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.

A Dixie Chick returns, scarred but smarter

Still scarred from the backlash she endured for dissing George Bush 10 years ago, Natalie Maines has jettisoned any trace of the twang that survived the Dixie Chicks’ last album, Taking the Long Way, and has made her first real rock ‘n’ roll record. Mother is not merely a shift in musical direction or a crossover attempt; instead, it’s the sound of a woman fighting defiantly to redefine herself with a harder, steelier sound. Fortunately, Maines’s commanding voice remains intact. She nimbly navigates the slow build from soft melody to full gospel finale on “Free Life,” while “Trained” binds a torrid sex metaphor to a rowdy blues-rock groove courtesy of co-producer Ben Harper. Her cover of “Lover Your Should Have come Over” may be too faithful to Jeff Buckley’s original to transcend karaoke, but Maines picks up some intriguing vocal tricks — especially a new way to treat vowels — and applies them throughout Mother. Best of all is the Jayhawks’ “I’d Run Away,” which shows the Dixie Chick at her most unguarded. Despite the tough rock exterior she constructs, the song reveals a bruised self-doubt that haunts the album. Maines might love to run away, but she knows she has to stay and keep fighting.

Synth-pop chanteuse favors more eclectic synth sounds on her long-simmering second LP

A lot happened very quickly for synth-pop chanteuse Little Boots: Her 2009 debut Hands generated hit UK singles, a gold album, worldwide tours and topped the BBC Sound of 2009 poll. What followed in the ensuing four-year gap between albums wasn’t quite silence: Victoria Hesketh filled it by DJing, making mixtapes and working with more club-oriented cohorts, such as Hercules and Love Affair’s Andy Butler and Simian Mobile Disco’s James Ford. But like her compatriot in ’80s-derived dance-pop La Roux, Boots has distanced herself from her initial hype simply by dragging her heels.

Nocturnes, the long-simmering sophomore effort, isn’t a total break from her buzzy beginnings. For “Broken Record,” Hesketh writes with veteran songsmith Rick Nowels, spinning the same obsessive love angle as her attention-grabbing first single, “Stuck on Repeat.” But here and elsewhere, she downplays the ’80s vibe in favor of more eclectic synth sounds largely overseen by former Mo’ Wax/DFA honcho Tim Goldsworthy. Album opener “Motorway” steers in the urbane direction of indie-dance pioneers Saint Etienne, gradually building up a mood that’s more wistful than amorous. “Confusion” pairs her with ex-Junior Senior member and “Born This Way” co-creator Jeppe Laursen, who helps Boots write a troubled, simple love song that shines over Goldsworthy’s finespun production.

Nocturnes hits its stride halfway, where she digs deeper both lyrically and groove-wise. “Beat Beat” repeats the octave-jumping bass bumps of ’70s disco funk, while both Butler collaborations, the house-y “Every Night I Say a Prayer” and the slow-grinding ballad “All for You,” reveal a spiritual side to Boots previously hidden behind her glossy pop veneer. She doesn’t have a big or distinctive voice, but she does pick the right henchmen, and here she even bares a soul, an aching one that compliments all that’s tidy and efficient elsewhere.

Inspiring grandeur while remaining taut and gripping

When a band makes music that is repeatedly, almost invariably, described as “ethereal” or “dreamy,” it’s fair to worry whether things might fall too far into the soup. Although the signifiers that often provoke these descriptions — heavy reverb; breathy, obscured vocals; layered effects; wading tempos — can produce a soaring, satisfying cumulative effect, the pitfalls are just as clear: Focus too much on piling up and tweaking lush sounds, an album can end up as a sort of unformed mass of pretty stuff.

Greg Hughes, the primary songwriter, producer, instrumentalist and lyricist of Still Corners, is conscious of this tightrope walk. He spoke to Sub Pop, the label releasing Strange Pleasures, about his evolving approach: “I started taking the production more seriously this time; instead of listening to records and going, ‘Oh, that’s cool,’ I actually studied everything: sound absorption, speaker placement, mixing, mastering, microphones…I see it principally as a widescreen pop album, clear, with upfront vocals…There aren’t a ton of layers this time; everything has its place and is focused.” This thoughtful, balanced method shines through on Strange Pleasures.

Hughes smartly juxtaposes the more traditionally “dreamy” elements of Still Corners’ sound with some crisper textures and more insistent rhythms. On album opener “The Trip,” a delay-heavy, snaking, spacey guitar lead and Tessa Murray’s washed-out, wispy vocals are anchored by prominent, raking acoustic guitar and a krautrock-like pulse. “Beginning to Blue” has wonderfully inside-out sounding production with wobbly, reverse-flanged keyboards and backward cymbal crashes, like a loping, screwed “Tomorrow Never Knows.” Hughes’s songwriting and production style still skews sweeping and epic: On single “Fireflies,” the synths stack — pillowy pads, twinkling upper-octave melody lines and punchy synth-bass — and are buoyed by Murray’s vampish vocals. With Strange Pleasures, Hughes has carefully crafted a set with songs that inspire grandeur while remaining taut and gripping — an impressive feat.

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].

Lonely treatises about loss and redemption

Marcus Ryan is a songwriter from Texas who wound up traveling to New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Somewhere along the way, he found time to write and record Walk to the Light, an album full of lonely treatises about loss and redemption. The tunes are big in the sense that they are heavily produced, with power guitars, acoustic pianos and processed drums layered over hooky themes. The core of the pieces is the bedrock messages. Ryan leaves a woman in “If I Fly” and tells her, “It’s gonna be alright,” but, despite the soaring guitars, you get the sense that it might not be. “Who would be there for you if nobody knew where you stayed?” Ryan asks on “The Road That Has No End.” The entire album is preoccupied with questions like this: What happens to people who leave their homes, leave those who matter to them and head toward an unknown and solitary future? There’s a sense of inevitability about these departures, a dour fatalism that surfaces in many of the tunes. There’s also a kind of dark honor. In “On My Own,” he tells the woman he’s leaving that it “doesn’t mean I don’t wish I was there,” and it rings true.

There’s a long musical tradition of restless songwriters, lonesome travelers all, who struggle to find solace. Ryan is part of this tradition, and the album plays like a man searching for a way to make peace with himself. That its final track is Walk to the Light, suggests that Ryan’s wanderings might have at last brought him to a place where he can rest for a while.

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.

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

The band's sincere love of music of all kinds really shines through

When The Melvins put out an album of covers, a little irreverence, both in song choice and in execution, is to be expected. Deciding to replicate the electric piano intro to Queen’s “You’re My Best Friend” with some chintzy-sounding Casio tones, and completely disregarding the second verse of the song: par for the course. Turning The Jam’s “Art School” into an oi-punk anthem, complete with introductory chanting and a spoken outro from someone affecting an over-the-top British accent (“Is this too Rough Trade?”): not surprising. And if any other group puts a Throbbing Gristle homage and the theme to John Waters’s Female Trouble on the same LP, please contact us immediately. But when Buzz Osbourne, in the press materials, states unequivocally that “we REALLY like all of these songs,” he’s not just flapping his gums. The group (joined by a handful of friends, including Neurosis’s Scott Kelly, Foetus’s JG Thirwell and Mudhoney’s Mark Arm) tears through obscurities from nearly forgotten California punk groups like Pop-O-Pies and Tales of Terror with the same eagerness and fervor that’s bestowed upon faithful renditions of Venom’s “Warhead” and David Bowie’s “Station To Station.” That said, it’s when The Kinks’ fuddy-duddy late-era track “Attitude” is turned into a great Buzzcocks outtake, or The Fugs’ “Carpe Diem” becomes a long-lost Nuggets track, that the adventurous spirit of Everybody Loves Sausages, and The Melvins’ sincere love of music of all kinds, really shines through.

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.

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.

Agile and aggressive, like a ragtag version of the Raveonettes

If you adhere to the strict definition of the term, you really shouldn’t call it shoegaze if you can dance to it. This is a problem you run into when categorizing the most recent effort by No Joy. While the Montreal band formed by Jasamine White-Glutz and Laura Lloyd had its feet firmly plastered onto its reverb pedals on 2010 debut Ghost Blonde, new album Wait To Pleasure is far more agile and aggressive. Make no mistake: No Joy retains the bathyspheric vibe it established on Ghost Blonde, if only by virtue of its distant-sounding vocals, which rarely interrupt the mysterious vibe with an enunciated word. What’s different here is an avowed guitar crunch and blasts of white noise that at times make No Joy resemble a ragtag version of the Raveonettes. It’s just as easy to spot similarities to Lush’s shimmying pop (“Wrack Attack”), the Breeders’ bass-heavy rumbles (“E”), or the Kills mucking about with the Cure’s “A Forest” (“Blue Neck Riviera”). While these are somewhat expected influences and sounds, “Lunar Phobia” serves up a mid-album surprise, as a shaggy Madchester beat bubbles alongside some shamelessly catchy synth-pop tricks. It may be time to retire the band name as well as their shoegazer label.

Anthem-ready sing-alongs, full of pumped-up hooks for pumped-up kids

Guards are positioning themselves to take up residence in the house that Foster the People built; unacquainted with understatement, the trio pepper their caffeinated debut album with anthem-ready sing-alongs, full of pumped-up hooks for pumped-up kids. In Guards We Trust packs a spectrum of touch points into its 12 tracks, plucking influences from across the dial. Although leaning heavily on a slacker charm, “Silver Lining” is more jingle pop than garage, the raw guitar mostly used to frame the sugary chorus. “Can’t Repair” repackages their energy into a Motown swagger. The unifying factor here is energy, every song eagerly poised to become summer barbeque and film credit fodder alike.

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.

Well-honed songwriting, offbeat experimentation and freewheeling abandon

After breaking up their black metal band Ludicra in 2011, guitarist John Cobett and drummer Aesop Dekkar decided to make one more album together, so they recruited YOB vocalist Mike Scheidt and Hammers of Misfortune’s multi-instrumentalist Sigrid Sheie (on bass) and formed Vhöl, a band that combines well-honed songwriting with offbeat experimentation and freewheeling abandon. The band’s self-titled debut is rooted in black metal and hardcore, but it’s the injections of classic and prog-metal between bludgeoning rhythms and blastbeats that make the album exceptional. Picture old-school Darkthrone and Motorhead tangled in a burning mosh pit with Mastodon, Voivod and Rob Halford.

More than anything, it’s those Halford touches that make Vhöl stand out. Unlike the countless bands that interrupt extreme metal passages with melodic riffs and clean vocals, Vhöl layer soaring vibrato atop sepulchral growls and wherever the fuck they feel like it, and never to create sing-along choruses. The same holds true for Cobbett’s tuneful leads and fills, which provide euphony to even the most dissonant parts of a song. Throwing caution to the wind is Vhöl’s M.O., and it’s what they’re best at. On “Plastic Shaman” they weave an epic NWOBHM guitar melody, sustained chords and marching drums through a black crust rhythm and halfway through “Illuminate” the song takes a chiming, psychedelic left turn before transforming into a transition that can only be described as power metal to unlock the gates of Valhalla. Even stranger is whatever lurks in the middle of “Arising,” which resembles a nightmarish ho-down replete with shuffling drums and slide guitar. Although Vhöl was originally intended as a one-off, the members reportedly are already making plans for a follow-up. As long as they don’t lose their bold spontaneity and hunger to reinvent, it should mark yet another step in the continued growth of extreme metal.

The soundtrack to the best stoner-rap neo-noir never made

Grails members Alex Hall and Emil Amos struck beat-geek paydirt in 2012 with their self-titled debut as Lilacs & Champagne, a musty, scraped-up soak in sample-based psychedelia that played like the lost score to a 1972 Italo-American giallo set in a desert. To continue that cinematic analogy, Danish & Blue is the soundtrack to the best stoner-rap neo-noir never made. It’s the kind of album where RZA-eerie piano loops pair up with heatstruck AOR guitar riffs and decaying fragments of Gary Wright’s synthesizer, soaked in whiskey, and set on fire at 4 in the morning. If that reads like lightweight chillwave kitsch, it ain’t – the drums knock too hard to lull listeners into a reverie. Danish & Blue trades in its predecessor’s bristling spookiness for a mirror-shaded, marquee-lit haze wafting somewhere between sleaze and sophistication — dig the fusion-via-Schifrin bass growl of “Police Story” and the Thin Lizzy-assaults-Precinct 13 dirge of “Hamburgers and Tangerines” for the choicest highlights.

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?

Curling up deeper into cosmic folk with José González's pre-fame band

Jose González, who came to renown for a muted cover of fellow Swedish act the Knife’s “Heartbeats,” has, like them, spent the years since reacting against that hit. After slipping off into bleakness and haunting textures of 2007′s sophomore solo outing In Our Nature, he returned to pre-fame band Junip for his next album, 2010′s Fields, which expertly spiked González’s airy acoustic melancholy with spacey synths and free-flowing drums.

The follow-up shakes off its own shackles by instead withdrawing even further into Junip’s comfortable cocoon. Throughout, Junip is unassumingly elegant, particularly on bleary-eyed dancefloor pick-me-up “Your Life Your Call,” jagged psych excursion “Villain” and tranquil epiphany “After All Is Said and Done.” Over African-style rhythms, “Baton” finds a way to make even whistling sound subtle. As suggested in the lyrics of patiently propulsive first single “Line of Fire,” sometimes it’s best to beat a graceful retreat. There’s more than one way to deconstruct the mechanisms of consumer culture.

File under: Noisy crash pop for art-school kids who like to dance to live music. Melodic guitar-driven songwriting with DIY/punk sensibilities. Scottish nerdcore for girls who put on all-ages shows and collect vinyl.

For fans of: Veronica Falls, Look Blue Go Purple, The Pastels, The Vaselines, Brilliant Colors, Grass Widow

From: Glasgow, Scotland

Personae: Eilidh Rodgers (drums, vocals), Ruari MacLean (guitar, vocals) and Rachel Aggs (guitar and vocals)

I interviewed Golden Grrrls before their show with Brilliant Colors in Olympia; they had just flown from London to Seattle to start their first U.S. tour. We ordered pizza and sat on the floor of Bikini Kill Records HQ to get to know one other. I quickly discovered they’re record nerds who prefer nothing more than to geek out about music: Drummer/vocalist Eilidh Rodgers works in a record store owned by Stephen Pastel where my band, Spider and the Webs, hung out for a day when we played Glasgow. We bonded and immediately started arguing about the Beatles.

Guitarists/vocalists Rachel Aggs and Ruari MacLean picked George as their favorite Beatle, which Rodgers thought was a total cop-out. (Aggs was about to write Harrison a fan letter when he died, so she wrote it and then ceremoniously burnt it in memoriam. At this, MacLean changed his mind and chose Paul.) Rodgers confessed that when she was younger she always picked John, but went with Ringo in the end, possibly for comic relief. In a way, their choices make total sense: Golden Grrrls are interested in pop music and experimenting with forms — like Paul — and in musicianship and aesthetics, like both Paul and George. They have a sense of humor (Ringo), and while they want to be taken seriously, they don’t wanna seem “too serious” (John).

After the interview, we headed to the show. Watching them made me remember hearing the Pastels for the first time, and illustrated an unlikely continuum from ’80s underground to today’s DIY, an international network that connects Olympia to Glasgow.

On the origins of Golden Grrrls:

Rodgers: I started playing the drums in high school. I used to just sit in the front room and play the drums. I used to play along to that film with Tom Hanks, That Thing You Do! It’s pretty silly. I think I really just loved the song. It all started with Tom Hanks didn’t it?

MacLean: The first band I ever played in was my dad’s cover band. Kind of like pub rock — classic jukebox hits. I was 15 or 16 and got to go into a bar and not be thrown out and got paid at the end of the night. My history teacher was the singer.

Aggs: My family plays music too. My mom just started playing double bass and my dad plays banjo and guitar. We play old timey bluegrass music. I play fiddle and mandolin.

On their troublesome name:

MacLean: My grandmother was from West Virginia and I used to watch Golden Girls with her. When I finished University I had to have surgery on my knee so I couldn’t work for like a month or two and I thought, “Now’s a good time to record some songs.” I didn’t think there would be any shows involved. It was just me messing around, like playing the drums and everything. I just thought that’s a silly name because, like, I’m a young guy, I’m not an old woman, there’s one of me, there’s four of them and then somebody had a side project called Golden Girls so I had to change the spelling and now it’s just a big load of trouble.

Rodgers: It’s fine. Who cares, fuckin’ hell!?

MacLean: Then we actually started playing. As stupid as it sounds, when we started playing live, I hadn’t made the connection between there being women in the band and the name at all.

Rodgers: I think it’d be a really bad name if we were all girls. I wouldn’t be in that band.

Aggs: I don’t think it’s a bad thing. I think it’s funny and if people do associate it with riot grrrl that’s not bad. It’s not like that’s a terrible thing to be associated with.

MacLean: I think it’s more that it’s related to a cheesy TV show.

On music and community:

Aggs: I make zines and stuff, I do drawings. In school I studied fine art and I made sound art but I actually just wanted to play music so I felt like I was wasting my time.

Rodgers: I think it’s easier to start playing music than it is to establish yourself as an artist.

Aggs: Music is so instantaneous. If you have an idea and you wanna do something with someone it’s so easy to make a demo and put it out there. It’s easy to communicate in that sense, because you know where the community is gonna be. You can just go play with your friends’ bands. If you make some art, it’s like, “Oh what am I gonna do with this? Where am I gonna exhibit it? Who’s gonna care?”

MacLean: With music there’s a really immediate response.

Rodgers: I think we used to joke that the minute Rachel met someone she liked, she’d say, “Let’s start a band.”

Aggs: Yeah, I need to stop. I’m already in too many bands.

On the ’80s indie-pop aesthetic:

MacLean: It’s easy for people to go “Glasgow, mixed gender…they sound like The Pastels or The Vaselines,” but I don’t have a problem with that.

Aggs: Before I joined the band I really liked Golden Grrrls, but I knew very little about indie pop except for New Zealand stuff. I’d actually never listened to the Pastels before and not really the Vaselines much. So I’ve listened to loads of new music since joining. But I like the band, because it’s really tuneful, fun music and I actually had no reference, which is really nice for me. It’s been fun coming up with guitar parts. What were we listening to? The Byrds and stuff like that.

MacLean: We like a lot of ’60s music, and I’m sure those bands did as well, but I can’t play guitar like [The Byrds'] Roger McGuinn. So maybe if you try and fumble along a little bit, it comes out sounding a little bit like us.

Aggs: When I used to go watch Golden Grrrls, it was really noisy and loud and fun live. I was going to see hardcore punk bands and stuff as well, and it was a similar thing. Me and my friend put them on in his bedroom, in a really small bedroom, and people were moshing and stuff.

Rodgers: There weren’t enough mic stands, so there was a mic attached to a mop or a broom or something.

Aggs: Golden Grrrl’s has a soft side but it has a crazy side too.

On the current DIY scene:

MacLean: The UK scene is looking pretty healthy just now with some cool new spaces and promoters doing shows, like Riots Not Diets in Brighton, Neen Records in Newcastle and the Audacious Art Experiment space in Sheffield. And promoters like Upset the Rhythm in London and Comfortable on a Tightrope in Manchester are amazing.

Rodgers: Before Rachel joined Golden Grrrls she was on tour in Glasgow with her band Trash Kit and Grass Widow, and we played in Glasgow together, and it was really great.

Aggs: Silverfox are one of my favorite bands in the UK at the moment.

MacLean: I think people like us like a broad range of stuff from different years. We toured with Edible Arrangements from Brighton.

Aggs: They’re amazing. They’ve got organ and guitar. They play spooky horror-movie music.

MacLean: We played with another band called Sex Hands, from Manchester. They sound completely different than us and completely different than Edible Arrangements. All the bands are totally different but there’s a love of melody and using that as a basis for making something.

Rodgers: I think it’s more interesting when you play with people who are into different things and you can meet in the middle somewhere.

Aggs: I had to learn to play guitar properly to join Golden Grrrls. Scales!

Rodgers: If you actually know how to play, you’d just play the same as the next guy. But if you’re kind of struggling —

MacLean: I’m constantly struggling.

Rodgers: — It sounds nice.