source: even when I dream of you: q&a with peyton thomas


Hangout with Peyton Thomas - Friday, January 12, 2018 11:01 AM

yo
yo!
how’s it going
pretty alright
[REDACTED]
[REDACTED]
me too!
did I remember correctly that this was interview time?
yes that’s right
i’m all set up i have a rough outline of q’s i’m ready to roll whenever you are
how much time have we got today?
great! sorry to make you go through it again
as much as we need, all I’m doing today is [REDACTED]
is IMming good? I figured I’d just copy it afterwards
yeah definitely, i think gchat is fairly easy to copy and paste?
cool
worst case I just screenshot everything
okay so i figured we’d start with just general questions about how the project came to be, then go over the recording process in a really general sense, and then we can go song by song again, touching on more specific recording flourishes as we go - does that work?
yup
all right so, this project has been in the works for a long time, probably longer than most fans would think - it was in your original 2015 contract with matador, right? how did it wind up in the contract? why did you want to revisit it?
Yeah, when I first met with matador I told them the plan was to revisit material for ToS, record ToD, and then do Twin Fantasy
it was just always something on the table for me, I guess. I figured it would get rereleased eventually, and I knew if that happened I would want to revisit the material in full
Did you ever have reservations about revisiting it? Did you ever want to back out and do something else?
no, I don’t remember ever questioning it. When I’m working on something and start thinking “this is shit”, I just try to figure out a way to make it not shit. You can make any work of art good or bad, regardless of what the boundaries are, if you look at it carefully and proceed in the right direction.
in terms of the integrity of the endeavor, that was a moot point. If I wasn’t able to record this with artistic integrity now, I wouldn’t be able to make any new music with integrity either. I’ve either lost it or I haven’t, and I don’t think I have.
Oh, I don’t think so either, and I think that’s evident in the subtle changes you’ve made to the album’s narrative
yeah, it’s not exactly a retread
And I want to touch on that up front, too - you’re now referring to the old version as “Mirror to Mirror” and the new as “Face to Face.” What does that mean to you? What do those labels say about each iteration of the album?
(also sidebar let me know if you want me to type like this or if i should be capitalizing and using proper punctuation like an adult)
well, I think that becomes clearer once you listen to the album. But I guess it puts the focus on perspective - they’re both looking at the same subject, filtered through a particular perspective, my own. And that’s changed over the years
haha, it doesn’t matter
got it ☺
what’s informed the shifts in your perspective? what allowed you to move from seeing this story as a tragedy to something more complex?
I grew up!
I spent time with different people, doing different things, and my understanding of my own life has changed. I don’t want to dismiss the things that were important to me in the past, but I want to reconcile them with how I’m living now
I put more voices than my own on this album, because I wanted to bring it closer to reality
the original version was kind of doomed, because it was such an isolated dream
I liked the dream enough to want to put it in a sustainable enivornment
and that meant bringing it more into the light
yeah i noticed that - those other voices especially start filtering in toward the end of the record, as you start to proverbially “wake up” from the dream
the bit with [REDACTED]
it’s true - I guess part of that is just how it was structured originally, but it works
i guess we can get to that in more when we talk about high to death & famous prophets later on
😉
do you want to start chatting about the recording process now or was there anything else you wanted to touch on right up top?
makes sense to start with the recording
great
so, we started in the middle of 2016, after I’d spent half a year brainstorming and charting out the new version
I knew I wanted to self-produce, but I wanted to work in a studio, so that meant finding an engineer who could help me get what I wanted
right, right - i remember seeing an interview with you i think the day of pitchfork fest where you said you’d just had your first recording session for the new album
yeah
how’d you get in touch with adam stilson? why was he the right person for this project?
we lucked out and found adam right when we needed to start - he’d produced a track for a band that got sent over as a potential opener for one of our shows there
it was a dense track but there was a sort of clarity to it, which is exactly what i wanted
so we got in touch and booked a session at adam’s studio, Decade Studios, while we were in town
and that was when we recorded My Boy
and that’s the recording that’s on the album now, right?
yeah, we did the vocals later, but the instrumental we did that day
actually the vocals for that track were hard to get right, we went through a lot of takes
it’s a difficult song to sing because of the range of it
but I guess we can get into that later!
yeah, i bet! you’re hitting some high notes there
but yeah, let’s just stick to recording q’s for the time being
so after that session we recorded some more instrumental tracks in Seattle at Soundhouse, which we’d spent some time at for the Denial sessions
and adam was still engineering on those sessions, right? or someone else?
Adam wasn’t there for the first Soundhouse sessions, but I took them back to Chicago for overdubs, and he was present for the rest of the album
all the band stuff we did in Seattle, and all of my own parts were either done in Chicago or my own place
oh wow so some of the vocal takes were recorded in your apartment?
I don’t think I did any vocals there, but I did a lot of guitar
got it
i imagine your home set-up has improved some since 2011, though ☺
barely!
the main thing is that I have monitors now - until 2016 I mixed on headphones
jesus
I use a Cyber Twin for guitar, or record direct-in
that’s really interesting actually - i was going to ask about what it was like to record the original version, what was rewarding about it and frustrating about it, but i didn’t realize you were still recording parts of it using such a similar set-up
I have no idea what recording the original was like!
that part of it has always just been “work”
I don’t really preserve memories of how long I spent at the mic for certain songs
right, and it was a long time ago, so i imagine recalling any specifics might be tough
I could barely tell you anything about recording the original - I know that BLID originally didn’t have bass, and I added it later
because I was recording an album for my friend Leo, and we put bass down on it, and it sounded alright
most CSH stuff before then didn’t have bass
yeah i think the first take of TF wound up on youtube somewhere and i listened to a bit of it and was surprised at the gulf even between that and the final 2011 version
*somehow, not somewhere
yeah, everything on it definitely got reworked a lot, which is also why it’s hard to remember specifics
right, right
so getting back to the new version, what parts were you most excited about updating this time around? was there anything you really wanted to “fix,” so to speak?
I was excited to get the new stuff down I’d written for it
musically, some of the changes I wasn’t really conscious of, because it was stuff we’d played live for years
someone just pointed out that some of the vocals at the beginning of BLID are rhythmically different, which I hadn’t remembered, because I was just doing them the way I’d been doing them at shows
of course, yeah
it was mostly about getting the whole of it down again
yeah, and you mentioned you spent most of the process just learning the songs as a bad and figuring out how to get specific portions just right
how did the band’s collaboration aid in updating the album? where were their contributions most valuable?
e.g., the jam at the end of NYI, i know that’s something you talked about quite a bit
yeah, it’s a great jam
for most of the songs we worked out a backbone that was just ethan, andrew, and seth - they’d be out in the recording room, and I’d be in the control booth
I think Twin Fantasy was the only one where it was just me for most of the track
that, I think, goes with what I was saying earlier about wanting to bring it closer to life
absolutely, yeah
it just makes sense for the narrative
and for those group sessions, were you recording ethan and andrew and seth’s portions separately or all in one room, all at the same time, live?
was it the blue album way or the pinkerton way
in other words
most of it was live - they did some overdubs
I think it was easier to keep a rhythm when it was all of them together
that makes sense - the arrangements are more complex this time around
(sorry, I gotta hit the bathroom, brb)
i mean, of course they are, but
haha no worries
back
hello!
okay so i think the last general recording question i wanted to ask was just, what music from recent years has been most influential on the sound and feel of this new version?
i know we talked a bit about frank ocean & blond being similar to what you wanted to accomplish
yeah, but more in terms of overall goals -
I was really inspired by blonde as something that took influence from a lot of different sources, and made something unique with it
but my sources were way different from FO’s, so there’s not a lot of overlap in vision
I wanted to make a rock record that didn’t really feel like it belonged to an era in particular, and that could also be perceived as modern
I guess other than Pink Floyd’s records, there’s not a lot I can think of that capture what I wanted to capture
in terms of structure, it’s laid out more like a hip hop record
yeah i know you’ve talked about kendrick being a big influence on the way you write & structure your work as well
yeah - again, someone who did it the way I wanted to do it, in a totally different genre
something that compiled sound, lyrics, and structure to convey something on a thematic level
yeah, The Wall is the only thing I can think of that really achieved that for rock
i was thinking The Monitor as well but i don’t know if titus andronicus is a touchy subject or not
[REDACTED]
and that one’s not concerned w/ sounding modern as much as hitting a very specific kind of historical mood
understandable
well this is maybe a good place to segue into my boy, actually, because it’s the one song on the record that sounds the most Of An Era
and very intentionally so
why did you want to use that 60s pop sound? the nod to the be my baby drum intro?
yeah, it’s pegged down more to the 60s vibe
that was the first genre I really connected with, I guess - that era of music
so, making a record that in a way deals with ideas brought up from a very young age, it made sense to start that way
and in a way those records really wrote the script for the next 50 years of teenage pop songs, so they’re massively influential on how we think & write & make music about young love
maybe - that tradition goes way back
I think there’s less purity to it now, but I guess that was always a false concept
(you can slice teenage & young from that sentence but i think there’s something about the firstness of it all)
I do like the idea of something that was designed for mass consumption that is supposed to be a very pure thing
music is intangible, so it lends itself well to ideas of purity
and then by contrast beach life-in-death is… i don’t know about “impure,” necessarily, but it’s this big sprawling uncontainable epic coming right on the heels of something that’s really simple and pure, essentially just one sentiment repeated over and over
yeah, it’s way nastier
haha
falkjdfklsd good word
i love BLID being bookended by my boy and stop smoking btw
yeah, and that was one where I laid a lot of it out at home, whereas my boy was finished in the studio
I had to dissect it a lot and make all the different parts come out
so where did the compositional inspiration from? if my boy is rooted in the sound of the sixties, what are the precursors to beach life-in-death? are there any?
the first time around, the main sources were probably The Past is a Grotesque Animal by of Montreal, and then the sort of longer meandering work that Destroyer did on Looter’s Follies
it was all sort of united under a shitty lo-fi aesthetic
yeah i noticed there was much more distinction between the various sections of the song on this go round - the “lots of fish left in the sea” bit really blasts off, whereas before the transition there was just flat
a lot of that came from playing it live
obviously we needed to juice it up more
so it became more of an organic thing
yeah i can imagine - figuring out how to make a song that long sustain itself and keep an audience interested is a Feat
I think I was mainly excited by the idea of something like Destroyer, making these long poetic songs with different sections
I got kind of burnt out on that after a while, and I guess so did Bejar
yeah ken is… wildly different from his usual style
but TF was definitely supposed to be a work in the vein of poetry
so what poets were the most influential there?
(also, sidebar, have you ever read anything by richard siken)
I don’t know if there was anyone in particular, I was studying romantic poetry at the time - it was just the feeling of these long texts that were all about getting you into a particular world
nope
I really don’t track on modern poetry, because it seems like mostly assholes write poetry now
falkdjfklasjfklsldak
I stick to media forms that are popular at the moment
yeah your english lit background really comes through on these longer tracks and BLID is no exception
okay well i am going to give you this richard siken pdf because i really think you’d like his work http://library.globalchalet.net/Authors/Poetry%20Books%20Collection/Richard%20Siken%20-%20Crush%20(Yale%20Series%20of%20Younger%20Poets).pdf
anyway okay back to The Task At Hand
why did you want to release this song as the first glimpse of the new twin fantasy? what did you feel it would convey?
well actually I’d wanted NYI to be first, and I wanted to announce it in December, but matador wanted to wait
we had a video locked in for NYI, so I asked if we could release BLID without any press
just beyoncé it
interesting
I think it’s as good a barometer as anything - if you don’t like the production on BLID, you’re probably not going to like the album
that makes a lot of sense - i think it definitely boosted confidence in the project among the die-hards, at least based on initial response
idk
and why did you incorporate that verse from your ivy rewrite?
I think no one knows what to think right now, which is preferrable
oh true, keep people on their toes
well, it allows a chance for people to actually hear it as it is
if you’ve determined you like or don’t like something, you don’t actually know what it is
you just know how you feel about it
it’s only in that liminal period where you’re able to actually examine a thing
yeah i often don’t listen to singles even for artists i really love because i prefer to just… hear everything in context, a lot of the time
that’s hard to put people through when you’re making something, but it has to happen
yeah it’s just a necessary step of the process and i can see that you’re really structuring it so that people are getting a variety of the styles and moods here
did you want to talk about the ivy verse at all or shall we move on to stop smoking
or anything else re: BLID
the ivy verse happened because I knew I’d have to rewrite that verse, because I couldn’t sell the original lines - I wasn’t in the right place
and I liked the original content I’d come up with for covering Ivy, and it seemed appropriate
[REDACTED]
[REDACTED]
okay - anything else re: BLID you wanted to talk about, or should we move on?
I can’t think of anything
okay great
so stop smoking, this tiny little ditty coming right after BLID - what is that doing on a structural level? what’s its function in the narrative?
that song is pretty much as simple as it sounds, I wrote it one go
so naturally, it gets more complicated when it resurfaces elsewhere, but the song itself is exactly what it says
I recorded this one at home again, because it didn’t come out right in the studio
right, that makes narrative sense, too - going back to what you said about my boy being mostly you
i actually saw people speculating that you were going to turn stop smoking into a long epic band jam
yeah, no such luck
i guess we can talk about the arc of the smoking metaphor & the callback in high to death here, or we could wait til we’re discussing high to death in more detail?
I probably won’t talk much about it at either juncture!
I think it’s something that you have to tap into on your own time
no worries!
so… sober to death, then?
yeah, what about it?
you told me that you think this song ends in a bad place, and i can definitely see what you mean - do you want to elaborate on that at all?
yeah, I regret writing parts of it - I like the end, but that’s about it
it’s a fine song, but it’s kind of toxic
right
so unsurprisingly, people have latched on to it
i feel like now, as an adult, i can look back and appreciate how i’ve grown beyond that way of thinking (because it IS a really effective portrait of that sort of dysfunction), but i feel like if i’d heard it when i was seventeen i would have just swallowed it whole
yeah, and maybe I haven’t learned anything, because it’s the same deal with Drunk Drivers
even though it’s something you come back to and correct later on, especially in this version
even if you try to write about something in a balanced way, sometimes focusing on certain ideas at all is the wrong decision
I don’t know if I’ve corrected it in this version, but I’ve amended it
i don’t know about that! i mean in drunk drivers the refutation of that toxic thinking is built right into the text
yeah, amend is probably a better word than correct
sure, but people don’t care
to put it in movie terms - if you show someone getting murdered, you can put it in a positive or a negative light, but at the end of the day, you’re showing someone getting murdered
I’m feeling less and less as I go on that if I made a movie, I would ever want to show a murder
that’s something that gray folie did very well in Drop Out, which is a comic about suicide
that’s a great illustration of it, yeah
god i haven’t read drop out yet, my friend rachael’s been begging me to
it’s great
but what’s important is that it’s always pointing towards life - it deals with the subject without romanticizing it, I think
yeah and i can see where, in this version, you’re tipping the scales away from the latter, so to speak
you’d mentioned before that if you could have left any song off the new version, it would have been this one - do you still feel that way?
well, I don’t know, there might be a murder in this film, but at least it’s properly acknowledged this time
idk, it’s hard to see the whole without it
now that it’s finished, I can’t really worry about what is or isn’t on it
honestly I’ve been thinking more about the live set for the past several months
yeah this is going to be a huge year of touring for you, huh?
i mean, not that last year or the year prior weren’t, but i imagine there are different considerations this time around
maybe not actually that huge - the first half the year we’re starting out small
it’s a bigger group, but I don’t think we’ll have too much trouble
we were playing on stages that really needed filling out, so I’m glad to have Naked Giants with us
yeah i’m excited to see what the seven-piece ensemble is like!
and yes mike told me that [REDACTED] in toronto which is like, triple the size of the venue you guys played the last time you were here
yeah
it’s difficult because rock music is really meant for smaller venues
the amps are supposed to be in your face
but after a certain point you’re playing in halls that are designed for classical music
so you have to figure out how the fuck you’re going to make it sound good
right - i know some bands try to get around that by doing 2-3 nights in one smaller venue but that’s not always tenable
I wouldn’t mind doing that in the future
i hope you can!
do you know what the setlist is going to look like at all? i know there’s some speculation that you’ll be playing twin fantasy from start to finish but idk if it’s really That Kind Of Tour
yeah, but it’s a surprise
it’s gonna be totally different from the album
ooh okay
well i won’t pry
it’ll be good
oh i’m sure it will
do you want to get back to the song by song now or is there any other tour-related stuff you wanted to chat about
i guess while we’re on the subject
I think I’ve said all I can say about the tour
okay great
so then, nervous young inhumans, i think this is the biggest sonic update of the whole album - why the new sound? why the stylistic changes?
maybe it was Adam’s influence - he has a very 80s schooling, so it’s an interesting contrast with my own influences
so we ended up with more synths and drum pads this time, but obviously none of it is very 80s
i’ve seen a lot of people comparing it to hot fuss-era killers
the vocal line changed because the original was a real drag to sing, you can hear I’m struggling with it on the first version
I hadn’t anticipated it, but fair enough - I prefer killers comparisons to the strokes
because I actually heard the killers growing up
okay i DON’T GET the strokes comparisons i don’t get it AT ALL
but that’s neither here nor there i guess lmao
I think it has more to do with the kind of people who picked up Denial than it does with the music
idk, the strokes ended up being a very interesting band - 80s comedown machine is a really great album
oh good point
but I have zero interest in their earlier cool-dude rock
the hits are really good, but the albums are weak
i haven’t spent a lot of time w/ them to be honest but yeah good hits, weak albums would also be my assessment
I don’t like a record that does the same thing 12 times
and actually i wanted to talk about the “people who picked up denial” point a little bit - there are still folks out there who ONLY know you from denial, and i’m wondering how you feel about what their reactions to TF will be
which is why I like comedown machine - it’s doing something different on every track
not everyone is a deep cuts collector
well, I’d imagine they’d like it, because it’s a good rock album
ok i might check out comedown machine
but i mean fill in the blank and my boy couldn’t be more different as openers
maybe people who came in last year and decided they knew everything about me will be offended by this release
but if they actually want to hear good music, I don’t think they’ll have much to complain about
harsh burn
idk, there’s some slower stuff in Denial that serves as precedent
yeah and the longer songs certainly
I think this album actually seems more left-field to people who are familiar with the discography than it would be to people who only know Denial
how do you mean?
that’s just what I’ve seen so far
most of the negative reaction to it has come from people who feel they “knew me better” than the casual fans
because i guess it amounts to a personal betrayal
right, right
but obviously, none of them were around when I actually released twin fantasy the first time
just the garden variety “i knew them back before…” shit
I have no idea
I can’t related, because if any artist I’d known in 2011 making self released stuff said they’d gotten an opportunity to revisit a work from that era, I’d be incredibly psyched
but I guess that comes from more the point of view of a creator, because I’ve seen too many artists burn out entirely to take it for granted that anyone can keep producing shit for more than 4 or 5 years
some people seem to find that expiration date actually desirable, because it matches the amount of time they’re willing to be invested
yeah i can imagine your perspective on this as a creator is quite different from those who don’t make music or art of their own
so folks who are tearing our posters off the wall now, it really doesn’t matter why it’s happening, it’s just “time’s up” for them
and that’s ok, you shouldn’t linger where something isn’t pleasing to you
but I could do without the doomsday judgement
for what it’s worth i do think that once the new version has some time to marinate people will cool down a bit
yeah, me too - it’s hard to communicate that now, before it’s out
there’s an inevitable period where there’s a lot of agitation
but I wouldn’t have made it if I didn’t think that in the long run people would like it
(brb again)
(also lmk if you’re running short on time)
no i’m fine - the only thing i have on my docket today is visiting my grandma for dinner, i got lots of time
back
awesome!
okay!
so getting back to NYI, the last question i had there was about the monologue
oh yeah
i think the original monologue was actually one of the most effective parts of the album, a real springboard for the beginning of bodys, and i’m interested in hearing how you arrived at the new version
was there anything in particular?
process of elimination, i guess
there were a bunch of different ideas I had prepared, and none of them worked
do you want to talk about those early ideas at all?
they were more in the vein of the original - more like direct analysis
but I didn’t feel it worked at all with the aesthetic of the jam under it, or with the new album in general
so eventually, I came up with something much more stream-of-consciousness
it’s kind of unhinged, but I think that fits better
Hitchhiker came out the last month of mixing, when I was working on this track, and I was listening to it a lot
the jam had kind of a Neil Young feel, so I was like - what would he do here? Certainly not what I’d had written.
I dunno if he’d do what I came up with either, but it’s closer
WWNYD
yeahp
i can definitely see the influence there & i also think it’s a reflection just of you having grown up between the original version and the new
i mean even just the tone you use to speak off the cuff here vs. the original stumbling over your words
yeah. that was something that I thought a lot of people would seize on as being compromised, but I was surprised - most people “got it” right away
maybe it was time for a new monologue
yeah and of course since “galvanistic” isn’t present in the chorus anymore it wouldn’t have made any sense
yeah, for a while the monologue started with pointing that out, the loss of the word
but after a certain point I was just like, “eh”
better not to be endlessly self-referential
ohhh interesting
and was there any particular reason for altering the chorus, while we’re on this point?
yeah, because I found out galvanistic wasn’t a word!
omg
I’d fucked it up, the adjectival form is ‘galvanic’
I’m surprised no one ever pointed that out
omg i just googled it’s galvanic
so I wasn’t about to preserve that
yeah doesn’t quite have the same ring to it
that’s so funny oh my god
it’s also usually better to have a chorus that you don’t have to google to understand
cogent point
now is there anything specific in the monologue you want to break down
a friend of mine filled me in last night on “painstar” being [REDACTED]
correct
and bits of it are from murray wilson, which some people already picked up on
right you mentioned murry wilson when we talked before
I had the first part of it written down, and was thinking of using it as part of a music video, possibly for BLID
it was right after I’d seen The Evil Within, which I watched several times and had some weird dreams about
oh yeah you were posting about that recently
that film is about being possessed, and so I wanted to do something to convey the insidiousness of possession, how it can creep in
you’re most susceptible to evil when you don’t think you’re capable of it
and so where does that fit into the broader arc that the narrator is on?
well, they’re evil!
haha
because right after this we’re abruptly into the happiest streak of the record
or at least, the most upbeat
it’s true, it makes it different from the original, more of a continuous narrative -
well, actually I don’t know
I was going to say that the original monologue was more retrospective, putting the rest of the record in past tense
but I guess I only think that because it was one of the last songs recorded
oh huh
i’d always thought it was recorded chronologically
so I guess it doesn’t really break character as much as I imagine it to
no, it was all over the place
i made a lot of incorrect assumptions actually, i’ve realized through this whole Process
fair enough, you’ve only seen the end result
no and i think on this version there’s more of a sense of the narrator’s missteps and culpability
yeah, the tension that it sets up is different
there is more of a violent energy that goes directly into the next tracks, but it’s sort of overridden
right and it complicates bodys & cute thing in a really interesting way
yeah, or it makes the complications more explicit
i write young adult fiction and so much of it is having to suspend my own like, grown-up emotional intelligence to get back to a place where i had less of a sense of how my choices affected others, or what my decisions could lead to
yeah, those sorts of narratives seem like they must be very difficult to write when you’re not in that mindset
but the masters can do it!

and that’s sort of the mirror i see here, with the 19-year-old monologue vs. the 25-year-old’s monologue
anyway! i think those were all the q’s i had about nyi, did you want to move onto bodys?
let’s do it
okay, so so so
you said this was one of the very last songs to come together - what made it so challenging?
oh, just the musical nature of it
it’s got all these moving parts to it, but I wanted it to sound like a pop song at the same time
and the guitar riff, on an objective level, sucks -
if it’s not treated exactly right in production, it sounds like the wimpiest shit
that was why it was always one we were pulling out and then taking out of circulation for shows
because it just was not juicy
(we’ve now reworked it live so it sounds great)
(stoked to hear it live btw)
it’s a lot of fun with the whole group
i remember you made that one post about the various things that influenced bodys and one of them was lcd soundsystem
but again, quite different from the album version, which is more of a studio whack-job
and i can see how, you know, just like that one-note riff that carries all my friends, there are specific difficulties w/ the bodys guitar riff for similar reasons
the drums are very very different too in the new studio version i noticed
yeah, that’s the same deal, where it’s production trickery that carries the song
yeah, the drums are just 'more’
they’re pogoing around
in stereo
because it was always a dance track, and it needed to hit like a dance track should in the updated version
and the original recording of those drums was kind of fucked up, there was some issue with the snare
so for most of the song, there’s at least two snares on top of each other
but they’re blended to just sound like one thicker one
and then just re: live versions of these repetitious dance tracks, i recently got to see LCD live for the first time (on account of i was fourteen or whatever when they were at their peak, and i was still listening to hannah montana) and it really was night and day from the recordings, so much new life there
I caught them at a festival - the dancier stuff was really top-notch
[REDACTED]
anyways, with bodys, I’d forgotten we actually recorded another version that was too fast -
we’ll have to go back someday and mix that one
bodys speedrun
but we went back in in Chicago and I made that drumpad beat that starts the song, and we did it at a slower tempo
then we went back and recorded the band on top of that
actually, speaking of speed, one thing i noticed about your delivery both in the original and this one is that you sing most of the song very rapidly but when you hit “don’t you realize…” you slow down every syllable, talking about how afraid you are of the passage of time
I didn’t notice that at all
is that intentional or am i just reading into things here
must be another live thing
we played that one live ever since I wrote it, so it’s totally warped
okay interesting
i just wondered if it’s significant b/c it’s really the only place in the song where you’re holding notes for any amount of time
I feel like that’s how it was in the original
but maybe I’m thinking more of my own impressions of it
yeah yeah sorry if that was unclear, i did say “in the original and in this one”
oh woops!
no worries
let’s talk about the actual themes for a second though
yeah, that was intended to be a break
as far as the more fluid phrasing contrasting with what came before it - it’s more like a harmony
right, right, i can see that
I think it was kind of put together part by part, so that sort of thing emerges on the way - I’d record backing parts that would become leads
same sort of deal with the breakdown in Los Borrachos
yeah it scans that way
man, I should record that one again
god the ending of los borrachos is so great
but okay, okay, themes
so, fully stop me if you don’t want to talk about this, but [REDACTED]
[REDACTED]
[REDACTED]
[REDACTED]
yeah absolutely
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I think of this song in the context of the line from NYI - “most of the time I use the word you, you know that I’m mostly singing about you”
what’s implied is that there is some vagueness as to who or what’s being addressed
and I think that bodys is probably the vaguest song on the album - it’s the least specific “you”
and more about a fantasy
that line comes across so so much more clearly on this version, btw - it barely registered for me in the original and now i think it’s almost an encapsulation of the whole project
yeah, for sure
and yes i remember you described bodys as “the point where the fantasy gets too real”
yeah
and we were able to kind of acheive that on a production level
it’s a very manic, sort of hyperreal state it goes into
I’m probably most proud of the production on that song
and then slipping into this kind of acoustic dreamstate for the bridge, which was a great choice
& yes manic is a good word for it
Twin Peaks left a 12-string in Decade which we ended up using on a bunch of stuff
andrew’s drumming especially
oh neat
it’s a really lovely little flourish
and then it was a little too Foo Fighters, so we cut up some synth to make a sort of Won’t Get Fooled Again part over it
oh yeah i noticed the boosted presence of the synths right away
we have to be careful about publishing this or else stereogum’s gonna hit us with the WILL TOLEDO HATES DAVE GROHL PERSONALLY headline
I think that’d hardly be the first target
fjaljfklasdjfklasdjl okay okay moving on
i think? i’m ready to move on to cute thing unless there’s anything else you want to go over here
I just wanna say that my favorite part of Bodys is the low note in the first and second choruses
it hits you with a bunch of mid-range guitars, and then there’s this deep synth swell that comes up and totally changes the space
hang on let me pull up the chorus so i can hear exactly what you’re talking about
it got a bit deflated in mastering, but I’m still happy with it
idk if i have the final masters
it might actually be better in the master you have
okay wow yes got it
it’s a good chorus
😀
def more rewarding after the build-up
so! okay. cute thing.
first of all: [REDACTED]
I think I actually want to leave that reveal for when the track drops
understandable
at any rate i’m named peyton james after [REDACTED] so i appreciate the reference
haha, didn’t expect that!
he’s a master
he is!!
i want to talk about the themes & its role in the narrative in a general sense, but before we get to that can i ask about the ana ng bit? i know TMBG are an extremely important group for you and i was just wondering if there was any neat story about getting in touch with them for clearance.
there’s not a big story - I haven’t been in touch with them personally, but I heard that they’re fans, which is great to hear. we’re sending a few copies of the record to them.
(obviously they said yes)
of all the groups I listened to growing up, they turned out to possibly be the best role models
they did what they did, took a positive approach to it, didn’t get fucked up on drugs or ego, and never burned out
[REDACTED]
and it seems like they’re still going strong
[REDACTED]
new album coming out in a week
[REDACTED]
lol
I like that tmbg wasn’t shy about being uncool
right!
i’m not a superfan or anything but i still love that video they did with homestar runner
yeah, they popped up in a bunch of different places, just from working with so many different people
I’d like to be that way
yeah it must be nice to be able to prioritize that kind of off the cuff collaboration
but all right, in a more general sense, if bodys is the moment where the fantasy gets Too Real, what is cute thing?
cute thing is just pure swagger
it’s just energy, nonsense lyrics on top of a rock song
which actually, a lot of the best tmbg songs are like that
but it goes into something more pure at the end
yeah there’s that tmbg energy coursing throughout before we even hit ana ng
which we actually just integrated into the live set - we’ve never played the “I am love” part live
i read some review of lincoln (probably pitchfork but idk) that said something like, this is what would happen if punk rock was motivated by love instead of anger, and that’s sort of how cute thing feels to me
mood-wise
and that’s interesting about the outro - was there any particular reason you hadn’t been including it previously?
that’s probably a good way to put it
I think it was just an arrangement issue
with a four-piece it would have been hard to make the final section feel as powerful as it’s supposed to
(it sounds great now)
i’m so excited to hear it!!
😛
and we talked before about the importance of sustaining joy in music
and i think i asked kind of a leading question saying “our culture takes sadness more seriously than happiness” and you disagreed
yeah, mainstream rules usually trivialize sadness
and that lens is definitely applied to a lot of modern music that deals with negative emotions, as if it’s a trend
but if you listen to 60s pop music, like 70% of it was “sadboy”
brian wilson emo godfather
but those artists would all go back and forth, there would be the happy stuff intermingled with the sad stuff
and I think it’s that coexistence that makes that era of music powerful
and that makes sense writing about love, because it can go either way, but it’s always extreme
i can agree with that for sure - i guess what i was trying to say is that it seems harder to garner critical recognition without being willing to put your deepest sadnesses on display, and that goes hand in hand with the kind of trivialization/fetishization you’re talking about
yeah and it’s that same coexistence that makes the narrative of TF work so effectively
yeah, the critical circuit is rooted in anti-pop ideals, or at least it has been until recently
now everything’s getting intermingled again, which is good news for musicians
absolutely yes
and i think even just the presence of that critical trend makes me wary of “sad albums” being contrived or like, god forbid, artists feeling like moving toward healing and growth would deprive them of their critical reputations
I think it’s just hard to be recognized regardless of what you’re doing - it’s all about who sees you and what they want to pin you as
yeah, and if you’re willing to be pinned, it means you’re not going anywhere
but there just isn’t a valid reason for pinning yourself down - if you’re making sad music, it’s something you should want to escape from, because presumably it means there’s a hole in your life
and there’s always going to be a hole in your life, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing you can do about it
exactly, exactly
[REDACTED]
sorry i just wrote out and deleted a very long and very off topic thing about how mad i am about the music press’s treatment of lil peep
but essentially yes there’s an unfortunate tendency to suggest that good art can’t exist without suffering and i think songs like cute thing are vital in countering that viewpoint
I think artists existing is the most important way to counter that viewpoint
meaning, existing as people who grow
I was amazed to get out of the 'damaged artist’ idolization bubble and realize there are artists who do that, and continue to make good shit
[REDACTED]
but yes i think wrecking the “damaged artist” stereotype is a net societal good and i’m glad you’re working to counter it
yeah, it serves a clear purpose
this is like the most depressing possible discussion we could have had about cute thing
sorry about that lol
but I never considered twin fantasy to be serving a purpose like that - for me, music in itself has been the emotional release
if it’s conveying something that’s getting through, regardless of what that thing is, it’s a moving experience
high to death is probably the most blunt manifestation of sadness in the entire piece
and also one of the songs here that’s been altered most from its original state
kind of - I think the core of it is totally the same
i guess i just mean there’s much more clarity
then I haven’t done my job!
i mean in a literal sense ajflkdsajklfjksld
as in, you’re not being swallowed up by the instrumental anymore
it is more spacious
the thicket of external voices at the end there is much more difficult to immediately decipher
its place on the record is kind of interesting, because it’s sort of a song I was conceiving of long before
just in terms of wanting to do something hazy and sort of ominous
yeah you mentioned it was the first one you started writing, if my memory serves me correctly, which really surprised me
I don’t think any of it was actually written, it was just a concept
I’d heard the song “Once We Walked In The Sunlight” and read “The Yellow Wallpaper” around the same time
and that period was just kind of marked by a continuous sense of building dread
dread of what?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvV2_Y3SOqM
of everything - of life beyond what I knew
(thanks for the link!)
I didn’t know what my options were, to put it simply
I was afraid of living
any sort of transitional period, I get that way - I had an intense phase of anxiety when I was starting elementary school, everything terrified me
[REDACTED]
I remember not being able to listen to “I Don’t Wanna Miss A Thing” when it came on the radio - it was a hit at the time
whatever emotion it was conveying, it was too intense for me
oh man
and that was a tie-in to armageddon, the movie where an asteroid is going to destroy the earth
god yeah it’s kind of a remarkably grim song isn’t it
so it all just seemed like a time when the integrity of the world was compromised
I felt that way again going into college, and coming out of it
I haven’t felt that way since, which I’m grateful for
i’m glad ☺
anyways, I guess High to Death ended up being an expression of mourning for an entire world
those transitional periods are such a brutally difficult time for everyone but i’m always surprised by just how few resources there are to aid people going through those times, or give them any sense of external perspective
well, it’s kind of hopeless, because it’s all about being caught up in your own head
that’s how it feels, yeah - like this sadness you’re feeling is so much broader than just this one experience
it is true that the external perspectives that are most readily available to kids in that position is the sort of anti-development stuff, people who stayed broken
but I don’t know how much of that is lack of resources, and how much is being attracted to those narratives
sometimes it’s more appealing (or at least, easier) to want to lean into those feelings of lostness rather than actively search for a way out
yeah, it’s also hard to know what searching feels like, because a lot of the time it just means waiting
and that’s not really a romantic subject to write about
yeah and in those transitional times your life feels completely defined by uncertainty
yeah
and i think it’s possible and necessary to give yourself room to feel hopeless and unsure and let it pass with the knowledge that stability will find you eventually
and high to death is… a step in that process? i think?
yeah, a lot of my music looks like that
[REDACTED] captures it really potently i think
how’d you find that, by the way?
I love that piece, it might be my favorite part of the album
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it might have been, if anyone could hear it!
i’m glad you did find a place for it and i think it does help to establish that throughline
[REDACTED]
apparently not
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just listened to I Don’t Wanna Miss A Thing again
it’s still disturbing!
it really is? it really is
steven tyler really did not want to fall asleep, it was a life and death situation for him
but doesn’t he know that if he stays awake too long he’ll just die anyway!!! steven!!
hah, it’s like the arcade fire song on a whole different level
it’s funny that we’re talking about this b/c early on in my novel there’s a scene where my protagonist loses his virginity and it’s just a deeply unsatisfying and awkward experience the whole way through and i pointedly specify that “i don’t wanna miss a thing” is playing on the radio the entire time
to add to the grotesque mood
NICE
sure hope aerosmith doesn’t sue me
I wonder how many people are gonna come out of the woodworks to share their scenes of visceral upset with this song
anyways, famous prophets?
it seems like that would be way overdue like we’ve gone far too long as a society without admitting how inherently disturbing this song is
yes sorry famous prophets
so i feel like the most important shifts in the album’s narrative occur here
yeah, it all comes together in that track
and a lot of that hinges on the incorporation of the new bible verse but you’ve also [REDACTED]
w/ a killer high note to boot
so do you want to start with the bible verse or the new lyrics
or are they part and parcel of the same thing
which is the high note, you mean the [REDACTED]?
no no I mean, what happened to YOOOOOOOOOOU
oh, the falsetto
right before you lead into the [REDACTED]
this all was what got cooked up at the beginning of 2016, before we started work on it -
I decided to [REDACTED], and that meant shifting things around so the [REDACTED] could be a [REDACTED]
so I wrote new lyrics for that part
and you’d been performing those new lyrics live throughout 2017, right
or, at least a couple of times
the bible verse I was inspired to include after seeing it recited in full in a japanese film - I need to figure out what it was
yeah, they got fleshed out live
ah, it was Love Exposure
reading the wiki now
it’s kind of a strange soap-opera comedy, but there’s a great scene right in the middle where the protagonist’s love interest unexpectedly screams the entire bible passage at him
I’d heard parts of it, but never the whole thing, and it hit me in a powerful way
so it seemed appropriate to try and pass it on that way
can you tell me more about how it landed for you, hearing it in the context of the movie? i’m having a hard time piecing the narrative together from this truly wild plot summary on wikipedia
oh, it’s impossible to put it together outside of the film itself
I guess it’s something that you have to see in full to understand…
just like Twin Fantasy!

got it!
i was just interested in hearing how it came to be because i had a very specific emotional response to it that i’m sure wasn’t at all what you intended
just based on my own experiences of having the worst and most stereotypical closeted gay evangelical christian teenagehood possible
yeah, I didn’t intend for it to be used in that context
or I guess the intent was to reclaim it as what it was actually supposed to convey
mm that makes a lot of sense
most christian texts have a lot of good to them, they just get used by bad people
they sure do
at any rate i think it’s a really unique usage & reclamation of the passage
and in the context of the narrative it’s so much more forgiving of all the involved parties than the original verse you’d used
which i figured you would want to strike out of the remake anyway, for obvious reasons
yeah, forgiveness is the key difference between the two texts
it’s old testament/new testament stuff
[REDACTED]
[REDACTED]
right, yeah
hm i’m not sure we’ve touched on everything worth discussing re: famous prophets but i’ve kind of gone through all the questions i’d prepped
so unless there’s anything else you wanted to emphasize here we could go on to the final song?
I guess it’s probably better to leave it relatively uncovered, so people don’t know too much about it beforehand
good point
okay so then, this last song here… it closes the circle in a way, or it completes the arc from this very pure expression of “we won’t be alone” to “when i come back you’ll still be here”
yeah, the drum beat comes back
I guess those things probably emerged musically, at first - maybe most of the “pure” stuff did
which comes from like… “loss of innocence” is tacky, but maybe more, having lived through a difficult and complicated experience and having some trepidation about throwing yourself open again
yeah, it’s a cyclical 'advance and retreat’
bringing the drums back is a nice touch
the “when I come back” line is from a very early song
that was all about regression and fantasy
and that one also closed off the album it was on
so I guess that’s sort of my MO, emotionally - I can only be open and vulnerable for short periods
and with any luck there will be an album that comes out of it
sorry i’m just trying to figure out how to word something
and I did go through that entire emotional arc again while remaking it
i’ll bet
i honestly can’t even fathom what it’s like to put this much of yourself into your art, art that you know other people will be consuming en masse
I was very high-energy putting the pieces together, and by the time we were doing final mixing sessions, I was feeling so miserable about it that I changed the ending of the album
the ending of the album being [REDACTED]? or more than that?
no, the very end
[REDACTED]
[REDACTED]?
but by the time I was putting the final pieces together, I said “fuck it, it’s going to end on [REDACTED]
no, [REDACTED]
oh, sorry
I’m talking about just [REDACTED]
right, gotcha
the [REDACTED]
anyways, I guess it’s nothing major
no, no, it’s major enough
but once again, I didn’t end up making quite a complete picture
there will always be something unresolved to it
of course
is it still true that you don’t see it as a tragedy?
yeah, it’s just a good album
I think it’s pretty open ended
but I’m not mournful about anything
the open ending is more realistic, i think
we never really get neat narrative conclusions in our real lives
yeah, sometimes you get catharsis, though
I think there is a breakthrough on this record that wasn’t on the old one
i would agree, yes
but everyone’s got to experience that on their own time
incredibly valuable stuff, catharsis
I enjoy it
it’s interesting seeing how younger people respond to the narrative of TF vs. how i see it, how my older friends see it
while we’re talking about people experiencing things on their own time
yeah, it’s a text
what you get out of it is going to change over time
that’s been true fo rme
there are a few stories i make a point of coming back to periodically just to measure myself against the narrative & the characters and see how i’ve grown since the last time i read it or saw it
and i can see twin fantasy becoming one of those pieces
I hope so!

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