This is all I have now: a garbage bin, two newspapers informing me about the world’s ills and how there’s nothing anybody can do anything about, and my personal favorite, a McGriddle from the you-know-what store down Depression Street. I stagger forward to the street corner; past the “Each day is a gift” sign, or whatever that bullshit says just past the highway. A few cents—if I’m lucky, a dollar—and I can get something nice. Who am I kidding? The garbage pail outside the zoo is an excellent place to grab a meal: hungry, desperate souls feel cheated purchasing the shit inside, so they bring their rejected turkey melts outside and toss them in the trash.
I’m enjoying the veracity displayed in the instrumentation and vocals on your latest record, Hell on Earth. I spliced the album together in Audacity, then looped it three times so it’s roughly equivalent to a single album listen. I’m joking. The average runtime per song is roughly one and a half minutes (plus change). When you’re recording music that’s this short, how do you decide what to keep and when it’s done?
Bran: In some ways the trick is not to think at all, to cut quickly and trust it’ll make sense later. So much of our process is improvisational and culled together in the edit, it frees me up to chase weird ideas, weird combinations, parts that weren’t meant to fit together.
John: All our cassettes are actually the entire EP repeating over and over again till it hits the wall. Ends up being the whole album 6-7 times in a row before you gotta flip the tape. So, joking or not, you actually had the same idea. Maybe the music is best consumed that way? I’m an “eat the whole bag of popcorn before the previews are even over” guy. I’m not really paying attention till suddenly it’s done. I agree with Bran. We don’t really think. Sorta the unspoken doctrine of the band.
There’s nothing like Sundays, when everybody goes to church and throws their hands up high, humming the songs of the good Lord before paying off some of their sinners’ debt by dropping change in my poor man’s pail. I say thank you to the frequenters; they must be the worst of the worst, visiting me once a week for the past three weeks. Shit, at this rate, I could purchase myself a time machine; in fact, I’ll just do a brain transplant into one of those rich bastards running our country—they’ll call me Mr. President, and I’ll primp and pretend for the cameras before cannonballing into my pool while the nation cannonballs South America (again). No day like a Sunday, is there?
These tracks, on paper, are simple instrumentally: a guitar, a bass, vocals, and drums—maybe a keyboard poking around in the back. Yet the melodies constantly evolve quickly through each song’s short runtime. How do you prepare a song, and remember all the switchups when performing each track?
Bran: Performing is something we’ve actually never done. All these years and we just haven’t figured out how to make that transition. But I think that’s a big reason for why this stuff sounds like it does, we aren’t bound by the reality that we have to recreate it live, at least not yet. I told John the other day I’m starting to worry we might actually have to figure it out someday.
John: Ya just having two cooks in the kitchen is fun till you gotta run a busy restaurant. We don’t have to remember what we’re actually doing longer than it takes to play it “correctly” once. I’m not even really listening to the other guitar part when I’m playing the 2nd one. Just hit record and it will probably work out in the end. If we ever agree to do it live, assuming I’d just be singing, I’m not looking forward to dissecting these songs, teaching myself how to play the guitar parts again, and then teaching two other new people all that wacky shit. Yikes. It’s more fun just to fuck around Bran and I.
The shelter is a good place to catch up on gossip. I see familiar faces, grab a bite to eat, then it’s back at it on the streets. Truth is, I’m not interested in “getting better.” Have you seen everybody else lately? It’s fucking insane—and everyone’s giving me funny looks. Are people actually looking at anything on their phones? I’ve seen lizards, and they’re actually quite smart; they’re damn smarter than we give them credit for.
The messaging behind your music generally embodies paranoia, exhaustion with the current world’s ills and toxic norms, and any reprieve from the nonsense. How has creating these songs helped you deal with these bigger issues?
Bran: I’ll let John speak to those lyrics, but for me, making music is the only way I’ve figured out how to deal. If I can go get lost in a session for a few hours and come away sensing progress, that’s the dream.
John: I often find myself laughing when things get totally fucked up. It’s gotta be in my family genes or something cuz it’s not just a “nothing is too sacred for a joke” mentality but more like it’s a built in reaction to deal with extremes. Finding comedy in the chaos of life instead of letting the stress of it take you to hell. Writing lyrics to these zany, complex, short bursts of music gives me an opportunity to combine part of my personality with whatever modern human horrors I’m thinking about that day. Does it help me? Maybe. I’m not cracking any codes or fixing the world but being able to spell it out in my own creative way makes my life a little better. Doing any art or music does that for me.
It’s night, and I need to find someplace to huddle up. Walt and I had a fight, so I can’t crash in his tent tonight. I can keep warm in nearly any circumstance; just don’t bring me near the refrigeration section at any grocery store. I don’t remember why they bother me so much, but I still avoid them like the plague. A bad trip is in the eyes of the beholder, and I haven’t worn glasses for a few years, so everything looks pretty great. There are so many heroes and villains; my favorites have gotta be Batman and Bane. Batman’s a piece of shit who gets off smacking around other villains, and who doesn’t like a genius who can also kick ass when needed? I grab some paper, wad it up, and tuck it inside my jacket. There’s the sound of the church bells ringing. It’s almost time to give up, throw in the towel, and let myself slide until tomorrow morning. Maybe I’ll streak tomorrow through my hall of failures, but only if there’s a proper audience.
What songs’ messaging in your catalog, or otherwise, do you feel most strongly about now? Why is that?
Bran: I think the songs are mostly about whatever happened to John the week he decided to track the vocals, correct me if I’m wrong John. I love how it makes each release feel in time, and looking back on them, like finding an old handwritten grocery list
John: The last album had a song about my writer’s block being cured by stepping in shit twice in one day. It was an epiphany for me. I went home and wrote the lyrics to the entire EP that same day. I feel very strongly about that song. I doubt there has been a unified message over the years. The world is weird and full of even weirder people. The majority of them are decent folks even if they are doing something you find mind bendingly stupid, right in front of you. I am often that idiot.