For this album, you’re obviously singing a lot more than rapping. What’s it like for you to sing versus for you to rap?
You know, they’re the same thing really. It’s a little different, obviously, but it’s not black and white, there’s a gray area. But sometimes, for a live show, depending on the night it might be easier to do the more rap-type songs, if my voice is weak or something, worn-out.
Do you think WHY? is becoming, as a band, more and more of a cohesive unit as the albums have been going on? Especially from Elephant Eyelash to Alopecia to Eskimo Snow, it seems like everything’s getting tighter.
I don’t know. Each album’s different, it has its own sound and feeling. Yeah, they’re more sparse as time has gone on, we’ve sort of whittled things down a little bit. Elephant Eyelash and Oaklandazulasylum as well were sort of any idea goes kind of albums, where they’re more additive to solve the problem of the production of the songs you keep adding stuff, whereas with these last two albums it was more subtractive, where they’re boiled down more or less to they’re most important elements. And you know, hopefully nothing is there that is extraneous or whatever.
I know right now you guys have this ten-part Vimeo series going on. Where did the idea for that come from, how did that start?
The camera crew started following us around basically since Alopecia came out, they would come out and film me in California and they went a couple times up to Seattle. But yeah, I don’t know, they just follow me around and go through my life with me and at some point, you just kind of forget that they’re there. Looking back at it, actually watching them has been embarrassing.
Any chance of you and Andrew Broder, who’s touring with you right now, putting out another album as Hymie’s Basement?
I don’t know. Not immediately something we’re gonna do right now, because obviously we’ll be touring for the next year and then... I don’t know. It’s possible, one day.
How does playing in a duo like Hymie’s Basement compare to being in WHY?, which is a little less intimate, it seems like. How do the two outfits, and outfits like cLOUDDEAD too, compare to each other?
Well, yeah it is different. WHY?’s a five-piece at this point, and it is different. It’s full-on, everyone can do a little less generally, or at least I do less. There is a dynamic with a three-piece, there’s a dynamic with a two-piece, each of them has their own plusses and minuses.
With everything I’ve been reading about you guys after Eskimo Snow came out, it sounds like the new talking point that everybody feels like they need to hit is how prolific you are, because Eskimo Snow followed up Alopecia pretty quickly. Do you feel like you’re a prolific artist?
I work a lot, I don’t think that means I’m necessarily prolific. I’m not a fast worker by any means, I’m very slow.
What’s your songwriting process like?
Well, I’m given the songs by, there’s like a writer’s group that comes through BMI that the label pays for, so they basically give us a pool of songs to choose from, 50 or 60 generally for an album, and then we pick the ones that we feel best represent us, and then go from there, sort of. Then we speak to the producer’s group and see what they can do for us. So yeah, it’s really just a lot of management, it’s a lot of paperwork and stuff like that. I mean, if you really want to get down to the nitty gritty, I’m more of a paper-pusher.
Alright. Have you heard the Karl Blau cover of “This Blackest Purse?”
I did hear that, yeah.
What did you think of that? Because it’s so much different than your version.
Yeah, it’s super lo-fi (laughs). I love his stuff. I think I like it. It’s pretty different, yeah.
So, having a band with your brother in it, what is that like? Because it seems like that can affect a lot of bands greatly.
Umm... it’s cool, I mean, he’s adopted, so, I don’t know, there’s never been too much weirdness or competition because it’s always been understood that the birthright is mine and stuff like that. But it’s nice to have him in tow, I’ve known him since I was like 8 years old, so it’s neat to have somebody you’re pretty close to.
I gotcha. I guess this goes back to Alopecia, but I just watched the video for “A Sky for Shoeing Horses Under” again, which I hadn’t seen in a while, and it reminded me of how amazing that video is. Do you remember how you guys got the idea to do that, with the whole band inside and people resisting an alien attack, and it’s all done in one shot and everything. How did that come about?
That was all the director Ben Barnes, it was all his thing. When we got to his house where we shot it, he showed us a demo of the video that was exactly what we were gonna do except he was playing every single part. So he had mapped it all out, it was all him, it was all Ben Barnes.
Was that fun to do, was that tough to do? Because the whole it being one shot makes it seem like it would be really tough to make.
Yeah I can’t say it was like, an entertaining thing to do, it took many many hours of doing it over and over again before we got the shot that was actually used. But we were glad to do it, anything for a cool piece of art, I think. A day’s worth of work for us, which is not a big deal. So yeah, it was great.
And it compares nicely with the “Song of the Sad Assassin” video, where you get to see yourself animated, which is probably interested.
(Laughs) Yeah, yeah. I think he got me way wrong though, dude.
WHY? plays at the Cat's Cradle Oct. 10.