got from Bowie’s people, and the negative waves from Williamson, to put us in touch with the generation that really articulated punk.

So did it feel like a vindication?

Williamson: By the time all that stuff had started happening, I was pretty much out of music, so I wasn’t really paying much attention to it, but of course it was hard to miss The Sex Pistols, so I did notice a kind of similarity, and I thought to myself, “Good for these guys, they were able to put it together, and market it successfully.” They were doing stuff right. That was one of the regrets that I think I’ve always had about the early Stooges — we were just too fucked-up to be successful [laughs]. We just didn’t care about that kind of stuff. In the end it broke up the band, because people just couldn’t go on.

Iggy, your lifestyle problems ran on well into the 1990s, as has been well documented over the years. But James, how did you manage to extricate yourself, straighten up and hold down a challenging, cutting-edge job for so long?

Williamson: I think he has a different kind of vulnerability to these things than I do. I wasn’t as bad as people make me out to be in terms of drug usage and debauchery and all this sort of stuff. I always had girlfriends who were usually pretty clean, and so once I stopped doing music it wasn’t too hard for me to get cleaned up. That’s not the hardest part, though. The hardest part is getting your mind wrapped around different concepts. It was a rather large existential gap, between The Stooges and calculus, for example.

Where exactly did you work? Legend has it you ended up working for Sony in computer programming.

Williamson: No, no, I went back to school, to become an electrical engineer, because I was fascinated by the personal computer. It was the very beginning of that, and it was much more exciting to me than what rock ‘n’ roll had become. It was really tough, but when I was finished, I got hired to a company called Advanced Micro-Devices up in Silicon Valley, which is where I still live, and from there I worked through a succession of jobs. It was a really exciting run — the PC, and eventually the internet, waves and waves of different technology from brilliant people that I got to work with. So I never really regretted any of it.

Is it true you’d been presented with a retirement package just around the time you got the call from Iggy?

Williamson: Yeah, the timing of it was just unbelievable. For all its success, the company was not immune to this current economic situation, so they were handing out those packages. I looked at the package, and at first I wasn’t sure I wanted to take it, but eventually I thought, “You know what, I can’t actually afford not to take this.” So coincidentally Ig had called, and initially I just told him, “No,” but then a little while went by, and I decided to take the package. I had also given Ig’s call a lot of thought, and soul-searching, and I felt like I kind of owed it to those guys. We went back a long way. They were fresh out of Stooges — I was kind of the only one left, so I called him back and said, “Let’s do it.”

Was there some patching up to do between you? Iggy, you’ve said that you hung up the phone after James accepted your offer, and suddenly panicked, “Hang on, but James is the devil!”

Williamson: I don’t know where all that devil stuff comes from exactly, but yes we did have some patching up to do. The thing is, when people die, there’s also this funny thing that happens, and a lot of stuff suddenly isn’t that important, that has been going on all those years. We didn’t really talk much after Soldier for 20, 25 years. Only the odd phone call for publishing or whatever. After Ron died, we got together down in L.A. when Ig was doing a benefit show with the Red Hot Chili Peppers. We chewed the fat for a little bit. It was no big deal, but I think it made it easier for both of us to go forward from there.

Your lives have been so different in the intervening years. Does that give an extra frisson to The Stooges now?

Pop: To deal with him, the bar was higher. And it was also higher for me because this has got my name on it — it’s Iggy & the Stooges [just as the band was billed for Raw Power], so I had to live up.

Williamson: The thing is, you can’t help but be who you are. The first two years of touring together, we covered a lot of ground about different experiences we’d had over the years, but basically the two of us know each other since we were in our 20s, and so we go back a long way, and I don’t care what you do in your life, there’s some things that never change about people. That person’s personality was developed early in life, way before your 20s, and they’re pretty much always that same person. When you know somebody for that long, you dial into the commonality, rather than the difference.

Is it an odd feeling to be a celebrated guitar hero now, James, when all you’d ever known before was being in that loser band from Detroit all those years ago?

Williamson: It’s just unbelievable. I can’t begin to tell you what it’s like now. The largest show I ever played in the five years I was first in The Stooges was less than 2,000 seats. The first show I played back with The Stooges was 40,000 people in Sao Paolo, Brazil. Just, what?! People are crazy about us. Twenty-somethings are out there in the audience, and we even got in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The last four or five years have been like victory laps. And we’ve made a new album which was really a defining full-circle moment for the band. I’m very proud of it.

The frequent indie collaborator proves most formidable and impressive on his own

Avant-garde saxophonist Colin Stetson’s credits as a collaborator include a slew of indie friends — Arcade Fire, Feist, Godspeed You! Black Emperor and TV on the Radio among them — but he’s most formidable and impressive on his own, with just a metal horn and a pair of heaving lungs to help push air through its twisty, peculiar channels. Stetson’s expansive style finds fine form in “Hunted,” an unusual instrumental track that matches ghostly, wordless cries to a sax treatise in which Stetson taps on keys percussively while blowing out sounds as if summoning some strange prehistoric beast. “High Above a Grey Green Sea” follows in a comparatively subtle mode, abstracting the sax until it’s mostly a tool for texture and extrapolations on timbre and tone. Stetson is credited for playing alto, tenor and bass saxophones (the latter a burly monster of an instrument), but the presence of each, in all cases, conforms to the whole of his unique sound-world. Another habitué of that world is Justin Vernon from Bon Iver, who contributes vocals on four songs in a very Bon Iver-ian way (see, especially, “Who the Waves are Roaring For”). His nuanced presence is never unwelcome but it is also ultimately unnecessary — a testament to the powers that Stetson wields on his own.

Andrew Perry interviews the band about their remarkable comeback album here.

Scuzzy, no-nonsense blues-rock

Tracked entirely at Dan Auerbach’s Easy Eye studio in Nashville, Hanni El Khatib’s sophomore outing lives up to its title. Head in the Dirt is loaded with raw, scuzzy, no-nonsense blues-rock, its lyrics telling of misfit isolation, relationship angst and hardscrabble street life.

Plenty has already been said about the garage revival spearheaded by the likes of Ty Segall, JEFF the Brotherhood and Mikal Cronin, but what sets El Khatib apart is his fascination with the rootsier end of rock ‘n’ roll — think Bo Diddley and Ballin’ Jack. Thanks to his Bay Area skate-park roots, he absorbed these influences through the dual prisms of hip-hop and punk, which made his 2011 debut Will the Guns Come Out a muzzle-blast of slashing guitars, gravel-crunching beats and rebel swagger.

El Khatib’s growth as a songwriter takes Head in the Dirt a step further, but it doesn’t hurt that he has an ass-kicking band behind him (Auerbach on bass, Bobby Emmett on keyboards and Patrick Keeler on drums). The title track swirls out of a psychedelic haze into a razor-sharp groove, with El Khatib snarling into a distorted microphone, “Don’t want your empathy/ The road to my heart is narrow and covered with thorns.” Despite that grim sentiment, El Khatib is mostly having fun; you can hear it in the guitar solo that rips through “Skinny Little Girl,” in the twists and shouts of “Save Me” (which reprises the evergreen “Not Fade Away” shuffle beat, and in the pure elation of the scuzz-pop ditty “Penny” (“You’re my perfect little penny/ So please shine on”). Vintage amps buzzing all around him, El Khatib sounds right at home in the Black Keys’ sandbox.

Working with adventurous influences to brute, yet majestic ends

A cabin on the side of an active volcano is a captivating image. There, pastoral peace shares space with violent bombast; the world is a fury, a wonder. As a metaphor it’s an exceptional fit for Akron/Family’s music; as a real place, it served as the location from the writing of their last release, 2011′s ecstatic S/T II: The Cosmic Birth and Journey of Shinju TNT. Some two years later the band has come down from the mountain and crawled down into the doom basement (studio) of Seattle producer Randall Dunn. The new songs take aim at familiar targets (harmony, frenzy), but find the band working with an adventurous set of influences to brute, yet majestic ends.

The album flips between prog-psych freak-outs, monastic slow jams, Afro-pop rhythm and noise-addled soul. Reverb drenched vocals, swells of minor-keyed strings, futzed electronics, complex drum rhythms smack against handclaps, jangly guitars and lightly spaced tambourine, and horns. The tracks skid from one time signature or influence to another, but feel of a whole — like some take on American roots by way of a post-industrial Africa invaded by Eastern shamans. On paper, it sounds haphazard, incomplete. But Akron/Family build these disparate parts into something explosive or holy or both, time and again on Sub Verses. There’s no mythic volcano to stamp the narrative; there’s only a radical harmony, divergent strands threading together.

Hushed and delicate portrayals of loveless lives, dissonant relationships and bleak futures

The London trio Daughter usually gets filed under folk or indie-folk, but their music bears no traces of strum-and-stomp barnstorming or campfire confessional. The band interprets folk the same way Jason Molina records do: dusky guitars, spare arrangements, sparse beats and anguished vocals thrust into the spotlight. Daughter’s full-length debut, If You Leave, softens this stark foundation with chilly atmospheric effects, lyrics haunted by romantic angst and rebirth, and Elena Tonra’s low-lit voice, which is as hazy and tortured as Chan Marshall sounded on early Cat Power records. The results are often hushed and delicate; “Smother” is lovely slow-core, both “Amsterdam” and “Winter” resemble Bat for Lashes, and the relatively upbeat “Human” echoes the whimsy of Sigur Ros’s folkier moments.

Yet Daughter isn’t easily pigeonholed; If You Leave‘s biting moments sting like an icy wind. “Youth” transforms from a somber lullaby into a galloping, battle-scarred treatise on failed relationships (“If you’re in love, then you are the lucky one/’Cause most of us are bitter over someone”), while electric guitar simmers underneath the surface of “Lifeforms” before crescendoing into distressed post-rock howls. The record is desolate and desperate in equal measures. Little by little, If You Leave‘s portrayals of loveless lives, dissonant relationships and bleak futures burrow under the skin, lingering long after the album ends.

Direct and tuneful, replacing raw, loose rhythms with more economical song structures

Over the past two years, Louisville, Kentucky’s Coliseum have completed their evolution from a storming, metallic hardcore powerhouse to a more musically refined post-punk band. The group’s fourth full-length, Sister Faith is direct and tuneful, replacing raw, loose rhythms with more economical song structures. The album was produced by J Robbins, which explains the Jawbox influence, but there are also strains of Fugazi and Quicksand present in the barbed hooks.

As much as the music seems driven by the members’ collective record collections, Ryan Patterson’s lyrics seem to stem from an inability and unwillingness to fit into the mainstream and the toll it has taken. “All my life, failure, All I see, failure/ All my dreams, failure,” he barks in “Last/Lost” before concluding, “See clearly from failure, live freely from failure.” And on “Fuzzbang,” he rails, “Gotta get away, wish we could close our eyes and dream it all away.” Patterson’s resigned discontent shines through Coliseum’s tunes, which steamroll without obliterating and cut without leaving scars regardless of tempo or intensity.

A genuine rebirth of a sneering, vital band, defiant as ever

Few albums are so misleadingly titled as Ready to Die. The first release in 40 years under the “Iggy & the Stooges” banner sounds nothing like resignation; its taut 10 songs — clocking in at an old-school 34 minutes — constitute a genuine rebirth of a sneering, vital band, defiant as ever. Iggy Pop’s voice retains its feral power on searing opener “Burn” and lower-middle class anthem “Job,” while his deep croon conveys poignancy on the woebegone closer “The Departed.” Not-so-secret weapon James Williamson, retired from his job at Sony, is back in the fold, replacing the late Ron Asheton, and reminding listeners how integral his gracefully primal guitar playing and hooky songwriting were to seminal 1973 Stooges classic Raw Power. Bassist Mike Watt’s muscular, supple lines propel everything forward, even flirting with Motown-y funk on hilarious horndog anthem “DD,” while original Stooge drummer Scott “Rock Action” Asheton keeps it all earthbound, but just barely.

File under: Classic guitar pop. Glitter girls who like to skateboard and make art. Stylish and sharp. Bubblegum punk. Love rock for heartbreakers who don't mess around.

For fans of: The Buzzcocks, The Breeders, Blondie, Best Coast, B Girls, Beach Boys

From: Los Angeles

Personae: Jennifer and Jessie Clavin

When women and girls listen to love songs written by and/or performed by men, we have to filter stuff out, switch pronouns and, often, navigate a sexist point of view. After a lifetime of listening to male-dominated pop music I’m used to making these kinds of adjustments in my head, but I still feel starved for love songs that I can actually identify with and dance to without a power struggle. This drives me to write my own songs and actively seek out pop groups that give voice to a female perspective on desire. I want to know what girls want, not just what guys tell us we want.

Bleached’s Ride Your Heart is quickly becoming my favorite American guitar-pop album since The Breeders’ Last Splash. Upbeat, infectious melodies are enhanced by minimalist arrangements reminiscent of power pop by Nick Lowe or mid-period Ramones. The songs explore the tension between narcissism and objectification, desire and attraction, longing and sweet sadness, real feelings and true crushes. It’s the sound of a girl’s fast-beating heart. You don’t have to be a teenager to feel like one; just put this album on repeat.

It was my pleasure to chat on the phone with Jennifer and Jessie Clavin about their evolution from Mika Miko, their visual aesthetic, and the L.A. music scene.

On playing in the all-teenage-girl punk band Mika Miko:

Jennifer: We would tour so much, but we were all like best friends. We learned how to play our instruments playing in that band; I learned how to book our tours. Also the hard parts of touring: how to deal with being so close to people all the time and work through situations. Just a lot of crazy things would happen, and we’d have to deal with it on tour and being really young. One night in Texas — it was our first tour around the U.S., and we stopped at SXSW and met this guy who invited us back to his house to party. So we went, and like — we know, you know, “don’t eat like shit, drink water” — but we were smoking weed from this huge bong and all of a sudden the cat started throwing up all over the house and the guy who lived there came out of this dark hallway and he was totally green and someone in Mika Miko started freaking out. I think there was something else in the weed, and we had to take her to the emergency room.

Another time this guy was like, “Oh come play our festival” and we had a day off so we were like, “Why not, we’ll just go play our set.” So we finally get there — and it was so out of the way — and he’s like, “You’re playing in the living room.” So we play in the living room and he was literally the only person in the living room watching us, the only other people in there were just walking by to go to the bathroom. Finally, he was like, “Sorry I can’t pay you guys any money because I had to buy the keg just to get people to come here.” We were like “whatever” and ended up stealing one of his pedals.

That made me realize that maybe doing everything yourself doesn’t always work out. At that point I was still booking the tours myself. I realized that if we wanna keep doing this, we have to get a booker.

On the musical aesthetic of Bleached:

Jennifer: In Mika Miko we were just playing straight punk. My favorite bands were Black Flag, Redd Kross, Circle Jerks, TSOL, and that’s what Mika Miko was trying to do. Jesse and I started getting into different kinds of music, like Fleetwood Mac, Rolling Stones, Gun Club. We’re writing songs that are punk, but also rock ‘n’ roll with a little bit of pop. We’ll pretty much write the whole song and I get to sing whatever I wanna sing. With Mika Miko, I was kinda scared to sing about what I wanted because there were so many people’s opinions. In Bleached I feel comfortable and we can experiment and we get to have a lot more control over everything.

On making stuff look cool:

Jennifer: When we first started, we didn’t know if we were gonna take Bleached seriously or not. We didn’t know where we wanted to go with it. We were really excited to have a visual side that wasn’t just live. The record art I really wanted to have a similar look and feel. I think when you look at all our record art, you kind of get the same feeling from each picture. They’re beautiful, but also dark in a way and they say something about love. I got that from the bands I grew up liking. They all have a visual side. It’s also just like taking what you have and expressing it. Like the Smiths records, you know [by looking at it] that it’s a Smiths record or like Black Sabbath art or Rolling Stones. Those are all my favorite bands, so I was inspired by that. If you have a band, why not take the art side of it seriously too, and make it look just as cool as you want it to look?

Jessie: Growing up, our dad was working in the industry as a sound engineer at Universal, so he was around movie sets a lot and we were always visiting him. Someone always had a video camera. I remember even just being in a car and playing some punk song, and someone would just push record on the camera. Sometimes we’d go film our friends skateboarding. Most of it was just fun, but then we started doing little shorts and did some videos for Mika Miko. I have a box of so much footage of us, but I have to find the equipment to set it up to watch it again. There’s so much Super 8 footage from tour that I keep because I’m gonna use it for something.

On making the record:

Jennifer: When we record we have a drummer, but me and Jesse do everything else. I play rhythm guitar and sing and Jessie does lead guitar and bass. When we first started, we just wanted it to be Jessie and I, because we had already been in a band where it was so hectic trying to get everyone together all the time. We were like, “We’ll just do it ourselves.”

On hanging out in the L.A. music scene:

Jennifer: It’s actually been really fun lately. There was a period where there weren’t that many fun bands, then it just started up again. FIDLAR are really good live, and Tangea are really fun live, too. And our friends Chad and the Meatbodies. There was just a festival in Santa Ana called Burgerfest because Burger Records is a label from Santa Ana and it was all these bands that are on Burger, like Gap Dream and they’re so good. That festival was soooooo fuuunnn, just so many kids going crazy. It was insane. I don’t know how many people that place holds, but it must be at least 1000. It was so crazy.

On where they will be 10 years from now:

Jessie: Jen will have her own clothing line. Possibly lingerie. She also wants a flower shop. Next to Jen’s flower shop, I’ll have a restaurant and it will be, like, all the food we ate on tour. Our band will still play shows. Maybe not tour as much — festivals would be cool. In 10 years we’ll be ready to do things at home.

But right now, we’re in this moment with Bleached. This is what we are doing right now. This is what’s in front of us to do. If you wanna go back to school, you can always do that later. This is the right time to be doing Bleached. It’s what we’re supposed to be doing.

So it’s not a surprise that Phoenix took their sweet time crafting an encore. Four long years after Wolfgang, they’ve delivered, Bankrupt!, their fifth studio album that contains a slightly hazier, more impressionistic batch of songs that nonetheless maintains their genial approach and pack epic hooks.

eMusic’s Ryan Reed spoke with bassist Deck D’Arcy just before the group’s performance at Coachella, discussing their steady career trajectory and to unlock the eclectic influences behind Bankrupt!‘s standout tracks.

On the album’s slightly more experimental vibe:

[The experimentation] was not really conscious. We have a bit of a weird way to write songs — it’s a bit empirical. We basically record everything we are doing and listen to stuff afterward with fresh ears and make a very thorough selection of short bits of music that we then put together, trying to create cool stuff at random. It’s hard to consciously write a proper song from A to Z. What we find attractive at first is something quite predictable, so we kind of have to put together kind of random stuff, and sometimes it ends up being weird.

But what’s weird now is not going to be weird in two weeks or years or whatever. What’s weird is relative to the timeline — it’s not very absolute. It just depends on when you hear stuff. Most of my favorite albums, I didn’t care for on my first listen. I remember the first time I listened to [Beck's 1996 album] Odelay, I didn’t like it, and it ended up being my favorite album of all-time — or in the top three. So for us, this is how we see music anyway. We love “grower” albums.

On the pressures of following Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix:

The thing is we don’t really choose where we’re going, you know? We just make everything ready to capture our inspiration in the studio, but we don’t know where we’re going, and that’s the exciting part of it. If we knew where we were going, it wouldn’t be genuine. We don’t know what we want, but we know what is cool and not cool for us. We just generate as much music as possible and select what’s cool.

Shit, I lost my point [laughs]. The thing is, we did have quite crazy success on the last album from where we were before, but every album has been a relative success. The first album came out of nothing — we were just a Versailles band, and we released an album and ended up touring the world. The album wasn’t a worldwide success, but it was still kind of crazy. We felt like, “Wow, this is amazing!” With the second album, we had success in some other countries. We had an idea of what success is and an idea of how inconsistent it is. This time, [the success] was the U.S., so it had a bigger consequence, of course. But I really think we haven’t been influenced by the success of the previous album.

We did all of our albums in a very selfish way. The only goal is to impress the other band members, not really to impress the audience. We just decided to do it exactly the same way we did Wolfgang — not trying to impress anyone other than ourselves. When we finished Wolfgang, no one really liked it – like, [among] our friends. We had no record company then. We didn’t struggle with it, but it wasn’t easy. People were like, “Yeah, that’s cool, whatever.” It ended up being successful, but that wasn’t really obvious at the time. So we decided to apply exactly the same formula [with Bankrupt!].

“Trying to be Cool”

We found this little melody a long time ago in New York, and we left it aside for like a year. We re-listened to it a year after, and there was something too obvious in it. So we kind of left it. But I remember we started re-trying it a year after with different instruments, and it started to have a new vision. We changed the key and everything. At the time, we were listening to a lot of French artists from our childhood era — the mid ’70s to late ’70s. And we were really inspired by that. And we gave it another try, and it worked. I remember [producer] Phillipe Zdar coming to the studio, saying [uses harsh French accent] “Yeah, yeah, you have to finish that track right now! Just go for it!” It felt like an investigation creatively.

“Chloroform”

While working on “Drakkar Noir,” at some point, we started playing it at half-tempo, and it had this repetitive groove and vibe. “Chloroform” is a loop of “Drakkar Noir” but quite slower — which is a very easy trick — but the music came out of it. We liked the kind of hip-hop quality. We like to explore areas that are far-flung from what we usually do, and we thought this was interesting. It’s very random — it came out of little accidents from “Drakkar Noir.”

“Oblique City”

This song was inspired by another French artist from the same era — early ’80s, before the ’80s became cheesy, kind of French punk. Probably a bit obscure for you, but for us, it means a lot. His name is Jacno. We were really obsessed with this at some point. It wasn’t the easiest one to put together, with all the layers. This one has a lot of key changes, and we were really fascinated by key changes on this album. I think this is what you’re calling “weirdness.” We had to work a lot on that one — it was probably the one we worked the most on.

“Bankrupt!”

The very first stuff we recorded on the album is actually in that track — we did it in Australia. The beginning of the song with the marimba, it’s actually the first take we did for the album. And the very end, the last vocal take we did is on there. So this is the track that followed us throughout the whole process, and it’s a very meaningful track for us. This is neither an introduction nor an outro — it’s a very important part of the album, so that’s why we put it in the middle. Every album we do, we realize it’s not really on purpose, but there’s always an instrumental or maybe two. In the studio, we always do a lot of different things, and we felt like it was totally a part of the album. But it’s not a real instrumental because it’s sung at the end, but three-quarters of it is instrumental. We grew up listening to a lot of soundtracks and instrumental music, so I guess it’s in our DNA to make instrumental tracks as well. Actually, it’s cool live, as well. We’ve started playing it, and it’s really intense.

“Entertainment”

It’s funny because everyone thinks it sounds Asian. It’s true, but the original inspiration was the Éthiopiques compilations. They’re a bunch of compilations of Ethiopian music from the ’60s to the ’80s. We listened to a lot of this. Working with the Ethiopian key, which is a Pentatonic key, it’s very close to the Asian one. We found this melody at the beginning of “Entertainment,” and it ended up sounding very Asian, even though it’s really Ethiopian. Anyway, it’s the Pentatonic key, which has been around for centuries.

It’s the first track on the album because it’s the first track we finished. When we do a new album, we think it could have been made by a whole new band, but maybe this one is the closest to Wolfgang. I’d actually never thought about it, but it’s possible.

On the album’s track sequence:

That’s the specialty of Phillipe Zdar. He’s very good at it. I remember for awhile, we were having arguments, but on this one, he found the perfect order the first time. It took him like two days, and he came back with it, and everyone agreed. Which never happens in Phoenix — we have arguments about everything. But it was just perfect, or we felt it was perfect. Especially on this album, the sequence is quite important. We tried a lot, and we felt, “This is not right.” And Phillipe found a good one, so it’s thanks to him. We grew up with the LP — we are old now, so we’re used to the LP’s A-side, B-side vibe. It’s very important to us, the album format. So it’s something that has to be exactly right.

Remaining the epitome of rock-disco dialectic

What Phoenix does better than just about any current band is combine the euphoria of a raucous rock ‘n’ roll show with the surgical exactitude of studio-crafted dance music. Mixing the obstreperousness of old-fashioned guitar/bass/drums/keys grooves with hyper-precise digital calibration, this supremely, this supremely French foursome remains the epitome of rock-disco dialectic.

Their new one picks up where 2009′s mainstream breakthrough Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix left off, maintaining that album’s crowd-pleasing formula while accentuating the group’s gentle waywardness. The lyrics, for example, are often nonsensical: “Victory lap, formal with feathery eyes/ Dating vendetta win small spray pesticide” goes a typical near-rhyme in the title track, an abstracted take on EDM’s slow-burning trance. It further abstracts the build-up into ambient doodles over muted four-four thumping, accentuates the breakdown via oscillating Phillip Glass-like synths, and climaxes with a psychedelic folk-rock coda. This is and the similarly spaced-out verses of “Bourgeois” are clearly what the band had on its mind when it announced that Bankrupt! would be more experimental.

Otherwise, though, it’s just as generous with its hooks and anxiously-happy propulsion as any Phoenix number: “Entertainment” storms the gates with chiming “Turning Japanese” synths that reappear throughout the album; “The Real Thing” holds back its catchiest bits until near the end, when the cut practically levitates; “S.O.S. in Bel Air” similarly affirms the band’s ever-increasing dynamic command. The peaks, of which there are many, are bombastic, while the restrained parts offer woozy respite; one is self-descriptively called “Chloroform.” Mostly, though, there’s pleasure on top of pleasure, sweat mixed with digital mathematics, both equally generous.

That, in part, is one of the most bewitching things about Wheel, Stevenson’s third record and first credited solely to her as opposed to “Laura Stevenson & the Cans.” Musically, it’s big and brash and joyous — Crazy Horse by way of the Blackhearts — but tune in to Stevenson’s lyrics and you’ll find California being decimated by an earthquake and fragile, trembling children begging for their mother to notice them. That Stevenson should reach such stunning musical maturation so quickly is, in part, hereditary: Her grandfather, Harry Simeone, was a musical arranger most famous for co-writing the Christmas standard “The Little Drummer Boy” and her grandmother, Margaret McCrae (née McCravy), sang with Benny Goodman’s orchestra. Stevenson’s own music eschews the lush for the ragged — they’re scrappy songs that claw their way forward, bleeding, bruised and determined.

eMusic’s Editor-in-Chief J. Edward Keyes met up with Stevenson at the Grey Dog Café to talk about suicide, nihilism and how America faked the moon landing.

I wanted to start by talking about your grandfather, actually. How did you start to become aware of the fact that he was, you know, kind of a big deal?

My chorus teachers started getting excited about me being in their classes — he was a really important choral arranger. They would ask me questions about him and I would be like, “How do they know about my grandpa?” And then I’d start to see his name on TV — like, when you see the commercials for the compilation CDs of Christmas music — and there would be a blurb about the song with his name on the bottom of the screen.

Did he offer any guidance to you as you were getting started in music?

No, he was scary.

Scary?

He was very stern, a very serious guy. So I was really intimidated by him, basically. He would tell me I was banging on the piano when I would play him something. He’d say, “Stop banging, stop banging.” And I thought I was playing gently. So now I play, like, overly gently because I’m afraid I’m banging. But he did help me a few times. When I was really little, I wrote this song for a nationwide contest, and he helped me notate it.

What was the contest?

It was a contest at the end of the year every year in school — there would be a theme, and it was multimedia, so you could write something or you could draw something, whatever. So I wrote a song called “Dare to Discover,” which was the theme that year. I remember the first part, which was about Christopher Columbus: ‘When Columbus sailed the ocean blue/ he found a great new land for me and you/ he daaaared to discover/ a land for you and me.’ And then the chorus is, “Yes he did,” over and over and over again [laughs]. I was like, six.

You were six? How did you put this together?

Well, I played piano…

Even still, though! I played piano when I was six but —

I don’t know! [Laughs.] I would write little melodies, and I sang in my room. But that was the first time it was written down. I mean, I grew up around music. My parents were divorced, and I’d stay at my dad’s on the weekends, and every morning he’d put records on, and I’d wake up to music. He listened to a lot of Grateful Dead and took me to a lot of Grateful Dead shows — a lot of Grateful Dead shows. He took me to Phish shows. And I was little! I would have wax earplugs in my ears so I couldn’t pull them out. I was really little —

Like four or five?

Littler! My mom was pissed. I mean, people were doing drugs around me. I remember there would be the “spinners” at Dead shows — those people that dance — and [shrugs innocently] I guess they were all on acid! I had no idea, I just thought they were awesome.

One of my earliest memories is of sitting in a big circle with a bunch of free-spirited 24-year-olds and they were passing around a big jar of water and everybody was drinking out of the same jar, and they were just treating me like I was an adult. They were like, “Here, man,” and I was like “Thanks! OK!” And I was just drinking, catching all the germs of all these weird people. It felt really cool, it felt really communal.

But eventually you started moving away from that music almost in the exact opposite direction, toward punk rock.

Yeah. I didn’t have MTV, so I was pretty isolated. I found out about Nirvana through this kid I was in the gifted program with when I was in fifth grade. There was this one cool kid, and he was like, “Yeah, maaan, fuckin’ Nirvana.” And I was like, “Cool! What’s that?” So I went to this store called Prime Cuts which was down the street from my house and I used my own money and I bought In Utero, because I’d heard “Heart Shaped Box” on the radio. I listened to it non-stop. And then I heard Green Day’s “When I Come Around,” and I was like “OK. More guitars that sound like this. Cool.” And I got into Green Day and then later Operation Ivy.

Something I was wondering about — I grew up on Long Island, too, and at that time, there were just not a lot of punk rock kids on Long Island. At least, not that I could see. How did you start to connect with people who had similar tastes?

Well, I found out about this a big ska fest — there were also hardcore bands and punk bands, but they called it the Ska Fest — at Our Lady of Victory church in Floral Park. And so me and my friend Katie went, and we knew a couple of kids from our school were also going. We just got really tight with those kids and that was like our first show, kind of. And then it just became an every-weekend thing — we’d find out about more bands that lived in the next town, or shows that were happening in our town, and we were like, “What is this?!” We started getting into all the local bands — not so much the hardcore bands, but I liked the bands that sounded like pop punk or ska punk. I mean, Less Than Jake was my favorite band of all time. I bought Hello Rockview for my dad. I was like, “Dad, you gotta hear this record!” After that, we’d all just get together and hang out in my friend Zach’s basement. He was the drummer in a local ska band.

What were they called?

Premarital Sax. We would hang out over there, there was Scotty Dee’s Urban Joe Café in Rockville Centre. When we got a little older and could drive, there was Witch’s Brew. That was the cool place where all the cute boys worked that had tattoos and that you didn’t know how to talk to.

I mean, in a sense, that sort of DIY community vibe is really similar to the ethos that governs [Stevenson's label] Don Giovanni.

Yeah, I mean, our reason for why we’re [making music] and the way we established it is very DIY. We’ve been doing it for a while and it gets frustrating when it’s — “Why can’t I live off this yet? Please, help me, universe!” But at the same time you’re slowly building a thing, and you’re building it based on people falling in love with it. And I think that’s what Don Giovanni does. That’s the biggest thing I learned from being on the label: Play shows in people’s houses, play shows with bands that you’re friends with, go on tour with bands that you’re friends with and who believe in the same shit, even if you don’t sound the same.

This is the first album you’re releasing as just “Laura Stevenson,” as opposed to “Laura Stevenson & the Cans.” My immediate response to seeing that is that this record is somehow more personal. How true is that?

I feel like the lyrics…I feel like I’m being more truthful to myself. I feel like I’m being more honest. Before, I would just tuck things away and be like, “This is what the story [behind this song] is on the surface,” without really getting to the root of it. Now I feel like I’m…dealing with some shit. Hopefully that will be therapeutic thing for me and I can build from there. Either that, or I’ve healed myself and now I won’t be able to write anything ever again.

The album is called Wheel, and wheel imagery turns up throughout the album. What drew you to that as a central metaphor?

I wrote the song “Every Tense,” and I knew that was a song that encapsulated how I felt at the time — which was out of control, needing to figure out my place in the world, to figure “what does it all mean?” I felt like every song kind of dealt with that, whether it was dealing with my own personal existence and nothingness, or my relationships with people and what they mean. It was an exploration of all of that. And I felt like a “wheel” was representative of what I was feeling.

But then that last song, “The Wheel,” I wrote that way after the record had already been written and recorded. I was just like, “This record isn’t making sense to me. I don’t understand how we’re gonna put it in order.” With Sit, Resist, we had figured out track order before we even got in the studio. This record, I was like, “This sucks. I don’t know where these songs are gonna go.” I knew I wanted “Every Tense” to be near the beginning, but I wanted to close it with something that brought it all back around thematically.

Is the mention of “Lucky Strikes” an allusion to your grandmother?

Yeah, she sang [commercial jungles] for Lucky Strikes, and I guess you could say she had a lot of lucky strikes in her life. It was the idea of her being a protectress in my brain, protecting me from things I don’t want to rehash.

Were these things that happened to you growing up?

Yeah, just some weird shit that I wasn’t ready to focus on. Something that I needed to…overcome.

Did you view your grandmother as a “protectress” when she was alive?

Not so much emotionally, but she’s the closest person that I had to me that’s no longer here. Not to be a hippie, but she’s almost some sort of like spiritual presence. And I’m not a spiritual person at all. I see her sometimes in my dreams and she keeps me away from things I don’t want to see. That’s kind of what that song is about.

I don’t know — we were close, she would sleep in my bed when she was in town. We didn’t have a guest room, so it was, “Put grandma in the bed with the kid.” She’d tell me stories. She had a cool life. Her father was a sheriff in South Carolina. He died in 1913 and she was raised by her mother. She had three older brothers, two of which were on the radio. They had this project called the McCravy Brothers — it was like a gospel thing. And that’s how she got into radio. And then she was put on the Hit Parade and that’s when she came to NYC and started working with Benny Goodman, but [her brothers] raised her to be a gospel singer. Like, old-timey gospel, so it sounds spooky. There’s some YouTube videos where you can hear the audio, and it sounds fucking creepy. Creepy dudes with warbly voices. It’s just kind of scary — it sounds like something from a horror movie.

My grandmother and my grandfather both came from very humble beginnings. He was the child of an Italian immigrant living in Newark — basically, he was living in the slums. That neighborhood was where all the Italian people moved that didn’t have any money. He grew up out of nothing and then went to Jiulliard and sounded working for CBS, and that’s where he met my grandmother. By 1933, my grandfather was a working musician. My grandma had glamour shots and all that. Benny Goodman made her lose weight. He was like, “I’ll buy you all new gowns” — she didn’t have any dresses, and she needed these gowns to be the singer in a big band — but he was like, “You have to lose 30 pounds.” And she wasn’t a big lady. I mean, she had meat on her bones, but she wasn’t fat. But then she just never ate again after that. She told me that was when she “quit eating.” She wouldn’t eat a lot at all. She was so thin. She would just, like, drink scotch. She’d be like, “Just make me a scotch.” And we’d say, “Grandma, do you want some food?” and she’d say, “I’ll have some creamed spinach later.” I mean, she never really ate. Ever. My mom called it a “crash diet,” because that’s what they called it at that time. Nowadays, they call it anorexia.

It’s interesting that you mention that about your grandmother, because I feel like there’s a lot of death on this record.

Yeah, I had some issues at a certain point in my life…I’m OK now, but I’m still fixated on death. I have a desire to continue living my life, but you know, I, at a point in my life — like 19, 20, 21, I didn’t think I was gonna live. I had no dreams or anything because I was just, like, really depressed. And so then I was medicated, heavily, and that was frustrating because I felt like I couldn’t concentrate — which was annoying, but I’d rather have that than be depressed. I mean, now I’m fine. I’m not medicated at all. But it was just overcoming that, but still being naturally fixated on the fact that I’m going to die at some point. It may not be self-inflicted, but it’s still actually going to happen and I have no control over it. That’s something that I think about.

The first line of “Runner” is “To give yourself a little bit of hope’s a lie.” Do you believe that?

At a certain point in my life, yes. At the end of the day? [pauses] I don’t know. I don’t know. If it’s all going to be over, then what’s the point? For some reason we’re all still here and all still believing that there’s a point, even though we know that there is no point. That’s the whole idea of that song. We’re still going, for some reason, even though we don’t know what it is.

So you reject the idea of an afterlife.

I don’t know. I’m not sure about anything, so I can’t say I’m an atheist. I don’t want to reject it. I just know that I don’t know, and that’s sort of scary. “All I know is that I don’t know nothin’,” as Operation Ivy once said.

There’s a lot of apocalyptic imagery on the record, too. “Sink or Swim” is about California basically being destroyed in a single massive earthquake.

It’s scary. It’s scary thinking about the future of this planet, this country, the future of humanity — anything in the future.

Does uncertainty freak you out?

Yeah. Yeah. But I think that I’m becoming more able to just…I’ve always been really paranoid and scared and neurotic. Meanwhile, my mother is growing more Christian by the day. It’s driving me insane.

Was there something that brought that on?

She joined this one of those megachurches in Florida. I went there and it felt like a casino. There’s no clocks, no windows, you feel like you’re…I think they’re pumping oxygen in there.

You went to a whole service? What was that like?

It’s just so manipulative, financially. They’re just tugging at the heartstrings every five minutes for you to contribute.

Do they do the “modern worship,” with the rock band?

Oh yeah. And the drummer is in one of those plexiglass cages. My mom was like, “You’re gonna love it, because the music is cool, there’s a cool guy playing guitar.” I was like [dryly] “Oh, they have a cool guy?”

So I was there and my mom was, like, crying, and there’s tissue boxes on the back of every chair in front of you. And, you know, I’m trying not to push my nihilism on my mother, but it’s just fucking bullshit. I’ll call her, and she’ll be like, “Give your fear away. Give it away. It doesn’t have to be to God, give it to nature,” and I’m like, “OK, leave me alone.” I don’t wanna “give it away.” Who am I gonna fucking give it to?

How does she feel about your music?

[Pause] She’s coming around.

So there was a point when she wasn’t into it?

She was not supportive in the beginning. She did not want me to do it. I mean, she saw what was happening in the industry, with people unable to make a living…And I totally understand that she wants me to be OK. She doesn’t want to leave this world and be wondering if I’m gonna make it, or If I’m gonna have kids. And she definitely wants me to have kids — I feel like that’s her annoying reason to want me to be successful.

You can do both, if that’s something you want.

If I’m able to make enough money. Right now, that is not in the cards. Life continues this way.

I mean, you’re still very young.

I’m 28. I mean. “Young.” But, you know. These are my “child-bearing years.” [Laughs.] I don’t know. The clock’s not ticking yet, but my mom’s sure calling a lot.

Is your dad on board with your career?

My dad is on board. He comes to all of our shows, he’s totally into it. He’s like, [In a thick, Long Island accent] “I see you’re on tour in April. Were you gonna tell me that?” He’s really supportive, and he has a brother in Austin who we were staying with for South by Southwest who’s also into music. But they’re very Irish Catholic about it [laughs]. Whenever they come to our shows, they can’t just say, “Good job,” they have to say, “This was wrong.” They’re very stoic with their praise.

And then when my mother finally started praising it, she really went over the top. The only song she really knows is “Master of Art” from our last record — but she calls it “Masters of Art,” which drives me fuckin’ crazy. She’s like, [heavy Long Island accent again] “How many times I listened to ‘Masters of Art’ today? Seven. Seven times.” Now she’s like obsessing, but just about one song. I mean, I’ll take what I can get.

Has she heard “L-DOPA” [A song on Wheel that is candidly about a mother who is emotionally unavailable]?

She heard it. She didn’t like it so much.

How autobiographical is that song?

That song definitely has hints of her in it. But she doesn’t know that any song is about her. Like, the song “Caretaker”? It’s about her. And about me taking care of the house on Long Island while she’s living in Florida, and her inability to accept the fact that I want to do this with my life. She’ll be like, “Did you ever write a song about me? You wrote a song about your stepmom” — which is “Renee,” the first song on the new record. She was all pissed about that. And I’m like. “Listen to a different song! Stop listening to ‘Masters of Art!’ Listen to another one. Listen to the words.” I told her “Caretaker” was about her — I wasn’t going to — and she was like “Oh, really? OK, I’ll listen to it again.” I don’t think she did.

What exactly is L-DOPA?

L-DOPA was a medicine they used for people who had encephalitis lethargic. My grandfather’s mother died of encephalitis in the teens in New York, and so she was never able to give him what he needed in terms of nourishing him as a musician, because she wasn’t there. So it was kind of a parallel to my relationship with my mom at the beginning of this whole thing. But she’s really come around. She told me that she was proud of me. But I’m still getting my Masters in art history — and I’m doing that for her. I want to be doing this, but I should have some kind of backup plan.

I like that art history is your backup plan.

I know, it’s so fucking stupid. I’m trying to finish the second edit of my thesis so I can turn it in to my professor. I haven’t spoken to him in two semesters

You can just do that? I thought at a certain point they kinda want to know…

Oh, I think they wanted to know. I think you’re only allowed to do a program for four years, and it’s been four years. He emailed me last semester to check in and I was like, “Fuck, we’re doing the record right now.” So I sent him the YouTube video for “Master of Art” and was like [proudly], “This is what I’ve been up to,” and he was just like, “OK, well, you have to read this and write about…” I was like, “OK, fair enough.” I have no excuse. I’m just, you know — “Playin’ music. With my band. In Brooklyn.” So’s fuckin’ everybody.

I could be mistaken about this, but when I saw you play at South by Southwest, you introduced “Telluride” — which is my favorite song on the record — by saying, “This is a song about how we faked the moon landing.” Is that true?

I guess so! I was really into the conspiracy about Stanley Kubrick helping to fake the moon landing. And I was also listening to a lot of Crazy Horse, so I was like, “OK, I guess I’m gonna write this song, about the moon landing being faked.” It’s more about, if that was true, what he might have felt about everything — about the country believing it and him not being able to express that, and trying to tell people through metaphor, and to give hints through the imagery in his movies. Just the idea of, like, living a lie. Pretending that this thing is true because you can’t say otherwise. And that’s what I did for a lot of my life in certain terms. I felt like I was kindred spirits with Stanley Kubrick. Also, I think I was really stoned for, like, a couple of days.

So you think the moon landing was faked?

Yeah, I think so! I mean, I believe they landed, but I don’t think that’s the footage we saw.

Why would we fake it?

Propaganda. To bolster people’s spirits. It’s really manipulative.

So you just think they didn’t have a camera up there at all?

I don’t think they would have been able to get the shots that they got. Those iconic images? No way. Definitely not.

To wrap up: I know that you’re on the road a lot. I was wondering what some of your more unfortunate tour stops have been.

Oh man. In Bozeman, Montana, we played a show for two people, plus the sound guy. We didn’t know what to expect. We played with this band called Genitaliens — they were, you know, your basic two-piece funk jammer — and the lead singer had been stung by a bee. His eyes were swollen shut. The sound guy was like, “Bro, you need to go to the hospital bro?” And he was like, “No, I’m cool. The show must go on.” Yeah, the show must go on, for no one.

I mean, all of those in-between shows are still hard, the ones in places like Boise, Idaho — even though they should have a good scene, because that’s where Built to Spill is from. We have a manager now who looks out for us, but on the tours we were booking ourselves, we’d be like, “Yeah, we’ll play in this community space at this college we didn’t even know existed,” and then we’d show up and it’s like three kids and they’re like, “Yay! You made it! Um, we can’t pay you, is that OK?”

I get weirdly fascinated with places like that in the middle of the country. I mean, I’d never have any cause to go to Boise. I always just wonder what it’s like there.

I mean, the drive through Idaho was one of the most scenic drives that we did. Wyoming was fucking beautiful. But you’re just bleeding money. Bleeding money.

I mean, on the other hand, it seems like the bands that suffer a lot in the early days and pay dues are the ones that have a longer career arc as opposed to the ones that blow up instantly.

I think so, too. Because you just come across people who love your music, because it’s this little thing that they watched grow. And they know that you care about them, too. So maybe we’re not the coolest band in the world, but, you know…

We have a fan who went through gender transformation, and he got the lyrics to our song “The Pretty Ones” tattooed on his arm during that process, because we helped him go through that. And that was really touching to me, to be able to help someone in a way.

I mean, I don’t want to get too philosophical about it, but to go back to something we talked about earlier — maybe that’s the point of all of this. Maybe that’s what we’re all doing here.

To give back something meaningful. [Pause.] Yeah, I think so.

Focused and self-assured heartstring-plucking orchestral folk and rock 'n' roll sass

A question lurks in the background of Laura Stevenson’s Wheel like a party guest invited out of obscure but unbreakable obligation: Once you realize you are going to die, what are you supposed to do about the rest of your life?

From a distance, Stevenson’s songs seem to tally up the standard frayed relationships and rocky familyscapes; up close, in flashes of quiet brutality, she makes the stakes clear. “There was a time when we believed that we could measure out a line just how we wanted it, so we could live just as long as anybody ever did/ but I was wrong,” she concedes over the clamorous ballroom swing of “Bells and Whistles.” On “The Hole,” a nuzzling, solo acoustic thing run aground of a campfire hootenanny, “you are the constant in my constant, you are the salty wind in my sail” could be directed at a reliable lover, or at the specter of death itself.

Stevenson, 28, has made two records already — both as Laura Stevenson and The Cans, both lovely but not quite as focused or self-assured as Wheel. Before, her reference points were so obvious as to be nearly suffocating, her raw-throated bellows and ramshackle accompaniment at times sounding like an audition tape for America’s Next Top Mangum. Here, her influences (among them: Crazy Horse, Nirvana, Dolly Parton) seem more fully absorbed and processed, like she’s finally hearing just her own voice in her head.

Rather than make the choice between draping the record in heartstring-plucking orchestral folk or loading it with unstoppered rock ‘n’ roll sass, Stevenson and producer Kevin McMahon (Titus Andronicus, Swans) went with all of the above, and it’s for the best; the songs plot themselves out one by one, each as connected and disconnected from what comes before and what comes next as the endless numbered days they taunt and lament. They bloom unexpectedly, then wither away; they blindside, linger and end before you’re ready.

Wheel is all questions, asked and unasked; there’s no answers, no easy solace, just a lot of ground teeth and gawking voids. Unseen clocks tick, sidewalks swallow pedestrians whole, coastlines crumble into the sea; all the while, love is nurtured, neglected, mourned, and life moves at its own awful, beautiful pace. “The hardest part is getting older,” Stevenson laments, and it’s true, but what choice do we have?

Heading toward hip-hop pop provocateur territory

Charli XCX (née Charlotte Aitchison) may have staked her initial musical claim on electro-Goth turf, but on her debut full-length, the 20-year-old singer/songwriter heads toward hip-hop pop provocateur territory. True Romance is Aitchison’s tribute to primordial longing for love and the enviable comedown when it’s over. Like genre-gobbling kindred spirit Grimes, Aitchison cherry-picks styles highlighting her journey from angst to elation and back again with Siouxsie Sioux synths, Material Girl hooks, and sing-speech akin to M.I.A. basking in the afterglow. Although aiming for an alternate-dimension mainstream takeover (“Nuclear Seasons” is a kohl-lined cousin to Britney Spears’s “Toxic,”), Aitchison has her art-school dropout priorities in place — never resting on one idea long enough for us to get comfortable. Moving between a seductive rap-whisper to a throaty growl with preternatural ease, she never once gives the idea that she’s ever less than in full control.

But unlike most internet provocateurs, Fortune seemed both self-possessed and incredibly smart — the kind of person who pours themselves completely into their work, and who only reacts strongly to criticism because they feel things deeply and passionately. Fortune and I have struck up a loose internet acquaintance over the last few years — we occasionally Tweet at each other or send messages through Facebook — which is how I knew that she had, during the making of her second record, Discipline & Desire, struck up a stormy S&M relationship with Mark Burgess of legendary UK post-punkers the Chameleons and that, after their romance capsized, she’d fallen in love with — and pretty much immediately married — Tim Gick of the band TV Ghost. After several weeks of missed connections, I reached Heather at by phone to talk about true love, global power dynamics and murder/suicides.

So first things first: I wanted to congratulate you on your recent marriage — watching the two of you on Twitter and Facebook has been pretty adorable. I think the thing that kind of surprised me the most was how fast it all happened. What was the story? Was it a “love at first sight” situation?

It was a love-at-first-sight situation, but I met him over a year and a half ago. And I was actually dating someone else at the time, and so was he, and so nothing happened. But it was a very intense interaction. I was obsessed with him immediately. I was at one of his shows, and I was like, “That’s the guy. Right there.” I’ve never been so horny watching someone play. [Laughs]

So we stayed in touch, and I think we were both obsessing over each other secretly from a distance. We finished our records at the same time we exchanged them and found that we had both reached kind of a common middle ground sonically. His band used to be real no wave and crazy whereas I came from a more traditional pop/punk structure and then got weirder. We kind of met in the middle and we were both really intrigued by that. So we started booking a tour together and, like midway through that, he said to me, “I think I’m in love with you,” and I was like, “DITTO.”

How did his parents react to the engagement?

Oh, his mother wanted to kill me. She was not happy at all. [laughs] She’s chilled out a lot now, and I seem to have grown on her rather quickly — I do that — but at first, man, it was rough. I mean, my mom is used to me being unpredictable, so this stuff tends to roll off her like water off a duck’s back. At first, she was kind of dismissive. She kind of thought, “Oh yeah, yet another ridiculous thing that Heather is doing. Whatever.” But I think she realized quickly that I was really serious and really happy and that I was really gonna do it. And when that kinda sunk in, she got on board and was as supportive as she could be.

We were talking about your new record in the office the other day, and the one thing that kept coming up about it, in comparison to No Future, is that this one feels much more you — it’s much more of a natural extension of your personality.

Well, with No Future, what happened was that I had a collection of songs that I’d written over the course of two years. They were all over the place. I’d written some in collaboration with people who were in the band at the time and who were coming from a completely different set of influences. The thing that tied that record together was that all of the songs were more or less written about Jay [Reatard]. Pretty much every song on that record was written in the two-year period right before and right after Jay died. So the common thread was the subject matter. I made that record largely to get those songs out of my system, and also as sort of an homage to Jay. It was very much something that I needed to do as part of my grieving process. His influence is all over that record.

But by the time the record was out, I was already writing a ton of songs that were much truer to who I am, and had less to do with how I was feeling after the death of Jay, and were less informed by other people who were playing with me. Growing up being obsessed with, like, Joy Division and stuff, my whole intent with this project was to try to find myself as a songwriter and find a way to balance my aggression and my attraction to things that are darker with the fact that I am naturally gifted as a pop writer.

In other interviews you’ve talked about being influenced by Daniel Ash and Siouxsie Sioux. I was wondering what, specifically, you learned from them that you incorporated into your own writing process.

Friends of mine who are big music nerds have been telling me since the first Wax Idols 7″ that they can hear that I’m obsessed with Daniel Ash. Which is completely true. Daniel Ash and Wire have been the two strongest influences on me over the last five years or so as a songwriter. With this record, I was just hugely inspired by the first Love & Rockets record in terms of the way it was produced. I borrowed techniques from them all over the place — direct-inputting 12-string guitars, layering harmonies in weird ways, switching up effects on vocals to accentuate different transitions in songs.

Siouxsie Sioux is somebody that helped me find my voice. I identify with her as a singer, because I feel like when she started, it was very punk and she was just yelling in this really powerful weird way. And she probably didn’t think of herself as much of a singer — that’s what my feeling is at least, I could be wrong — but she was a singer. She wanted to front a band, and so she forged a path for herself vocally, and it sounded weird and androgynous, but there was power and passion in her voice. I also identify with her because I think she was really influenced by a lot of Middle Eastern singers, and I was raised in a Lebanese family, so I was raised listening to Middle Eastern music. It’s a huge influence on me. I still listen to a lot of Turkish psych and traditional Lebanese stuff.

So, the album is called Discipline & Desire. And I feel like, anyone who knows anything about you, they know you work as a professional dominatrix. So I think the natural tendency is to interpret that phrase, “discipline and desire,” in a BDSM context. But I actually don’t think that’s what you’re talking about on the record at all. I feel like you’re just using that as a metaphor to explore the power dynamics that come into play in the world at large.

You’re exactly right. Discipline & Desire is the name of an old ’70s fetish mag — that’s where I first stumbled across it. But what struck me about it wasn’t its tie to fetish at all. I immediately knew, upon looking at those words together, that it completely embodied everything this record was to me because of its association with power dynamics — which is a huge subject on this record, and in my life in general. Power is something that I think about all the time. And not in the way where I want power — it’s something that, I don’t know…Often the wrong people have power, and everyone wants it, and you can’t get it if you’re looking for it. It’s a twisted, weird world we live in.

Given that, it’s interesting that you open the record not by seizing power, but by essentially identifying with the metaphorical “sub.” You sing, “I love the sad and the sick of the world.” That’s where you’ve cast your lot — with the outcasts.

Exactly. That was intentionally the first lyric of the record — I immediately wanted to spell out who it is that I’m looking to connect with, which demographic I’m a part of and want to speak on behalf of. And that the people who are the “sad” and “twisted” people should have everything they want in life but don’t, and are trying to. Or who are misunderstood, or are being constantly told to go away or shut up, or that they’re weird, or that they’re not good enough.

When did you first start becoming interested in these issues?

Unfortunately, it was something I was raised with. I think I started becoming aware of it when I was pretty young — kind of around the time I started going through puberty. I was raised in an environment where power was unevenly distributed toward men. It was a cultural thing, a lot of it. It was the Middle Eastern family that I was raised in for the first 12 years of my life. Specifically, in my household, it was that we all lived in fear of my first stepfather, who is my brother’s father. It wasn’t the worst it could have been, but it was very much his house, his rules. And I, in particular, was terrified of him. And as I got older, I started seeing how those kinds of power dynamics play out in the world in general. I’ve always had a problem with authority figures, I’ve always had a problem with being told what to do. And it’s not so much because I feel like I’m above authority, it’s just that I disagree with it, largely. I disagree with uneven power distribution and it makes me mad. It’s something that I decided when I was rather young that I would spend my life fighting against, in one way or another.

How do you see that dynamic playing out in the music industry? You don’t have to name names.

[Cracks up laughing] Oh, come on, you know I’m gonna name names! It’s Pitchfork. It’s not the individual writers at Pitchfork that I have a problem with. But Pitchfork itself represents to me an unevenly distributed form of power within the creative world that I think is fucked. They remind me of an overbearing stepfather. That’s why I hate them [laughs]. It’s not personal. It’s not that I think that when they started that they had bad intentions or anything like that. But, unfortunately, it has become a monopoly. And I feel like over time a lot of the people involved with it — this is my feeling — may have subconsciously started wielding that power in a way that is destructive rather than constructive. And is unfair and is less about music and more about who knows who, and who can make who popular, and who’s the favorite. Pitchfork certainly isn’t the only problem by any means. But I think that money and media and all kinds of things have really changed the way the general public is exposed to art and to music, and has changed the value of music and have made artists and musicians feel like they have to change along with that in order to survive. And it’s really fucked up and sad. I don’t like it.

“Dethrone” feels like a rallying cry against that.

All I know how to do is what works for me. Obviously my way is not the way for everyone. I just feel being really honest and self-aware and true to your vision and to what you think is right, or what feels right to you, and not thinking about how well it’s gonna fit in to whatever is cool at the moment is the best way to effectively change things. It comes from within first. I think a lot of times people confuse my passion for art, expression and discussion with being insecure, or with caring too much what other people think. And that kind of makes me sad, because I feel like people are so used to having to play this “Keep Your Mouth Shut and Play it Cool” game in order to survive in this silly, irony-based indie music world. Being really passionate and open and true to yourself is seen as uncool, or the wrong way to do things. And I think it’s the right way to do things.

Things upset me, you know? I’m not made of stone. I am a human being. I’m a weirdo. I am a very passionate person. I’m very outspoken. And when I get pissed about something, I’m pissed, and I don’t feel I should have to keep my mouth shut. Keeping my mouth shut is something I swore that I would never do. I was forced to keep my mouth shut, and to be “seen and not heard,” and to be this little scared, shaking unwanted stepdaughter in the background for most of my childhood. And fuck that. I am not gonna be that in my adult life.

We’ve talked about the “Discipline” part of the record. Let’s talk a little bit about the “Desire.” The last three songs on the record — “The Cartoonist,” “Elegua” and “Stay In” — those are the songs to me that kind of encapsulate this idea of desire and longing.

Well, “The Cartoonist” isn’t about me. It’s about a couple who I became aware of through Mark [Burgess]. The man was a cartoonist, and his wife was diagnosed with a fatal illness — I think it was MS, but I can’t remember — but it was something where she was physically deteriorating. The story was really sad. What happened is that he went mad watching the love of his life die slowly in front of him, and he ended up killing her and then killing himself. It’s really brutal. It’s just really struck a chord with me as a romantic, and as somebody who’s really passionate and also kind of crazy. I wonder, you know, about the possibilities of something like that — love driving somebody to the brink of madness. So the song is written from the perspective of the woman, as if perhaps she wanted him to kill her, because she was in so much pain.

“Elegua” isn’t a love song at all. It’s kind of a weird, dare I say spiritual song. It’s not about a person. It’s more about me looking for an answer within a practice that I am engaged in. I decided to write about it.

What kind of practice?

An occult practice. I don’t like to talk about it. It’s just about a ritual that I was working at and was having problems with. And then “Stay In” is about the deterioration of my relationship with Mark.

I kind of suspected as much.

It’s ironic, because he helped to write that song. When it started, the lyrics I wrote were about being in love with him. And then I rewrote them right before I recorded it, and pretty much had a breakdown while I was recording it. It was pretty terrible.

What exactly happened there? I remember talking to you on Facebook, and I think it was before you even started making this record, or it was in the early stages, and you were joking about how you were going to seek out Mark Burgess and make him produce your record. And then the next thing I knew, it was actually happening, and you had entered a kind of dom/sub relationship with him as well.

Well, I was being kind of facetious about it at first. I can be kind of mischievous I guess. Mark and I were connected because he already knew Keven [Tecon, who played drums on Discipline] and Amy [Rosenoff, bass] from Wax Idols because their other band had opened for The Chameleons before. And also a dominatrix that I work with had known him for 20 years. Mark and I had been friends on Facebook for over a year, but I just never said anything to him, because what am I gonna say to Mark Burgess?

But then I got tipped off that he was a submissive, and also tipped off that he liked the band. So I just started talking to him on Facebook one day just casually to see if he’d be interested in just talking to me. And I had no ulterior motive at all. I kind of had a hint, based on his lyrics, that he was a fetishist, but all I was thinking was maybe we’ll be friends or something. So we started talking and — he is very…let’s see…he’s very accessible, particularly to women, on the internet. I don’t think it’s something he’s a stranger to. I think it’s something he encourages, based on my experiences with him, so it wasn’t difficult to connect with him in that way. But it did feel very genuine, like we had some kind of really intense connection.

So we just started talking all the time. And then I was talking about the new record and he was really curious about it, so I was casually like, “Oh, maybe you can come and help me with my record and that can be a ‘service’ that you can ‘perform’ for me’” [Laughs]. So, you know, I’m domming him a little bit. He just was completely on board with that, and then it just happened. And then the more we talked, it gradually started getting romantic and sexual, which didn’t surprise me. I’m a hypersexual person and a romantic and I found him to be extremely attractive — especially for an older guy. And he’s one of my favorite songwriters of all time! I got totally wrapped up. But it was a disaster [laughs]. Because although he is a fucking genius, he is a diva. A total diva. It’s The Mark Show, and there were many points [in the studio] where I had to be like, “Look, motherfucker, this is my record. Not yours. Shut up!” [laughs]. He drove me fucking insane. If I was in the middle of tracking, he’d cut in over the speaker and try to give me tips that I wasn’t interested in. If I didn’t acknowledge him the way he felt he deserved to be acknowledged, he’d storm out of the room and throw a fit. That happened a lot [laughs]. In our personal relationship, he was my submissive, but he very much actually was not. Really was not. And that played into the record, it played into every aspect of his involvement with me and with the band and it was based on this completely phony power dynamic that he insisted was real but that was not.

So he was essentially “topping from below.”

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. He totally tops from the bottom. And I’m sure if he reads this he’s gonna be furious and say it’s not true and he’s a “true submissive.” Whatever. As far as I’m concerned, being someone who genuinely is naturally dominant? That motherfucker does not know how to submit [laughs].

We broke up a million times while the record was being made. I kicked him out of my house, I kicked him out of the studio. He wasn’t around for most of the final vocal tracking, he wasn’t around for mixing, I didn’t want him to come back. And I don’t think he really wanted to come back. Monte [Vallier, producer] was exasperated by the situation toward the end and was just kind of like, “Get him out of here.” It was not just his fault — I’m a tremendously difficult person to deal with in any capacity, and I know that about myself. But it was a fucking disaster, it really was.

What were some of the positive things you learned from working with him?

He did really help me expand as a vocalist. He spent a lot of time singing with me. He really believed in me. He saw — and I think still does — something special in me that maybe I didn’t see in myself yet. And that helped me, to have that kind of encouragement from somebody that I admired so much creatively. He did a lot for me in that way. It also helped me to kind of be around him and watch the way that he writes and thinks and works because he’s a really weird, talented guy. It was really inspiring. Ultimately, all personal things aside, I still really can’t believe that he ever gave a shit enough about me or my band to do the things that he did for this record. And I am and will always be humbled and honored by that experience with him. Because he’s a genius. He’s one of the greatest songwriters of all time — truly one of the most underrated songwriters of all time.

Speaking of tortured geniuses — you wrote “AD RE:IAN” about the suicides of both Ian Curtis and Adrian Borland of The Sound. What attracted you to them as subjects?

I wrote that song on the death anniversary of Ian Curtis, which is always a really sad day for me. As silly as it is, Joy Division was one of the first bands that I ever heard that really moved me when I was a teenager, and I always get kind of sad, because he was so young. He’s become a mythical figure at this point, but I wanted to humanize him and his memory and connect with that feeling in the moment when a person decides to kill themselves

And then Mark told me something I didn’t know. I knew Adrian had also committed suicide about 10 years ago. But I didn’t know that Adrian was a huge fan of Ian Curtis and Joy Division and was really traumatized when Ian killed himself. So it just became this story about suffering artists trusting other suffering artists, and the kind of domino effect people have on each other.

You put yourself in the song. You talk about wishing you could have stopped him.

I do wish I could have stopped him. That’s kind of egocentric of me, but those two people in particular are people I think had more left to give. And I wish that they had found another way to deal with what was going on. It makes me really sad.

There’s also that myth of the tortured artist, where you have to be miserable in order to do good work. Do you worry about that, now that you’re married?

Well, if you’re married to someone who’s boring and stagnant and makes your life comfortable, that might affect you as an artist. But I’m married to someone who’s a fucking nutcase, so — [laughs]. He’s a fantastic person — he’s sweet as hell, he’s wonderful, but he is just as insane as I am and just as twisted as I am. He may be even a bit more so. So being married to him is actually hugely inspiring — it’s opening all kinds of new doors for me. I’m already working on a new Wax Idols record called Loss, so you can tell it’s not exactly a honeymoon record [laughs].

What do you think the biggest misconception about Hether Fortune is?

That I’m mean. I’m really not. I’m mean if you give me reason to be mean, I suppose. But I feel like a lot of people think that I’m this hardened, angry, bitter, mean, selfish asshole and that kind of hurts. Because I’m like, ‘Man, why does it have to be one or the other? Why does being outspoken and being honest and being tough have to automatically equate to my being a bitch?’ Because I’m not. I feel like I’m a total softie in a lot of ways. I’m a very loving person. I’m real sensitive. I cry all the time. I think that’s probably the biggest misconception. I feel like I’m expressing love constantly.

Hatched in near-total isolation, this remarkable combo, who sound very approximately like Black Sabbath, Alice Cooper and Slade all at once, have made all the more impact. Word began to spread of their amazing entrail-splattered riffola on the doom metal scene in late 2011, after initial pressings of their second album, Blood Lust, sold out immediately, and began to change hands on eBay for an astonishing £700.

But Uncle Acid’s music is fully deserving of such pecuniary folly. Raunchy and demented, yet deceptively crafted to the point of mastery in their tunes and harmonies, Blood Lust and its newly released sequel Mind Control would already be massive hits in a better world. In hell, they probably already are.

Yet, even as their renown spreads, Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats remain shrouded in mystery. Via their new label, Rise Above, eMusic’s Andrew Perry was merely forwarded a mobile number, and a time to call it. Who knew what lurked in the shadows at the end of the telephonic corridor…

Hi there, is that Uncle Acid?

Haha, yeah.

Nobody seems to know if that’s how you want to be addressed, or…

You can call me Kevin if you want.

Kevin, your music has been blowing our minds. When my buddy Todd first put me onto you, I couldn’t quite understand why you’d make music so melodically rich, yet only release it in such tiny quantities. But then obviously its extreme collectability has helped spread a buzz about the band. Was that your master plan?

No, not at all, we didn’t think anybody wanted our stuff, that was the problem, so we just printed as much as we could afford — really small runs, because we could only afford to get booklets printed up in batches of 50 or 25. I thought, have we really got much of a fanbase beyond that?

So that’s how we started, and it built up and up, and we started pressing more CDs, and then it just got to where we couldn’t keep up with it anymore, so luckily at that point, Lee [Dorrian, of Napalm Death] stepped in and Rise Above [Dorrian's label] took over, and they’ve helped push us further. So we didn’t plan it to be like that, we just weren’t aware what kind of audience we had, or might have, so we just did what we thought we could sell, which was not very much.

Have you emerged from a thriving doom-metal subculture in Cambridge?

No, we happened in isolation. There’s not really a music scene in Cambridge. It’s an academic place, there are no real music venues for bands to play. It was a struggle to get any musicians involved, so we started just as a three-piece, then we tried doing a bit of gigging, but it didn’t sound very good with just the three of us, so we decided that we’d just be a studio band, and do albums, but now we’ve got a new line-up, we’re more focused now. Everyone else is in London, and I’m the only one that lives in Cambridge, so it’s a little bit different, but it’s the same idea. We’re still outsiders, wherever we choose to reside.

Your sound is so evocative of vintage Black Sabbath and turn-of-the-1970s heavy rock, it almost seems like an implicit criticism of contemporary metal. Correct?

Yeah, most of our influences are from the ’60s, ’70s and maybe early ’80s, and that’s pretty much it. That’s what we absorb, and it just comes out as whatever. One of the things we took from [Black Sabbath] is the idea of having the riff, and the heaviness, but having a really good melody on top, which is what a lot of the modern metal bands seem to have lost. We’re bringing back melodies. I love Electric Wizard and Blood Ceremony and bands like that, but I don’t really think we have a lot in common with them. I think there’s something else to our sound, we’re not as heavy as that. The Beatles are a big influence on us also, so… How can you compare to that, you know?

You yourself play the same Les Paul Junior guitar as Johnny Thunders. Is he a hero?

I love him. He’s one of my biggest influences, even though you probably can’t hear it in the music. I’m a big fan so I had to get the same guitar as him. It’s just got a very distinct sound to it. It’s just a really raw, rock ‘n’ roll sound.

We heard that your second album, Blood Lust, was supposed to be based on an imaginary horror B-movie. Confirm or deny!

Yeah! The story is supposed to be a long-lost horror film from the early ’70s. The plot follows a Witchfinder General kind of guy, who goes around torturing women — that’s how he gets his thrills. He kills people all around the country, and at the end he meets the Devil. It’s not a great story [unrepentant laugh], but it was kind of good thinking of a B-movie, and what would happen in a really terrible B-movie, which I would love to watch, and basing an album around that. That’s the kind of crap that I watch, rubbish like that with no real plotline.

Are you properly into the occult? Or are you just adopting the language of metal with all the Satanic stuff?

With us, it’s more about the film side. The occult thing, that doesn’t have anything to do with it. This is just thinking of things like B-movies, or old Hammer Horror films, and just trying to recreate that vibe in the form of music, rather than anything that these occult bands are doing. We’re not taking it too seriously.

Not with a name like Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats…

Exactly!

I’m guessing the new record, Mind Control, is a similar imaginary movie, but one about the Manson Family?

That was the starting point for the concept, which obviously was to do with mind control, and the story narrative is some guy who starts a super-cult out in the desert, and they steal motorcycles, and he’s got all these girls around, and they do drugs — it’s kind of Charles Manson meets Jim Jones — and obviously, there has to be a big murder spree at the end. So it’s more the American exploitation films of the early ’70s. I find writing lyrics hard, so to make things easier for myself, I come up with these stories.

Have you got rooms full of this nonsense at home on VHS?

I do really enjoy terrible movies. Rubbish films are an escape as well, it gets you away from all the bullshit.

Some of Mind Control has a mellower vibe. Was the idea to let some light into the sound this time?

The idea was to mix it up a little, and maybe not give people what they want or expect, which would maybe be Blood Lust Pt 2, because that did so well.

The production is still, um, fairly murky.

Part of that was due to the fact that we didn’t really have any budget to start with. The new record, we got to use more expensive valve mics, but it still sounds raw because there’s not really anything else done with it. It’s us live in the studio, then we just balanced it all in the mix, and that was it. There are no fancy effects on it. Part of our whole thing is small valve amps that don’t really work properly. We just tried to keep it as loud as possible.