Download: Ponys “Check The Door”

(from the Deathbed +4 EP out today on Matador)

Download: Girls “End Of The World” (Skeeter Davis)

(from the “Morning Light” 7″ out now on Fantasy Trashcan)

Girls tiptoed out of a San Francisco bedroom to find a colossally welcoming worldwide reception that got them covered in the kind of publications that mostly only cover wars and sports. They helped link Dean Bein’s excellent True Panther Sounds label (home of L.A. RECORD alums Glasser and Hunx and His Punx) to Matador and at press time, their band name really did outrank every single porno site in Google. This interview by Chris Ziegler.

What producer would you most want to be handcuffed to for 24 hours—Joe Meek, Lee Perry or Stacy Sutherland when he was doing Bull of the Woods all by himself in the dead of night?
JR White (bass): Lee Perry would be amazing. I’ve never been to jail so Phil Spector would be cool.
Why haven’t you ever been to jail?
JR White: I don’t know. I’ve thought about it too. I think I convey …
Respectability?
JR White: Yeah—even when I’m doing awful things I’m wearing a peacoat and leather shoes.
Are you permanently past the age of jail-ability?
JR White: I kind of had a repressed adolescence. I didn’t start smoking pot till I was out in college. I didn’t start drinking until then either and I didn’t discover anything else till then. There was a point recently where someone was like, ‘Do you want to take acid?’ And I was like, ‘You know, I never took acid and now I feel like I’m too late. I’m 29 years old and I’m not gonna figure anything out right now—I shoulda figured this shit out like five years ago. I should have had that acid trip to figure stuff out back then, but I didn’t.’ But jail-ability—maybe because of my delayed adolescence, I’ve got a good couple more years for jail. I think once you’re 30 and you go to jail, it’s probably for really bad shit. You don’t get that pass anymore. ‘Oh, he’s just a kid.’ That’ll be the reality hit for me—two years for something that when I was 18 would’ve been a month or something.
What do you think you’ve learned in the rock ‘n’ roll world that will translate best to an incarcerative setting?
JR White: Stage presence, which I don’t have really … maybe the ability to bullshit out of a situation.
That’s applicable in all situations.
JR White: Yeah. I’m not gonna go to jail. I’m not gonna go to jail.
Do you and Greg Ashley ever get together and talk about how to mic a toilet tank or anything like that?
JR White: No, I worked with Greg once but I was filling in on drums for this band called the Passionistas from San Francisco. I could play drums by sitting and doing it for six months, but if I don’t I can just barely get by. I did a record with them and it was embarrassing—it took me like six hours to lay three tracks. It was one of those things where it took me a day to do half the album. But funny enough, I did mic our chimney—just hang a [SM] 57 way up in there and just leave it. The only way I could do it was with a mic stand—it was a really small chimney and I could get it three feet up there and I also had the mic going up into it instead of hanging down from it.
You didn’t find a foot in a Santa boot or anything, did you?
JR White: No—that would be amazing. I know it’s like shut off because in San Francisco they close all fireplaces. You’re not allowed to use your fireplace because everything’s so close together. But I think there is a B-side—it’s great because [singer/guitarist] Chris [Owens] trusts me, and I had his head in the fireplace. ‘You gotta sing up, dude—you gotta sing up.’ He was like laying on his stomach singing up into the fireplace and it’s funny because in the end you can’t even tell—to tell the fucking truth.
If you and Chris were in a criminal gang and not a band, what would be your specialty?
JR White: We would be drifters—we’d probably be con artists. In broad terms, I’m good at doing things and then recovering from them. I worked in kitchens and I would always drop things and catch them in fantastic ways. I’m always able to get out of trouble and maybe every once in a while steal a pair of shoes and somehow talk the person out of getting me in trouble and maybe even letting me keep the shoes.
Are you more like, ‘Oh, my life is terrible! Have pity on me!’ or ‘Hey, I’m a cool guy! Let’s handle this in a COOL way!’?
JR White: You just got to be self-assured and make them believe what you’re saying is the truth. If you trick yourself into believing what you’re saying is the truth, then you can get other people to do it. I don’t do that a lot, but seven years in San Francisco of working shit jobs and walking into a thrift store and seeing a cool pair of fucking boots and saying, ‘I am gonna get those! Those are mine!’ and stuff like that—which I think is pretty typical of somebody living in the city and being poor and just trying to scrape by like that. Every once in a while trying to take things that are embellishments in your life—things that will make you feel better. There have been times when I was caught and I was just like, ‘These are my shoes! I don’t know what you’re talking about!’ ‘Well, there’s a security tag on them.’ ‘Don’t you know anything about style? Do you not read Vogue or something? But you look like you do—those shoes are great!’ It’s almost laughable to say something like that and get people to believe you.
I knew someone who stole a lamp from a Christian thrift store and the next morning woke up with a brutal foot fungus. Have you ever been divinely punished for stealing?
JR White: I’ve thought about it—it’s not like you don’t think about that kind of thing.
In an interview, you said that the way Girls came together was almost like divine intervention. So is Girls the opposite of getting a foot fungus from ripping off a Christian thrift store?
JR White: I don’t know if it was done by divine intervention. I think it’s the opposite. It’s always been really hard to get a band together for us—that’s probably the suffering that we’re receiving for all the—
So it’s divine prevention? The universe does not want you to have this band.
JR White: Yeah—it’s been hard. Our guitar player quit last tour in the middle of it. He’d never been in a band. I don’t think he knows that what was going on was actually pretty nice compared to what most bands have to go through. So he quit and we tried to restart the band on tour and it’s been a total nightmare. We thought maybe we should just start all over and become a different band and we tried to do it with a week to go. ‘Let’s just throw ourselves into this shit!’ And like two days into it we were like, ‘This is not gonna work.’ That was the first time we’d succumbed to pressure. Normally we’re like, ‘No, if people don’t like it, people will just have to wait a year and then they’ll like it! We’re just taking advantage of a situation!’ And this was the first time—getting ready for this tour—where we were like, ‘Let’s just go with what we know and go back to square one.’ I think we were trying to keep ourselves interested because we’ve gone through a few bands now and it was always serious, but there wasn’t expectations before. Our own expectations are the highest ones actually. So we got done touring—how can we shake this up? The four-piece straight-ahead rock band is really cool but it was getting a bit tedious and we wanted to do more stuff—we didn’t want to get into laptop sampling, but we wanted to have another person and keyboards and get a little bit weirder and less straightforward. I think it was mostly to try to entertain ourselves and not get bored. Not to say that we’re bored but …
But there’s a threat of boredom.
JR White: Yeah, and we always wanted to have a stable band—like we want to have a band of people that are part of it and are writing stuff with us. We started seeing how things would work with Cass [McCombs] because we’re really good friends with Cass. And how he is able to exist and find people to play with him and every album is a little bit different—he’s able to just grow and evolve and do whatever he wants and we kind of want to do something like that. That was enticing to me.
What has been your most productive instance of negative inspiration? Something where you saw something and thought, ‘I can’t believe that exists—I can do better.’
JR White: That’s a good question because I don’t like a lot of stuff.
We’re the same way.
JR White: There’s a lot of opportunity for shit-talking but the first thing that comes to my mind I can’t really say. There was a time when Chris and I started becoming better friends … the tail end of the Oakland noise scene. The whole noise scene in Oakland before it spun out and deteriorated, it got really ugly and that to me was an instance. I grew up in punk, I like punk as an emotional outlet, like seeing people and having the crowd freak out and it was an offshoot of that. But at some point it just seemed like there was a lot of people who weren’t playing anything important. It was supposed to be for emotion but they were doing it to be cool and there’s a lot of cool people playing and there was this one instance where Christopher and I went to a place and just found it to be awful. We were wasted and turned on a hose in a hallway for like three seconds and kind of laughed like, ‘Whoa, that’s getting everywhere!’ and turned it off. Just this very drunken behavior and stupidness. We didn’t know that the whole place houses hundreds of people and some guy came up—some kind of jock-y guy came up and started pushing us around and instead of going for me he went for Chris, who’s like 5’4” and like 100 pounds. And he started punching him and we got into a tussle and finally his friends came and they just escorted us out, and we ended up throwing a rock through their window. This is just bad—I’m not condoning what we did but that was a moment where it was like, ‘Fuck everything! Let’s try to do something that’s not brash and simple chord structures and do something that has melody instead of avoiding that because it’s easier to make noise.’
You said you felt like people weren’t doing anything important—what do you think is important about music? What was lacking?
JR White: I kinda said that without thinking. I’m not very self-important—I don’t think everything I do is that great, honestly. When I read good reviews it’s so surprising to me.
What happens when you read bad reviews? You’re like, ‘Yeah! Pour it on!’?
JR White: A little bit. Actually a little bit. They don’t really bother me—they bother me when they’re at a personal level or if they call you a poser. I’m like, ‘You don’t even know me, and first of all you have a blog—I don’t.’ But the question was?
You said bands weren’t doing anything important.
JR White: It wasn’t important to me. I don’t think music necessarily has to have any meaning, it can be very—to me it’s the highest form of art.
Sartre actually said that too.
JR White: I don’t think that it has to be important—it just has to be important to the listener. It’s important to the artist as someone making it and whatever their attention to it is, but it really only exists in the ears of people listening to it. So I can’t say if my music is important or not—only someone else can say it.
What three chords together are most likely to melt someone’s heart?
JR White: The prerequisite is that I never had any music training at all—that’s why I play bass. It was all patterns for me, and when Chris yells out chord structures I seriously start fucking drowning. E and A together is always my favorite just because I have a love of drone and Spacemen 3 and things like that. E, A and G are always good ones. I guess they say minor chords always bring out the sorrow feeling.
Is it true that every time somebody sings the word ‘love’ in a pop song they actually mean the word ‘fuck’?
JR White: Chris would argue with that I’m sure. I don’t know—do they mean ‘fuck’? I think when people say ‘love,’ they usually don’t even mean love. I think when people write a song about love, it’s not really as important as they think it is. The process of writing a song is fairly instantaneous—something that happens instantly. A song that is written about a person is usually written—from my experience—out of lust and yearning before any real rationalization comes into it. And I think you need rationalization for love—true love anyway. The artist’s interpretation of what they’re writing is probably never about love so yeah, it could be about fucking. I would agree with that.
Brian Wilson’s favorite song ever heard—as far as production, arrangement, songwriting, everything—was ‘Be My Baby.’ What’s the most perfect song you’ve ever heard? What’s your ‘Be My Baby’?
JR White: I like the Band—‘The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.’ I just like the timing on the chorus before it comes in and the roll and how it’s late every time, but it’s not late because he does it every time—I still can’t sing along to it right. It’s challenging and ever since I was a kid it was my favorite song because it’s so grandiose but still very ramshackle.
What is the most unhappy you’ve ever been to see the sun come up?
JR White: Oh, on bad Ecstasy actually. The kind of Ecstasy that you never had the euphoria and all you had was the speed. I’ve had the speed instances where it’s actually kind of fun—you feel like a million bucks and you’re like, ‘Why don’t I do this all the fucking time?’ But when you’re laying in bed and it’s coming through your window and it’s hot and you just can’t sleep through it—I’d say that. Or just being in an airport waiting for a plane. I can’t think of a worse situation than that.
What’s the worst place you ever woke up?
JR White: I’m good at blocking things out. Last year I woke up in McCarren Park in New York with my pockets inside out and my cell phone missing and I had no idea where I was because I haven’t spent that much time in New York. That was pretty shitty.It’s funny because I’d found this photo in a thrift store of a close-up homemade anal sex shot and I had been carrying it with me to slip into the opening band’s stuff when we were on tour. For the first few shows it was just constantly passed around and hidden in places. It was a really shocking image.
Was it shot by a third party or the one guy with like a Polaroid?
JR White: I think it was third party. It was that famous shot of ass and penetration and the taker on top and giver on bottom sort of thing. Full-on shocking image. But they took that from me and I was more embarrassed that somebody went through my pockets and found that. I think they went through my pockets because my receipts and stuff were next to me and my phone was gone and I’m not the kind of drunk that throws his things around—I sort of just curl up into a ball and fall asleep. So someone stole my phone and charged $700 calling Thailand on it and—who knows?—had a lot of fun with that photo.
Dean from your label True Panther was talking about how amazing it is that if you type ‘Girls’ into Google it outranks every porno site. How do you feel about that as your legacy?
JR White: I don’t know, man—someone at Matador must have paid someone somewhere. I don’t believe it. I don’t even understand how that happens.
Do you think they routinely pay off porno sites to get higher search ratings?
JR White: It’s possible. I’m actually here right now. They’re really sordid people. I’m looking at them through the window right now and one guy’s pulling pieces of his hair out right now.
A bunch of shirtless people all grunting and sweaty?
JR White: Thurston Moore is here and he’s just taking his pants off and no one looks surprised.
What famous person would you most like to take off your pants?
JR White: I’m so bad at questions like this. I’d like to really emasculate someone by having them take my pants off so lemme think of someone who’s really tough … I’d like Arnold Schwarzenegger to have to take my pants off.
Imagine looking down there and seeing those eyes looking back.
JR White: Totally frightening. It’d probably be a little bit scary for him. I hope so.
So an exchange of terror?
JR White: I’d like to really just terrorize someone with the option of having them take my pants off, rather than me try to get something out of it. I’m sure if Angelina Jolie was taking my pants off, it would be just as terrifying for her as it would be for Arnold Schwarzenegger.
That’s interesting that you went past selfish sexual gratification to this intense power dynamic.
JR White: Yeah. I’m a fairly selfless person.
What’s the most fucked-up food you ever ate?
JR White: Oh, I used to be a chef so I eat everything. Most people are grossed out by my diet but I’ll eat anything. I won’t eat bugs—that’s where I won’t cross the line, even though they’re probably not the worst-tasting thing. I just think it’s wrong. I’ll eat anything—hearts, livers. I’ve had lamb testicle tureen.
A cobra’s beating heart?
JR White: No, but I was in Vietnam though and I would’ve. I’ve had cobra wine.
Does it make you virile and potent like it’s supposed to?
JR White: I wouldn’t know—no babies yet. Not that I know of … But we tried to find monkey wine once, which is the whole monkey soaking in the wine. That shit’s crazy. They’re actually known to randomly explode because it’s so volatile—the alcohol in there. Like a couple times a year one of those bars just randomly explodes. I was having a conversation with someone in France and they’ve made a kind of sausage where they stuff the lower intestines with the kidneys and liver—they stuff it but they don’t wash out the intestines, so you’re eating shit.
Isn’t that fantastically dangerous?
JR White: I would think so. The cooking process probably kills a lot of the bacteria but still … it tastes like shit. Cass actually ate it and he said it was the worst thing he’d ever eaten. I can’t imagine actually going for it.
What in your professional opinion does shit taste like? I’ve never actually eaten shit.
JR White: I don’t know—especially cooked shit, it probably changes taste. I don’t even want to know, to be honest. I can’t even think about it.
What’s the first thing you think when you look in a mirror?
JR White: ‘Um, seriously?’ That’s what I say when I look in a mirror. ‘Really? Seriously?’ When I look in a mirror, I’m not quite sure what I’m seeing. I’m not sure if I look older or I look younger. I think every day I look different. I had this conversation before about whether or not you would recognize yourself if you saw you walking down the street.
Because you’re used to the mirror and it would look different.
JR White: Yeah, and the basic idea being that when you look in the mirror is that actually you? Totally stoner conversation, probably. But I’m convinced I would not recognize myself. I would feel akin to the person—like, ‘That guy looks like me!’ But I don’t know. I really do avoid mirrors at all costs. I actually wait for the mirrors to fog up before I get in the shower. And I don’t have weird body issues—I don’t hate myself that much. Not more than most people, I think.
If you saw the female version of yourself on the street, would you be attracted to her?
JR White: Would I want to have sex with her?
Sure—let’s put it out there.
JR White: No, probably not. But when you said that, I started to wonder if [drummer] Garett [Godard] would want to have sex with me because I’m slightly bigger and Garett has an affinity for the bigger girls. He’s openly expressed this. And if I found out that he did want to fuck me, would I then be mad at him? Yeah, I would. I think I would be mad and think Garett would want to fuck me if I was a female.
Are you excited that I’ve introduced this troubling idea into the band dynamic?
JR White: I’m going to bring this up to him as soon as I walk into the other room. I know he’d say he wouldn’t fuck me—that’s 100 percent sure—but I don’t think he’s being truthful.

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Download: Harlem “Friendly Ghost”

(from Hippies out April 6 on Matador)

When Harlem moved to Los Angeles, they spent their first day prank calling 911 from every payphone on Hollywood Blvd and lit an American flag attached to a car on fire. Time passed and they couldn’t get a show to save their lives. They’ve moved from one “cockroach town apartment” to another, city to city, settling in Austin, until somebody at Matador finally said, “This band rocks—let’s give them a record deal.” This interview by Daiana Feuer.

How do you navigate the business side of being in a band?
Michael Coomers (guitar/vocals): Well, take today—we were trying to put out a 7” before Hippies comes out in April, but everything has been fucked up with that. I get e-mails from five different people saying seven different things—but I have a glass of wine and a cigarette so I am fine. Not to be totally outrageous, but I thought it’d be like that scene of Tupac flashing $100 bills in front of Death Row. That’s not the case. I do a lot of work. I never fucked around with the internet until we couldn’t get a show without having a MySpace. Sending a mixtape to a club—you might as well throw a message in a bottle and put it in the ocean. None of what we’ve done was in pursuit of success so much as it was all out of boredom and necessity. People think we had a career track. We ‘toured’ across the country getting sublets in towns for periods of time because we couldn’t afford to tour. That was our version of touring. Now it’s a little more legit. People ask me advice on how to do a band and I have no fucking idea. If you consider Forrest Gump to be a way of life, then yeah, we’ve made it from place to place. Austin was not a pilgrimage to the live music capital. We just had three friends with a house. We lived in L.A., too. [L.A. RECORD editor] Chris Ziegler can attest to the fact we couldn’t get a show. I see bands that have a lot more of their shit together; we aren’t supposed to be successful in life. I watched something on the curse of lottery winners. They win the lottery and have all this money, and in all the interviews they say they’ll give money to charity—then they drive to strip clubs with a suitcase of money in the front seat and how do you expect not to end up in a ditch?
Do you watch a lot of television?
Michael Coomers: Hell yeah! TV is basically where I get every idea I’ve ever had. Certain shows give you the idea of the way people think about things and how they interact with the world. I was obsessed with The View, though it went downhill after Rosie left. I watched it religiously and I am definitely not the demographic of that show. I was so into the strangeness of the whole thing. Barbara Walters trying to seem relatable to a lower-class demographic though it’s so obvious she is blue blood. It just seems so surreal at this point. Right now is a weird time period in which the fabric of reality is super fucking thin.
Does that go for your fabric of reality as well?
Michael Coomers: In my own—that too. I grew up in Tucson, Arizona, and there’s something about the light there—how everything is in massive amounts of daylight and a dusty haze. It feels like the entire town is stoned. They’ve been smoking weed all day. Nothing is crisp or clear. It’s all overblown. Maybe being in a band and touring, not sleeping and being bad to your body helps facilitate that. When I was 16 everything made sense. At 21, things seemed clear. Now I am 27 and the whole world feels like a fucked smorgasbord of animals eating each other. A weird dinner party with Tasmanian devils. A friend of mine called it second puberty. Your skin goes shithouse again. You’re trying to figure out what you should be doing. I saw Garth Brooks in Las Vegas the other day, and there was this weird feeling—am I supposed to propose to somebody right now because I’m old enough on this romantic trip of seeing Garth Brooks? Is Las Vegas really supposed to be romantic? You look around—it’s a fucked up disgusting thing of people gambling and it smells like jail. Why is this romantic? How is this classy? This place. Caesar’s Palace—you go in this gilded mechanical walkway and there’s just beer and leftover potato salad containers next to faux classical sculpture. This is not classy—this is horrible. The idea that this is what you are supposed to think. If I was eating rabbit in some castle in Scotland, I would be like, ‘This is classy.’ Something other than just expensive. I was thinking today … how you record music, and there’s this new thing about these weird epic swells of sound people are doing. They do a backline of a synthesizer and tap this subharmonic frequency—it’s a mind-fuck where you can’t help but be ingrained in the music. It’s an automatic body response. It’s cheesy. It isn’t legitimate but it’s there. Van Halen said a song is good when you get goose bumps. But I thought to myself—this body response to something doesn’t mean it’s good or classy, but some subhuman portion of your body responds to it. Just like if you feel a baboon’s ass you will get a hard-on. It seems more about hypercolor genitalia than making a good song. It’s this automatic thing when something’s put in front of you that’s warm and red so your body goes, ‘That’s what I like.’ It doesn’t mean it’s good.
Is it your body or mind that truly knows what is good?
Michael Coomers: There is no answer to that but when I am searching—this sounds cheesy—searching for better truth through punk music. That seems disingenuous and shitty. What are you working towards? It’s punk music. It’s making a noise. It’s banging pots and pans because you wanna make racket. You wanna find something you respond to well. The difference between something decent and valuable and something that you have an immediate response to is a subjective and subtle difference. I don’t want to reference bands I don’t like, but if you listen to Weezer—the first album—there’s all this stuff that makes them sound like humans, then the later albums are monstrosities. Grilled cheese sandwiches. So disgusting. I have been responding to music lately that’s not any tricks. I like old music a lot and that helps. They hadn’t figured out how to manipulate people’s minds yet. I have been listening to Salem a lot and there’s no frills, no obvious things that will make people react. These are their songs. Me, I’ve been weirded out by everything and this is the sound I make.
What qualifies the genuineness of your music?
Michael Coomers: I can approach this question two ways. One, it’s more along the lines of how you manipulate people into feeling something and what your message is—is your message to force-feed an emotion out of someone through bells and whistles that simulate a romantic feeling? Or do you say, ‘This is what I do—how I deal with melody and rhythm’? ‘Lo-fi’ is not the term. When people say that, well it’s just not over-produced and over-done. A lot of writers say write what you feel and don’t make it more precious or wordy. Music is pretty fucking dumb. You can only do so much with it. Pick up a guitar—unless you’re the Shaggs and have no reference point, you are going to find patterns that others have found before. Comparisons to the ’60s doesn’t mean we are listening to a Shirelles song and decide to rip it off. There’s a naive starting point: How do you write a song? What sounds pretty? As opposed to a big epic statement of what technology does to music. I can’t play guitar. I don’t care to learn. I don’t know what a D chord looks like. The way I look at it, there are these hand patterns to make sounds. The idea of making a descending scale, diminished fifth, I have no idea. I listen to old rock ‘n’ roll, and it’s in that—it’s the basic realization of equipment to make songs, and there are certain patterns that are natural or inherent. That’s the genuineness of what we do, and what they did.
If not for the sake of musicianship, why do you think these songs need to come out of you?
Michael Coomers: I don’t think I can do anything else. I’ve been fired from every job. I don’t think I’m a visionary—there’s not much ego. I don’t think I am better than anyone else. But I do this because what else am I going to do? There’s only so many hours you can spend pursuing getting laid or eating or sleeping. The other hours have to be spent pursuing some goal that will last a little more than you. When we first put out a record, it was to put out a record some friends would buy. We weren’t trying to tap into a greater market of people we can relate to. We want people to come down to the party and have fun, but it’s not about how talented we are. ‘Watch me wail on guitar.’ What I would say about the ’60s comparison is we believe in ‘giving them a little of what they want.’ In old and early ’90s country music, the performer does not have to be this icon. It is supposed to be background noise for everyone to get drunk and dance and potentially get laid. Why do I have to play this music? I am better at making drunk people have a good time than I am at building a road or putting aluminum on the siding of a wall.
Can you live off music at this point?
Michael Coomers: We do alright but not really. We can live day-to-day and maybe come home and pay rent. I am not going to bitch—we are in a better position than most. You go on tour to have fun and goof off and it makes the days you work at the coffee shop worthwhile—making lattes for douches. But I am sitting here in a house with dead raccoons in the walls for ventilation. There’s no pie in the sky. It’s kind of shitty because there’s no fucking difference between us and any other band trying to make it. It’s timing or some weird idiosyncratic band that plays rock ‘n’ roll and gets a chance. Rock ‘n’ roll has been played for ages. You can buy a new record every day and you’d never have to buy anything beyond 1980. But if people like us and don’t try to make broad comparisons and will help us along, that’s awesome. We’re stoked that anyone likes what we’re doing. Otherwise, we’d be doing it, but with nobody being stoked about it.
Is struggling a genuine component of rock ‘n’ roll reality?
Michael Coomers: Being hungry for whatever it is—‘necessity is the mother of invention.’ If you’re comfortable you are not going to push anything. We played with a band in Santa Cruz—they were a good little band, a bunch of guys—they surfed all day, they had beautiful girlfriends and live by the beach and make rock ‘n’ roll at night. If you have that nice lifestyle, that doesn’t need to be shaken up. You’re not going to push anything to be any better than whatever it is that comes first to you. We’re not tortured, but we don’t have it easy. And you know what? It is hard to write simple pop songs. I’ve played in noise bands and fucked-up dissonant whatever bands and to write something that is far more simpler is way harder than people give it credit for. As dumb and straightforward as a song sounds, there’s a lot more attention to it than just sitting around and mimicking Pink in guitar riffs.
What about people taking you too seriously or not seriously enough?
Michael Coomers: We could go down a dark path talking like we are, and then people will find out our songs are about Ren and Stimpy. Everything is so serious. People see things so black and white and straightforward. This band is serious because they write songs that have lyrics about gun barrels or what Sylvia Plath died of. If you feel it, and it’s dark and it’s in your heart, and that’s what you need to talk about, OK. But the same ennui can be described in how your TV doesn’t work because they changed your converter. It’s the same thing. It’s about feeling dissociated with the way things are and how things look. We are not that dark. We’re sorta well-adjusted. We don’t have girlfriends that need to hold us when we cry on cold nights. Someone responded to Curtis’s song ‘Friendly Ghost’ as a song about a ghost. But I am pretty sure it’s not about Casper. I can guarantee he alluded to that because it sounded cool to him in lyrics. It’s not as straightforward as trying to get on the Haley Osment remake of Casper.
Where is that guy?
Michael Coomers: Last I saw him he was thuggish. No, that was the Jerry Maguire guy. He’s this homie kid now trying to be all hard. But, come on—the human head weighs five fucking pounds. Give me a break.

HARLEM WITH DANTE VS. ZOMBIES ON SAT., FEB. 20, AT SPACELAND, 1717 SILVERLAKE BLVD., SILVER LAKE. 8:30 PM / $8-$10 / 21+. CLUBSPACELAND.COM. HARLEM’S HIPPIES RELEASES ON TUE., APRIL 6, ON MATADOR. VISIT HARLEM AT MYSPACE.COM/HARLEMDUH.

Download: Cold Cave “Theme From Tomorrowland”

(off Love Comes Close is out now on Matador)

Roundtable Discussion: The Role Of The Record Label

Via: NPR

At the beginning of this decade, record labels were still a way of indexing artists; of positioning them within a community, a scene and a movement. Throughout our end-of-the-decade coverage, one reccurring theme is whether context still matters. After all, one of the most glorious (if not overwhelming) changes to take place in the last 10 years is how much music is available to us, and from everywhere.

So, while the notion of community has been broadened and redefined — we may no longer see record labels as megaphones for towns and the bands therein — perhaps we still need someone to help curate and make sense of the music out there. Personally, I still turn to certain labels as a means of filtration.

And, while plenty of musicians have acrimonious relationships with their labels, just as many do not. Musicians still choose to work with specific labels because they are aware of their history and want to be part of a tangible community of people and supporters. [Read More + Listen]

Congrats to the Burger boys for further penetrating the American consciousness via NPR and Matador Records’ Gerard Cosloy! Carrie Brownstein conducted this conversation about the role and the future of the record label which concludes:

Carrie Brownstein: What are you nostalgic for from 10 years ago? What don’t you miss?
Gerard Cosloy: There’s some record stores I miss.
Maggie Vail : I miss some zines, magazines, record stores.
Robb Nansel: I’m nostalgic for an underground.
Gerard Cosloy: Here’s your underground: http://www.myspace.com/burgerrecords.
Mac McCaughan: Is that made up or real?
Gerard Cosloy: Real.

Real indeed—visit Burger’s store in Anaheim, read our interview with Sean Burger here and get the Burger mixtape here, too!

Download: Yo La Tengo “Periodically Double Or Triple”

(from Popular Songs out now on Matador)

Entire island ecosystems arise, corrupt, decay and disappear within the generous lifespan of Yo La Tengo, the New Jersey three-piece who reinvent endlessly what an independent American rock band is supposed to do—play Flamin’ Groovies songs in heaven, for instance. Guitarist/singer Ira Kaplan speaks very early in the morning. This interview by Chris Ziegler.

Is that Onion article about the record store clerks dying at the Yo La Tengo concert when the roof collapses the pinnacle of everything that’s ever been written about Yo La Tengo?
Ira Kaplan (vocals/guitar): That was pretty great. It’s hard to imagine anything else that was written about us once you bring that one up. I don’t know if you heard the story but we played at a party for The Onion later that year. They asked us to play at their Christmas party and they offered us some money, but there was no way it was going to be the amount of money that we normally get paid. We told them, ‘Look, we don’t do everything based on the dollar sign—we don’t even care about the money. What we’d like to do is re-enact the story—that’s what we really want.’ So what we ended up doing was we tweaked it some. It took a bit to convince them but then we really got into it and dived in. We ended up setting up fake rigging on the stage so that late in the set all the power and the PA flickered and then the fake stage rigging collapsed on us and killed us. And we had six people dressed as medics—with really hackneyed white coats and those reflector things—run in with stretchers and carry us off dead.
This is colossally elaborate. This actually happened in real life?
Ira Kaplan: Yeah, and it was so elaborate that I’m not even done yet. Then we changed into angel costumes and returned and played one more song.
What song does Yo La Tengo play in heaven?
Ira Kaplan: We decided to do the Flamin’ Groovies—‘You Tore Me Down.’
What’s it like getting ready for those legendary covers marathons on WFMU?
Ira Kaplan: It depends on the year because there was one year we were out of town—I guess we must have been at SXSW or something—and we went straight from the airport to FMU because the scheduling. What that mostly does is it kind of reminds us that we are capable of playing a lot of songs that we’ve never thought of playing before and it reminds us also to watch each other. One of the big things about doing that is to try to know when to stop—you don’t have to do all three verses.
Which also applies to life in general.
Ira Kaplan: That’s one of the attractions of doing this—it reminds us there’s a lot of life lessons in it.
How well does the Yo La Tengo experience serve as a microcosmic analogue for the entire human experience?
Ira Kaplan: I think that’s for other people to, ah …
People have asked you that way too much.
Ira Kaplan: Yeah, that’s right.
What are the legal procedures necessary to play and release an Electric Eels song?
Ira Kaplan: I don’t know how serious a question that is but one of the things about covering songs is you can record and cover any song you want on a record. You don’t need permission, you just have to pay for it. And it’s not a negotiable rate. There’s just an established rate of what it costs to cover an established song. The only thing you can’t do is if you’ve written a song that hasn’t ever been recorded—then the writer maintains the right of how it’s first recorded but after that you can cover it as long as the royalty is paid.
So they were helpless before you?
Ira Kaplan: We got a nice email from Brian McMahon—we were very impressed. There’s been a lot of the artists who’ve been ‘immortalized’ on Fuckbook that have contacted us. We’ve heard from Richard Hell and we’re friendly with the Flamin’ Groovies, but it’s pretty cool. We heard from a guy in Florida who did a version of ‘What’cha Gonna Do About It’—we didn’t know about it until he wrote to us, but it’s been a perk we weren’t expecting. We keep hoping every day that Felix Cavaliere will be sending us e-mails, but so far not yet.
How satisfied are you with the way that Yo La Tengo has made your fondest rock ‘n’ roll dreams come true?
One of the questions that we do get asked is, ‘Who would you like to play with and what haven’t you accomplished yet?’—stuff like that—and we tend to just sidestep it. Obviously, when we do the Chanukah shows and we actively seek out people to play with us there is some kind of planning involved, but I will say completely that when we recorded Fuckbook we weren’t at all thinking, ‘This way the Electric Eels will write to us.’ Things like that just kind of happen without thinking about them—it’s great.
What’s the significance of having a sculpture made of human bone and trinitite from the first atomic bomb test on your album cover?
Ira Kaplan: Trinitite? I don’t think I looked that far into it—I don’t even know what that is. We didn’t delve that deeply into it to be completely honest. We were just so taken by the image and we stopped reading after ‘human bone.’
Two of the 20th century’s biggest gifts to the world were rock ‘n’ roll and the atomic bomb—can we make a connection between the two?
Ira Kaplan: I wish I could say yes and it’s one of the reasons I wish that I didn’t have to do interviews sometimes. I think that’s one of the best things about being obsessed with—well, probably anything—but in my case and probably your case, being obsessed with music. It sets the mind racing and the aspect of the interview process that short-circuits that is a pity. The idea that you’re making that connection is amazing to me and it’s too bad that I have to come along and say, ‘Nah, never thought about it.’
We can use this interview to generate some mysteries if you want.
Ira Kaplan: I’m still connected to a lie detector, so the best I can do is be evasive.
You’re lucky you’re not connected to a nuclear device.
Ira Kaplan: Yeah.
So what do you think is the biggest connection between rock ‘n’ roll and the threat of nuclear war?
Ira Kaplan: Wow. I can’t—you’re three hours earlier, it’s too early for me to answer that. I don’t know. It is an interesting thing when people look back on that time. It’s funny how that aspect of it—how scary it must have been living and really believing that nuclear annihilation was around the corner. It does make me look at the fury with which people deal with each other today and think, ‘Man, you have no clue.’ And the thing that’s so frustrating is that most of those people—I’m a proud member of the left wing, so I’ll focus my ire on Fox News right now—but those people are old enough to know better. And it’s frustrating to look at these people who really know that things are so much better right now in that regard and to just rile people up the way they do is pretty sad and dishonest.
Stan Lee says do all your artistic work standing up and that way you won’t get a potbelly. Do you agree?
Ira Kaplan: We do quite a bit of our work standing up.
That’s where I assume you get your trim physique.
Ira Kaplan: Exactly right. You can’t tell because the stage is so high, but we’re actually all on treadmills while we’re performing.
What key are your treadmills in?
Ira Kaplan: As big Terry Riley fans, we’re in C.
Do you have any special insight into the American economy through the lens of Yo La Tengo?
Ira Kaplan: Sometimes it’s hard to tell because we’re only seeing it through our eyes. We just finished a tour and …
Were people no longer throwing hundred dollar bills at you?
Ira Kaplan: The serious answer is that attendance at the shows wasn’t as good as it had been the last time we’d gone out. Now that could be because people are less interested in seeing us or it could be because the economy is changed. We get some data but we’re not quite sure how to interpret it. We naturally want to blame the economy and not our dwindling appeal.
So as the Republican Party’s fortunes fade, so fades Yo La Tengo?
Ira Kaplan: We’re fighting against it—fighting the tide.
We’re having a minor staff debate about ‘Pass the Hatchet, I Think I’m Goodkind.’ Is that a nod to Black Randy or Eddie Bo?
Ira Kaplan: Luckily, it doesn’t have to be one or the other.
What does it say about me that I thought it was Black Randy?
Ira Kaplan: Well, you don’t hear me saying, ‘Who?’

YO LA TENGO WITH ENDLESS BOOGIE ON THUR., OCT. 15, AT THE AVALON, 1735 N. VINE ST., HOLLYWOOD. 7 PM / $22.50-$25 / ALL AGES. LIVENATION.COM. YO LA TENGO’S POPULAR SONGS IS OUT NOW ON MATADOR. VISIT YO LA TENGO AT YOLATENGO.COM OR MYSPACE.COM/YOLATENGO.

Download: Jay Reatard “Wounded”

(from Watch Me Fall out Aug. 18 on Matador)

We have been covering Jay ever since he took the bus from Memphis to L.A. for the Reatards reunion and this is one of our favorite songs by him yet! Very Homosexuals—very good!

(from Get Guilty on Matador)

A.C. Newman sprouted out of the New Pornographers with an official solo album in 2004 that reinforced yet again the concentration of talent romping around Canada. His new Get Guilty is out now and he speaks early in the morning from New York. This interview by Thomas McMahon.

Being based in the U.S. now, what do you miss most about Canada?
I miss the Asian food in Vancouver. A couple of my favorite Japanese and Chinese restaurants are there. You know, I miss my friends and family there. It’s good to go back. It makes me appreciate it. When you’ve lived your whole life in a place, you get kind of sick of it. You start thinking, ‘Nothing happens in this backward city.’ It’s good to go back. Last time the New Pornographers went back there, we did this little two-day benefit concert that was for ALS—Lou Gehrig’s disease. We got a bunch of our friends to play it. The New Pornographers played it and Neko [Case, also of the New Pornographers], Destroyer, Black Mountain, Andrew Bird, Deerhoof, and Stevie Jackson [Belle and Sebastian]. It was the ideal kind of homecoming, where you come home and you’re doing something for a good cause. It was outside—a nice day in the park. My last memories of Vancouver and Canada are very nice.
You recorded all of Get Guilty in the U.S., right? Do you think that location has a significant impact on the music?
That’s a tough one. I don’t really think it does. My writing is so solitary. You can do it anywhere. And most of the work is just done by myself, so I’m not really taking in my surroundings that much. I mean, it’s bound to sink in, but not that much, just because it’s not like I’m a confessional songwriter or anything. When I move somewhere, I’m not all of a sudden pouring my new life out. Some of it might come out, but I couldn’t say exactly how.
Why did the New York Times do an article on your wedding reception?
I don’t know. Some random shit that happens. It was ‘A Night Out With’ in the Style section. Every week it’s a night out with a new person. It just happened to be that one was me, or the New Pornographers, and it happened to be my wedding reception. It was fun. It was a little interesting because it happens, and then a little while later, it leaks onto these music blogs and they’re writing about it. Because I guess there’s often not much to talk about. People start writing about your wedding reception and then all of a sudden, in the blogs, you’re reading comments where people are talking about your wedding reception. It was kind of surreal, because obviously in the comments sections, that’s where you have the real assholes going, ‘This wedding reception sounds lame.’ And you want to write in and go, ‘You know what’s really lame? What you just wrote.’
It seems like when people can write things anonymously, they just let loose sometimes.
But it’s funny when you know that. Like, my wife was showing me some review because it was a nice review, and then you can’t help but notice the comments section start, and the first comment is a guy like, ‘I want to fucking punch Carl Newman in the face when I see him.’ Which is just so absurd. You can’t help but think, ‘I can’t even be insulted by that—it’s too stupid.’ I have a strange feeling that the people who write that weigh about 98 pounds.
Do you have a different approach for writing A.C. Newman songs than you do for New Pornographers songs?
Not really. At any given moment, I’m just trying to write songs that I think are good. I wish I had such a mastery of my craft that I could just bend my songs to the will of whatever band I’m working with. But that’s not exactly how it works. That’s the strange thing I’ve realized about myself putting out solo records—that most people in bands, when they put out solo records, it’s because the band is broken up. Like, Stephen Malkmus put out Malkmus records after Pavement. But I’m in the middle of the New Pornographers. I’m just putting out solo records. And what’s more, I’m putting out solo records that—arguably—aren’t a massive departure. It’s not like I’m putting out really quiet records and going, ‘Oh, these are my quiet, acoustic records.’ I’m just doing more of what I do, and I think that confuses people. It makes people go, ‘Why did you make this record?’ Well, why not? Because it’s a record, and I felt like making it. That’s what I do.
Do you ever think about doing something completely different—like a hip-hop album or something?
That’s the tricky part: I feel like I’ve been getting flak in the last few years because I have been changing too much. Like Twin Cinema and Challengers I think are kind of considerably different records from Mass Romantic. Maybe I’m wrong, but if you play Challengers next to Mass Romantic, I think they sound quite different. So inasmuch as some can say I’m always working in the same kind of genre, there’s this other group of people that go, ‘Why are you changing so much? Why are you moving away from your formula that works?’
You can’t please everybody.
That’s true. Ricky Nelson said it.
Including A.C. Newman and New Pornographers albums, you’ve had five albums over the past six years. That seems like a daunting pace.
Yeah, that’s right—it’s basically five years and eight months since Electric Version. That’s my job, man. For a while there, I was on a really good clip, because Electric Version was in ’03, then Slow Wonder was in ’04, and Twin Cinema was in ’05. I wanted to do a record a year. But then I skipped ’06 and then, of course, put one out in ’07. I wanted to get Get Guilty out in 2008 just to keep on that schedule, but then I said, ‘Ah, fuck it.’ I was even thinking of trying to get two records out in 2009, but then I saw that there was no way I was going to get another Pornographers record done. So that’s going to have to wait until 2010. It’s my job, you know. I feel like I’m in such a privileged situation right now that I would be stupid to just sit on my ass. You’ve only got a certain number of years in your life where you can do this, where you can make records and people will buy them and it’s your job. So I want to make the most of it. It’s what I like doing, and I think there’s also this fear of, ‘It will all go away if I don’t work hard enough’—if that makes any sense. I’m doing pretty well, but I’m not at a point where I could just stop playing music and go, ‘I’m set for life.’ Although, the moment I get to that point, I’m quitting music. I’m doing all this bullshit for money. After that, I’ll just become like Jandek. I’ll just put out albums, you know, print 1,000 copies of them until I die.
What’s the first song or band you can remember liking as a child?
When I was a really little kid, I really loved ‘Billy Don’t Be a Hero.’ It’s Bo Donaldson and the Heywoods, which I just found out. I was really into ‘Crocodile Rock’ by Elton John. And I seem to recall really liking ‘I Think I Love You’ by the Partridge Family. In terms of bands, KISS was the first band I really got crazy into. And then Cheap Trick and Queen. You know, obvious stuff. I remember my brother going to a local record store—it was when punk rock was beginning to happen—and he said, ‘What’s your best punk rock album?’ And the guy at the record store gave him the Talking Heads’ 77. So I remember being a little kid and listening to 77 and just thinking, ‘This is the new music. This is crazy.’ It was interesting being a little kid at that time. The music scene—I was so fascinated by it. I remember walking into the record stores and seeing posters of Elvis Costello and Devo and thinking, ‘Wow, this music is so weird.’
What’s the first song you ever wrote?
I have no idea because I’ve never been much of a singer-songwriter. When I started playing music, it was essentially in a band where we got together and jammed, and somebody played a loud guitar riff, and I yelled over top of it. And I’d think, ‘Does that count as a song?’ I don’t know. Those might be the first songs I ever wrote, but I don’t consider them songs, really. I just consider it: I put some chords together and yelled over top of them. I never really thought of it as songwriting, so I never had an epiphany moment where I went, ‘Oh my God, this is my first song,’ and rushed out to play it for my girlfriend or something. I can never remember where songs come from because I’m not the kind of person that, you know, wrote a song one night in a motel room and can say, ‘And that was ‘Early Morning Rain,’ and that was the night I wrote that song.’
So you won’t be doing VH1 Storytellers?
No. So many songs, they just unfold. I’m too busy trying to figure out how to make them work to remember how it happened. It’s a lot of hard work. Songs don’t magically just come out of me—I have to work at it. And I have to use some of my critical faculties, as a music fan. I make the music, and then I sit back and go, ‘What would I think if I heard this song?’ Sometimes it’s interesting when you record something very quickly, like a demo, and then you don’t listen to it for a few days. Then you come back to it, and you don’t remember how your own song goes. That’s usually a good measure of whether the song works or not, when you’re listening to a song and you actually shock yourself, and you go, ‘Oh, this one’s pretty good.’ You know, few musicians get that kind of objectivity.
Do you have a favorite lyricist?
There are tons of them. I really like Arthur Lee, maybe because lyrically I feel a slight kinship with him in that a lot of it’s kind of insane and doesn’t make any sense, but it works amazingly well. I really like Vic Chesnutt—he’s amazing. People who are friends of mine I think are amazing, like Dan Bejar [Destroyer, the New Pornographers] and Will Sheff [Okkervil River]. It’s kind of intimidating having people like that around you in your life, because it makes everything you do feel really shitty.
At the same time, though, does it kind of force you to rise to the challenge?
Yeah, I think there’s a definite healthy competition there. When we were working on Mass Romantic, Neko had just put out Furnace Room Lullaby, and Dan had put out the Destroyer Thief record. And I listened to those records and thought, ‘I gotta try to keep up with the Joneses here. These records are really, really good.’ So it definitely helps to get pushed. I feel like I’m just trying to keep up with people. And it’s good to play in a band with somebody like Neko. It keeps your head from ever getting big.
What instrument do you most like the sound of?
I’ve been really into flutes recently. Flutes as a rock instrument, in a kind of marching band way. I just love baritone sax. You know, like old Sonics records. That baritone sax, when it’s just kicking out that low, distorted note—I’ve always thought that’s amazing. I love to use that as a trick—like when the chorus starts, just kick in a loud baritone sax. It kicks the song into another gear.

A.C. NEWMAN WITH DENT MAY ON THU., FEB. 26, AT THE TROUBADOUR, 9009 SANTA MONICA BLVD., WEST HOLLYWOOD. 9 PM / $15 / ALL AGES. TROUBADOUR.COM. A.C. NEWMAN’S GET GUILTY IS OUT NOW ON MATADOR. VISIT A.C. NEWMAN AT ACNEWMAN.NET OR MYSPACE.COM/ACNEWMAN.