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every instruments and JR was running all
the equipment and now on this album we
had engineers, producers and musicians and
a studio and everything was done right. But
there’s no change.
On the album’s first song Honey Bunny,
which is also the video you just released,
you sing ‘they don’t like my bony body,
they don’t like my dirty hair’ and then you
go on to sing about a girl who loves you for
who you are. This theme of acceptance -
are you referring to anyone in particular
or is it more of a general statement?
It’s a general statement. The song was
written at the time when the person in the song
doesn’t know for sure if they’re ever going to
find somebody, the right person. It’s about
saying: I’m not going to give up, I’m going to
keep trying because it might be right around
the corner. It’s about optimism.
You’ve been quoted as saying that you
think that music is a spiritual way to communicate
transcendent things…
Yeah, it’s more about just communicating
my feelings. I think it’s important for me because
I’m trying to figure these things out myself. It’s
just talking about it in the songs in the same way
that somebody might go to therapy or write a
journal. That’s really the motive. I don’t want
to indoctrinate anybody with any kind of theories,
but I do want to communicate my feelings.
For me it’s really selfish.
How important is the validation of websites
such as Pitchfork to you? What do
you think of this moral authority that one
website commands on the indie scene?
I don’t really know. I don’t follow it, I don’t
check it, I don’t read it. But I know when they
give us a good score, I hear about it. It’s just
like anything, when you get an award or you
get praise… It’s really not the time where you
feel successful. You feel successful the first time
you listen to the album after it’s finished. It’s
the same for live shows – when you’ve had a
good show and when the audience was really
great. And after that it’s like when people close
to you are telling you they have real respect for
what you’re doing or something. And finally
after that, of course you want to get some
respect from the people in the industry. But it’s
really not the first thing. Our booking agents,
our record label, our fans, … They were there
before our first album, before we got a review.
I think it helps, of course, but I know for
example if Pitchfork had given us a bad support
on this album it wouldn’t have made a difference.
The tour was already booked before
this. We don’t go and say like: “hey, look at the
score, will you give us a show?”
Music
Doing my research, I couldn’t help but feel
that you’re definitely moving closer to the
mainstream and it’s not a move that you
seem to be doing yourself. Rather, it’s the
mainstream that seems to be embracing
you, I mean you have interviews in GQ,
Vogue Italia, showcases on Conan. How do
you feel about that? You’re clearly becoming
the darling of the airwaves.
It’s just because those people are just slower
than the public. You know, it’s the same in politics
for example. Finally yesterday, there’s no
discrimination about homosexuality in the
army anymore. It’s just the government always
needs an extra 10 years just to catch up. It’s the
same with people like GQ. They would never
say “Oh, I saw a band last night in a bar, let’s do
a story!” They wait until you’re becoming relevant.
The only reason that the mainstream is
catching on is because they’re the slowest ones.
Probably the final person to catch on would be
like hum… Obama or something!
ˆ
If Pitchfork had given us
a bad support on this album
it wouldn’t have made a
difference. The tour was
already booked before this.
We don’t go and say like:
‘ Hey, look at the score, will
you give us a show? ’
ˇ
That’d be nice…
Yeah, that’s the goal! They’ll give me a call
and say: “I’ve listened to your album and it’s
really good!”
You recently stated in an interview that
“The album should go down in history as
an important album. I hope people realise
that. Whether they do or not, they should
at least not write it off as music that is
trying to sound a certain way.”
Yeah, you know, I believe that this is a great
album, I believe that the music is great and that
we did a good job making it. We took huge steps
up from the first album to the EP to this record. It
would have been really easy for us to spend three
or four thousand dollars and make another one
of those and just put it out and stick to what we
know, but we invested much more money into
this new record. That’s the whole thing, even
right now, on our tour, everybody got engaged to
go on the road and they get paid a lot of money.
And you know, the easy thing to do would have
been: keep the same plan up from the beginning,
keep the money just low, keep going on cheap
tours, and rack up some money for ourselves.
You know, when you look at it, it looks like a
small business or something: every time we get
extra money we put it straight back into our business
and we make a better thing for the people
involved. I have a lot of pride about what we’re
doing because for me it’s the first time in my life
where I’m doing something and I’m basically a
part of a company. I’m making decisions. I’d
like for people to understand that this is a very
serious effort and that there is a lot of work going
on. People like to label you as a certain thing and
to me it’s frustrating because here I am 32 years
old trying to run a company, make a career out of
this and make the best albums possible.
You’ve spent some time in Belgium. Can
you tell me how you ended up here, where
you lived, any memories you kept, things
you remember about the place?
Yeah I spent like six months there! I was
living in France at the time and my mom had a
new boyfriend and I wasn’t getting along with
him and that was becoming… you know young
teen (I was like 13 years old, or maybe 12) and
I was being rebellious. So there was this place
where they wanted to send me away so I could
maybe be mature or something and to be totally
honest with you I don’t really know what city it
was, I don’t remember anything about where I
was. I remember that it was a very nice place and I
liked it a lot. We had goats roaming around freely.
Do you remember if you were in the French
speaking part or in the Flemish speaking part?
I was speaking French, for sure.
So you went with your mom to Belgium?
No, I was by myself. I do know one detail,
which is that they used to take all the children
together and there were a lot of children and
we’d go sing in the docks of Antwerp – where
there are all the big ferry boats from everywhere
around the world – and we’d go on the
boat and sing “Stille naaacht, tralala naaacht”…
Really?
I’m serious!
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To the sailors?!
Yeah! And then we would sell some cassette
tapes of us singing. And that’s how we would
make some money. But it was like a program
for kids who were kind of having a hard time
growing up. You’d go there and learn how to sing
Christmas carols and take care of goats and play
outside. I don’t know if that helped me or not.
But I remember I liked Belgium a lot.