This is the best Bleachers album you've made, in my opinion.
I think so too, but it's nice to hear.
You live with it alone, man.
It's weird.
People have this idea.
This goes for Bleachers, my production work everyone, people just have these wild ideas of how it's done.
They think there's these like people listening.
It's like, it's so fucking small.
It's crazy by design.
The second you open it up...
I always see making records like you're making something like a house of cards and you see it, but you know the world wouldn't see it yet.
And you're so excited, but it's not done.
And letting anyone else see it, it would just destroy it for you.
It's weird.
I'm stuttering around this, but it's a very emotional phase I'm in yeah, sharing it because it's like bizarre.
Well, we have a cultural dissonance of uh, it's a huge part of this album of the everyoneness of everything.
Yeah, so no artist.
You know, when I was 13 first, you know, feeling misunderstood and finding music and finding that as a way to communicate, there was no part of me that wanted to reach everyone.
There was no part of me that wanted to be adored by everyone.
You were actually the opposite.
You and your friends were doing 250 gigs a year to avoid people.
It always starts as the opposite.
It starts from a weird chip on your shoulder.
It starts from feeling misunderstood.
Fuck you, Juice.
It's super important.
Yeah, it's super important.
It's a moment.
There's a lot of things going on in the world which I touched on in the album, but even in the music community.
It's like we're about to break through this wall.
We all fucking hate it.
The amount of stats we talk about.
Like, no fans give a shit.
I got into music because I was shit at math.
How was math running music?
Well, you know whose idea it was.
The people upstairs, you know?
It's like, you become... they make you in their image to do their bidding, right?
No fan cares if their artist is the biggest in the world or just broke some record or this or that.
No one gives a fuck.
And artists don't give a fuck.
And I don't give a fuck and none of us do.
And it's just I want to get.
I want to kick that wall in and just be like guys.
It's about the album.
It's about the lyrics.
It's about the way it's played or sang.
And it's about the fucking show.
But you must get a sense that that is happening.
I certainly do, from a little bit of altitude and playing a lot of music and being invested in a lot of people's life stories, which is their music right.
So let's talk a little bit about like, let's go from Chicago to Nashville.
Let's go from Lifeguard and Horse Girl and that crew of artists, these young bands, late teens who are like pressing up vinyl and handing out cassettes and doing shit, because my take at least, have to ask them, but like the internet, cool tool but bit of an F in terms of like, all of the answers.
And then over here you've got Hayley, who's coming out of this big fucking machine, who seems to be having the time of her life.
Oh, and just breaking it and the whole thing and kind of smiling and winking the whole time.
Yeah.
Calling her label post-Atlantic.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. to me, it's so not that deep.
And I talk about this on the inside.
It's just sort of like, what do we think is interesting and cool?
Not what is anyone else doing?
Because I see, but I see like the music scene and the internet in general as kind of like, like a like a city street and everyone's rushing by.
You know what I mean.
And everyone's rushing by and just like shouting shit and like, as an artist, you just want to be sitting on that street playing your fucking music.
Yeah yeah yeah, you just want real estate.
Yeah, to find out if anyone rushing by is compelled enough to stop, right.
But I think the problem is when I'm walking down the street in New York City.
You know, the things that mean the most to me is when I'm caught by something.
But often what catches my attention is someone being like fuck you, Bush did 9-11.
You know what I mean?
Like those kind of like inflammatory thoughts, and that is what plays but no artist is.
It's just about reclaiming our heart and soul of why we do this and not letting it turn into a video game, which I think actually this is not a dig.
I think we're at the end of something.
It's all just kind of flattening out.
I think we're heading to a beautiful place.
Good, because there's at the end, there's multiple people have different um ideas about what comes next.
If you talk to some people who i know that they're like it's progress and and and added technology and we have to adapt.
I'm super that.
Uh, i'd like progress.
I wouldn't be at apple without progress.
But My thing is like don't fix music.
Well, i i i tend to agree with you, but what i back up to is sort of like where we all meet.
So it's like whether you're trying to like shoot through the screen into like a different transcendence, transcendent place, or like reject it and eat from the ground and make your music there, it's sort of the same thing, in the sense that no one's happy with this.
No one sits around and says this is it, we figured it out.
There's so much fucking amazing music.
There's so much brilliant stuff.
Young people are doing incredibly brilliant things.
There's just a great vibe out there.
But the systems in which it's all being run through are so cooked, it's almost funny.
So I look at that and I think the same thing politically.
I think the same thing about communication.
Big part of the album is like one of the first times in my life that every person, no matter who you are, is like well, it's not gonna be this.
Like, you know, it's all a scam.
We figured that out.
Having our hopes and dreams get sort of monetized and regurgitated back to us, it's all boring.
So everyone's like pushing, like, let's get to the next moment.
For me, that goes on to the album and the live show. but it's just an exciting time.
Which is the human side of it.
That's the eating from the ground up side of it.
For me it is.
Yeah, that's where you get to the heart of it.
But I also think in my time in art, You know, like I've never I'm as an artist and every artist I know.
I've never sat there and said if there was only a way we could record music better.
Never said, never said it.
If anything, I like bow at the altar of recorded music.
I sit there and think this is so magical.
There's so many options and it's like, it's endless.
So it's often the people trying to change the form are non artists who are looking to break something in profit off of it.
That's right, a scale.
Yeah, because no one's like, I've never sat there, I've never watched a great movie.
I don't make movies, I'm a big fan, right?
And thought, God, that was a brilliant hour and a half, two hours.
But what if we changed the form?
Never.
I just think to myself.
I've never looked at a painting and been like but what if I could like put my hand in the painting and feel something?
It's just like some forms.
It's like the human body or love.
It's like, why is an album 10 to 15 songs?
You know, why is a TV show this long?
Why is a book this?
What you do in the form is all that matters.
And sometimes we get dragged on these journeys.
Then you get to the end of the journey and you're just like that was just like.
That was just like some weird you know, like dipshit, who was like found a way to extort money from people.
It's just scaling up.
That's why I'm not really mad about it so much anymore.
When it first started to present itself in a particular certain, um, how do I do this delicately?
Do it undelicately.
Certain people were coming up making certain statements about why these things existed, and they were just so fucking off.
I'm like, you really don't understand.
And I got mad.
You know, I got mad.
And for a few months, I was the mad rapper.
You know, I was just like fuck that shit, fuck that shit, fuck it, fuck that shit, fuck.
And I realized I sound like a crazy person and I wasn't actually achieving anything.
I was just sounding like a fucking crazy person.
It's good to show your emotions.
I've been super mad about systems.
I'm never mad about my work.
That's good.
No, that's a safe place.
Sometimes I just think people are in a lot of pain and looking for connection.
And there's these beautiful connection points, whether that's music art community, all these things.
And when anyone gets in the way of that, I get pretty hot.
You know, and that's where the album starts, man, as well, with Sideways.
One of the reasons I love pressing play on a new Bleach's record whenever I get to hear it is that I feel like the journey has been taken into consideration now in a very real way.
You know, it's another road trip.
It's a beautiful road trip.
That's, you know, my whole life, everyone's, the album's dead.
And I'm like, okay.
No, that's, okay, that's hilarious.
But first of all, I'm not sure, but I'm like, okay, well, so what do you want me to do?
No, but we're about, we're about, I still make it up.
And then we're about to say the same thing, because when people used to say that to me when the streaming era started to begin and there's certain people in the room who remember this the conversation was like well, playlists are going to replace the album.
It's all about individual freedom of choice to create whatever experience you want over a period of time.
So you tell me what the experience should be.
Yeah, I just fell asleep.
Exactly.
And I used to say to people, no, you're missing the point.
You haven't asked the artist what they think.
Or they're fancy.
Yeah, they want to have the experience.
I need a complete thought.
I need to know what someone is really feeling in their life, and that is the amount of time it takes.
Not to go too deep, but that's a dissonance of our time.
So I make music.
I got a lot of thoughts about a lot of things.
I don't want to fucking do anything besides make music.
I know how to play a show.
I've done it my whole life.
I know how to make records.
I know how to write songs.
This is what I do.
I am so laser focused there.
I'm walking down the street and I see stuff and I just like a million ideas about like how they can do public bathrooms better or this you know like, and then I shut the fuck up and go make music.
Are you on Yelp?
No, no.
Is that a bad idea?
I'm on nothing.
But my point is A lot of times the functions of how these things happen aren't coming from people who are experts in doing it.
They're coming from people who have a different mind and then just wanted to sort of megalomaniacally whatever the right terminology is do everything.
And I think the death of expertise is the great boredom of our time.
I love people who spend their life obsessively digging deeper and deeper and deeper into something.
Yeah, uh.
So i'm surrounded by and it's a beautiful thing, it's a life well lived, because you know it's the never-ending journey.
Who wants to get to the end of something, who wants to clock the game?
I would always feel bad.
I would talk to my friends who are really good at video games and they'd clock it and i'd be like how do you feel?
And they'd be like kind of bumped yeah, you don't want to, you don't want to win, You don't want to win.
You don't want to... I don't know.
It's like Well actually, let's talk about winning for a second, because you have won quite considerably.
But I meant in a deeper way.
No, but you can't choose.
So let's not create a hierarchy around winning.
Let's talk about winning.
Let's talk about.
You don't want to win necessarily in life, or win the game of life or any of that stuff.
Yeah.
But not...
Winning is nice too to be acknowledged.
So when you do win, what does that winning mean to you?
Let's just micro in on that for a second.
Like what does winning producer of the year three, four times mean to you?
It's encouraging.
You gotta take it for what it is.
You know what I mean?
You didn't, you know, it's just that you could.
You could go down all the rabbit holes of different cynical feelings and stuff.
But when I feel that way, it's like, uh, my family's around me.
And my life is so about the future that it's just like I take it for exactly what it is.
It's a moment that we take a day and look at the road behind us.
But it's not entering my mind when I'm making things.
And one of the things I love about what I do is I always feel like a baby.
I always feel like I'm kind of looking up at the sky.
Just when I think I've figured something out, it disappears.
It's like chasing ghosts, right?
It's like love, relationships, all of it.
You're searching for something.
So I don't know.
Sometimes something cool just gives you a pep in your step.
But it's not like, you know, that shit's not around the studio.
That stuff isn't going to give me any answers.
So where does control catch you?
In a situation, the way you're describing life, and I love it because I search for the same thing and I strive to do this in the present moment a sense of letting go, a desire to not try to control things.
Very hard for me, but same.
So where does it catch you?
Where does it?
Where does it trip you out?
Where do you find yourself?
Leaning back into this place of, like damn man, i i'm really feeling, i'm holding on tight here, everywhere else, because i exercise, like you know, i think, because i have a lack of control in my creative life as, by design, then i then then i'm very, i'm kind of like a monk in other places, Like I wake up at this time, this is what I eat, this is what I'm putting in my smoothie.
Big routine guy.
I get very, I wouldn't even call it routine, I would call it like OCD.
Yep.
And, but that's funny.
You know, I think shit like that.
Like you know OCD depression, anxiety it's like they're just kind of part of the walk of life, unless they stop you from moving.
And I've had moments like that.
Same.
I'm OCD and I had to go through a few pretty significant years trying to untangle that and figure out how to use it as a tool and not be the victim of that experience.
Yeah, like I'm, you know, someone might categorize me as complicated now.
I feel pretty good right now.
I've had moments in my life where it was uncomfortable to do things because of these voices in my head.
You know.
But yeah, I'm pretty rigid.
I like to shut off at a certain point.
You gotta know yourself.
I'm good in the morning.
The more I hear, the more I eat, the quieter the interesting voices get.
So I try to, if I'm home, just write in the morning.
Journal?
No.
Write, write, write.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Do you journal?
No, I don't like to, my hand cramps.
So I really like, I'm all about like, I'm all about just recording myself.
I get it, man.
I look at my lineage and which I wrote about a lot on the album.
It's like you know a lot of the the chill people in in my uh.
Yeah, my lineage didn't make it out, so it's like i'm here because my grandparents were like we gotta get the fuck out of here, which is they were correct, but it wasn't necessarily a chill thought, so then they created people who had that same, But that's a huge.
I mean, that was the you know sideways in the van, the first two songs when talking about my origin story.
That's right.
But there's a way, deeper piece to it, which is this amazing joy and amazing guilt of like severing the ancestral pact.
Coming from a long line of people who are like.
All they wanted for their kids was to have a roof over their head, food on the table and some version of safety to raise a family.
And then when I was born, I had the opportunity to kind of cut that cord and get in a van, which is really interesting.
But a lot of guilt came with it.
Well, understandably and this isn't coming from a place of naivety I can fully dial into what you're saying.
But just for people who are listening and watching with a little more of a microscope, what do you think that goat was attached to?
The stories, everyone has their ancestral pact, right?
Some people are born to break it.
If your ancestors did horrible things, then you- Break the cycle.
Yeah, you break that.
My ancestral pact was just this kind of like very eastern european mentality they're coming to get us.
So we just have to like keep it tight.
Yeah, you know, keep everything tight, you know uh, keep family tight.
Um, you know, just have a nice small house and just put food on the table, just like Yeah.
Generational trauma bonding, really.
Majorly.
And that's just where it came from.
So when I did what I did, there was just a lot to it.
But it was me and all my guys.
We're all coming from the same general place.
So what prompted you to get in the van?
Was it in part because you recognized the ancestral line and you didn't want to have that experience?
Were you rejecting something?
No, i kind of actually love that, i think.
I think my ancestral line minus some of the anxiety is is the meaning of life love family food, kind of hit music.
For me it was.
I just discovered music and I just knew, at a very young age.
Contrary to a lot of things, I was being told music school this or that, but the only way to do it was to do it.
Those stories are, if you can block out the noise as a young artist, they're right there for you.
From the dawn of you know, blues artists to jazz artists, to the first bands, to the fucking Carter family, whoever it is all the way to.
70s 80s 90s, everyone who really needed to communicate this way got in the van or the covered wagon and went and did it.
Commit to the trip.
Yeah, you are a person who brings your work hand to hand.
And I still do that.
The concept of I'm in a new town, a new city, and I restart this machine and I retell this story, but it's different is a huge part of the art.
That's one of the reasons I love going to a Bleachers show is that, even though I know that 50 of the crowd may have seen you perform before you are hitting that stage like this, is the first time you've met anybody every single time.
I mean...
Shows are like miracles.
I always felt that way.
And so I don't know, it just feels that way to me.
And I think it's more needed than ever.
Just this like right here, right now, this is all we have, beats the shit out of my body sometimes.
I don't have that bone in me where I'm like, oh, I should save my voice a little bit.
You know, Chicago's tomorrow.
You're an out-of-body performer.
Yeah, the whole band is.
And that's why...
I wrote a little thing about this last night that I was gonna put up at some point.
But just like, so interested how, like all the guys who like dragged this whole past with us, like all those shows to Noah and all those like that kind of like, But it's like armor, that belief.
I experienced that at the weekend when I saw Dijon and Henry and Ryan and that whole group of his on stage.
And I said to my friend and it's the same for a Bleachers show I said you could draw a curtain between the stage and the audience right now, where they can't actually see each other.
And if you had a camera behind that curtain on the stage, that band would still be playing.
It's fucking hard for each other.
Oh, yeah.
Without anybody around.
You know it.
You know it when you see it.
But it's fact.
And I've been talking to the guys about it.
I've talked to friends about this.
I've talked to a lot of younger musicians about this.
It's like we do this either way by design.
And then, when you do have an audience, you honor it even more, because you know what it's like to not
But yeah, it's a trip.
It's magical live music.
You know, it's why it's kind of like all I really fucking have.
Let's just pause on Bleachers for a second.
Come back in a few minutes time and just seeing as how I brought it up,
I didn't see you in the desert, so I'm assuming you weren't there and you watched the stream.
Well, maybe you didn't watch it, but you know, your friends.
Yeah, I watched Turnstile.
I watched Sabrina.
I watched Dijon.
Yeah, I want to talk about Slater.
I want to talk about Slater was great.
I watched Wednesday.
I watched Geese.
I watched a few things.
I like watching it.
It's really fun.
It's fun.
I was at the Slater show on the first day, the first weekend, and I watched...
It was just fucking fantastic watching her just come out there and just lay waste to that 10 to 3 o'clock on a Friday.
Those are my favorite shows.
The journey she's been on, man.
I mean, talk about some hit and miss, trial and error shit.
And for her to just land it and to be exactly who she is was great.
But I wanted to zero in on the Sabrina show for a second.
Highly conceptual, highly theatrical, just flawlessly delivered pop show that at the core of it has these songs that not all of them, but a lot of the bigger ones you've been involved with and have worked with her on.
Smaller ones do.
And smaller ones do.
Thank you.
Shouts to the smaller ones.
You know what does it feel like if you can put it into words when you're experiencing vicariously the joy people are getting from something that you had such an intimate role in helping to come to life.
Oh, life-affirming is the best feeling in the world.
Because, like I was saying before, it comes from such a tiny place.
You know, like... That living room with just the four of you.
Very, yes, tiny.
It's like a secret that the people in the room who are making it you know Laura Sabrina John Amy, myself just in that little space there's no focus group, there's no one else, no one's hearing it.
And if anything, what I've noticed is, as time has gone on and the world is sort of buzzing with endless communication, all my projects are getting more and more insular in a great way.
So it's surreal.
It doesn't matter how big an artist is.
And even if the writing is on the wall that they have a lot of fans and a lot of people will hear it, when you see people connecting to it in a certain way, it's completely surreal.
Just because of the literal opposite nature of how it's made.
It is polar opposite.
Feel this way about every album i make.
You make it in a dream state.
You're sitting in a small room and you're thinking what if?
What would it feel like if a lot of people were connecting with this?
And so it's like the sound of a great album to me is a sound of people dreaming about connection.
Live music is literal connection.
So when you see the actual fruition of a dream, to me, a great album should sound like a dream.
I don't want it to sound like the live show.
I don't want it.
It's like it should sound like people dreaming of a thing and then capturing that document before they even fully know what it is.
So it's, um, it's like, yeah, I started thinking about it, but it's beautiful.
Zero cynicism there.
I just watch stuff like that and I'm just like, it inspires me.
I want to, I want to go make more music.
And I like how the journey of that, I feel like it was so much fun making a song like Man Child and now it's... Yeah, sitting on a couch, just fucking laying it down in the room and the next thing you know, it's up on that stage and it's just kind of playing the... It's a cornerstone of this incredible, magical Sabrina Wood concept, which is...
Or like house tour we did.
We were in the UK and we were working on Man's Best Friend and then it was the last night and like the drink cart came at this place, we were staying and we all got some drinks and then it was like two in the morning and we just kind of like were having fun and just did it.
I'll never be unstunned by where it comes from.
And it's usually from moments of just like connection and joy where the great stuff comes from.
You can't set out to do that.
Anytime I've ever set out to do something, it dies a hard death quickly.
No, it is 100% a tangible energy searching for a host.
And if you're open and available to it and you just grab it, it's like, can you hold on long enough to just Not just my favorite songs, any song I've ever done?
I can remember how it happened.
And it's not by saying, let's do this.
It dies quite quickly.
It would be like you wouldn't sit with a friend at coffee and be like hey, let's have a deep conversation.
It just starts and you go.
You're just like, you're there, you're not.
Well, that's the art of therapy too.
The amount of times I've sat down with my therapist and gone.
I've really got nothing to say this week.
And he's like, well, let's just see about that.
And he starts asking me what I had for lunch.
And by the end of it, I'm in floods of tears.
Or like you think about dreams, I think about religion, I think about all these things constantly.
But to be in America is to be bombarded by a lot of other people's ideals.
So it's always... To be in America is to be bombarded by a lot of other people's ideals.
Just go again, just go again.
I'd have to wait for it to end for it to go again.
Oh, you do?
Yeah, yeah, do it again.
To be in America is to be bombarded by other people's ideals. which is why I love playing.
I mean, I love playing everywhere, but when I go to Europe, their view on American music is fascinating.
What is it?
It's very clear.
It's sort of like the way like if I hear a record from Manchester or from Japan or some Italian thing.
It's like I'm viewing it from the dream lens of what I've read about it.
So what's on the mood board of a fan that's coming to an American say, a bleachers show or whatever?
What's on the mood board?
They're like, oh man, this is what I'm coming for.
I know what I'm, this is what I'm...
European or American fan?
European.
I think a European fan can witness sort of like heartland American music.
Freedom, baby!
Freedom is the answer!
Quite the opposite.
I think they get all the sarcasm within it.
But I think when you're in America and you're playing with all these things, it's much, it's much dicier.
You know in little ways, you know like to me, like you know bringing the fiddle on dirty wedding dress or playing with anything that sounds bar or heartland.
It's like the way it reaches people is funny because it might sound like a thing, but then you might know me, you might hear what I'm talking about.
And it's like It's just playing with all of it, with.
American culture is an endless and fascinating rabbit hole.
That's one of the things I love again about your music is it doesn't surprise me that you love to watch films, because I feel like Bleacher's albums are very cinematic and you do lean into that space of trying to create an overarching feeling that you get from multiple artistic experiences.
It's not just a listening thing.
It's like if i press play on the van i can get a sense of the wheels turning and what is going on.
I feel like you, you really strive for that.
I just yeah, i kind of see i i need to be somewhere to write something.
You know like in a van walking, thinking at a restaurant.
Yeah, you're very situational with your writing.
I don't have to, but I...
I just access something when I'm like telegraphing from a place.
I don't know why.
Yeah.
Well, it's great though because, like I said, when you press play on the album, I feel like I'm literally on a journey, and this is what you've done.
You've created sideways into the van and We do go through these key human touchstones of your life that are very universal.
You talked about dirty wedding dress and we talked a little bit about that online.
I love that song.
I love how granular it is and how specific it is and how unafraid you are to open the door to that and just let it exist as art, think it's really cool.
What was it like to write?
And and, like you know, i've met your wife.
She's super lovely, like.
What's it like when you play those songs to her and she knows what she signed up for.
You're an artist.
You're going to write songs about your life.
How is that balance between, kind of like expressing yourself and your truth, versus the things that are obviously very important to you, which should remain special?
It's pretty easy for me because i, because like, and i'm like, a pretty private person, so to me it's very simple.
It's like, if there's a, if there's a feeling that is worth expressing, then i'll, then i'll tell the story to get to that feeling, but not intimately, so it's like, so like that song dirty wedding dress.
What it's about?
First of all, it's about me.
I'll say everything.
If there's something going on in my soul, I will just spill it.
That's mine to spill.
But when it has to do with other people, like Dirty Wedding Dress, it was like the song is not about my wedding.
The song is not about... that moment.
The song is about a barrier between the people who know and love you my friends, my family, my audience and the others who are very transient and want a piece of your soul but really shouldn't get it.
That's what the song is about.
I've written a lot of love songs, but that experience of getting married and having this, you know literally the people I love most in my life.
And then a crowd of people outside who obviously couldn't care less about me.
It was powerful.
I knew I'd write about it.
And it turned into kind of a bit of a funny snarky thing.
But it's like, you know, I'm not spilling the details of what happened at my wedding.
Of course not.
I'm talking about the feeling of who, in this moment in time, like we were talking about before, when we're trying to break through to the next phase of humanity, in a way, with dignity.
What the fuck is this?
Yeah, who gets access?
Who gets access?
Because I don't...
I reject the idea that everyone gets access to everyone.
It's ridiculous.
Unless someone's making our laws.
Then that's for everyone.
But if you're an artist or if you're someone who's offering something, you're out there looking for your people period.
End of story.
Nothing else.
You are shooting messages in bottles out into the world, not for everyone, just to find that one person.
Just like in high school.
You get there, you feel like you fucking are not seen by anyone.
You feel like you're the only person that's ever existed on earth.
There's all these people that just look like the kind of people that might want to punch you in the face, and then you just see in the distance one person, and maybe it's the shirt they're wearing, maybe it's the way they're wearing their hair, maybe it's just the look in their eyes.
For me, it was guy pete who had this tattoo that i was like oh, we might connect and you find each other right.
And that is what it is to be an artist in tour.
I'm just looking for my people, and that was the point of that song.
It's one of my favorite songs on the record for all the reasons.
It is funny too.
I just you know, and then I get a little silly about sometimes like whether it's like people I've met in the press are here and they're like picket, weird things.
Not naming names.
It's not a roast.
It's about.
But they know who they are.
I don't know.
I don't know.
But it's just about the experience of being me where sometimes... I would know.
You would?
Oh, shit.
Is it about me?
No, of course not.
Or is it?
You would because... Yeah.
No, just the experience of... It's a funny thing.
It's not even anyone's fault.
Sharing deep, intimate things about your soul and your life, and then them becoming like weird facts that can just be like.
That's why I like being in conversation with my audience.
They know the context.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's also the perfect way to bring it back to what's really truly fucking important, which is this idea of sharing these thoughts and these emotions and these life experiences for people in the room who are looking to feel less alone.
Who, I've never asked you this, really did that for you at formative moments in your life?
Who made you feel less alone?
Probably the biggest one because of the time in my life it was would be John Darnell from the Mountain Goats.
Because I got the Sunset Tree and dance music and This Year and You and Your Memory, at the perfect time in my life when I needed it the most.
Um, and i always thought with him.
You know he tells a lot of stories of depression, domestic abuse.
You know, my stepfather launches a glass across the room.
Uh, my mother and i dash upstairs to take cover, leaning close to my little record player on the floor.
I guess this is what the volume nubs for.
You know, like not my experience at all, but his honesty.
I felt so seen and i felt like uh, But I got that.
You know, I was 18, 19.
I lost my sister when I was 18, which completely altered the course of my life.
I think when I was 21, that album came out, somewhere in there.
And it was just a magical time for me to hear someone uh, lay it all the fuck out there uh, in the most gruesome way, and still act like there was a path forward.
I mean, this year with their, you know, I'm going to make it through this year if it kills me.
One of the greatest lines ever written.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Where is music, um, at its most valuable for you during times of sadness?
Like how do you lean into?
Do you use music in order to unlock emotion?
That maybe be a little harder to find.
Yeah, oh yeah.
It usually just comes from other people's honesty or other people's pain.
You know, I don't necessarily connect well if I hear my story, if I hear a mirror.
Oh, I experienced that.
That's not what does it for me.
It's just hearing someone going through something and feeling like I'm part of some kind of continuum of human beings and not just like floating along.
I really.
For me it's always, it always really gets me when it's never like.
Very rarely is it like the most intimate, softest moments.
It's often the moments where the band is trying to drive to the top of the mountain.
It's like Middle East blood.
You know that song?
Yeah.
When they finally get there, I'm done.
Like I'm done or like, you know, no cars go like when it's like little babies, let's go.
And then they fucking drop it on you.
I'm fucking over.
Yeah.
I get that from like, Like I just put Refuse, Shape of Punk.
Oh, I'm sick with that album right now.
Let's fucking spend the rest of the conversation just talking about that record.
But just, you know, the obvious moment.
Get ice cream.
It's like nothing.
The classics never die.
I mean, that's a perfect album, but, but.
That kind of stuff that I grew up on really sends me going.
But you know what actually really gets me going?
Like that kind of like threat of tension, suicide, anxiety, like doesn't actually blow up.
It's just like or literally suicide yeah, not killing yourself, the band suicide yeah, like where it's like?
Yeah like, that's why I love Arps so much.
Depeche Mode does that.
Great, they get a little more cinematic.
But anything that's just like yeah, I'm always.
I'm always finding that with the Bleachers band too, it's like let's be on that.
Yeah, you very rarely actually tip it over the edge.
Yeah, but let's dance on the edge.
Tipping it over the edge, it's almost easy.
Anyone could just say, fuck it, and go... And you break everything.
It's like, can we live on the fucking edge?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And just heighten the anxiety and emotion to a point that is almost unbearable is what I think.
No, it makes total sense.
I love discovering new things about bands that I already love and about people I love, and that's no.
I want that place.
We talk about it.
Yeah, to me it's yeah, it's like the image in my head is like so I'm like yeah, there's like a cliff and there's like a.
So many memories of Bleacher shows now coming to mind, of those moments where I feel like you're going to go to take us there and then you just don't.
You just live on the edge and then you pull us back.
Yeah.
Somehow you land in a different way.
You get to work on albums that go on to find life in front of 200000 people at Coachella on the main stage.
As just one example of many,
And then you get to go and work on this beautiful, precious thing, which is about to play Madison Square Garden as a bonafide arena band and will headline other festivals in their own way, but has gone on a different journey.
And it is like a refuse journey in a sense.
It's like one great experience after another, after another.
What does it tell you about the speed of success versus the importance of holding the line and achieving it in your own way, and are both valid?
Oh, there's only holding the line.
Period.
End of story.
And that example list is everywhere.
You know what I mean?
That's not like you don't want it too quickly.
I mean, you brought up Sabrina. made many full length albums.
Do you know what I mean?
Many, many full length albums.
You look at what happened with Charlie, he brought up Slater, people like that.
It's like, it's, trust me, I was there and I was mad and I wanted it.
I was 16 watching Slater I want to be big.
I was 18.
I want to be big.
I was 21.
I want to be big.
What the fuck?
Everyone cares about the strokes.
Fuck these guys.
They're so fucking good.
Fuck these guys.
They're so fucking good.
I wasn't ready.
I wasn't ready because I was putting it all together.
And what it leaves you with, it's a great gift.
There's a lot of things that frustrated me that I now see as an amazing gift.
First of all, those years of honing it, doing it the way I wanted to do it, and then leaving all these openings for people, but explaining that it was this.
And then also this funny thing you kind of brought up has happened with Bleachers, where it's like Bleachers because of my production work, something that used to frustrate me and now I think is really beautiful, has like.
It's bizarre how big the band is and still feels like a secret.
Yeah.
That's the dream.
It's kind of a blessing because it's like you know, just in the inherent nature of some of the other records I make, there's going to be this sort of like larger mainstream group of people that's like oh, that's the guy who does that.
It's like, I am.
And there's going to be like three people in that room like, you don't know Bleachers?
And it's like, that is so, I don't know.
It's become a really beautiful thing because they're so artistically separate, but they're the same to me because it all happens at once.
And in the past, I tried to, in interviews, create more of a separation.
It's just not true.
Like everything is happening at the same time.
Yeah, it's true.
When we first started talking about the two, there would be a sense of like you know- This is this and this is this.
We'll get to that.
Well, let's talk about this and then we'll get to that.
That was me trying to like, you know, I think something happened when bleachers reached a certain level.
I kind of chilled the fuck out on trying to explain everything to everyone.
Isn't it about maturity as well?
You get to a certain point in your life.
If you're lucky enough to keep going, that certain shit just naturally starts to fall away a bit.
Yes, but I think it's more feeling seen.
And I felt this way with production stuff too.
I felt like I used to really have to just explain what I was interested in my style, but then now I feel like some of the vastly different albums I've been working on they just tell the story themselves.
And then Bleachers yeah, like something you know.
At some point you turn around and you're like this, this culture and these people here.
This is so beautiful.
And it's so, it's just expanding and deepening at the same time.
And it's a huge fucking theme on this album of just like stopping to signal to the transient people and just utter focus.
But yeah, when you first met me, I think I was more like this is this, this is this, this is this like, let's draw a line.
And it's just not true.
And I think it was annoying.
Well, I understand it, though.
There was an interesting transition point where you went from having this kind of runaway success with fun, which was short lived but certainly holds its place in terms of like oh, proof of concept.
I can be a part of something really big.
That's how I always took it, as to then getting into the studio while simultaneously figuring out where your voice was with Bleachers.
Then, all of a sudden, your production work starts to happen.
And Bleachers is always going to take more time.
Just the nature of what you're creating is always going to take more time.
So it's like, hang on.
People know me for this, but it will dissipate.
This is happening, and this is kind of here.
How do I drag this fucking thing out?
Well, yeah, and how do I tell this?
And I'm also on tour that whole time.
I i think i think i've always there's always been a you know.
Once again, it's about feeling seen.
I think when you know now i feel so, seen by the people who love the albums i produce.
People are seen by the bleachers, people and they're and and then whatever bleed there is in between.
But i think in the past i felt so.
You know, it's very hard for people to catch up to where you're at because they know what you've done, you are, You make an album.
By the time people get it you're beyond it.
You know, so you have to give people some grace experiencing you.
You have to give people some time to put it all together.
You can't just, because it's not a simple story.
You know, if it's a simple story, this is Jim.
He plays a blue guitar and he sings songs about going on hot air balloons.
You're like, Okay.
You know if you're going to weave something that is a bit more complicated and super nuanced and touches all these different really hot buttons.
You know like it takes some time for people to understand what you're doing purposes.
Is there a song on this album that kind of as you kind of touch on these human experiences and the evolution of you as a person and as a creative person?
Is there a song on this record that kind of touches on that, that speaks to the journey of the band the most and kind of acknowledges the time and the grace that you've either had to or then decided to take in order to become your best selves?
Yeah, there's different corners to that.
There's a song called Take You Out Tonight which is sort of a funny love song about being exhausted by the world.
But just saying that, you know man, you look so good.
I'm taking you out tonight, even though I fucking hate going out there.
There was a time when like, a lot of people were like comes and goes, like you know, kind of like taking pictures of me and my wife and I just wanted to stay in, but I'm also still just a person who was like I want to take you out and show you off.
As weird as my life in that area has become.
So I kind of, it was just an interesting prompt for me to write.
But the way we recorded it was just so fucking bleachers that it's just one of those songs where you just sort of pan back and you're like that's just, that's just us.
You know the whole album is.
But you know there's these moments where it's like okay, i'm playing with darker tones here, this is more acoustic, or this is bigger production and and i'm and i'm drawing on the past of of inspiration and pulling it towards the future, but it's only take you out.
It's just like i don't know how the you get that other than just the band spending like a six-way marriage basically, is how you get that.
Yeah, the camaraderie and the chemistry of the- The lived life, man.
Yeah, you can hear it.
The parts of life that aren't fun, the parts of life that are weird being with people when you know, being in this group of people where like, your hands are like kind of all in, no matter what happens, and there's this pact that no one, no one uh, leaves anyone behind, no matter what's going on.
You can fucking hate someone, someone could be heartbroken, someone could be so pissed.
I'm gonna be so fucking annoying.
But you are moving as a unit yeah, but then that in itself is a dream, is a wistful dream, and you know it because you touch on it.
At the end of the song, of the end of the album, you touch on an els.
You know that as much as you want this band to be the unified experience of all time, that life and somewhere along the line something's going to occur and someone's going to decide to leave or something's going to happen or whatever, And not to be too sort of dramatic or morose about it, but that intention is beautiful.
But in a weird way, that's why I called the tour bleachers forever.
What has been created because of that moment is so eternal, even though it will end that it is forever in a strange way.
So it's happening at the same time.
There is an eternalness that I feel only sometimes and when I feel it, I really stay there.
It's also great merch.
I'm so wearing a Bleachers Forever t-shirt.
It's a strong fan statement.
You know what I want to do?
Oh, wait, I unplugged myself.
I don't think it matters, but you brought up upstairs the DLS.
Yeah, i really want to do.
I got to get it together.
But like that place is such a specific like, it's just like my life, i just live there and all the records, i love it.
Every time i walk past i just want to knock on the door and ask of jackson you should.
No, i shouldn't, because you're probably making a record with someone under high levels of secrecy.
It's like zane's here.
He just happens to have a really loud mic at apple.
Yeah, just welcome him in, he's live, he's live.
I want to.
I want to at some point get everyone together and the band and all the records I've made there and like get everyone on the roof and just do some sort of like, like tape performance of the whole thing and just just just celebrate those, like just show what was what happened there and like you know, do all the shit talk in between and whatever.
But like, I got to do something like that.
It's buzzing in me.
It's a really cool idea.
Yeah, I'll call it Upstairs at ELS.
Yeah, it's a really cool idea for a series, you know, or even just a one-off documentary where you just get Yeah, actually more like Last of Allty, just like one thing.
Yeah, just one thing.
Because I played during COVID.
You know it started, you know it was recorded there.
But during COVID I wanted to like.
That album was taken Saturday night and I wanted to play some stuff, so I got St.
Vincent and came up on the roof and Springsteen came up on the roof and that I was really delicate about because it's like I'm not getting this guy sick.
So we were like Far away on the roof.
Thanks for the tacos and COVID.
I'll give my cousin COVID.
I'm not giving Princey COVID.
So, you know, we're up there and we're on the roof, but we're feeding everything into the studio.
And it was just beautiful.
And that's a project I got to get together at some point because the story of what happens there is Has not be told and cannot be told.
It would be about celebrating, not necessarily telling it, but it's so undocumented unseen, unknown other than the people who are there.
Cause no one's phone is out.
No one's barely taking.
We're not doing anything.
In every album I've ever made has happened right in this tiny little room which I've kind of recreated in my tour set now.
And it's just bizarre and kind of mythical to me.
Oh, yeah.
And when you step foot in it, you know why.
It's magic.
And the funny thing is it's a new generation of it.
So I think upstairs where I work was supposed to be Jimi Hendrix's apartment and then became the space that D'Angelo fell in love with.
Did Voodoo up there?
It's not the classic studios.
Yeah, downstairs.
And then the past decade that I've moved in has been just a really special stretch of music, starting with, I think, Strange Desire Melodrama, St.
Vincent's Mass Seduction was the first three up there, and then kind of everything since.
Yeah.
And it's such an interesting generation of artists that have really I mean, I've said this so many times, you know it's pre-Lord and post-Lord
I really stand by that.
Not just for the like, you know, Kiwiness of it all.
You know, there's pop music before that first album and there's pop music after that album.
You know, it changed everything in my opinion.
And since then, we're just hearing music in all different shapes and waves and forms.
And I just love how you're at the center of it all, man.
It's a fucking special gift you have to do that.
I'm just upstairs there.
That's what's so cool about it.
You've seen it.
It's not even like a studio.
It's like a little apartment, practically.
And when things are happening up there, it's you know it's like anything with songwriting it's like or production it's nice to be praying at something bigger whether it's the gods of songwriting the gods of production or the gods of that space you know and it's just it's good to to feel um yeah like at the altar or something you know I do.
Bleachers forever, baby.
What was the thing I say that to live in America is to be bombarded by others' ideals?
