galaxylong.blogg.se

There was a lot of pressure to succeed that I learned to not care about.

But I’m not worried about how people will feel. I feel very anxious about coming out, for me. I feel like I’m constantly on the move and trying to find a way to feel comfortable. I feel like I’m sort of in a tense place - touring all the time, getting used to more press. It feels like I didn’t waste my time.Īre you excited that Lush will be out in the world soon? It’s not those things directly, but directly drawing from my classical training feels good. Those are the guitar players that I like listening to: Kurt Vile, John Fahey. It feels like the music that, in my head, Snail Mail would be down the line. “Let’s Find An Out,” the finger picking one. We almost didn’t play “Thinning” this morning, for fun. I can play solos and do weird shit with my hands when I feel like I don’t want to play. It’s not embarrassing, it’s just fun - I’m having so much more fun on stage. I love being able to fuck up and having a support system to fall back on. He’s a really good singer so we’ve thrown a couple harmonies in. Our new guitar player is the sweetest dude of all time. You guys are playing as a four-piece now. I realized that too many cooks in the kitchen stuff really freaks me out. My living experience was so bad that I’m taking a lot of time to re-evaluate where I want to live. I lived in New York for two months and I hated it so much. I actually kind of like the anonymity, but I’m willing to give it up for a good cause. But now I just don’t care about anything, and I would hope that in doing so, maybe some other young gay teens could be like “Hell yeah, me too.”ĭo you think people still assume you’re straight? I was never ashamed of it, but I was insecure about it being part of my public image. I could use whatever pronouns I wanted and no one would be like, “No way.” It takes a lot of the pressure off. That’s not really what the songs are about, but I’ve felt a lot more motivated to be honest with myself. Lots of relationships came and went through this record. What are some of the individual tracks about? There actually kind of is a lot of that on the record, because that is who I am deep down. I just tried to put that extreme oh my God if you don’t love me back I’m gonna die feeling that you have but you don’t want to outwardly express because it’s embarrassing.

I was kind of making fun of myself in a way because I was getting so enveloped in this one love interest and it was almost ridiculous. It is really romantic, and at times sarcastically pathetic. And so the themes are really representative of so many different points in time. I took a lot of care in not forcing anything. I made sure that the people who I was working with were understanding that one of the most important things about songwriting for me is having time to do it. And then I need a few months to come back to it. I need to spend a few months on it, religiously, all night, no sleep. And then I decided that I wanted to put more time and work and revision in it. Right after we finished Habit, I had written “Pristine.” It was maybe gonna be a Habit B-side. What was going on in your life when you were writing it? Lush is heavy, a little sad, and really romantic. It’s this pseudo satire comedy about all of these old people who are living in a retirement home together and waiting to die. Now I’m reading this book called Ending Up. It’s really good - it made me cry, like, every page.

I just finished The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall, which is this classic lesbian novel from 1928.

You don’t have to be a big personality for everyone all the time. Turn myself off in the car and at the hotel. I feel one hundred percent different than the last time I was at SXSW. So I just kind of keep my head down and care a lot about the songs. It’s real easy to get wrapped up in it and go down evil paths. It’s so disheartening to be surrounded by things that have nothing to do with your art. There’s sketchballs everywhere in the music industry world. Last time we spoke you told me about how the sudden attention from the industry was disorienting, how you put a lot of pressure on yourself and weren’t sure who to trust. It got to a point where I was like, I would feel like a shitty rock fan if I didn’t. I love Iceage and Kurt Vile and Steve Gunn. It feels like everyone who owns that label, or works on it, are just super interested in things that will last. I don’t feel like there are any bands on there that are trendy or riding out a hype cycle. They are just such rock revivalists, and they have a really cool sense of what is genuinely good right now.