File under: Unnerving, serrated-edged, spacious art-punks who love dissonance and contrast

For fans of: Teenage Jesus & the Jerks, Sonic Youth, Arab Strap, Xiu Xiu, The Birthday Party

From: Omaha, Nebraska

Personae: Jack Begley (guitar, vocals), Noah Sterba (guitar, vocals), Jeff Sedrel (bass), Kevin Donahue (drums)

Yuppies took a very long time to make their first album — the band formed in 2007 and has released a handful of singles and a split EP over the past few years, but their self-titled, full-length debut has just appeared on Parquet Courts’ label Dull Tools. It’s a terrifically unsettling record, flowing from quiet, spacious passages (with main vocalist Jack Begley muttering or chanting lyrics that sound like every phrase is in a separate set of quotation marks) to out-of-control punk slaloms like “Hitchin a Ride,” which Noah Sterba screams so hard his voice cracks. And the band’s years of playing together are evident in the way they run every song into the next, without a pause.

There’s a lot of history audible on Yuppies — the atonal hammer-and-release textures and shambling rhythms of some of these songs echo the late ’70s no wave scene, and Begley and Sterba’s voices recall the Midwestern punk rock of the ’80s. But it’s also an assured, startling take on the psychogeography of the Dust Belt landscape that spawned the band. “All right, all right, we’re going for a ride, whether you like it or not,” Begley snaps at the beginning of “A Ride,” and that’s Yuppies’ attitude, right there.

eMusic’s Douglas Wolk talked with Sterba as the band geared up for a month-long tour.

On the band’s origins in high school corridors:

Me, Kevin and Jack all grew up together. In high school, I was writing songs, and Jack was writing songs, and we knew Kevin played drums, so we started playing together. Our earliest stuff was very primitive and…”young.” We were learning to play our instruments as we were playing songs. As we’ve gone on, we’ve kind of gotten more competent. We graduated from high school in 2007, and then in probably 2010, Jeff joined — we’d just been guitars and drums, and we thought, “Oh man — we gotta have some low end!”

On geographical separation and making their first album after six years:

Jeff lives in Virginia now, and Jack lived in St. Louis for a year or two. We’ve only had two or three years of being in the same city as a band. But once we got Jeff, we couldn’t play with anyone else. Even if after this tour we can’t play for another year, we won’t stop being a band — we’ll just kind of try to work with what we have and where we are.

The album’s definitely been a long time coming. One or two of the songs on the album we’ve had for four or five years; there are a few that we’ve thrown out, then reclaimed and put on the record. Most of the songs flow together, but I’d almost say that’s not something we consciously did — we’ve had a lot of space between times when we could practice, so the songs form their relationship with each other. Which is pretty cool.

On their nonstop live sets and how that translated to the recording:

Our shows are high-energy and anxiety-ridden. There are a lot of moments of chaos. We don’t take any breaks between songs, although we’ve got a bunch of different sets. We don’t have very long attention spans; we try to push ourselves to do new things at every show. The first side of the album we did in one long take. We recorded it live except for the vocals, and we thought, “This could take all day if we keep fucking it up 15 minutes in,” but we got the whole thing in one take. The second side we did in two parts — the first few songs run together, and then the last two.

On “What’s That?”:

That was one of the coolest songs to be a part of. We never talked about the writing of that song, we just started playing, said, “That’s kinda cool!,” practiced it again and started playing it at shows. When it started out, it was so different from how it turned out on the record. We never once talked about the structure of the song until the day before we recorded it. It was a bizarre process to be part of, watching this thing form itself.

On what they do when they’re not being Yuppies:

Kevin and I play with Simon Joyner — I’ve been playing with him for three or four years, Kevin just joined the group this year. We just made a new record and it’s awesome — more of an experimental record than Simon’s ever done. Simon lent me a space with an 8-track, and I recorded a solo album where I play all the instruments — that was released on Unread Records. Jack had a solo tape close to a year ago. And Kevin and I work at a diner that our friend owns in Omaha. Jack also works in a restaurant, and Jeff works in a restaurant in Richmond.

On the band’s favorite reactions to their music:

I’ve had a lot of people come up to me after a show and say, “It was good, but it made me feel really weird.” To be able to conjure up an emotion in someone, just from the sounds we’re making — to be able to create a feeling and have them really feel it too — that’s so flattering to me.

eMusic’s Tobi Vail caught up with Maricich over the phone to discuss the New York City art mafia, hugging the audience and squeezing her heart into a meat grinder.

What has changed for The Blow since you put out Paper Television in 2006?

[In 2006] I lived in Portland and worked with Jona Bechtolt [of Yacht] and then I moved [to NYC] with Melissa Dyne. Working with Melissa is super different because we’re girlfriends — also because we’re girls, and girls communicate differently on creative projects. We talk about everything. My experience with boys is like, “I’m just gonna do it and it’ll be cool.” At least with us, we like exploring, philosophically and theoretically, all the options of how things could be —we’re as interested in the process as we are in the outcome. [Melissa] hasn’t done albums before. She’s a sound artist and works with physics and sound waves in her installation work, and she used to play cello. We treat it as a total experiment, and sometimes we make one version of a song and go, “Huh, what if we try it completely New Wave this time?” and redo it. So it’s a process of building models. Sometimes we build one model and then we look at it and say, “Let’s completely renovate it and try it in a different way,” as opposed to being like, “OK, we’re gonna make an album and we’re gonna go about it the most direct and businesslike manner.” Our endurance for working with the process and playing around with it is vast.

Can you talk about the technical process of arranging the songs electronically?

We didn’t feel committed to a particular identity as music makers. IYou’re starting with the void. We both really tripped out on that, the fact that you can put any sound from any source anywhere. We knew we didn’t want to take the sounds out of a computer program, so we sampled different live instruments and perfected the samples so they sounded really clean. We would use generic computer sounds to make a beat and then find sounds to replace so that it [sounded] three-dimensional and rich. We inherited a couple of really weird synthesizers and Melissa just played around with them and tried to find the weirdest things she could.

How has your approach to performance changed over the years?

Music audiences can be so unruly, like a mob. We are learning how to sculpt the mob — make connections and take [the audience] to interesting places. During the live show, [Melissa] performs on a riser that’s at the back of the room in front of the sound engineer and I perform on the main stage and we have the crowd in between us. On my stage, there’s generally nothing besides myself and maybe some lights. The live show is us just hugging the audience in between us. We use that as a platform to see what cool stuff we can make happen. Melissa has a really strong role, but doesn’t want to be the one everyone is looking at all the time. We’re both working the room. She is making the room super high-fidelity intimate; she sets it up so it sounds really good. Little modules of sound are penetrating as deep into people’s ears as they can and opening people up a lot — and then she’s playing the electronic instruments — like manipulating samples and fucking with delays.

How would you describe your music to your cool aunt?

I come from a history of being super influenced by Kimya Dawson, but over the years, and in the process of making this record, we’ve both leaned more toward the experimentation of the ’70s — Laurie Anderson, David Bowie and Brian Eno are big influences on this album. Also Bjork — she kind of led the way for talking about emotions in abstract and really intimate ways in her lyrics, not even rhyming sometimes, just straight-up describing. But the impetus from where I started from was definitely Kimya Dawson — the idea that you just pick up your guitar and you don’t have any resources and you don’t need any because your emotional honesty is enough to form a bond with the listener. She’s a really awesome songwriter, she can play guitar and she’s really perceptive.

But the swashbuckling adventure story of what it was like for us to make this record is that we basically just decided to squeeze our hearts into a meat grinder and see what came out. It’s still hard for us to describe the music. We didn’t think of about a genre or a style until after we were done. We were [essentially] jumping out of a plane or, like, taking pictures of ourselves falling and then seeing what they looked like. Style-wise we have no idea what this is, but it is emotionally resonant and honest so we feel like we are on track.

Are you still involved in a DIY or any kind of community in New York?

Community is hard to come by in New York. Everybody doesn’t live in the same neighborhood, so you have to unite along events, and the events we found ourselves uniting around are mostly within the queer art scene — what I call the “lesbian mafia of New York,” or I guess the “lesbian-trans-queer art mafia.” They don’t call themselves that, but that’s how I’ve thought about them. It’s a scene where they were like, “We need to make space for ourselves,” and really went about doing it and were successful and smart. To me, that is DIY: They didn’t see themselves represented in the world they were a part of — the art world — and were like, “OK, we’re gonna make ourselves be the people you wanna know.” That is super inspiring.

So what’s next?

The process of how we’ve been able to make sounds has arched through the sky and we’re watching it morph and change and grow. It’s like we wanted to create a planet but then it took massive time and energy and force just to get the materials and raw elements. And then they develop to a certain point and then you stop it and box it up and send it out to people. But that planet is still developing and growing and new things are evolving, because as we play the samples, looping and combining them with sounds from other songs and putting them all together — it’s all still changing. It’s super fertile. After the album was done, we got way better at it. It’s a growing living thing, it’s not a product. Now that things are all greased up and moving, we’re just gonna keep recording and capture more of it.

Which is not to say they’ve forsaken their roots. They’ve still got punk attitude and country hearts, but the music on Blur the Line feels, on the whole, more thoughtful and controlled. The new confidence might explain why they’ve also decided to drop the shared “Darlin’” last name, embracing instead their real identities (Jessi Zazu, Nikki Kvarnes and Lynwood Regensburg) as opposed to the characters that had served as a sort of protection for so long.

While the Darlins were at a tour stop in Florida, eMusic’s Ashley Melzer spoke with founding guitarist Nikki Kvarnes about the Blur the Line and the band’s new attitude of self-acceptance.

How long after Screws Get Loose did you start thinking about the next album?

Immediately, I guess. We’re kind of always working on stuff. We set up a chunk of time over the winter where we were just focusing on that and we weren’t touring. But yeah, that’s something we’re always kind of working on.

Did you go in with certain ideas?

It kind of all just fell into place with what was going on in our lives collectively, me and Jessi especially.

Like what?

Just time to reflect on the past couple of years. Like, actually spend some time with ourselves and dive deep into some stuff that’s really personal. This is the first time — well, not the first time, but it was a different kind of way of writing the album. Jessi would work on her songs and I would work on my songs, lyrically, and then we’d come together and go, “Well, what about changing this?” or, “What do you mean by this?” It was just a different approach than trying to write really personal songs with another songwriter.

There does seem to be a level of patience about this new record. Is this the first work you’ve done with Roger Moutenout?

He was suggested to us by our manager a while ago. We did a 7″ with him and we did a couple other recordings with him. He is just a joy to work with. He’s helped us grow a whole lot. We love the studio. We love working with him. So we were all about working on the album with him and trying something different, working with a different producer, ’cause we’re kind of a different band now too.

What has that transition been like?

It’s been really good. It’s been gradual. Adrian started playing with us right before we went into the studio for a couple months, just fleshing out the songs and trying to tighten things up, talk about all the parts that we’re doing. Also, this is a transition because [in the past] we’ve always switched instruments. It’s always kind of been up in the air who plays what role. This is the first record where Jessi and I are playing guitar, we sing our parts, Lynnwood plays drums and Adrian plays bass. It’s always been kind of a clusterfuck of “Well, what do you want to do?” and on the last album my arm was broken, so I wasn’t able to play on the album.

Is there a reason why you wanted to streamline that way?

Yeah, it’s made us a way more solid band. It’s more defined what everyone does. It gives time to focus on exactly what it is that you’re doing and giving yourself a specific sound.

In looking back at your press over the years, you’re constantly being pigeonholed as “wild women” or reckless. How do you feel about that?

I mean, I understand why, because when we first started out we were really wild and crazy. We were just so excited to be in a band, we were just going all the way, all the time. There was some focus on music, but I think the performance and engaging people was what we were concentrating on, whereas now it’s a little bit more introverted. We still really want to interact with audience members and we want it to be an experience. And, whatever, people can think whatever they want about us, but they’ll know in the future what this album is and what the band is, and that it’s not just, “Let’s get drunk and party. These are a bunch of fun, silly songs.” There’s some depth behind it and we’re exposing ourselves a little bit more instead of these characters we’ve built over the years.

Listening to the record, I almost felt a level of regret in regard to that. Do you think that’s a theme? Like the song “Optimist” seems to have that as a crux of it.

Jessi wrote that, but no, no, not regret. It’s less regret and maybe just more awareness of how people perceive you. It’s not a song about regret at all. It’s about being an optimist and you realize that maybe not everyone’s as optimistic about what you’re endeavors are or, I don’t know, getting a hard time because you’re doing what you want to be doing. This is really broad — I’m being vague about it because I don’t want to describe a song that she wrote, because I’m sure she has way more to say about it than I do.

Well, which of your songs on the album do you think captures that theme of identity most for you?

Each one of the songs are reflections of who we are and sides of ourselves. “In the Wilderness,” that’s this idea of people being wild, but it’s deeper than that. It’s more about struggling to want to be in a mysterious place, or the depths of your subconscious and how hard it is to grasp imagination for this generation. I want people to know there’s this other side of me that’s very in touch with, I don’t know, the animalistic nature of man and woman and the facades that everyone puts up. That’s kind of a representation of the album: the man and woman and the black and white and the opposites of everything, and creating a balance between the two.

Right, I think there’s a part of the album that’s a voice for the misfits, people on the fringe. Or maybe just people who are comfortable with sexuality and vulnerability.

Absolutely, because there has to be a balance. You can’t just be this overly confident person throwing all your ideas out there and being like, “This is the way things are.” You have to be humble and you have to be vulnerable in order to grow and to be optimistic and able to just expose yourself as a whole human being.

Were you worried about the way the cover of the album art would be received at all?

Oh, no. I mean, there’s a reason why we put it out there. We feel like that represents what this album is and who we are and to break down that whole like idea of people pigeonholing us, to just be like, “This is us. This is a part of us and this is us all together and this is what the band is now.”

What do you want a listener to take away, to hear in the difference from Screws Get Loose to Blur the Line?

Maybe just kind of identifying with themselves, being like, “Whoa, I feel that way about myself, and I didn’t even really know I felt that way about myself.” There’s a lot of self-realization in this album on both sides, me and Jessi. The songs we wrote are like, “This is OK. I’m going to show my beauty, all my ugliness and all my fears and all my strengths,” and maybe just for someone to realize that it’s okay to be fucked up, but also be really strong and intelligent, simultaneously. I guess, just self-acceptance.

File under: Dour but hooky jangle-pop with a decidedly Anglophilic edge

For fans of: The Smiths, The Housemartins, The Lucksmiths, The Go-Betweens

From: Brooklyn, by way of Florida, by way of Connecticut

Personae: Andrew Marr (vocals/guitar), Jared O'Connel (bass), John Barinaga (guitar), Jake Beal (drums)

Ski Lodge’s debut Big Heart opens with a jangle and a pout, a tumble of giddy guitars, a handclap drum track and frontman Andrew Marr sighing, “You don’t have to be like me/ You don’t have to make the same mistakes.” And while the go-to easy critical reference point for this Brooklyn band has been another band with a Marr in it, Big Heart is more than a mere Manchester mimeograph. Its songs sway and sashay, guitars wreathing the edges like fine lace on velvet shirt sleeves. But all that frilliness masks a bruised heart: Throughout Big Heart, Marr laments his inability to connect with lovers and friends and his frustrations with his own shortcomings.

eMusic’s editor-in-chief met up with Marr at a New York coffee shop to talk about Florida, emotional alienation and the perils of teenage drug culture.

On the early influence of the Grateful Dead:

I was in a jam band in high school. We did a lot of Grateful Dead and Phish songs. I started to sing a little bit for the first time in that band. I still respect the Grateful Dead. I was obsessed with them for a while, then I went through a phase where I started listening to more indie music and thought, “Well, I can’t really like the Grateful Dead and Phish if I’m liking this other music.” I’m kind of getting over that now, and realizing that they were great songwriters, and that it doesn’t have to be one or the other. I think a lot of the distaste for those bands has to do with the type of people who like that music and not the music itself. I mean, have you ever been to a Phish show? It’s such a ridiculous scene.

On the downside of growing up in a wealthy community:

I grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut. It’s pretty suburban — it’s about 45 minutes from New York. It’s a pretty wealthy town — that’s usually why people have heard of it, though my family wasn’t super wealthy. It was a great place to grow up, but it’s kind of fucked up also. Kids there just have access to a lot of money. There are a lot of drugs, and that had a big impact on me. High school basically revolved around doing drugs and trying to do as little school work as possible. I was fully in it. I started by just experimenting [with drugs] with friends in middle school — a lot of my friends had older brothers, so it was just out of curiosity mainly. But then I just fell into that group of people, and that was just what we did. It got bad. I crashed a couple cars, so my parents kind of caught on after that. [Pause.] They were their cars.

On being exiled in Florida:

I went there for rehab — I think a lot of people end up there for the same reason — and then I just got stuck there. I started in Del Rey Beach and then moved a little north to the West Palm Beach area. I was there for four years. I didn’t really like anything about it, to be honest. I just kind of stuck around because I couldn’t really get my shit together. A year or two before I moved up here I finally got a band together and we played out a little bit down there. The scene there, there’s just not much going on. Touring bands don’t really visit there much. Miami has a pretty good venue, but it’s just way out of the way from where I was. I saw Radiohead while I was down there, but not really much else.

On his slow departure from the jam-band scene:

A friend of mine played [Death Cab for Cutie's] “I Will Follow You into the Dark” on guitar one time, and he was singing it, and I was like, “That’s an awesome song — who sings that?” And he told me. And I got really into Plans and Transatlanticism, and I listened to them a lot. That was the first band in that world. I got into the Shins right around that same time, too. So then when I was in Florida, I was writing a lot of Death Cab-inspired songs on the piano and just recording them into my laptop. At some point I was just like, “I want to start writing on the guitar — I’m kind of missing this whole other feel.” So I started messing around with it on my own and wrote songs based on my ability. As I’ve gotten better on the guitar, my songs have gotten a little more advanced than they were initially.

On songwriting as biography, and therapy:

None of the songs on Big Heart were narratives about other people. I’m more of a biographer. I get these little snippets of ideas and I try to piece them all together. “Anything to Hurt You” is just about being a bad influence on somebody else — looking at my mistakes, and saying to someone else that they don’t have to go through the same shit. And the title track is about a death, a figurative death. I’ve always had a hard time connecting with people — both knowing what other people are thinking and telling people what I’m thinking. Songwriting is a way for me to speculate on what relationships are really like, or what another person’s intentions were when I really have no idea. So the title track is a personal song about my inability to open up to people — in relationships, specifically. My girlfriend used to say I had no heart. And she was fucking around with me, but that’s what inspired me to think, “What does it feel like to not have a heart? And what does it feel like to open yourself up but then have your heart crushed?” That song for me is about the struggle between closing yourself off to everything versus opening yourself up and dealing with pain. I’ve gotten better — I’m going to therapy, and I’ve gotten better at telling people what’s going on in my life, but before that I was totally closed off. So I think songwriting is a useful tool for me. It’s part of my process.

Moby first broke through in 1991 as a New York club DJ (he’d been a regular at the multi-level space Mars, in the Meatpacking District, where he’d play everything from hip-hop to dancehall reggae as well as house music and early techno) who’d scored a novelty hit: “Go,” which utilized Angelo Badalamenti’s Twin Peaks theme. Within two years of “Go” hitting the UK Top 10, the small, geeky multi-instrumentalist was signed to a major label (Elektra) and issuing critically-acclaimed titles (1993′s Move EP and 1995′s Everything Is Wrong) that bridged the rave underground and the pop mainstream. Dance purists blanched at first (and pop fans shrugged, at least in the States), but by 1999 — after a detour into loud rock with 1997′s divisive Animal Rights — Moby had perfected the amalgam with Play, a warm recasting of downtempo beats, sampled blues vocals, and inviting instrumentation that sold more than 12 million copies worldwide.

Since Play, Moby has settled into a comfortable niche as both a dance-music forefather (he frequently DJs at festivals around the world) and singer-songwriter whose songs are often sung by others. That’s particularly the case on the songful new Innocents, which pairs Moby not only with his first outside producer — Mark “Spike” Stent, who worked on Massive Attack’s early records as well as, in more recent years, Lady Gaga, Usher and No Doubt — but a half-dozen vocal guests of note: Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips, Mark Lanegan, Damien Jurado, Cold Specks, Skylar Grey and Imyang Bassey, Moby’s longtime touring vocalist. eMusic’s Michaelangelo Matos spoke with Moby about the new album, the shrinking of New York studio space, and L.A.’s confusing topography.

Innocents is the first album you’ve made with an outside producer. Did that change how you wrote?

I’ve been working on music the same way for the past 30 years. I go into my studio and I play guitar or play keyboards or play around with different equipment and I just keep writing until I end up with something that I like. Sometimes I’ll read interviews with musicians who will talk about an erratically different way in which they approach making one record different from the next. I wish I had those interesting stories, because it’s really just me alone in my studio with a bunch of weird equipment, and it has been for quite a long time.

Because you were recording with someone else, did you treat your initial recordings as demos?

Yeah. I would go into my studio and spend about six months coming up with a bunch of ideas. When I first started meeting with Spike I had around 200 ideas, but clearly they weren’t 200 good ideas. We focused on probably 30-40 of those ideas and then we started reaching out to people who we thought might be interesting to have on the record. I got really lucky, because only a couple of people didn’t get back to us.

When did you begin to meet with Mark “Spike” Stent?

I think a year ago. To be honest with you, my grasp of time is kind of not that great. Like, the other day I was signing something and I had to put the date in there and I felt like the Absent-Minded Professor because I couldn’t remember what year it was.

[Stent] afforded me a degree of objectivity and perspective that I normally don’t have. Your perspective on what you’ve written really changes qualitatively the moment you share it with someone else. That for me was the main benefit of working with the producer is having this regained objectivity.

What led you to work together? Did you meet socially before this?

I’ve been signed to Mute Records for a while. Daniel Miller [the owner of] Mute Records, kept working with Spike and Alan Moulder, who did a lot of records. I really liked the records that Spike had worked on, some of the early stuff like the KLF and Massive Attack and Björk, which is ironic because a lot of people who want to work with him are interested in more of his pop productions [including Beyoncé and Madonna]. In turn, I think the reason he wanted to work with me is because I wasn’t interested in making a big pop record. I wanted to make something more lo-fi and weird.

You take a couple of guys in their 40s who spent most of their lives in studios, and the first thing they start talking about is their favorite weird old equipment. I have a slightly compulsive collection of tape delays — about eight of them. None of them work particularly well. You end up almost having an orchestra of tape delays. At one point the record was sounding very, very clean. So we ended up spending a couple of days putting the record through some sort of processing that would make these clean recordings sound more grimy and characterly.

The odd thing about…I would almost call it the new way of making records, because in the old days things were more compartmentalized. There was a writing period, followed by a recording period, followed by a tracking period: You’d have the drummer come in and spend a week doing drums, and then the bass, and then the vocals. Now you keep writing and recording and adding things to songs and playing around with stuff until things are done. The mixing process, rather than being a separate, added process, is almost a continuation of the creative process.

What changed the most from your initial idea of what the album might be and what it became?

When I first started thinking about this album I wanted it to be an underground, lo-fi dance record. Spike got me to change the focus to a more lo-fi melodic album. He said that when he listens to my records, what resonates with him is the more melodic music. He is the one who pushed it to become more like a singer-songwriter album. “Don’t Love Me” and “A Long Time” originally were very grimy, minimal dance tracks. He pushed me to give them more an emotional quality and more interesting chord structures. Those are the two holdovers from what the album was originally meant to be.

What lo-fi dance records inspired that initial idea?

Marianne Faithfull’s Broken English; a lot of early electronic music like Silver Apples and Suicide; Manu DiBango; a lot of Jamaican dance music and African dance music; and especially things that Wally Badarou played on. He’s one of my favorite musicians of all time. He’s the unsung hero of so many dance records. And a lot of New York records made in the early ’80s: Liquid Liquid, ESG, the Bush Tetras, Medium Medium, Konk. Just the records I grew up on. I’ve rediscovered them.

It’s funny — one of the people who helped me rediscover them was my old assistant Alex [Frankel]. He’s now in the band the Holy Ghost!, on DFA. When he was working with me, I would hang out with him and his friends, and they were all in their early 20s, and their favorite records were my favorite records when I was in my teens in the early ’80s. They kind of reintroduced me to the kind of music I loved. He was my assistant at the time [of 2008's Last Night]. I was playing the tracks I was working on to him. Every now and then he would get excited about something, and that was when I knew it was probably worth pursuing.

You moved to L.A. three years ago. Do you approach music differently there than you did in New York?

I think so. I have a sort of poetic-philosophical understanding of how living in L.A. has affected how I make music, and also a very practical, direct way. The direct way is college radio. Living in New York, I mainly listened to music that I owned. New York has good college radio, but terrible broadcast signal strength. Whereas in L.A., there’s KCRW and KXLU — really great college radio — and I think that’s affected how this album sounds.

On a more poetic level, L.A. is so vast, so byzantine, so weird and so un-cohesive, so in a way, when you move you have to make this huge effort to try and understand Los Angeles and make sense of it. Most cities are very cohesive: New York, Paris, Frankfurt, San Francisco, D.C., amazing, wonderful cities that are quite small and quite cohesive. Then you come to L.A. and it’s just [got] absolutely no cohesion. It almost makes people who live here search out a degree of smallness and comfort, because the city is so huge and confusing. I feel like this album has a smallness and comfort to it that might, oddly enough, [come from] living in L.A.

I thought I’d live in New York forever. Then I stopped drinking five years ago, and when I got sober I suddenly realized that New York is the single best place to be a drunk and unfortunately not the best place to be sober. The culture in New York revolves around going out and drinking and doing drugs and being degenerate, which is amazing when you can do that, but then you get sober and you feel kind of left out. Everyone in New York is out having the best time of their lives, and I’m at home watching 30 Rock DVDs. Also, I realized I wanted to be warm in the winter, and I wanted to be around nature.

New York, because it’s so affluent, most of the writers and musicians have been pushed out, so I wanted to live in a place that’s got more creative community. At some point I guess four or five years ago I realized that I actually had more friends [in L.A.] than I did in New York, especially when it comes to music. The real estate in New York is too expensive for anyone to have studios anymore. A couple of years ago, some friends of mine in L.A. were looking to record an orchestra in New York. There wasn’t a single recording studio in New York where they could record an orchestra. They ended up having to rent an empty space in a theater — and while they were recording, there was a huge Korean birthday party happening next door. They actually had to cancel [the session], because the Korean dance party music kept coming through the walls. Now, I actually don’t know too many professional musicians who don’t live in L.A.

You’ve been putting out records frequently these past few years. What kind of clock do you work on? Do you write music every day you can?

I don’t know how to do anything else, and it’s what I love to do. When I was 13 or 14, I spent a lot of time reading books, and some of my heroes from back then were Flannery O’Connor and Woody Allen and Picasso. I was always impressed by their work ethic, that idea of: When you’re inspired, go into the studio and work. When you’re not inspired, go into the studio and work. If you have success that means you should work more. If you have failure that means you should work more. No matter what’s going on an artist or writer or musician’s life, the only appropriate response is to keep working.

You’ve worked with vocalist Inyang Basey for a while now. How did you meet her?

When I was going on tour with the album Wait For Me I had a singer I was working with in the UK who couldn’t get a work visa to tour in the States, so at the last minute I had to hire a new singer. The very last person I auditioned was Inyang. The moment she started singing I knew she was the one. It turns out she’d never really sung professionally; her day job at the time was working at Carnegie Hall in their 20th Century classical music division. Her background when she was growing up was listening to the Dead Kennedys and the Sex Pistols. It’s funny that this skinny white kid was introducing her to older gospel and soul music.

Did Spike suggest any singers for the album?

Yeah. I basically started asking friends of mine whom they would recommend. My criteria were quite specific: I was looking for people who had really interesting emotional voices but who could also write really interesting lyrics. Spike’s one recommendation was Skylar Grey. She’s known more for being a pop person, but her background is more singer-songwriter based and a little more experimental. I asked Daniel Miller, and his one recommendation was Cold Specks. The way it works with all the collaborators is, I sent them about five instrumentals to see if anything resonated with them. Each of them picked one or two that they liked. Once the vocals have been recorded and sent to me I then rewrote the song around the vocals.

Did you resend a track to multiple vocalists before you got a yes?

Oh yeah. I had 10 instrumentals I really loved and really wanted vocals on. I’m kind of mercenary when it comes to trying to get the right vocals on the right track. It’s almost like a weird form of musical promiscuity, where I would sometimes send the same instrumental to three different people to try to see if it resonates with anyone.

Where was the third time the charm?

The song that Mark Lanegan co-wrote, ["The Lonely Night"] — that had been instrumental for a few years. I had never quite felt comfortable with what people had sent back. Then I gave it to him, and all of a sudden it felt like the vocals and the music made sense together. I made the final mix around his vocals. The music is mixed very quietly; the whole intention was to draw attention to his vocals.

Do you end up editing lyrics a lot?

Sometimes. The only person [I did that with] on this record was Skylar Grey. She’d written a line in the song: “Shades of grey.” This was right at the height of the Fifty Shades of Grey popularity. Skylar, because she lives up in the mountains, hadn’t heard about the book. I had to get her to make some suggestions for things that didn’t sound like they were referencing Fifty Shades of Grey. She thought it was funny.

I want to ask you about “Saints”: It’s obviously your instrumental style, but it seems looser and grander than usual — a big sweep with a lot of moving parts. Did it take a long time to put together?

It was supposed to be an instrumental that someone was going to write lyrics to, and I couldn’t find the right person. At some point Spike and I realized it was pretty good as an instrumental, so the focus was to try and finish it. I hired an arranger at the very end — I’d written orchestral parts, and I wanted to know what it would be like if someone came in and wrote orchestral parts. There’s a lot of big, bombastic brass parts. I think there are 300 different string players on it. It’s mixed in a way that the orchestral stuff doesn’t overwhelm the track. It almost makes me want to do a weird orchestral mix of it that strips out the drums.

Were you thinking of how some of these songs might be interpreted live?

No [laughs]. I knew from the beginning that I wasn’t going to go on tour with this record. I’ve had that frustration in the past of recording music, putting it on a record, and then realizing that it’s impossible to play it live in any interesting way.

What led to the decision not to tour?

A lot of it involves aging. As I’ve gotten older I’ve started to realize that life is short, and as much as I like standing on stage and playing music, I love being at home working on music. Of course, it drives my manager crazy, because in 2013 very few people buy records and the only way musicians make money is by touring. Basically, I’m focusing on the one aspect of the music business that’s not at all lucrative, while turning my back on the only lucrative side of the music business.

Well, you’ve always had a contrary streak.

Yeah, I guess so. I appreciate that we all need to eat and need to pay the rent. But if you have a finite amount of time, shouldn’t it be spent on things that you really love and find important? Even if that means making less money and making my business manager and manager very unhappy, I’d still rather be in my studio working on music.

When Moby requested we interview Cold Specks as part of his takeover of eMusic, we were all too happy to oblige. The debut from pseudonymous songwriter Al Spx topped our list of eMusic’s Best Albums of 2012, and her live show had grown more riveting and more assured each time we saw her. Her performance on Moby’s record Innocents contains all of the things that made her first album so stunning — enigmatic lyrics, deeply-felt vocals and a free-floating but undeniable sense of spirituality. eMusic’s editor-in-chief J. Edward Keyes caught up with Spx by phone to discuss her new record, her collaboration with Moby and her paralyzing perfectionism.

I’m interviewing you at Moby’s request, because he’s taking over our site for a week, but it’s kind of convenient — your album was our No. 1 record of last year.

I heard about that!

So I thought this would be a good time to see what you’ve been up to since then. Where are you right now?

I’m in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. I’m in a studio recording some songs for the next record.

How long have you been working on that?

Well. I don’t know. It’s kind of — [pauses]. Some of the songs have existed for a while, some are brand new. We didn’t start tracking until maybe a month ago.

So there were still some songs from your original batch that didn’t make it on to I Predict a Graceful Expulsion?

There’s just one. It’s existed in many forms, and I finally forced the son of a bitch to give in recently. I won’t tell you which one. It’ll ruin the surprise.

I was going to ask if it was the one you were playing on tour.

Well, actually, OK — I got that wrong. There’s two that have existed in a few different forms. The one that you’re speaking of — where did you see me play?

I saw you at Glasslands, then at Mercury Lounge, then at Piano’s.

OK. So you probably heard a bunch of the new ones. There’s a song… [stops suddenly] I don’t want to say!

You don’t have to!

Oh, I’ll just say it, whatever. There’s a song called “All Flesh is Grass” and a song called “Let Loose the Dogs.” “All Flesh is Grass” is probably written around the same time as “Blank Maps,” but it didn’t make the first record because I hadn’t figured out the arrangement for it, and it’s taken a couple of years to get right. The other one was written when I first started touring.

You talk about these songs existing in a few different forms — how do you know when to say “stop”?

I know it’s done because when I listen to it, I become filled with delight and satisfaction, and I know that I can’t make it any better. My producer, Jim, and the assistant here are probably realizing that I’m incredibly anal when it comes to the studio, but these songs exist forever, so I just want to get them right. I’m kind of a perfectionist. I want and I need for everything to be absolutely as perfect as I can make it.

What was the moment you started becoming aware that the first record was really resonating with people?

I guess when I started to tour the record, I would notice the crowds start to get bigger. We’d be playing tiny shows in small towns in the middle of nowhere — like, say, Denton, Texas — and there would be loads of people who knew and loved the songs. I guess that’s when I started to realize that I was doing something right.

One of the things that really struck me about the record was the way you took Bible verses and either recontextualize them or manipulate them in certain ways. How conscious a choice was that?

Not very conscious. The record is a representation of loss in many forms — mostly just loss of several relationships. I studied English and noticed Bible verses are common in literature. It’s the best piece of fiction in the world as far as I’m concerned. There are some really beautiful lines in it, and some lines really just stuck out to me. I don’t really like to go into detail about what the songs are about. I’m a very private person and my songs are very vague and I really do love it when people interpret it and take it in different ways. I think it’s incredibly fascinating.

A lot of the story around the early record was about the falling out between you and your parents. From what I’ve read, it sounds like things are better now?

It’s all good in the hood. It was kind of blown out of proportion in the early days. It was mostly just growing pains, really. My parents wanted the best for me and they didn’t necessarily believe that music was the best for me at first, but they’ve come around. It’s all love.

Does that mean you’ll start using your real name?

[Laughs.] No, I’m a very private person. I write music and I enjoy doing it, but because I do it, I think it’s completely unnatural to perform day in and day out and give yourself to people — a collection of strangers — every night. I’d much rather have a stage name and remove myself from it all.

So you take on this persona of Al Spx to maintain a sense of self.

That’s exactly what it is. Al Spx is a character, and she exists because I created a project called Cold Specks, and people kept asking me who Cold Specks was. And I thought I’d given enough at first, but evidently I hadn’t [laughs]. So I came up with a stage name, and that’s all I’m willing to give. I just got so uncomfortable attaching my real name and myself to songs that are incredibly personal and have the tendency to be morbid. It’s not a reflection of me, and I don’t feel entirely comfortable with the songs completely defining me as a human being, because it’s just one side of me. So I have a stage name.

I’d imagine it also allows you a degree of sanity because you can step out of that character when you’re not performing.

Exactly. When I’m not touring, I go back to the girl I am and remember who I am as a human being. It can be incredibly grueling at times. Al Spx is a tough bitch and she can deal with that, but when I’m at home, I want to just be me.

One of my favorite lines is on “Blank Maps,” where you sing “I am a goddamn believer.” What are some things you believe in?

I’m not sure. I’m still figuring it out. That particular song is — [pauses]. That particular song is about a boy, and I think I was just trying to let him know some things.

Have any of the people these songs are about heard them?

Probably. [Laughs] I’m not sure. I don’t know. I’d rather not say.

Let’s talk about the new record. Thematically, how do the songs relate to the songs on the first record?

It’s different. They’re louder. There aren’t any acoustic guitars — I’ve been joking that I’ve gone all “Judas” on this record [laughs].

Is this for real, or are you doing that thing you like to do to interviewers where you pull my leg and then I report it?

[Laughs.] I’m not! I’m not. I’ve stopped doing that. It’s more playful this record. The first record was a delicate record, and it was a moment in time and a reflection of a fragile girl. For this record, I’ve grown a lot as a human being. The songs on the first record were written when I was a teenager and in my early 20s, and I’ve grown a lot since then. I think I also got a little tired of being depicted as an “emotional songwriter.” That sort of seeped into my songwriting. So this one’s just playful.

So more major-key songs?

I actually can’t answer that for you, but only because I don’t know anything about music. I play in two tunings, and they’re both, I guess, minor tunings — it’s always gonna be minor with Cold Specks — but I don’t actually know anything about music. I play guitar and write all the songs and I sit down with the boys and tell them what I want. Like I said, I’m incredibly anal in the studio.

I’m curious as to how you think other members of your band would describe working with you.

Chris Cundy, the woodwind player, has a phrase — he says I’m “predictably unpredictable.” And that’s accurate. I’m the most disgustingly indecisive person. I think I know what I want, but I really don’t.

Let’s talk a little bit about the collaboration with Moby — how did that come about?

We’re on the same label, Mute, and I think he was looking for singers and Daniel Miller from Mute mentioned me, so he looked up all my stuff and really liked it, and we just started working together.

Was the song already finished by the time it got to you?

“A Case for Shame,” he sent an instrumental. There’s a studio in London that I work in occasionally and I recorded some vocals and sent them back to him. It was a very creative and collaborative setup. The other song we actually recorded in his home studio. I had a day off on my last North American tour, so we stopped in L.A. and I went over to his house and recorded the second song. Very quickly, actually. He already had the instrumental and I had it for weeks but couldn’t come up with anything. The night before [we were recording] I scribbled some notes on my hotel notepad and went in and we did it in about an hour.

How is his process different from yours?

He’s not an anal piece of shit like I am.

That seems like you’re being pretty hard on yourself!

I like to think I’m funny with my harshness! [Laughs.] He goes with the flow, Moby. He doesn’t overanalyze. It’s something I learned from working with him. I can spend a lot of time just picking at things and just doesn’t do that. He’s a very free and open and creative man and he’s not at all disgustingly over analytical. It’s a really refreshing thing.

I’m sure some of that comes with experience, though.

Yeah, I’m only making my second record now. He’s had a lot of time to grow as an artist, so he knows what he wants and he gets there quickly.

I know you have a lot of influences outside of music. I was curious to know what you’re reading now.

There’s a book by Milan Kundera called Immortality that I just picked up the other day.

What kinds of books do you tend to be attracted to?

I like really descriptive stuff, and I like really short and sweet stuff as well. I like ‘em all.

Are you living in Canada when you’re not on the road?

I don’t live anywhere. I just finished touring. I’ll probably be moving back to London soon. I like it because it’s a very big city — I think it’s the best city in the world. It’s huge — there are cities within the city. So many people, so many things to do. It’s just a wonderful city.

Since Moby asked us to interview you as one of his favorite artists, I was wondering who you’ve been listening to lately and who you admire.

I’ve been listening to a lot of Scott Walker. Michael Gira from Swans. There’s this band from the UK called Savages that I really like.

I could almost hear a collaboration between you and Scott Walker.

Oh God, I would love that. The guy who did our latest music video did the video for that song “Epizootics!” from the last Scott Walker record. That’s the closest I’ve ever gotten to Scott Walker.

The Flaming Lips have never shied away from life’s unavoidable existential dramas — Death, Love, Depression, The Afterlife (or lack thereof). But The Lips have never made “depressing” music: Steven Drozd, the band’s multi-instrumentalist and chief sonic architect, has a flair for melodic, rainbow-hued arrangements, and Wayne Coyne, their outsized frontman, plays the role of psychedelic jester, particularly on stage, where he crowd-surfs on inflatable bubbles, pours fake blood on his face, and preaches his deep ruminations to a cult-like fan-base in his cracked warble.

The Terror, the band’s 13th studio album, is a bleak — often morbid — change of pace, filled with repetitive synthesizer textures, ghostly choral voices, and dark lyrical mantras. Inspired by a dread of mortality and deep personal turmoil (Coyne’s recent divorce, Drozd’s brief heroin relapse), the duo recorded the album mostly alone, working quickly and spontaneously instead of layering the songs with overdubs. eMusic’s Ryan Reed spoke with Wayne Coyne about the album’s intimate recording process and complicated themes.

In an interview with Pitchfork, Steven Drozd said: “The Terror is this internal feeling you get that you and everyone you love is going to die. Everything in your life might be good, but there’s still this notion…that there’s more pain and suffering to come down the road.” It’s interesting to compare that quote to “Do You Realize,” which basically says the same thing but puts it in a beautiful, uplifting sense.

I think that’s what optimism is, in the end. You go, “We can’t bear this,” or you go, “We’ll find a way.” Sometimes music tells us so much about how we feel, and I think that’s why we like music so much — because it fills in. We utterly know what it means while it’s playing, but the minute it stops, it’s like, “I don’t know anymore.” I don’t think one way of thinking has to negate another way of thinking. I’m certainly not “Do You Realize.”

It’s a dramatic song, and I think it’s most powerful when it’s used at these dramatic moments. Most people I’ve talked to that have used it have done so at weddings and funerals, even the birth of their children. They see it as the sound of this big moment, where this other sound — this sound that we’re doing on The Terror — it’s this moment that’s with you all the time. It feels depressing and triumphant at the same time. A triumph isn’t “Hey, this is the greatest thing! We’re gonna live!” A triumph is saying, “We’ll just get through this.” We don’t have to make it any more sparkly than that.

When I read about the album’s dark themes, I expected the music to be depressing. And it is in a way, but there’s also a comfort in the sadness. There’s a bleakness to it, but it’s also really beautiful at the same time.

When we were making it, a lot of it reminded us of church music. We don’t go to church now, but when you were young, you’d sit there and try your best, not knowing what the fucking words were, to sing along with these simple mantras that people would sing in church. And it wouldn’t be about a singular singer. I think that’s what a lot of this music feels like as well. It’s not coming from a point of “I’m the singer.” I call it “the voices from beyond.” There are only a couple of songs in which you can hear me trying to sound like to sound like me. It’s just melody and words that are in the cloud of the sound of the song anyway. For me, it’s not meant to be this big statement by this big character.

So from what I’ve read in other interviews, Steven’s dark period was what really set the tone for the album. But I also know you were going through some heavy shit during that time. What was it for you that sparked this mood and the idea of The Terror?

We’ve always hinted at this type of music. But the main difference is: Even five or six years ago, if we were having a semi-big production going on, like some of these songs are, with drums and overdubs and a lot of voices being recorded — in the early stages of a lot of our records, we start early on with really primitive demos. But now we don’t do that anymore. A lot of times we’re just recording, and we’re not really doing a demo of a song. We’re just creating it right there. There isn’t gonna be a second version or a third version — it just is what we create.

And now we can do that without anybody being there. So you really are, in a sense, kind of a painter in a dark corner, painting whatever you want and not always thinking anybody has to see it. It used to be, no matter what we would do, we were surrounded by people who were helping us record — engineers, technicians and producers, and everybody is in there listening to everything you do, and sometimes openly judging us, sometimes not. But you’re not doing it in isolation of your own creation, and I think that’s the main difference.

I think we’ve always been able to do expressionistic, internal music, but it’s very hard to do that sometimes. In the past, we’ve never been alone making it. When you get musicians together, they want to do music. They want to say, “You play that, and I’ll play this.” This wasn’t music like that. It’s simple, repetitive…a lot of it’s even out of tune and out of rhythm with itself — it just happens to be something we liked. If Steven liked it, and I liked it, that’s all that mattered. We don’t care if it’s good or bad. If we’re happy with it, let’s go. So I think that’s really powerful and great luck — this kind of music that we’re drawn to is this cold, distant, unsettled thing.

I’m really curious how you guys were able to sustain this mood throughout the album. Is it a situation where you guys started to capture this mood so you noticed that pattern and said, “Let’s shape the record in this way”? Or did a lot of it just happen subconsciously?

That’s a narrow path to walk. Part of it is you want to stay in this color palette. Not to simplify it, but you have Picasso’s Blue Period, or whatever, they’re all reaching for the same thing. But that can also be limiting because you can start cutting off possibilities, and we don’t like to do that either because sometimes you think, “Oh, it couldn’t possibly be this,” but then you hear it and you say, “Well, it’s absolutely that.”

We really struggled with the song, “Butterfly…How Long it Takes to Die.” We struggled with that one in the beginning, because it felt too snappy. It’s well played, but I think it’s the only song on the record that has this little moment of funk in it. With Embryonic, we were doing that all over the place — being very clumsy and funky and primitive. And this wasn’t doing that. For whatever reason, we were on another trip. And when we were confronted with that song, we thought, “What do we do?” And we just rejected it for the longest time. And I didn’t think about [the lyrics] very much, I just said cosmic shit that you think of with the music. Then we re-looked at it, and we thought, “Why don’t we make it more like what the lyrics are talking about and see if we can make another version of this bleak, un-chromatic landscape.” I think it works — over the last three or four songs, you really feel like you’re no longer looking for the answer. To me, it sort of feels like you’ve found the answer. And sometimes with really distinct rhythms, that’s kind of what it’s saying. You know which path you’re on. Earlier in the record, we begin with a rhythm that isn’t very solid, but kind of dissolves into almost-rhythmless rhythms. They’re rhythms, but they don’t really push forward with a lot of confidence, and none of it rushes ahead. And by the end of the album, we kind of get something back. We know something different. That’s how it feels to me — I don’t know if it really is true, but that’s how it feels to me as a piece of music.

“Try to Explain” is absolutely beautiful, and it epitomizes everything I love about the album. That could be one of my favorite Lips melodies.

It does that thing we talked about, almost being a “voice from beyond.” It never seemed as though it was a singular person singing it. Even though I’m singing it, it’s almost like music that’s always existed, and someone sang it somewhere in time. And I think when we do music like that, where there is no character involved, it allows you to be vulnerable and say things that you probably wouldn’t say if you were being you. You wouldn’t say something so crushing. When that big crescendo of all those harmony voices break into that line, “Try to explain why you’ve changed,” it’s unbearable. It’s as though nature has been split open or something — that’s why I sang that line. It just sounded like that to me. That crescendo really was an accident; we stumbled upon these harmonies just willy-nilly. Steven did one or two, and I did a third one or something, and it really became emotional. We added the lyrics — the music always carried the message, but we just added the lyrics like, “Of course, this is what the music was saying.”

The song is just enough sad, and it’s just enough powerful, but it doesn’t last very long. Sometimes that’s the hardest thing to do in music because you want to do it again and again and make it bigger — but if you leave just below the hottest temperature, it’s almost like you can have it forever, because you can handle it. The temptation with dumb artists and musicians like us is that you want to go all the way. If it’s big, make it bigger; if it’s loud, make it louder. But if you’re lucky, you don’t do that. When that happens, it can be pretty powerful.

I think the biggest anguish and pain people have is when they can’t find the answer. Your mind can’t stop searching, and it keeps you looking and keeps you wondering. And that’s really where your psychic pain is: Knowing the answer may be painful, but I think your imagination is something your worst enemy. Your mind sometimes goes to the worst possible place, and before you know it, you’re living in some unlivable hell. Most people I’ve talked to, without knowing it, have all pointed to that song and said, “I know what you’re talking about there. I can relate to that. There’s something about that piercing thing.” It’ s not demanding an answer — it’s longing for one. It’s crying out for something, saying, “I just wanna know!” It’s powerful, but I don’t know if I have any answers. Sometimes I know I’m singing something that’s trying to channel your subconscious. That’s a hokey thing to say, but for me, it’s not always, “There’s this thing happening in your life, so you sing about it.” Sometimes it’s just there.

Here, Bratton walks us through some of his favorite Cascine releases.

File under: No-wave hardcore; harmony meets disharmony in an unpadded cell; the sound a Kathy Acker novel would make if it was a band instead of a book

For fans of: Free Kitten, Arab On Radar, Destroy All Monsters, Scissor Girls, Magik Markers

From: Oakland, California

Personae: Marissa Magic (guitar, vocals), Jaime Clark (drums), Vanessa Harris (guitar, vocals)

Oakland’s Stillsuit mix experimental noise rock with punk politics, creating a feminist soundtrack to the confusion of sex and violence in a gendered world. Loud treble guitars in weird tunings duel while drums pound away in another time signature. Their live show lays waste to squares who cover their ears, clear the room and even pull the plug.

Stillsuit is the best band in America, and their legitimacy is not predicated on outside approval. Like all great underground groups, they make up their own rules. Listen and learn.

On noise vs. punk:

Marissa Magic: Sometimes I describe us as noise-rock, but I also kind of hate that [term].

Vanessa Harris: [Noise] is where a lot of my personal history lies, but it can be limiting. My conception of a punk band means that you care about things. I want to be explicitly feminist and care about the ways in which we do things. We are a punk band in that sense, but maybe we don’t totally sound like one.

On moving beyond the “man/woman” show and intersectional feminism in 2013:

Jaime Clark: The feminist scene in the Bay Area isn’t just about women or cisgendered women, it’s about gender-non-conforming people and people of color. It also considers class dynamics and so many aspects of people’s backgrounds that are not necessarily directly related to gender.

Harris: There’s also a lot of non-feminist punk stuff that’s going on too and that can be a bummer — some of those “man/woman” shows that happen —

Clark: — as in, “men” and “women” are at the show, and that’s it —

Harris: And they are very much acting out roles that are traditional. Being in consideration of all those things is what good feminism is. What inspires me about feminism is that it can encompass anything. It should be asking questions about race, class, gender, queer — I don’t know, everything.

Magic: Sometimes we get asked to play bigger noise shows and we are the only women on the bill — or it will be, like, very man/woman situations — I think it’s important to play those shows but it can be challenging.

On what they dislike most in popular music:

Magic: I don’t like music that sounds like it’s made by hippies on cocaine. Like ELO, Steely Dan — I just hate groovy-talented-guys doing groovy-talented-things in really expensive studios and everything sounds slick. Also a thing that bums me out is that a lot of the music I really like sonically is either lyrically or aesthetically really fucked up.

Clark: Generally I dislike Bruce Springsteen and I dislike “Don’t Stop Believing” — things that are sort of like “songs for every guy out there.” Also, drums or percussion really make or break a band for me. I don’t like music where it feels like whatever percussion has no life. I like a lot of music that has drum machines or pre-recorded beats, as long as it seems like life got put into creating it.

Harris: I hate ’80s synths. I hate the new ’80s noise dudes doing ’80s synth-music thing. It’s so unappealing to me. I love Steely Dan. I don’t like Journey, but I like Boston. But I would pay money if I never had to hear that song “You Spin Me Right Round” again.

Magic: The other day she said “I would pay $5 to never hear that song again.”

Harris: Yeah, I don’t care that much. But I could do without it.

North Carolina?

155 years after its publication, the phrase “Paradise of Bachelors” graced the spine of the first album released by a couple of Tar Heel Staters — Brendan Greaves and Jason Perlmutter — who had no idea they were launching one of the most promising labels in the Southeast, arguably the entire country. “What a title for a story, especially one by an author we consider to be a paragon of American literary excellence,” says Greaves, co-founder and Melville fan. “I just thought the title was so compelling and humorous. That was my primary justification.”

It might seem like an odd literary reference for a label so focused on American — specifically North Carolinian — regional music, but Greaves says the name has taken on new weight and significance since its first release, a compilation of homegrown soul songs written, produced and originally released by a stereo salesman named David Lee. “It’s a story about labor,” he says. “That idea appealed to me because when I was in grad school, I wrote a bit about labor lore and occupational booklets — the culture and everyday experiences of work among Americans. And in retrospect, the fact that half the story is about lawyers has become particularly relevant. You deal with lawyers a lot in this business, and that can be both educational and extraordinarily frustrating.”

Neither Greaves nor Perlmutter (who runs the site Carolinasoul.org) had high expectations for their 2010 maiden release, Said I Had a Vision: Songs & Labels of David Lee, 1960-1988, but surprisingly, it sold out before it even hit stores. “We thought maybe we’ve got something here,” recalls Greaves, “maybe we can do another project.” Next on the docket was Poor Moon, the new album by the Durham-based band Hiss Golden Messenger.

As the label grew and matured, Greaves and his new partner, Christopher Smith (late of the band Espers) would work to maintain a sharp balance between intriguing new music (such as the self-titled debut from Nashville folk-rock upstarts Promised Land) and fascinating archival releases (such as Chance Martin’s Music Row obscurity/absurdity In Search). “I’d like to braid the two together in a compelling way,” says Greaves. “I’m interested in older music to the extent that there’s more of it. There’s a lot yet to be discovered.”

Based in Durham, Greaves — a New Englander who moved to North Carolina to study folklore — handles copyright research, oversees most of the graphic design, and writes liner notes. His wife Samantha handles the bookkeeping, and Smith (based in Philadelphia) is in charge of A&R and artist management. “That’s his background. Through Espers, he has had intensive tour experience and understands these matters from the artist’s perspective. I don’t really have that. It’s a shared burden.”

Despite the many miles in between Greaves and Smith, Paradise of Bachelors remains entrenched in the culture and traditions of North Carolina and is becoming an increasing presence in the bustling Tar Heel scene. “One could argue that North Carolina is the birthplace of country music in a broad sense,” says Greaves. “There were a lot of important early country recordings in Charlotte before Nashville took control of everything. All the old-time banjo music string-band traditions, all the bluegrass traditions came from here. And then there’s this amazing wealth of African-American musical traditions, both secular and sacred.” He sees local acts like Hiss Golden Messenger, Megafaun, and Horseback as continuations of those traditions.

Even so, as Paradise of Bachelors grows, Greaves understands that its scope will transcend state lines. In fact, the label is planning a new set of reissues for a UK artist, which would fulfill the transatlantic nature of its namesake story. “We’d like to maintain and even accelerate our pace,” he explains,” without losing attention to detail or our ability to represent our artists effectively and accurately.”

Speaking by phone from his home in North Carolina, Greaves elaborated on some the label’s small, but growing catalog.

File under: Carefree bangers for a girls' night out

From: Stockholm, Sweden

Personae: Caroline Hjelt and Aino Jawo

Thanks to both canny use in a pivotal scene of the HBO show Girls and a memorable cover by Sesame Street‘s Cookie Monster, Icona Pop reached mega-fame months before even releasing their debut album. Their scorching dancefloor stomper “I Love It,” penned by dark pop songstress Charli XCX, has been practically inescapable since its first appearance on the internet last May. The duo’s meteoric rise is all the more impressive given that Caroline Hjelt and Aino Jawo come from a DIY background, and thus handle their own maximalist production on This Is…Icona Pop.

Despite these bragging rights, Hjelt and Jawo remain relatable, using their high-profile debut to promote girl power — just like their collaborator Charli XCX did on True Romance. Their record is full of shout-along songs that are more focused on friendship than romance. While other artists might have struggled with their newfound fame, Icona Pop rose to the challenge of following up their breakout single with a batch of songs that are just as catchy.

eMusic’s Marissa G. Muller phoned Hjelt — Jawo was out sick — to talk about writing empowering songs, how their hippie families informed their wide-ranging musical influences, and how they opened up their sound for a larger audience.

“I Love It” is the perfect example of a post-breakup party song.

It’s a very angry song with a lot of emotions, but it’s also kind of empowering. When you’re singing “I Love It/ I don’t care,” it feels like you’re leaving something behind. When you break up with someone, you get devastated and you think that you’re never going to smile again and you just want to stay in bed. But then there’s one day where you feel a little bit stronger, a little bit better, then you get into the “fuck it” mode, and the “I love it” mode. You’re like, “I don’t care anymore, I love it.”

Did you try to sustain the feel of that song on this album?

We have some songs that are still empowering and have the same vibe, but the album isn’t 15 songs that sound exactly like “I Love It.” The people that found out about us through that song will get to see some new sides of ours.

What are some of those sides?

We take it down a little on a few songs. Some people just know us for “I Love It” and we’ve been writing this album during a lot of different states of mind and in a lot of different cities. You get the whole of us. Not just one feeling, one emotion, one state of mind.

We’ve been working on this album for such a long time and we’re so proud of it. We just want to show people what we’ve been up to over the past four years. We want to make music that makes people feel so we hope that people feel a lot of emotions from this album.

What was the biggest challenge you faced when you were putting together the album?

Time and the logistics. We’ve been so inspired and have written so much music. We joked that we have maybe five albums worth of songs to release. But it takes awhile to kill your darlings and find the songs that really connect. So that was the hardest part — not writing or creating it, just finding the time to finish it. Starting a song is easy, but finishing it can take some time.

Did you and Aino set out to write empowering songs, or is that something that happened along the way?

When we go into the studio we never think, “Today, we’re going to write a song about this.” We just go in there and it’s our little Icona Pop world and we create based on how we feel that day. Or maybe we’ve been through something, or maybe our friends told us a story that inspired us, or maybe we rode the bus with someone who inspired us. But then I think, it needs to reflect who we are and how we feel together, and we feel very strong together. I think that’s where the message comes from. We are all about girl power because we feel the girl power.

You’re one of the few pop artists right now spreading that message.

Thank you. That makes me happy.

Who are some of the artists you looked up to growing up, and while you were writing?

We grew up in hippie families where we listened to everything from reggae to classical music. When we started Icona Pop, we were so inspired by Prince and David Bowie. We’ve also looked up a lot to PJ Harvey, Tina Turner, Beyoncé, Patti Smith — really strong female artists that are so great at what they’re doing.

That’s a really expansive group. Were you hoping to bring as much eclecticism on the album?

Yeah, I feel like we do that all of the time. We don’t have any rules when we write and we really feel like we can do whatever we want in the studio and call it our pop music. We can go into the studio and can do a reggae song but we can also write an EDM song. There’s a lot of mixed genres on our pop album.

You’ve found a spot in the indie crowd but you’ve also opened up your sound and it’s such a big part of mainstream right now. Why do you think your music appeals to such a wide array of people?

When we’re having a show, we’ve been having old biker guys come up to us and say, “I usually don’t listen to pop music but I love your music,” and then we have the cutest little girl standing in the front being at her first concert, or boys that are singing every lyric. It’s such a mix and that makes us so happy. I think people can relate to our music a lot because we’re not trying to be cooler than we are or anything — it’s just us doing what we love. We’re two normal girls from Sweden, and I think people can feel that it’s genuine and real.

So, it’s no surprise that when Barlow sat down with eMusic’s Robert Ham in the kitchen of Portland’s Bunk Bar recently to go over a handful of songs from his career, the 47-year-old musician didn’t shy away from addressing the tougher aspects of his life — including the subject that dominates Defend Yourself, the first Sebadoh album in more than a decade: the end of his 25-year marriage.

Deep Wound, “Lou’s Anxiety Song”

This is really strong stuff for a band in high school.

Yeah? Really? Huh…I wrote it myself!

Was it weird for your classmates to know someone in a band?

No one knew I was in a band. The only other guy who knew was in the band with me, Scott Helland. Literally, in a school of 500 kids in my class, no one in my graduating class. I could be exaggerating, but I think they had no idea.

There weren’t any other punk kids in school?

I’d say two of us. The other ones really weren’t punk. They dabbled. We were the only ones that were really into it.

You got together to do a one-song reunion back in 2004. How was that experience?

That was pretty special. It was a benefit show that my mother had helped set up. J played a solo set, Sonic Youth played. Sebadoh — Jason and I as a duo. Jay was playing solo came off the stage, and the other three members of Deep Wound came out. We said, “Hey J, get up here and play drums.” So we picked up Sonic Youth’s gear and did “Video Prick,” the slowest song on the record.

Dinosaur Jr., “Poledo”

Was it hard to get the rest of the band to accept the idea of what that song was?

It really wasn’t. I invested a lot of anxiety into it. I went up to J and said, “I really want to put a piece, a tape thing at the end of the record. Are you cool with that?” He said he was. That was that.

When you did the All Tomorrow’s Parties shows where you were playing all of You’re Living All Over Me, how did you present this song?

Just playing ukulele, doing the songs that were in there. I didn’t bring my laptop and blast everybody out.

Sebadoh, “Kath”

What came to mind when I was listening to this recently is that you can almost track the entire arc of your relationship with Kath through your Sebadoh albums.

Yeah. All of my really major relationships. For sure. Definitely my relationship with Kathleen, my relationship with J, my relationship with Eric Gaffney, John Davis.

Is it a version of therapy?

I think it is. My girlfriend now doesn’t really understand this concept. If I wrote songs about difficult times and sing about them continuously, it’s a way of overcoming those. Where she says, “Aren’t you just living through that every time?” I’m not because there’s a logic that goes through those songs. I don’t think that my songs are rooted in self-pity or negativity really.

The sense that I get is that it is very matter-of-fact or a kind of reportage.

I’m kind of explaining it to myself. That’s what it comes down to.

Sebadoh III was your first record with Jason Lowenstein. Why did you decide to add that extra element to the band?

To be a band, to play live. Eric and I experimented as a duo and that was cool but it’s hard for two guys to shut a whole room up or at least be loud enough to go over the talking. Especially with what we were. We weren’t a folk act. If we were punk, we weren’t loud enough. I really liked the concept behind the ukulele and two drums, but it just wasn’t practical for playing live shows. We weren’t self-conscious and arty enough to go, “That’s it. This is our thing.” We weren’t that precious about it. In the end, we just wanted to rock.

How was it going through all that material that you had that ended up on the Sebadoh III reissue?

It was a battle between me and Eric. Eric initially wanted to remix every one of his songs. The worst idea ever. You can’t do that. We fought and we fought about it, then I just said, “Go do it.” I got him the original tapes, sent him to the studio, came up with this mixes, and I said, “Eric, I’ve listened to the mixes. They’re fine. But we cannot under any circumstance replace the original versions on the record. And I will not allow this reissue to happen with those.” I let the conversation happen for a while but then just shut it down.

Was that before or after you did those reunion shows?

It was before. It was at least a two-year e-mail war. He had all of these accusations and ways that I’d fucked him over — I was hell bent on making these reissues happen, I was hell bent on getting him back into the band. We went point by point-by-point for, I swear, two years. And it drove my wife Kathleen crazy. “Why are you doing this? This is insanity!” I said, “No, I’ve gotta do it, and it’s gotta happen. We have to do it in a way where he’s really involved.” And we did and it culminated in the Sebadoh III reissue. It was a considerable amount of negotiations.

Did you foresee that there was going to be an endpoint to it? That Eric would be part of this and then that was going to be the end?

I don’t know what I was hoping for. I just wanted him back. Jason and I had done a bunch of shows as a duo and that was great. But we were missing the element of the drums so we brought Eric back. And by that time, Eric was much more concerned about playing guitar and being the frontman of the band. Which is fine, but his drumming to me was so crucial, his spirited drumming. When he came back, he would barely hit the drums. He’d get up on stage with a polyester jacket and complain about how hot he was. He was not going to throw himself into playing the drums. I needed to know it could never happen again. And I found out. He would never put as much of himself into it ever again. I had to come to terms with that.

The Folk Implosion, “Mechanical Man”

This was your only album on a major label.

Well, The Sebadoh was half Sire, half Sub Pop, but Sire dropped us one week after the record came out.

What was that experience like?

They were cool and totally hands off. I signed with Interscope because John Davis really wanted to sign with them. It was just bizarre. They cared so little about music that it was shocking to me. They had the golden ears, apparently. They were living on that idea. They didn’t give a shit about anything else. There was no love there. They funded us to make a record and we did it, and it ended up selling half as many copies as our last record on Communion did. So, they dropped me when I tried to make another record.

What was it about John that made your creative relationship work so well?

He and I just had this really great connection. He was a bit younger than me. That might have had something to do with it. He came to me as a fan of my early work. But we just had these long conversations. We talked all the times. And our conversations became musical. He was easily the most satisfying [musical partner].

There’s a real sense of playfulness to all of your work with him.

It really mirrored our conversations. He was better educated than I. He went to Brown and read a lot. I was just loved him. I thought he was the funniest and sweetest guy I ever met.

But there was another Folk Implosion record that he wasn’t a part of.

Yeah, he quit pretty much to the day that One Part Lullaby was released. He’s an incredibly sensitive person. And I’m…not. What I realize, in comparison to him, he’s really fragile. And I barely made it out of high school, and have been living on my wits for a long time. I’ve been through so much shit that I’ve let a lot of stuff roll off my back. Even though it doesn’t seem this way, I don’t dwell on things. I just move forward. We were in a really intense situation with Interscope. I was a mess personally. My personal life was on fire at that time. He bailed. I never heard from him again. No fight or falling out. He just said, “I’m out.”

Dinosaur Jr., “Recognition”

Is it a surprise to you that you are still going forward with Dinosaur Jr.?

It’s been eight years [so it's] hard to be a surprise. When we got back together initially it just worked so well. And I’d been through so much weird shit by the time I got back to J Mascis, it was like this is nothing. “At least this guy knows what he wants.” It was a relief — I’m actually working with someone who knows what he wants. With all due respect to everybody I’ve worked with. J is a fucking train on his track, and to come back to that, I’ll just ride. It’s not this emotional thing. It’s pretty easy to handle. Dinosaur’s the only band that I can play with that I can walk on to a festival stage and go, “Fuck yeah. There’s 30,000 people here and who cares?” Because if it’s me just playing a guitar, it’s a nightmare.

On all the three newer records, you only have two songs on them. Is that normal?

I tried three on this last record. J is so funny. He still has his dickish tendencies. He’ll do interviews with people, and say, “I don’t know. Lou really won’t write any more songs for the record.” He has the patience for about two songs on any record. This one, I was like, “I’m doing three songs.” The best of them is not on the record. I got J to improvise guitar on this pretty strong backbone that I’d come up with. And he fucking canned it from the record. Fuck you! I did my three songs. [Laughs.] He is very protective. He does want to keep a grip on that. And I respect that, actually.

When you’re writing Dinosaur stuff, are you specific about what you want from Murph and J?

I wasn’t at first, and then on the second record that we did, it was a nightmare. Both of them just sat there, like, “I don’t know what to do.” “You’re supposed to play the guitar! You’re supposed to play the drums!” They just wouldn’t do anything. I don’t think J’s used to collaborating, really. Murph needs someone to tell him exactly what to do. For one song on the second record, we worked on it for a week and he wrote all these drum parts. But then when we went to record it, he refused to play them. We played it for two days straight, and he refused to play it the way he wrote it. “I don’t know, I’m not really feeling it.” “What does that have to do with anything? We’re professional musicians, my friend. Whether you’re feeling it or not is immaterial.” It went right down to the wire. “I’m literally leaving in two hours I’m going back to L.A. with no songs if you don’t do this.” And he did it. So the last record, I had a whole different game plan. I had a really vivid dream where I walked up to [Melvins drummer] Dale [Crover] and asked him to write songs with Dinosaur. It took him two hours to write drum parts for three songs. “Oh, wow. Dale played on them?” Then they listened to my ideas.

Sebadoh, “Oxygen”

You said this wasn’t an issue playing the songs night after night, but: Was it difficult to write these songs, considering what was happening to you? Or did you just feel like this is what had to be said?

I had made a huge radical change in my life. I left my wife. Up to that point, I couldn’t speak honestly. I didn’t know how to finish those songs. I was dealing with years of repressing so much stuff. Once I made that actual break, all the words just wrote themselves. I don’t think they’re the greatest lyrics I’ve ever written, but they’re all true. I’ve been singing songs about jerking off for ages, so I set the bar pretty fucking low from the very beginning. There’s a part of me that’s so exhibitionist and so self-involved on that level. I don’t think that it’s that unusual or shocking or anything. I cut my teeth on punk rock, and these are people that were saying whatever. It was the truth. They were just laying it out there. That’s the inspiration I took. There were no boundaries. And the more real and uncomfortable it is, the better it is.

Has Kathleen heard the record?

No. No.

Is that something that you worry about at all?

It’s not really a concern. I put her through hell already while we were together. [Pauses.] Hopefully I’m not too mean in the songs. I would worry about that, if I was really calling her out on specific things. But I haven’t thought about it. I just can’t. Even my girlfriend now, she didn’t know anything about Sebadoh at all. She had no idea. She’s really into Ryan Adams, who is someone who writes beautifully poetic songs, my stuff is like, “Whoa…my god, do you really have to put that out?” Well, as a matter of fact, I do. I do need to put that out.

Do you feel like your approach to writing songs has changed?

I don’t know. Now I just have so much other shit going on in my life. Used to be every day I would just do whatever I felt like. Now it’s considerably more complicated. Because I’ve got kids and I’m supporting like five other people right now. My life is so fucked, but in a great way.

How are you kids holding up with everything?

My daughter is rip shit. She’s really mad. My daughter saw a lot of shit going on. She wasn’t spared anything. We had these heartbreaking moments where she would be between us going, “Mommy and daddy, don’t fight.” Fuck…never wanted that to happen! But she loves my girlfriend and is fascinated by this life I’m living. But she’s also rip shit at me. My son’s three years old and he’s just fucking crazy so it doesn’t matter. But it’s funny; he’ll say, “You’ll be nice to momma?” “Yeah, I’ll be nice to momma.”

File under: Co-ed indie pop with roots in noise, hardcore and punk

For fans of: Tiger Trap, The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart, Huggy Bear, Veronica Falls

From: Cardiff, Wales

Personae: Alanna McArdle (vocals), Owen Williams (vocals, guitar), George Nicholls (guitar), Max Warren (bass), Dave Sandford (drums)

Some bands meet in record shops and some meet through Craigslist ads, but Owen Williams bonded with his future Joanna Gruesome band mates at a rather unusual place: an anger management group. “If you just piss off a lot of teachers you get into those kinds of groups,” he explains. “A lot of the time they kind of draft you in through school.”

After initially forming late 2010, Joanna Gruesome cycled through a series of different sounds — including a twee phase that Williams says was a reaction to all of the ’80s hardcore they were listening to — before settling on both a permanent lineup and a style defined by its contrasts: Moments of winsome indie (mostly courtesy of ex-Evans The Death member Alanna McArdle’s lilting vocals) and exuberant noise-pop hove up against discordant, aggressive sounds equally indebted to riot grrrl, hardcore and fuzzy ’90s lo-fi.

As befitting their diverse influences, Joanna Gruesome cut their teeth touring with local indie outfits as well as what Williams calls “chaotic emo bands,” releasing 7-inches on underground labels Art Is Hard and Happy Happy Birthday To Me. Such activity — as well as riotous live shows that often involved band members jumping into the crowd as they played — pushed Joanna Gruesome to the forefront of the UK DIY scene and caught the eye of another label they admired, Fortuna POP! That label plans to release Joanna Gruesome’s first full-length, Weird Sister, in Europe (Slumberland is handling the US duties).

Annie Zaleski talked with Williams about their so-called anger issues, Weird Sister‘s dark crevices and whether their band name is really about you-know-who.

On how Nation Of Ulysses figured into their formation:

[Bassist] Max [Warren] turned up [to anger management one day] wearing, like, a Nation Of Ulysses bootleg T-shirt. That surprised me. That gave me a reason to go talk to him. I was like, “I love that band,” so we started talking. And he told me he played bass, so that’s that.

On their sloppier (and twee) early years:

It was a completely different lineup then as well, and we kind of existed in living rooms — and [played] really bad Field Mice covers and stuff like that. [Laughs.] It was pretty twee, to be honest. It wasn’t the kind of exciting music [we do now].

On how ex-Evans The Death bassist Alanna McArdle landed in the band:

Our original singer went off to live in Africa, so we needed a new singer. And we knew Alanna through this band called Playlounge that she was really good friends with. We knew she was in Evans the Death and we knew she could sing. She’s been great.

On their enduring love of DIY:

We played with a lot of cool DIY bands in Wales and England, like Facel Vega and Harbour. There were a lot of hardcore bands, really. Then we got into stuff like Huggy Bear, Tiger Trap [and] the Frumpies, and poppier stuff like Young Marble Giants.

On writing Weird Sister at a creepy Brighton, UK, hotel called Hell House:

We didn’t record there, but I kind of wrote the music there with some of the other band members. It was really weird; it was this sort of like kind of strange little hippie-ish hotel with these really odd guys who kept doing Ouija Boards and stuff like that. We didn’t really know what they were doing — hopefully they conjured something. We just hung out there for like a month and wrote all the songs.

On why their lyrics are so dark:

I really like the Alan Moore Batman comic. I was reading [the dark and highly influential Batman graphic novel] The Killing Joke a lot when I was thinking about lyrics. It’s got a zombie vibe, it’s sort of set in a circus and there’s loads of horrible things coming alive, and the joke is they’re screaming about shit.

I’ve never really thought about the lyrics too much. A lot of it’s just quite abstract. A lot of it’s just about crap horror movies and things. It kind of is from just being emotionally detached and just sort of purely this kind of horror-y [thing]. Some of it is about mental illness and stuff — I guess being in that hotel was quite an emotional atmosphere.

On their weirdest gig ever:

This is our second tour, but it’s still pretty early days. It was this show in a middle aged couple’s suburban home, because their kid had recovered from meningitis. They wanted some bands to play in the house. And we were on tour and were like, “Oh, we need a date.” And then he messaged us saying, “Come and play a house show here.” The guy [who booked us] was into [the] ’90s rock kind of thing, and somehow had heard of us. I remember he was wearing a Lemonheads T-shirt. We didn’t really know much about him.

We ended up with children running everywhere. It was really, really bizarre. It was probably the worst and the best show.

On the origins of their name:

It’s a play on Joanna Newsom. We couldn’t think of a name at first when we first started, and we didn’t really think anything would happen. Our friend Al, who’s now our manager, was suggesting loads of stupid pun names, and I think Joanna Gruesome stuck somehow. Then we just never decided to change it. It’s kind of a lot of bother, really. I always kind of forget it’s an awful pun. I think she’s aware of it. I have a feeling she is.

On Cardiff:

It’s weird, because I guess compared to somewhere — like, I don’t know, Manchester or London — there’s a very tiny amount of bands. In Cardiff, everyone knows each other, so everyone’s kind of helping each other step up.

File under: Bewitching, minimalist R&B that's part Kraftwerk, part coldwave

For fans of: Ikonika, Cooly G, Junior Boys, Kraftwerk

From: Hamilton, Ontario

Personae: Jessy Lanza, Jeremy Greenspan

Jessy Lanza’s debut album, Pull My Hair Back, strikes a careful balance of hot and cold. On the one hand, there are songs like “Fuck Diamond,” “Against the Wall” and the title track, not to mention a general air of R&B at its most suggestive: heavy lids and bated breath and scraps of discarded clothing paving the way to the feather bed. But someone must have left the window open, because an icy chill hangs over everything. Lanza and co-producer Jeremy Greenspan, of Junior Boys, favor cool analog synthesizers and crisp vintage drum machines, overlaying jittery R&B grooves with an eerie sheen that’s part Kraftwerk, part coldwave. In the midst of it all, channeled through delicate electronic processing, Lanza’s breathy voice fills the room like so many tendrils of dry ice.

That such a slinky, ethereal sound should find a home on Kode 9′s Hyperdub label might seem odd, given the imprint’s emphasis on twisted, hard-charging club music. But, taken alongside Cooly G’s 2012 album Playin’ Me and Ikonika’s recent Aerotropolis, Pull My Hair Back confirms Hyperdub’s standing as a conduit for unusual new mutations in R&B.

eMusic’s Philip Sherburne spoke with Lanza over Skype from her home in Hamilton, Ontario; she talked about vintage synths, the perils of a musical upbringing and Jed the Dancing Guy.

On Hamilton, Ontario:

It’s a weird city, for sure. At one point it used to be thriving. There was a lot of steel here; it’s kind of like Pittsburgh. But now the steel industry does maybe 20 percent of what it used to. There are a lot of really impoverished parts of Hamilton, but in the past five years there’s been a sort of revival. A lot of people from Toronto move here because it’s less expensive. Musically, there’s a lot of cool stuff going on, because usually people in Hamilton don’t really care what’s going on outside Hamilton. There’s a great music scene, which is what I really like about it. And it’s not expensive to live, which is great.

On the vintage synthesizers bequeathed to her by her late father:

You can play jazz chords on the piano and they sound pretty cheesy, but put them on a PolyMoog, and they sound awesome. It was only when I met Jeremy and we started working on tracks that it started to come together. He’s like, “I want to hang out with you and use the stuff in your studio!”

On her musical training:

I did classical stuff when I was a teenager. I did Royal Conservatory piano and I took classical singing lessons, but I don’t really think of myself as being a trained singer. There are soul singers that I really idolize, like Evelyn Champagne King or Candi Staton — they just have crazy perfect voices. I can’t sing like them. I just try to do what I can, you know?

On trying to forget her musical training:

I have to turn off the part of my brain that’s like, “If you do this seventh chord and it resolves to this one…” All those techniques. Jazz music’s kind of the first pop music — all the structures are there. And I have to work hard not to make things fucking cheesy and terrible. That’s the one thing I have to try to avoid: using too many of the chord progressions I learned in school. Fighting not to make it too obvious is the thing I’m always trying to do. Jeremy’s big into chords, though. He likes a good chord.

On her use of melisma:

I think that’s just from listening to, like, one Aaliyah song for 10 years. It kind of sinks into your brain and it’s just there to fall back on. When I was growing up, I listened to mainstream R&B. I really like old R&B, 2000s R&B, all different kinds of R&B. All the varieties of R&B!

On lyrics and meaning:

I find writing lyrics really hard. I really hate the sound of lyrics that I’ve written. If I think about them too much, it sounds so labored and really unnatural. A lot of times I do a whole bunch of vocal takes, and then I listen back to them the next day, and I’m like, “Fuck, I have no idea what I’m saying, but I really like the way it sounds, so I’m just going to keep it.” I try not to think too much about having something that was really cohesive or that I had thought about deeply for days on end, or pontificating on some subject…I try not to think too much about it, and just use what sounds right in that musical moment. That sounds fuckin’ cheesy, but whatever.

On the album’s sexual slant:

It all just stacked up that way. You see all these song titles in front of you, and you’re like, “Yeah, this seems like it’s all about fucking, for sure.” It turned out that way, but that wasn’t the intention for all of them. For some of them, yeah. I guess it’s because I listen to so much R&B, or pop music in general, it’s all about sex or love, and that was in my brain and it’s what came out.

On teaching piano:

It’s great, because kids are hilarious. They’re totally weird. I book my own clients, and usually it’s family friends and their friends. I’m well acquainted with all the families I work with. All the kids are really nice and they want to do it. It’s only if you have a kid that hates it that [it] sucks. But I try to keep the two spheres far removed. I had this show I played in Hamilton, down at this bayfront, family-friendly festival thing. A couple of the moms found out about it and were like, “We’re going to come! We’re going to bring our kids.” And I was like, fuck, now I can’t play a lot of stuff.

On Jed the Dancing Guy, the star of her “Kathy Lee” video:

He’s just this guy who has just been dancing around Hamilton for years. We thought that he might be schizophrenic, or have serious mental issues, but I found him on Facebook and wrote him a message and we met up and talked. It’s not like he’s a totally normal guy, but he’s not mentally disturbed. I think he had some life experience where his mother was going to die, and then she recovered, and he had prayed to God that if she got better he would dance and sing for the rest of his life; it’s some story like that. I think he’s very religious. He just goes for it every day. You’ll see him on the shittiest day in February, like the worst fucking day you can imagine, where you don’t even want to go outside, and he’ll just be shossing down Main Street, singing to his MP3 player. We were always like, “What the fuck is he listening to?” We had no idea. Then he put his ear bud up, and he listens to, like, Serbian folk songs. Which is not what you would think. He really gets going a lot of the time. It’s amazing that he’s listening to this male a cappella chanting.

He was really professional about the whole video shoot, though. He was a really good sport. He hung out with us for like eight hours.

There’s still no compromise in their unrelenting sound, but the harsher noise has been hammered out in favor of taut funk – the steel of Cabaret Voltaire given a radical modernization in “How You Say” or “Breathe In” and a pop militancy in the dugga-dugga of “Fall Back”. Interspersed throughout the album — which also features a new version of former 12″ “Two Different Ways” — are short sound sketches made by each member of the band. It’s claustrophobic music that, perhaps, gets its power from its extended gestation, and doesn’t sound like anything else released in 2013.

Luke Turner talked with Factory Floor about performance, perfectionism and why the album took two and a half years to make.

Why the decision to record in your own studio in Seven Sisters? Was self-sufficiency important to you?

Gabriel Gurnsey: We made a conscious decision that the album should be written, recorded and produced by us purely because of the fact that we knew how we wanted it to sound, and it saves a lot of hassle laying it on to someone else.

Nik Colk Void: That was partly to do with what the EPs and singles were about, to explore different ways of recording. We actually enjoy that part of the process of playing with our own factions of Factory Floor. You wouldn’t get that if you had someone else doing it for you.

So all the singles and EPs are a document of you learning?

Gurnsey: Yeah definitely, and the album is to a certain extent as well. It’s a document of us learning how to write and record an album. Which turned out to be over quite a lengthy amount of time.

Why did you even bother doing an album? You could have just continued releasing 12″s.

Dominic Butler: There was a point where we discussed that, but I think people want an album, it’s still a way that you can have a piece of a band and get to know it in a certain way. You can build a relationship with an album, look back at it. I’ve got 12″s that I love, but an album is a narrative.

Void: There won’t even be albums soon, it’s nice to have one before they cease to exist.

Are Factory Floor perfectionists?

Void: There are still bits on the record where I think, “That’s not what I was trying to do.” I’ve not been trained, so I get there in my own way. Sometimes I’ve got something in my head and it comes out sounding completely different. But it still works, so I just go with it.

Gurnsey: It’s not going, “Oh I recorded this through a bin in the middle of a field.” We don’t work like that. We just turn to each other and say, “That sounds good.”

Why did it take so long to complete the album? Was perfectionism to blame there?

Gurnsey: It was more about finding what kind of route we were happy with, and developing the sound by playing live — it was a good thing that we played so many shows, [because it helped us] to grow the music. We were essentially getting to know each other during those gigs.

What might have happened if you’d tried to work with a producer?

Void: It wouldn’t have sounded anything like this. I think if we’d gone to a studio and recorded 10 tracks, we’d have taken them away, been really unhappy and butchered them.

Were the collaborations a learning experience, too?

Void: It was treading ground that was a bit risky to us. It keeps your attention on trying to better yourselves as musicians, especially when you’ve got someone coming along who’s established themselves, like Peter Gordon. He occupied a space that was already there, sonically, so that was great. We’ve always invited musicians along who we know there’s a space for. I think the great thing about collaboration is that there’s no room for ego, you have to listen to each other to come up with your own way of replying to what they’re putting into it.

Some cross-generational collaborations can come off a bit back-slappy. Is there a sense that your collaborations are more about sharing ideals, rather than stealing ideas?

Gurnsey: That’s what it was. It wasn’t “Let’s get them in because we want to sound like them” or they wanted to sound like us, it was just sharing a common goal of making music and enjoying it, and not having a fear of a spontaneous, improvisational way of working. Although I was shitting my pants before we played at the ICA.

Void: That was the great thing about those shows, we were knocking ourselves out of our comfort zone, and that’s what Factory Floor always does. If you don’t go down that road, you don’t learn, and you just end up standing still. We’re not in it for love, or money, it’s the learning. [Laughs.]

Do you want to push your audience out of their comfort zones too? Not just in the sonic assault of your earlier gigs, but how this record is quite steely. It’s not what people might expect from a DFA record.

Gurnsey: That’s why I’m excited to see what people are going to say. They’re going to make so many assumptions, based on the Factory Floor name, based on DFA, based on what we’ve done in the past. I’m just happy knowing that it’s not going to be anything like what people think.

Void: I don’t think it sounds different from what I’d expect of a Factory Floor record.

Butler: I think it’s enquiring, and that’s what we wanted to do with it. We wanted to make our way into our practice as a band and unravel something, and I think that’s what we did. If we hadn’t, I’d have been a bit disappointed.

Was there anything you didn’t want it to be?

Gurnsey: I don’t think we’ve had any influences from what’s going on [in electronic music] at the moment. What’s great about being up here [in Seven Sisters] is you’re outside of what’s going on musically, a “scene,” all that kind of shit.

Now that Nik has moved to Norfolk and Dom lives in the middle of nowhere in Hampshire, will it have an impact on where you go from here?

Void: We’ve all set up our own studios in our new places. I think it’ll be really interesting to see what happens from being separated from each other and then coming together and working on stuff in a bit more concentrated manner, and in a shorter amount of time.

Gurnsey: I think it’ll be a lot less intense next time. It was fucking hell at some points. It was fucking hard work, a lot of frustration, because we took everything on ourselves. It’s been a bit of a mad journey, these past couple of years.

Lenny Kaye caught up with them at New York City’s Roseland Ballroom, a few hours ahead of their opening slot with the Cult.

I’m interested in the process of how a White Hills song comes together in the studio. Is there a lot of prior preparation, writing riffs and beats? How much improvisation is there when you record?

Dave W: Every song is different. This album was very different because we actually had a lot of stuff worked out before going into the studio. But then there were a couple of songs that I brought to the band about a week before we went in.

Ego Sensation: We’ve done a few records that were basically all improvisation, picked out from long jams. That’s how we wrote for a while.

Dave: The last record, Frying On This Rock, we had a very small window between touring and putting that album together. So a lot of that material hadn’t really been worked out. That one had more jam elements on it. For this one, we had an idea of how the songs would be, and then, basically, nuances were added between what I would do, and what Ego would do.

Is there a lot of overdubbing?

Dave: It’s pretty live. I did very few guitar overdubs on this record. I feel like, since I’m the guitarist, and I’m the one mixing and producing it, that I tend to get too heavy on guitar. I wanted to take a step back with this one and not try to fill it up so much. Instead of tracking more guitars, building things that I didn’t feel were full enough, and I wanted it to be more full. I just added more distortion in post-production. But usually we record guitar, bass and drums live. I don’t do a scratch track of vocals because a lot of the times lyrics aren’t really set before we record. Then the synths are done afterwards.

Did you consciously try to skew this record differently? It seems like there’s more dynamics, more light and dark.

Dave: I think this record is a culmination of what I’ve been striving for through the last three or four records. What I wanted to achieve with our first record I finally got with this record. Things flow better, more succinctly. Songs don’t need to go on for so long unless that is what is called for.

You worked at Martin Bisi’s celebrated studio. What input did he bring to the project?

Ego: Martin is really funny. He tends not to give you a lot of input unless you ask for it, but he’s very good at problem-solving and getting very specific sounds.

Dave: He asks what you are looking for, the kind of sound you hear. I would tell him what I was thinking and he would come in and move mics a quarter of an inch, watching out for phasing and frequency overload. For me, it’s great because it’s like going to school. He’s very involved. His studio is a Civil War armory in Gowanus [Brooklyn] and it’s a very large space — cement walls, extremely high ceilings, with two recording rooms. Typically what he does is he puts guitar amps in one room, the bass upstairs in an isolation booth upstairs right off his control room, and drums are in the big room. Everyone stands in the big room. But one of the things we did differently after the first day of recording was to move all the amps into the big room. He said he hadn’t recorded like that for almost 20 years. He was very skeptical about how we would be able to do it; but I think it ended up working out very positively. There was some baffling, but the amps were very close together, in proximity to the drums, and that’s where his knowledge of the mics, how much volume is being pushed out of an amplifier — all of those things helped define the sound on our record.

Let’s go back to the starting point of the band. When you first began, did you have a specific idea on how you wanted things to sound? Any forebears or traditions in which you consciously placed yourself?

Dave: Yes, definitely. Both of us lived in San Francisco before moving to New York. We came to New York because nothing was happening for us in San Francisco musically. We didn’t play together at the time, and we had separate things going on. I was trying to forge a different approach than what I had been doing before, Ego had this one-woman show that was kind of theater and dance and music all in one. I started playing in garage-y punk bands, and though I like that kind of music, I was kind of over it. So I sat down one day and asked myself what I wanted to do, and I decided I want to pursue my love of space rock. I got a version of Pro Tools and sat down and recorded the first record. I took inspiration from bands like Hawkwind, Pink Fairies, but also the Damned, Public Image [Limited]. I wanted to incorporate this essence of rhythm with something heavy. I wanted a power trio, but I wanted there to be synth, and an otherworldly sense of mantra. To make it heavy and brutal, and be a statement of the times: post-9/11, the world falling apart, waking up the senses.

There were bands I can hear within you as well, between Hawkwind and the current moment. I’m thinking of Spiritualized, Spacemen 3, My Bloody Valentine, a strange group I once came upon called Farflung…

Dave: My brother’s in Farflung!

Speaking of space travelers, how did your initial relationship with Julian Cope come about?

Dave: [Laughs.] I’ve been a fan of his since I was a teenager. My initial introduction to him was through The Teardrop Explodes. When I recorded the first White Hills record, They’ve Got Blood Like We’ve Got Blood, I thought, “What am I going to do with this?” I wanted to go to Europe and thought he might appreciate this. So I mailed him a copy and he loved it. He wrote about it on his website, and then I started receiving emails from people wondering how to get the album. And then he approached me about being on his label, Fuck Off and Die. So basically because of his interest is why I started putting a full band together. My music might have stayed a bedroom project for me to satisfy my own creative needs. He was very instrumental and helpful for us in the beginning. Having him behind us instantly made people aware of who we were. Our third show we ever played was opening up for him in London.

Do you feel like you’re part of a New York scene?

Ego: There are some great bands that we love to play with. The Psychic Ills, Oneida, Weird Owl.

Dave: We’ve never been a band that’s sat down and said we’re going to do it from the ground up, play a lot of shows in New York, people will find out who we are, and use the city as a launching pad. Our idea was Europe. Do it like Jimi Hendrix did.

You’ve worked with a lot of different drummers. Does it change how the songs come out?

Dave: I think yes and no. I think every drummer adds their flair to what we’re doing. I’m very much a dictator when it comes to the songs [laughs]. Ego and I bring in the riffs, but I have a very distinct idea on how I want it presented, I know where I want the accents to go. When we played with Kid Millions [of Oneida], that time we did way more improvisation.

Ego: He was less of a drummer that could listen to a song and learn that particular beat. He could, but that’s not his style. So we would improvise, spend a lot of time writing new material from the ground up, and so in that way it was more of a collaboration, creating songs on the spot which was really great and liberating for us.

How do the sounds and songs transform when you play live? Obviously there’s a template that you’re beginning from, but is it a vague template, or something more structured?

Dave: Definitely vague. When we go into instrumental breaks, it’s pretty much up to me. I’m not a Tony Iommi guitar player. I don’t play my solos note for note; I don’t play them like the record. I don’t think I could. I’m not concerned with recreating what’s on an album. It’s two completely different things. The recording is that song at that moment at that studio. When we’re on stage the song is it at that time.

What are your thoughts on the term “psychedelic?”

Dave: I think of it as music that is jarring to all of your senses. Overbearing. As much as I love Jefferson Airplane, I don’t consider them to be a psychedelic band, even though they’re seen as the forebears of that movement. On the other hand, a band like Cromagnon — their albums to me are a masterpiece, so strong. The Melvins, I love that band. I think a lot of what gets tagged psychedelic is really just pop music. I think we have done things that are psychedelic, but in my mind we’re a space-rock band. We’re not necessarily about mind-expanding drugs or psychedelics. I never wanted to have a tag, but if you don’t choose your own, someone else will. If a listener thinks of us as psychedelic, for them, that’s fine. Someone else thinks of it as stoner rock, that’s fine. To me, it’s space rock.

File under: Ethereal and understated punk shoegaze; transformative, cathartic feminist art rock; a hallucinogenic soundtrack to radical punk adulthood

For fans of: Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine, Unwound, Ride, Helium, Kristin Hersh, Thalia Zedek

From: Olympia, Washington

Personae: Kanako Pooknyw (drums, vocals), Jon Hanna (guitar, vocals), Abigail Ingram (bass, vocals)

A few years ago, Olympia had a vibrant punk scene full of talented young bands and, while I was excited by the energy of a new era (Gun Outfit, Milk Music, HPP) and liked some of the music quite a bit (White Boss, Sex Vid, Son Skull), I wasn’t into how male-dominated and retro it all felt. Not only did it evoke the sound of ’80s hardcore and art-rock it also brought back the trend of guys-in-bands taking up too much space at shows. Suddenly, being a woman in a band started to feel tokenistic again. Jon Hanna and Kanako Pooknyw formed Broken Water with their friend Abigail Ingram and things changed. Pretty soon feminist punk bands (Hell Woman, Weird TV, Hysterics) took over Olympia and obliterated the dude-centric vibe.

I didn’t consider Broken Water a punk group until I saw them at a local hardcore festival. Before playing their set in a room of clean-cut kids dressed in identical skinny black jeans and brand-new ’80s-hardcore-band T-shirts, Pooknyw took off her clothes, protesting the idea that punk is a uniform that can be bought and sold. This performance was probably pretty freaky for the crowd of mostly teenage boys to witness — who had likely never had sex or even seen an adult woman with body hair naked before — and established Broken Water as a radical feminist punk band with a political agenda. Listening to their noisy, experimental take on guitar-driven shoegaze in this context, the music itself further interrogated the idea of punk as style. The music is loud, but it’s often slow, with pounding bass and drums that build and crash like cresting waves. The vocal melodies are pretty and memorable, but are almost subdued next to the roar of electric guitar. It’s hard to decipher lyrics, an aesthetic choice that emphasizes sound over meaning and creates an atmosphere where pure emotional chemistry is laid bare.

It was fun to sit down and talk with Pooknyw and Hanna about the ideas behind political strategy and reflect on what it means to be a feminist DIY band in 2013.

On DIY ethics and sustainability:

Pooknyw: We’ve self-released our records or collaborated with other independent labels so that we get half of our records. We’ve negotiated alternative terms with smaller labels where we pay for half of production and get half of the record — so if there is a pressing of 1000 records, we get 500 and when that’s done we get the plates and can press the next 4000. That is what has made us sustainable.

Hanna: We book all our tours. We try to make an effort to play all-ages shows in towns that can actually support that. A lot of cities don’t seem to have a DIY all-ages scene.

Pooknyw: We prefer to connect with people who put on shows that have similar politics to us but that doesn’t always happen. Sometimes we just play with bands we are into and realize we have a different ideology and I’m actually open to that.

Hanna: There is a line we’d draw about commercialization and what kind of shows we play — I don’t think we would play a festival sponsored by Scion.

Pooknyw: No.

On their favorite places to play on tour:

Pooknyw: I wanna talk about playing in Minot, North Dakota. They had all these really political books and punk-rock posters and it was just like, you walk into a space and you could tell it was a punk space and you could tell it was a feminist space and you just were safe — and they lived in a working-class neighborhood in a town that has been completely overrun by the fracking industry. That show reminded me of what it was like to live in El Paso and live in a scene where there weren’t that many punks and you stuck together and there was a reason you were on the outside and didn’t fit in because you had criticism of the status quo.

These kids really have each other’s backs. The girls we played with had never played music a year prior, they really wanted to play with other women. They all had kids and were really young and all worked really shitty jobs but they lived to be in their scene and bring bands in from out of town and host — in a really supportive way — and were totally political and totally against fracking and all this fucked-up shit that is going on in their town.

Hanna: I’m gonna talk about the show in New Orleans that Osa set up for us. It was a really good show and we were really stressed out at first because we got a call as we were driving into town that the show had been moved from where it was supposed to be. It was supposed to be in an abandoned strip mall, a generator show — but because someone announced it on the radio there were already like five cop cars when someone went there to start setting stuff up. But it got moved to a punk warehouse and it was great. It was a huge show: There were at least 100 or 200 kids that showed up and the power kept going out during everyone’s set but it felt like a real scene.

Pooknyw: There was a pony in the yard! It was bonkers!

Hanna: There was a pony in the yard. I was pretty blown away by how a show could get so fucked up and then come together as one of the best shows on tour.

On feminist performative strategies for subverting “male freedom”:

Pooknyw: You already have a target on your head, if you are female-bodied in certain audiences. My response to any kind of fucked-up behavior from male audience members — it was always male — was just to yell “male freedom” really loudly at the top of my lungs until they stopped.

Hanna: It happened a lot.

Pooknyw: It would happen a lot. I would yell it in this like kind of monster-truck-rally monster way where you couldn’t talk over my voice because it was just so loud and I would just repeat “male freedom” over and over and over again and there would be giggles from the girls in the front and you know, total embarrassment on so many men’s faces — embarrassed because they know what I’m talking about — and embarrassed that the sound person who is telling me to get naked or something is completely oblivious to the fact that I’m calling him out and making fun of him. I’m just stating, frankly, what I’m experiencing — his ability to not care about anyone else. When I see people laughing I know they are laughing at him they are not laughing at me. A few people were completely stunned. I wasn’t calling them out in a way where they could shut it down or deflect it. It was in a more manipulative or subversive way where they are gonna question what “male freedom” means — that is my hope. There was one drunk dude that just looked so dumbfounded and I was like, I think made a little fissure in the way he’s behaving. I don’t know, am I being too hopeful?

Hanna: No, but it is really frustrating to try to communicate with drunk people, it doesn’t really come across, you can’t really get through.

Pooknyw: Maybe I was just being more obnoxious than them!

But the more people try to box her in, the more Hanna pivots, going from raw punk with Bikini Kill to busted DIY synth pop with Julie Ruin to electroclashy dance-pop with Le Tigre. After taking some time to work on other projects, including a film about her called The Punk Singer, Hanna is back to making music with a new Julie Ruin record, Run Fast. eMusic’s Cortney Harding met up with Hanna to talk about her life in punk through the songs she wrote.

Bikini Kill, “Rebel Girl”

I was living in D.C. and spending a lot of time at a house called the Embassy House, where my bandmates and a bunch of other musicians lived. I can say I wrote it there, in the basement, but the song almost wrote itself. It’s like there was something in the air in 1992 in D.C. and I just reached out and grabbed it. In a way, I don’t even feel like I can take credit for it. It was never meant to be a song about “riot grrl,” necessarily; we didn’t use that term, the press named it that. It’s really about this mix of envy and excitement you feel towards certain women.

Bikini Kill, “Thurston Hearts The Who”

There was an incident where a magazine wrote a negative review of our record, then after they heard that Thurston Moore liked us, went back and wrote a different, more positive review. Then there was another situation where we played a show in Hawaii and a woman wrote a terrible review — she said that I was confused and acting out abuse I had suffered on stage and she made us sound really stupid. But one of the points I was trying to make was that you can talk like a Valley Girl and still be a smart person; it’s all about recognizing the contradictions you have to live with if you’re any sort of marginalized person.

I had been wanting to do a more spoken-word-, performance-art-type of piece and doing this was also an opportunity to respond back and take control of this bad review. It was also a way to work through everything that was happening with Sonic Youth — they loved us and supported us and I appreciated the attention and help, because for a while it seemed like everybody hated us and it’s hard to be on stage and just be hated. But there was also the idea that we needed the stamp of male approval to be liked by anyone. The idea that men are the arbiters of taste; I remember for a while in Olympia if Calvin Johnson danced at your show, it meant your band had made it in some way. So while Thurston helped us and we appreciated it, I always wondered why it had to take a man’s approval to change how people thought.

Bikini Kill, “Reject All-American”

I was in Olympia, and it was a really difficult time period for me. I had three deaths in three days, two of which I found out about via my answering machine. So I honestly don’t remember much about writing the lyrics; I had a deadline for going into the studio and I basically just went to a hotel and wrote all the lyrics in 48 hours. This was in 1995 or 1996 and things had just gotten really shitty. And the funniest part of all this was that people hated this record and called us sellouts because we recorded it in a studio and we had gotten better as musicians. It’s like, first we were awful because we weren’t professional enough, and then we were awful because we were too professional.

The Julie Ruin, “I Wanna Know What Love Is”

Julie Ruin overlapped with Bikini Kill; Bikini Kill was coming to a close and around the same time I got a drum machine and Slim Moon gave me a broken sampler. The sampler didn’t have any memory so I couldn’t redo things and it was basically a three-step process to record anything. At the time, I was also dealing with a stalker. It was the end of 1997 and I was living in Olympia, and getting people coming up to me on the street and handing me zines, some of which were about how terrible I was. I would go work in this jock coffee shop because I didn’t know anyone there and the guys at the counter never talked to me and no one bothered me. One day, this guy who worked in a shop across from my apartment came in and asked the owners of this coffee shop if I was a prostitute; the guys at the coffee shop, who had never talked to me before, were so freaked out by it they told me they were worried. This guy would watch me and eventually he moved into the store across from me and would look in my apartment all the time. I was mostly sleeping other places because I felt so unsafe, and I didn’t feel OK wearing headphones to record music because it meant I couldn’t hear if he was coming in the door or the window. One night at 3 a.m., I happened to be in my apartment and I recorded this song, having to take off my headphones every 30 seconds to check the door and the window. Eventually he was arrested for another domestic violence charge and I found another apartment.

Le Tigre, “Bang Bang”

I had moved to New York and I was on Mott Street at the time. I think Moby lived in the same building, because I would see his mail in the lobby sometimes [laughs]. When Amadou Diallo was shot, I wanted to write a song about it, but I felt as a white person I couldn’t speak from a personal point about racism. I remember Fugazi singing “Suggestion” and Ian getting shit for that, but I also wanted to stick my neck out and say something.

Le Tigre, “New Kicks”

I wanted to document everything that was happening around the anti-war protests in 2003, to take a snapshot of that time. I think movements need music. I also remember we got permission from Al Sharpton to use a sample of him speaking in a song, and I was really excited and grateful. A little while later I met him at an event, and went up to him and thanked him and told him how much I appreciated it, and he had no idea what I was talking about. I’m sure our sample request was one of a hundred papers he just signed every day.

The Julie Ruin, “Oh Come On”

The singing style on this was inspired by Lydia Lunch, and I’m talking about being a feminist performer and talking to other feminist performers. There’s a pressure for female performers to be angry and sexy at the same time; you’re also supposed to be some sort of representative of your gender. There’s a feeling that if you make a mistake it’s the wallpaper for the rest of your life and career. I’m just saying, “Oh, come on,” do we really have to keep living like this? Can’t you just represent yourself?

Their first record since 2011′s I Am Very Far, The Silver Gymnasium takes all of Okkervil River’s familiar elements — unapologetically approachable rock, lyrics that touch on universal themes in plain language — and puts them in service of Sheff’s most autobiographical effort to date. The Silver Gymnasium draws directly on Sheff’s memories of growing up in Meriden, New Hampshire.

Hilary Hughes talked with Sheff about the stories behind the album’s creation.

I’m a New Englander myself, so when I found out that you had such a strong tie to New Hampshire and that The Silver Gymnasium draws from your experiences growing up there, I was stoked! I usually associate you with Austin.

It’s kind of funny — people see the word “Texas” and they don’t see anything else after that. I’ve seen all manifestations of us being a country band and Texas boys and all that stuff, which is totally hilarious, because I’m from New Hampshire, and I have no special feeling for Texas, other than the fact that I have lived here for awhile. I was living in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and the other members of the band were living in Appleton, Wisconsin. We decided Austin would be the easiest place for us to try and do something, but I never realized it would basically categorize us as a country band for 15 years. People will not stop thinking of me as Southern. But the truth is I’m from New Hampshire. [Sheff currently lives in Brooklyn. — Ed.]

I don’t hear a shred of a New England accent on you, though.

There are certain times I have it — if I’m around people from New Hampshire it comes out more. I think that accents are more of a personality type, and some people are more susceptible to accents and some less so. I’ve known people who’ve gone away to another state for a year and they come back and suddenly they have the accent. It’s not a poser thing; it’s like your brain absorbs the accent. My brother has a stronger New England accent than I do, and genetically, we’re pretty darn close, so I just think it’s some kind of combination of how long you’ve lived in a place and the way that your brain soaks up language.

I’m in a really good mood when my accent comes out, but when I’m really inebriated, I suddenly have a Texas accent.

Can you hear any sort of regional discrepancy — accent, colloquialisms or otherwise — on The Silver Gymnasium? Would you say this record sounds like it comes from New Hampshire?

With Okkervil River, I’ve been writing about New Hampshire from the very first record. I was writing about New Hampshire while I was living there, because I was always aware that it was an interesting and special place and that my town was very unique. There aren’t a tremendous amount of regional expressions on the record. I think here and there, there may be a couple. There are definitely a lot of references to very specific places in my town. A lot of this stuff was done out of my belief that when you’re being specific, you’re being universal, and if you’re being really honest about your feelings, even if those feelings are very, very specific to you, other people are going to relate to them because people are very similar. That’s really the only rule that I can just go by and believe, is that it’s okay to get really specific on a record, because the specifics will translate to more people.

What are some of these places that we’re talking about? Which ones conjure up the most visceral experience for you, where you have your strongest connection to a sense of place?

In “Black Nemo,” it starts out when I’m talking about Indian summers in Meriden, and in the third verse, I’m saying “through Bonner Road basements.” I’m thinking about specific friends and their houses that I’d go to. “Black Nemo” is very much a New Hampshire travelogue song for me.

As you share some very specific memories and places on The Silver Gymnasium, would you say you’ve delved into a deeper place, personally, with this record than with previous Okkervil River material? What are some risks you took here that haven’t necessarily encountered before?

That’s a funny thing about me: I very often will write a song that isn’t personal at all and it’ll get taken very personally. I think that’s partially because there’s something about my voice and the way I sing. There’s a feeling that gets mistaken for a deep personal investment in the material. People have a tendency to overanalyze things, like looking for clues about my personal feelings. There’s a kind of a tendency for people to really read into really, squirmy personal stuff, and that makes me kind of uncomfortable, which is a funny position to be in. Sometimes I think my impulses as an artist are at odds with my preferences as a human being. I don’t necessarily try to make a very big deal out of myself; I don’t want people to pay much attention to me in a personal framework. I enjoy the general vibe of my friends and being in a group and not necessarily making the focus come back to me. It makes me feel anxious and embarrassed and awkward. In some way, I guess because I feel a responsibility to bring something that’s real, and emotional, and direct, and genuine into a song, I very often go for something that’s close — but I don’t necessarily love the consequences of my tendency to do that. I didn’t write this record in an attempt to get people to focus on my personal life; I wrote the record because I’ve been chasing down something that I was passionate about, and I felt a responsibility to have some measure of passion in my work and what I was writing about. Right now, in rock ‘n’ roll songwriting, I hear an apathetic disconnection from emotion. It feels very disassociated from emotion and feeling, yet you hear a lot of people using a lot of emotionally charged language. They’re kind of using it in place of having to think about things in novel ways, and for that reason, I felt like it was important to write something that was direct and honest and straightforward and had a little something on the line. I think that was why I went a very personal route.

The Silver Gymnasium is rooted in a certain time period for you. Does its time capsule-like quality make it a timeless or nostalgic record?

I don’t believe there’s such a thing as a timeless-sounding record. I think that when a record becomes absorbed into our consciousness enough, it starts to sound timeless to us, because we listen to it so many different times and in so many different situations. I think that every record is dated, and I like that. I think that’s something to be embraced.

Youthful Tennessee native Valerie June plays a crude, but oh so endearing, guitar and banjo and sings in a one-of-a-kind voice with phrasing and intonation that embraces the wrath of Nina Simone, the cheeriness of Dolly Parton and almost everything in between. Her songs sound traditional but with a contemporary twist, and she’s the best thing to happen to Americana and roots music in quite a while. So far she’s better established in Europe than in the USA, but with the release of Pushin’ Against a Stone, her first album to receive national distribution at home, that’s about to change. You’re going to be hearing a lot about Valerie June.

What’s the first music you can remember being really moved by?

Oh, Walt Disney, I had on my Mickey Mouse ears and was going over each lyric. The one that really got me was “Bare Necessities” from The Jungle Book; that was incredible. I was about five.

When did you begin writing songs yourself?

When I moved to Memphis. My first husband was a guitar player; he played all around the house and I just made up words to the music he was playing. We split up because we were too young, straight out of high school, 18 years old, graduated and then got in the van and moved the next day. We got about six or seven songs early on in Memphis and then I said I was gonna book a show at the coffee shop where I worked. I knew at least my friends that worked there with me would show up. They’d say, “She’s crazy so at least it’ll be interesting,” and I am crazy to go into music. I did it the same way when I first starting performing alone. I got some songs so I said, “Now you’re gonna go out and play them for your friends.” So I’ve been doing it eight years now, though I never quit my day jobs until now.

For all the talk of your roots leanings, there’s such a strong, and personal, singer-songwriter element in your music.

I love singer-songwriters: Tracy Chapman, Leonard Cohen, Van Morrison…If you’ve got a story to tell I want to hear it. So it’s nice to be in the singer-songwriter world. I consider myself someone who plays an instrument but is not a musician; I’m a songwriter and singer who plays her own songs. I didn’t even realize about the singer-songwriter thing until I got older and thought I should look into it, and that’s what got me moving towards folk music. Old songbooks are a big thing to me; I have endless amounts of folksong books now. And I spent a lot of time at the Library of Congress, just listening to the old songs and all the different ways different people performed them; I really studied those songs. I also learned a lot from older musicians, like Robert Balfour in Memphis. I don’t even have much time for that now, but I love studying, and learning.

But what in particular do you think drew you in that direction?

Through music you get an idea about how it was for people who lived on plantations, or whatever was going on in their time. You hear the voices, listen to the songs and hear their energy; the songs carry the energy of the people at that time. Then you move on into your time. My album is an amalgamation of folk, blues, gospel and country and I really feel like I can sing those songs night after night. But the genre thing just kinda happens when you record them with a producer, and certain instrumentation. I think some of my songs could be done as hip hop songs, but they aren’t. At the same time, the songs are always changing. Like, on “Working Woman Blues” I worked with Hungarian musicians and when I hear it I say, “Wow, how did that happen?” I’ve never done the song anything like that before. I have no idea where this version came from, but I wouldn’t change a thing about it. Stories grow and change, and you can see how; same with my songs. When you record them, they’re like snapshots, and it’s always different no matter who I’m working with. Every time I get in a room with different musicians the songs go different ways. It’s really great.

Of all those traditional songs you studied, which is your absolute favorite?

“The Crawdad Song.” I love it. There’s so many different versions of it. It changes from one part of the world to another. People make it their own, and that’s the way it should be; they sing it their way and make it their song.

“I feel like an alien most of the time,” Wolfe jokes, attempting to skirt an obnoxiously oversized mound of whip cream topping her iced latte at Los Angeles’s Urth Caffe. “But I guess I’m human.”

Laura Studarus joined Wolfe for a conversation in the blistering summer sun about nature vs. nurture, life after death, music as therapy, and how it all fits together on Pain is Beauty.

Do you feel your new album, Pain is Beauty, is dark?

I don’t always think of it as dark. I talk about it as reality music. There’s always two sides to every story. There’s a dark side and a light side, usually. I guess I do tend to focus on the side that’s harsher.

Have people tried to slap the term “Goth” on it?

Not anymore. I actually thought of it as a joke at first. It started to get so widely used. In my mind, Goth is like Siouxsie and the Banshees or Joy Division, the whole ’80s music thing. I don’t consider myself in that category, so I don’t really think of myself as Goth.

It’s like the word “hipster.” The term has been diluted from overuse.

Yeah, it’s in the same family.

Were you always so aware of this idea of the dark and the light?

I definitely knew that I understood sadness and darkness in reality in a certain way, ever since I was really little. I started by writing poems and things like that about it. I knew I needed to channel it into something. It was frustrating and confusing to figure out the world as a young kid. So I started writing poems.

How old were you when you started writing poems?

Six or seven. I started recording music when I was nine. It was because my dad was in a band when I was growing up. So I had access to musical equipment in the studio.

So music was never some kind of foreign language to you.

No. It was just something I started doing organically. As cheesy as that sounds. I hate that word.

Did you show your dad your stuff early? Or was there an intimidation factor there since he was an established musician?

He would help me record and stuff like that. I have a sister and a stepsister, so we formed a little family band. I was having fun. I remember being in fourth grade and wanting to take the songs to show and tell. Just bringing a tape in.

Did you do it?

I don’t remember exactly. I might have. I was always comfortable with the idea of recorded music.

Where do you stand on the idea of nature versus nurture? It seems to be one of the narrative threads of the new album.

For me it’s a little bit of both. A lot of people are born to do something. A lot of times they don’t figure that out. Sometimes they do. From a young age I knew that I understood things in a certain way, and I could put it into words in my own way. I knew I would always do that, whether it was presenting it to the public or not.

Do you find that your physical environment plays into that?

Yeah. Pain is Beauty is a lot about nature and the inspiration that comes from it, like the intensity of a volcano. I was really drawn to stories of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, stories of natural disaster and the way it affects humanity. That’s where a lot of the lyrics came from. Translations from people and what they were saying.

Part of the title Pain is Beauty was inspired by fire ecology. In certain forest environments, fire is necessary to generate growth and cleanse it, so that new ecosystems can survive and thrive. The idea that something terrible can make something beautiful and things like that. At the same time, though it is something that’s semi-natural, when it comes to people’s homes, it’s very scary. The earthquake thing is pretty intense, too. There’s part of that in the album too, this idea that we go about our lives, we do what we do, but the earth is so much more powerful than us and it could shake us up and kill us off if it wanted to. It’s so crazy to have that dynamic constantly in your head.

Do you have a belief or an idea of a higher power? Or is the earth your higher power?

For this album, it definitely is. It’s the idea that nature has control over everything, that it could wipe us out in a second if it wanted to. It does sometimes; it takes out so many people at once. It’s so intense.

How do you feel about the way humans affect nature?

Thinking about clear-cutting forests makes my skin crawl. If you think about the earth as a living being, that’s how we toxify everything. I get overwhelmed, honestly. I do think about the world in the micro and macro sense, the bigness of everything and the smallness of everything. It’s really overwhelming. So both ways, the way we affect nature, the way nature affects us, and when they collide.

The idea of death also appears several times on the album.

In my music, it’s something I approach a lot and explore in different ways. It’s not something I’ve had to deal with, the death of someone that’s close to me, which is pretty rare. I feel lucky for that, but it’s also why it’s so intriguing. What is it like to lose someone? What is it like to die? What’s it like to be dead?

When I was younger, the first film to really impact me was The Seventh Seal by Ingmar Bergman. The visual character of death stuck in my mind. I used to dream about it in a lot of forms. Eventually I started writing about it in different ways. Sometimes it is very much a character. Other times it’s just a theme.

So if something does happen to a friend or loved one, do you feel like you’d be prepared to deal with it?

I don’t think it would make it any easier. I think I would be just as upset as everyone else, even though I’ve focused on it for so long.

What is your concept of life after death? Do you have one?

That’s such a big thing. I’m one of those people that feels like there’s a lot of different possibilities. I feel at peace with that. Not that I’m not scared of death. But I’m not particularly scared of it, either. It doesn’t fill me with a sense of dread. I feel like whoever or whatever put us here is going to put us in a good place. Whether that’s back in the earth or in the spiritual realm, it’s something that I feel okay with. Maybe one day I’ll have a specific vision of what I think it is.

Do you find it more interesting to write about the idea of finding peace, or the conflict leading up to it?

I’m interested in contrasting the two, I guess. There’s often a sense of yearning or questioning or frustration. But it’s contrasted by a sense of hope. For me, at least. Whether it’s in the melody or the lyrics. Sometimes the music can feel really dark, but the lyrics are actually really hopeful. Or vice versa. The song “The Warden,” the music sounds more light and airy than I’m used to. But lyrically it’s a pretty dark song about tormented love. I usually try to put a little bit of contrast in there so it’s not completely dreadful or too bright and happy. There’s got to be a balance.

“The Warden” does seem like it has some tormented love overtones, but that doesn’t seem like a huge part of your songwriting.

I approach it every now and then. That was one of my personal favorites on the album. I put it on the album as a theme.

There’s a beautiful simile on Pain is Beauty, “I carry heaviness like a mountain.” You’ve worked through so much; do you feel like music is a form of therapy for you?

I think it helps me to clarify things. For me it’s like an exultation. Once I understand something, it’s so much more fun to be alive. That’s why music is fun, even though a lot of my music is dark. It’s me coming to understand something or having a revelation about something. Even if it’s small, I really think epiphanies in life are really important. It’s an essential part of growing as a person.

There is no more fitting or hard-earned recipient of the Association of Independent Music’s Outstanding Contribution to Music Award than Billy Bragg. He has ploughed a lone furrow these past three decades, as a songwriter of urgent radical awareness, often in a musical landscape of near-total political apathy.

Along the way, he has worked with many of the independent sector’s leading lights, including Johnny Marr, Jeff Tweedy and California producer Joe Henry, as well as alt-rock icons REM and free spirits like Kirsty MacColl, whose cover of his early classic, “A New England,” first shot the busking East Londoner into the pop charts.

Known as the “Bard of Barking,” after his blue-collar neighbourhood, Billy released his epochal six-track debut, Life’s A Riot With Spy Vs. Spy, exactly 30 years ago, its stark combination of witty lyricism and clanging electric guitar helping him stand out amid the prevailing post-punk and New Romanticism.

Shuttling around on public transport with guitar case and amp, Bragg became British rock’s best-known activist, putting together the Red Wedge collective in opposition to Margaret Thatcher. Though he drew support from luminaries like Paul Weller, Thatcher was re-elected, and many expected Bragg to fall away in her wake.

This, however, was seriously to under-estimate his excellence, musically. He once described himself as “a love songwriter who also does political songs,” and through the remainder of the 1980s and ’90s, hits such as “Sexuality” confirmed his ability to touch on affairs of the heart (and body), while also finding time to hurl polemic boulders where necessary — in later years, online, often within a day or two of a political issue hitting the headlines.

With this year’s Tooth & Nail, he returned to a stripped-down sound, if not quite as bare as when he started out, then very subtly embellished under Joe Henry’s masterful guidance. In conversation, Bragg remains as enthusiastic yet as uncompromised as ever.

Tooth & Nail is your first album in four or five years. How come it’s been so long?

It’s been a very strange time. After my last album, Mr. Love & Justice, in 2008, I was sort of watching what was happening to the music industry, thinking to myself, “Well, is there really a viable place for me in the industry, or should I just put stuff out through mail order myself?” I self-released a compilation of all the topical songs I’d put out in the last 10 years, but there’s only so far you can reach with that, you can’t get beyond the people you know, so you really have to engage again with the music industry.

In the spring of 2011 my mum passed away — that changes your perspective on everything. My dad passed away 35 years ago, but losing my mum brought everything into sharp focus — not least, what was I doing and was there any worth in it? She’d had a lovely life, and it was her time, it wasn’t a terrible shock or anything, but at the end of it I really felt like I needed to do something now to move on. If I was gonna move on, I needed to actually get involved in something, and the elephant in the room at the time was a new Billy Bragg album.

So by the end of 2011 I was ready to record, and I went to see my friend Joe Henry in California. He’s a great songwriter, but the last decade or so he’s turned into an ace producer as well. He told me we could make an album in his basement in five days, and that was where my mind was. I didn’t really wanna do an album that took six weeks stretched over 18 months, which was how we made the last one. I needed to get in and get it done, so I could come away with something. It was most likely that I would come away with the foundations of a new record that I could bring back to England and add to.

There was always a chance I was gonna make the most expensive demos I’d ever made, but what I wasn’t really expecting was to come back with a complete album, that sounded amazing, which is what happened. So then I spent most of 2012 doing gigs, building up some money for a promotional budget, so that I could then in early 2013 get the record out.

In the words of your great heroes, the Clash, you had “complete control”?

Yeah! Which is scary, isn’t it. As long as you plan these things, and don’t just expect to waltz in there, it is possible to take on some of the jobs that the label used to do for you. Cooking Vinyl are great at getting the record out there, both digitally and physically — things I can’t do from where I am — but the crunch comes down to what I wanna do, and what I’m prepared to fund, so it’s a lot more realistic than it used to be. I did notice on the albums of a few people I admired, like Steve Earle and Tom Morello — if you look on the back, they made it in a week.

Funny you should mention Steve Earle, I was going to say your voice has matured into his sort of territory — it’s a bit gruffer, and more lived-in these days. This album really feels like a wise man sharing his wisdom with the listener.

I think there’s a couple of reasons for that. One was making the record in California with Joe and his studio guys, and the sympathy that they gave to my songs, around my voice. It just shines through, it was just so easy to sing. And for that I’m hugely thankful. But also I wanted to go back and re-visit that Mermaid Avenue space [his 1997 collaboration with Wilco on unrecorded Woody Guthrie songs], which I hadn’t really been able to do in the UK, for whatever reasons.

With England, Half English [the 2002 album recorded with his band, the Blokes], my head just wasn’t in that space, it was in the “taking on the BNP” space [the far right-wing British National Party had been gaining ground in his native East London constituency], which is why I was making a record about personal identity that sounds like world music.

Then with Mr. Love & Justice, I should’ve been a bit more engaged in the making of that record. I was sort of losing interest in making albums. I started to think, “Is there really any point in this anymore? Are people gonna still make records?” Well, clearly they are, so it behooves me to get back on it again, and that’s what I’ve sought to do with this record, and in doing that, I’ve tried to make a record that hangs together as an idea, and as a sound.

Billy Bragg, of all people, was considering throwing in the towel — that’s inconceivable!

What’s happened — because the internet allows you now to write a song one day and put it up for live download the next — which for a topical songwriter like me is really enticing — I’ve tended to make mine available that way. Take, for instance, “Never By The Sun,” my song about the phone-hacking scandal [in the British tabloid media], I wrote that the week the Millie Dowler story broke, and it was up for a free download before News of the World had even closed [the tabloid paper was forced to close, due to public and political pressure]. So that immediacy…Whereas, to get “There Is Power in a Union” out, I had to wait until 1986 when “Talking to the Taxman about Poetry” came out — a song I wrote in 1984, about the miner’s strike.

So that’s great. But what it means is, when I come to make an album, I’ve used up all my political songs, so the songs on Tooth & Nail tend to be more personal and reflective, and after the year I had in 2011, that’s not a bad thing.

You actually revisit Woody Guthrie’s canon to cover “I Ain’t Got No Home.” Lines like “the gambling man is rich, while the working man is poor” obviously resonate in the wake of the 2010′s banking crisis. In that context, it feels pretty bleak, even despairing, which is rare for you…

I think maybe reflection might be the word. I try not to despair. I’m a “glass half-full” kind of guy. It’s all in there in “Tomorrow’s Gonna Be a Better Day,” which closes the album, and in opener “January Song,” which says, I’m gonna pick myself up, I’m gonna get through this — this is where the end begins; I’m gonna finish with this, where I am now, and I’m gonna move forward.

Interestingly, the album was recorded in January 2012, and that was the very last song I wrote, on the last day. It was a song that needed to set the tone for the record, because it was a bit weird — by the time we got to Wednesday, we’d recorded 10 songs, and I thought to myself, “If I write another couple of songs, I could walk away with an album here.” So when everyone went home in the evening, I was busily away in Joe’s spare room — I was staying at his house — trying to get a couple of songs finished.

With that one, literally as we were recording it, a couple more verses came through, so I had to run upstairs, while the musicians stood there looking at the wall, and scribble them down. Then I came back down again and sang it. So it was — not an epiphany, but certainly a commitment to myself to move on to whatever comes next, to pick myself up, dust myself down, and get on with it. That’s what I really needed to do.

Did it feel like the right time for you to become the confessional troubadour?

Well, there’s a lot of that about. The sort of artists I’ve been listening to in the last few years have tended to be the more intense, personal singer-songwriter — Bon Iver, Fleet Foxes. I’ve always been a fan of that, ever since Simon & Garfunkel and Dylan, when I was a teenager.

Since 2000 or so, you’ve had a full band at your disposal, the Blokes, with the Faces’ Ian Mclagan on keyboards. Even before that, your oeuvre has been a bit schizo, veering between the stripped-back, often solo sound of you and guitar, and the more full-band stuff — it was even pretty much presented that way on your two career-overview box sets, Volume One and Volume Two, respectively. What was your initial motivation in doing the one man and his guitar act in the early ’80s?

Well, it was to escape. It was pretty risky, but it was hugely exciting. The adrenaline rush was incredible. That’s always been a big part of why I wanna do this, to get that adrenaline buzz, but a lot of the artists I used to listen to as a teenager were singer-songwriters who started out solo — the idea of the single figure alone onstage. That, plugged into the power and velocity of the Clash and the Jam, seemed to me like good wires to cross, to see what sparks flew off.

I initially had difficulty convincing pub guv’nors to put me on. I was just trying to find a way to escape from a world where my choices were getting fewer. The band I’d been in [Riff Raff] had broken up, punk had ended, I joined the army but that didn’t work out — what was I gonna do? This was like my last attempt, almost like a bayonet charge, you could say, and thirty years later I’m amazed I’m still making a living doing it. I feel really fortunate for that.

They called you the “one-man Clash”. I recently saw you defined as “folk punk,” which, if it is indeed a genre, certainly didn’t exist before you came along!

Yeah, but there was a strong connection between Woody Guthrie and the Clash. Joe Strummer used to call himself Woody, before he called himself Joe. The Clash painted slogans on their guitars because Woody did. And in some ways punk was a form of folk music, like skiffle was — a sort of do-it-yourself, get-up-and-play kind of thing that really put more onus on expression than on musicality, which is what folk music does, really. I think folk music really is music that they make for themselves, as opposed to music they buy commercially, to dance to or listen to. It’s a raw definition, but I think it’s as good as any. And punk was like that — music for ourselves.

You’ve always said that seeing the Clash perform in front of 100,000 people at a Rock Against Racism gig in London’s Victoria Park in 1977 changed your life. Why?

It was a huge catalyst, not only in my political development, but also my understanding of how music affects society. It didn’t change things, that gig, but it did send me away with a different perspective, that I hadn’t got before from the media I was taking in — the broadsheet newspapers. I was 20, but I hadn’t made the connection — there were a lot of gay people at that march, partly because Tom Robinson was performing. I hadn’t made that connection — that it was about discrimination, it wasn’t just about black people. So the world didn’t change, it stayed exactly the same, but my perception of it did, to such an extent that I wouldn’t probably being doing this job now, if it hadn’t been for what happened there. So, knowing that there’s the potential to do that every night at a gig, you’re always trying to put out ideas that you think just might send someone away with a different view of the world. You’re bringing the news from one place, like Woody did, and taking it to another.

Because you were active in extreme political times of mid ’80s Thatcherism — and with hindsight, we can definitely say they were extreme times…

Yup, I think that’s fair.

But through all of that, your musicality got a little eclipsed by the urgency of what you were saying. Is that fair, too?

Yup, for sure. The interesting thing was, I’d grown up listening to those singer-songwriters who had engaged in the Civil Rights Movement in America, and in the anti-war movement, who’d stood up and sung a song that somehow defined the moment. I suddenly found myself in a similar position.

You know, can music change the world? Well, I don’t know, but I’m gonna have a damn good go, and see if it does. I’m gonna push it as far as I can, as logically as I can, and taking my cues from the mistakes that I thought that the previous generation had made, and prime to me among that was the failure of the Clash to engage with mainstream politics. That was my analysis at the time — crude though it was.

I thought, the best vehicle, after the miners’ strike didn’t produce a revolution, which everyone promised me it would, rather than just go back to singing songs, it seemed to me we needed to find another vehicle to help defeat Margaret Thatcher, and the most obvious vehicle was Neil Kinnock’s Labour Party at the ’87 Election, and that’s how Red Wedge came into being. In the end, if you’re gonna sing these songs, you’ve gotta do your best to match your actions to that, rather than just observing politics. I’ve always tried to engage. I’m a songwriter, and I’m an activist as well.

When Kirsty MacColl charted with “A New England” in 1985, it put you on the map as a songwriter — like, hang on, this guy’s not just hollering away in a political void, he actually writes good tunes!

Yeah, that changed everything for me. It was a real badge of honor, because I was a huge Kirsty MacColl fan back from the days when I was working in a record shop. She herself had an incredible ear for a tune, and a great voice. And obviously through her dad she had the political chops as well, so for her to come to me and ask if she could record one of my songs was like winning the pools really. When it turned out so fabulous and got in the Top 10, and you could buy my album for the price of her 12-inch, all of a sudden I was reaching people that previously I hadn’t done.

And still that’s the song that most people know. Even David Cameron! When he said he liked the Smiths [in a famous press conference], someone said, “You’ll be saying you like Billy Bragg next, and he said, I do like ‘A New England,’ but I like Kirsty’s version,” which was like a glancing blow — it was close, but I just managed to avoid the full weight of it.

Did Kirsty’s cover open up the idea for you to start putting instrumentation on your records, to make them a bit prettier for people?

I think it was working with Johnny Marr that changed that. “Greetings For The New Brunette” [1986] was great, but the real thing was when he produced “Sexuality” on Don’t Try This At Home [1991], because me and the actual producer of the album, Grant Showbiz — when we got Johnny’s track back, we thought, “Oh fuck [laughs], now we’ve gotta make an album that sounds like that.” He set the bar really high.

I have no qualms about pop music. I love pop music. If I could sing like Marvin Gaye and dance like Fred Astaire, I would totally have gone for it in the ’80s — although it would’ve been political. I always thought my strength lay in what I was writing — content over style, I suppose. But I’ve always liked to think I have enough of a pop sensibility to be able to engage with people.

The thing is, when people talk about writing a political song, they often forget the song bit. People remember a song like “What’s Going On?” because of its great hook, and the orchestration. These things are important. The lyric should be able to deal with the attitude in it. You don’t need the music to do that too. The music should be drawing people in.

2002′s England, Half English, was loosely about Britain’s tradition of multiculturalism, stretching back for centuries. That led you on to writing your book, The Progressive Patriot. What were you able to write there, that you couldn’t in song?

All you can do with your records is send a message from where you are. That’s what Tooth & Nail is, and it’s definitely what England, Half English was. I ended up needing to write the book, because subsequent to England, Half English, the BNP got 12 councillors elected in Barking & Dagenham [Bragg's constituency] in 2006, and I was like, “What can I do? I can’t just write another record. I’m gonna have to engage in this in a much more detailed way. I’m gonna have to go on, in real detail about why I love my country, why I’m not willing to stand by and watch the town I grew up in turn into the racist capital of Britain.” There are different types of patriotism, let’s explore that. All those things, I could’ve done them each in a song. The book allowed me greater scope.

In the late Noughties, a freshly politicized new generation of British artists started name-checking you, including Jamie T, Hard-Fi and Get Cape, Wear Cape, Fly. Was that like a final validation for you? Like, your music has endured?

Yeah, that was a welcome surprise. I still feel I have something to say. At the tail end of 2011, I thought to myself, I really need to engage with the industry again, because I haven’t finished. I still have some fight in me. Let’s do this, and see what happens. When this period of touring and promotion is over in about a year’s time, I’ll step back, and hopefully I will be in a different place, both emotionally and career-wise — that Tooth & Nail will have made people look at me in a different perspective. I’m hoping — because I don’t expect to be in the charts and playing Wembley Arena. I don’t think that was ever really in the plan for me, just to carry on making a living, and still having people come along and ask you to play tracks from your newest album. That’s all I can hope for.