Sturgill Simpson Trades Psychedelics for the Sea on 'A Sailor's Guide to Earth'

In the midst of a cultural renaissance, country music is in as good a spot as any genre (if not more so). At this point, we’ve all been beaten over the head of how incomparable Chris Stapleton is (which realistically is still an disservice to the man), how cool it is that Margo Price was christened Jack White’s prodigal country daughter, and how “bro-country” has finally succumbed to its own interminable existence.

That’s all well and good, but for country music’s resurgence to extend its tenure and avoid falling out of the zeitgeist, the genre needs an indomitable force of innovation, conceptualism, and metamorphosis. Enter Sturgill Simpson - whose 2014 sophomore effort Metamodern Sounds in Country Music was effectively a Waylon Jennings record on six tabs of acid – the country artist most poised to venture out into the furthest weird reaches of country music’s sonic dimensions.

Simpson’s first record, High Top Mountain, was his foray into the crowded country scene, an effort that was arguably released before its time. Metamodern Sounds’ release saw Simpson (with the help of Dave Cobb, country music’s present day King Midas) shove a bag full of mushrooms down the throat of country music, creating a psychedelic haze of country wax poetics and a sound wave of intergalactic exploration. The record was a bonafide success, as Simpson saw himself assume the mantle of country music’s resident “outlaw,” spitting in the face of conformity all the while showing the utmost reverence toward those that preceded him in the genre.   

As Simpson’s near two year long tour run in support of Metamodern Sounds came to a close, he and his wife experienced the birth of their first child, and Simpson gained perspective on his newfound life as country music renegade and newly minted father. Viewing life through a different lens – one that featured the dependency of a now full-fledged family – Simpson’s third record maintained Simpson’s continual sonic exploration, this time taking to the sea in A Sailor’s Guide to Earth.

In short, the record is one of the (at least to my knowledge) few concept albums in country music – if not the best – as A Sailor’s Guide to Earth sees Simpson navigate his new life as a father and touring musician in the form of a Motown/R&B/country amalgamation of the finest ilk. Furthermore, the majority of the album is dedicated solely to Simpson’s wife and son, as the former Navy man navigates his life on the road and at home, creating an impassioned narrative of love and trepidation atop the bounding mains of existence.

"In Bloom" off Sturgill's new album - A Sailor's Guide To Earth // Available Now Download Now - http://smarturl.it/DownloadSturgill Stream Now - http://smarturl.it/StreamSturgill Limited Edition "A Sailor's Guide To Earth" Bundles Available here: http://atlr.ec/ASGTED2CYT "In Bloom" Official Music Video Directed By: Matt Mahurin Follow Sturgill Simpson https://www.facebook.com/sturgillsimp... http://www.twitter.com/SturgillSimpson https://www.instagram.com/sturgillsim... https://soundcloud.com/high-top-mountain

A Sailor’s Guide to Earth wastes no time establishing itself as a distinctly different Sturgill Simpson record in both theme and scope, as “Welcome to Earth (Pollywog)” sees Simpson come down from the interdimensional travels of Metamodern Sounds and settle (not by much) down as a loving ode to his newborn son – “Hello my son / Welcome to Earth." The track features emotional conviction that pulls at the heart strings of the listener almost instantly – “I’ve been told you measure a man by how much he loves” – as he speaks directly to his son – “You may not be my last / But you’ll always be my first” – utilizing the sea-faring metaphors as the analogue to his life on the road in support of his music. The song rips into a Motown groove that was unbeknownst to Simpson’s music prior to A Sailor’s Guide to Earth. “Breakers Roar” reneges the initial tonal promises from Metamodern Sounds, as Simspon sticks to soft acoustic picking over orchestral strings and slide guitar imitating the cries of a far off whale, all before cajoling the listener into a roundabout boogie jumping right into “Keep It Between the Lines;” Simpson’s do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do life instructional. The track incorporates heavy brass horns and chorus backing vocals that seem alien to Simpson’s music on paper, but on the actual record, good gracious its incredible. If anything, A Sailor’s Guide to Earth is beginning to feel like Simpson’s genre bending answer to his disco-country predecessor Conway Twitty’s varietal discography.

At the beginning of the album’s middle third, “Sea Stories” see Simpson return to the sweet psychedelic country rock as he revisits his time spent stationed in Japan as a Unite States naval man. Ever the humble man, Simpson pretty much recounts his entire life to date in the span of a three minute and seventeen second country song that features lyrics like ‘From Kawasaki to Ebisu/Yokosuka, Yokohama, Shinjuku…’ the track is easily one of the most amusing features on the record.

Following “Sea Stories” comes one of Sturgill Simpson’s finest moments – his magnificent cover of Nirvana’s “In Bloom.” Simpson is a deceptively – or in current terms, “low key” – profound cover artist, as Metamodern Sounds saw him cover When in Rome’s 80s hit, “The Promise,” one of the finest covers of the decade, if not the new Millennium. Anyway, “In Bloom” sees Simpson rework the brooding Cobain piece into a convergence of smooth soul and cooing country, before the track explodes into a crescendo of wailing horns and pedal steel. As Simpson returns to his original tracks – though the “In Bloom” cover is about as original as a cover can get – the album’s single “Brace for Impact (Live a Little)” rounds out the heavy hitting middle portion of A Sailor’s Guide To Earth.

The closing third of A Sailor’s Guide to Earth sees Simpson turn to his more sensitive side, with tracks like “All Around You,” acting as Simpson’s bellowing soul ballad while saxophones and brass instruments run wild in the songs latter half, rounding out Simpson’s exceptional sonic exploration of soul and country music. “Oh Sarah,” the album’s penultimate track, as well as the record’s sweetest. While most of the album had been directed to Simpson’s son, “Oh Sarah” is a loving promise to Sturgill’s wife – as an assurance that the continued life on the road is bound to place a modicum of strain upon their family’s life, but it will never create anything detrimental. After creating a warm and loving lull in the album’s final third, “Call to Arms” sees Simpson step onto dry land with a country-soul jam that celebrates the fullest combination of Motown/gospel/country/soul in a jam that would make Charlie Daniels blush.

With A Sailor’s Guide to Earth completed and circulating throughout the airwaves and streams of online musical content, it rests in choppier waters than most of Simpson’s other “classically” country compatriots. Still lauded as a country artist (and justifiably so), Simpson has truly separated himself from the country renaissance that he helped usher into the musical zeitgeist. Instead, Simpson has elevated himself from pioneer to innovator, within multiple genres that opens up the musical floodgates for his next project. Its an interesting notion that an artist of Sturgill Simpson’s ilk may have put out the year’s finest country album (not to mention one of the best in general) on a record that has more unbridled satin soul than country twang. 

Sylvan Esso's Nick Sanborn on Solo Project Made of Oak, "The Triangle," and Leaving Breadcrumbs

It wouldn't be off base to say that Nick Sanborn is best known as one half of the euphonious brain trust that is Sylvan Esso, but being Sylvan Esso's chief instrumentalist to Amelia Meath's head lyricist is not indicative of Sanborn's entire body of work. He's been an active constituent of the vaunted North Carolina "Triangle" for going on half a decade now, having aligned with acts like Megafaun as well as continuing to expand his long standing solo project, Made of Oak.

Wholly thoughtful and incredibly amiable, Sanborn spoke with Transverso about Made of Oak's 2015 debut EP, Penumbra, the various perspectives an act like Made of Oak allows him to explore, and the wellspring of musical collaboration found in Durham and the surrounding North Carolina area. 

From debut EP 'Penumbra' out now Purchase on iTunes: http://smarturl.it/PenumbraiT Made of Oak Webstore: http://www.madeofoak.com/store.php LP/CD: http://smarturl.it/PenumbraLPCD + Directed, shot, and edited by Adam Heathcott and Sara Padgett Heathcott, Endless Endless. http://endlessendless.com + Sculpture by Kristof Wickman + Special thanks to Kristof Wickman, Joe Zoller, Stella Wingfield Cook, and Donna Orr.

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TRANSVERSO: You just played in Bloomington, how was that?

SANBORN: Surprisingly great, considering I’ve never been there before with this project, and it was a Wednesday, and it was raining. [Laughs] It was great. It was kind of serendipitous coincidence that happened that my friend, Nate Brener’s band, Naytronix, happened to be in town on tour. We were crossing paths like ships in the night, and he ended up being able to open the show, so it turned what could have been a cold, weird night into a deep, old friends hang. We all went back to his mom’s house afterwards [Laughs], it was great. It was really, really cool.

So what are your thoughts going into the Spring/Summer tour? It sounds like Bloomington was a pretty solid start.

Oh yeah, it's great. With this project, the stakes are so low, and the people who tend to come to the shows have an extremely open mind about what they’re expecting or not expecting – so what the most exciting part to me is about these shows is that they feel very free and open, and can kind of go anywhere. That’s been the main theme for me, and also I’m just back to playing the venues I’m used to. Sylvan [Esso]’s been doing great, and I’m really grateful for that – that’s obviously been a huge change in my life. You know, I’ve toured clubs like the Bishop [in Bloomington, IN] last night for twelve years before any of that happened. This is like, I’m back in the shitty greenroom, where I belong.

Is that a familiar nostalgia?

Well it's more that it feels like my wheelhouse. These are kind of the clubs that I’ve always played in, and you know the last two years have been awesome, playing for way more people, but that’s the aberration – that’s the outlier. Shows like last night are more of the norm for me. So it's kind of good to be back to that.

Being in a more familiar territory, do you feel as if you approach your Made of Oak shows differently from your other projects? Does it make it feel any more organic?

No, not really. I think that just the energy of a smaller club is way different from a bigger club. They’re two totally different types of show. I think if I was playing the exact same set that I played last night that was like, ten times larger, it would feel way different, and I would react different, and I would play different stuff. You kind of just go with the energy that the crowd has, and I think in a smaller room there’s a really wonderful, intimate, energetic thing that happens when you can look up, and I can make eye contact with every single person that came to the show. It's just a different thing. You feel like you’re a part of the crowd. I guess that’s the biggest difference, I feel like when I’m in a small club, there’s no big difference between the performer and the audience, whereas the moment it gets bigger there’s this moment, when it reaches this critical mass where when the audience hits it, they feel like one giant person, you know? [Laughs] You’re kind of trying to make an individual connection, but its just kind of this mass of people, and it's either going well or its going terribly, and that’s kind of your litmus. That’s the biggest difference. I’m not sure if that makes a change in how I’d approach putting the set together, but I think energetically is where you really feel it.

I would imagine with your EP, Penumbra, already being more sonically dense, a smaller space might be a little easier to embody the record’s spirit.

Yeah. [Pauses] I think that… well, you know what? I think its tough to say. I think this material feels a lot more niche to me, definitely. So in that way its makes the most sense in a small room. But yeah, you might be right, there’s kind of a lot going on, so the minute it does get bigger you might lose something. I’m not sure though. Its tough to say, having never done it.

So what have the months following Penumbra’s release looked like for you? Were you pleased with its reception? Do you even bother with stuff like that?

Yeah? Um. Yeah, “question mark.” I guess. [Laughs] I try to not read anyone who writes anything about it, or who writes about any music made by me. Because, there’s no good that can come of that, you either get your ego stroked and then you become addicted to having your ego stroked, or somebody doesn’t get it and tells you you’re terrible, then the part inside you that tells you, “You’re terrible,” all the time is like, “See! You’re terrible!” So there’s no good that could possibly come of that.

What about with your live shows?

The shows have been great! We did a tour kind of right after it came out, and we went on tour with this band Tushka. And with Tushka, the coolest part of the tour was my buddies – Phil and Will – only put out one song out and they just put out one video, and I had just released an eighteen minute EP. So nobody coming to the show where you usually do forty-five minutes, they all know that they can’t expect… They’re going to hear a ton of stuff that they’ve never heard. Like everyone knows that going in. So that just made this great environment where the shows, both sets every night, felt like they could go anywhere. That has been a really cool part of the reception, I think. The people that are into it seem like they want to come and listen, and figure out what’s happening, and hear something they haven’t heard before. So no one’s waiting to hear “some hit,” its like what track is even playing is beside the point. So I think that’s my favorite thing, that that crowd exists.

There are some particularly unique song titles for Penumbra, or at least from an outsider’s perspective – I’m sure for you they make total sense.

Well that’s kind of the nice of being an instrumental artist, I’m not using lyrics, but I still feel like I wrote something that’s from a very specific time in my life. So you kind of leave these breadcrumbs that make sense to you. I just love it when you can imbue that kind of material with intent. Like when you look at something and think, “Oh, this is an intentional choice. This person chose these things. Why did they do that?” I love that moment, where as an audience member, you have to ask yourself why something happens, because whether you come to what the artist thought, it gives you this kind of structure to hang your own story on. Does that make sense?

Absolutely. I know that "penumbra" means "the outer region of a shadow being cast..."

Dude! You are the first person who interviewed me that’s looked up what it meant. That is awesome!

Well it sounds like you’re trying to have some fun with the language of the titles because there are no lyrics. So it almost seems like you’re presenting an over-arching theme without having to spoon-feed it to listeners.

Yeah, well that’s another thing, I think there’s this kind of teeter-totter of “overtness.” I was reading this negative review of a season of Mad Men – I’m so sorry, I’m going to tangent you out here.

No need to apologize, it’s a great show.

[Laughs] Perfect. So I think it was about season five, and the reviewer’s problem was that the metaphors were too “on the nose.” That was the season where one episode there was a toothache, and [the reviewer felt] like it was too surface, and that it didn’t take much thinking to figure out what they were trying to do. Where as before in the show, you had to really think about what questions it was making you ask, and you had to suss out the meaning of each shot, even. And then [the reviewer] compared that problem with when you hear a joke, which is, the thing that makes a joke funny to us is that our brain has to kind of “jump the gap.” Its when you make the connection, which is why when you explain a joke to somebody, it isn’t funny, because of the fact their brain didn’t do that. So learning-wise, we only ever learn the lessons when we actually have to make the leap ourselves. Like that’s the only reason that actually happens. Its like when you’re a kid and you do dumb shit over and over and over again, and your parents tell you you shouldn’t be doing this, but you have to screw it up to actually grow up and learn the lesson, you know what I mean? [Laughs] So I think about that a lot with music; you could really spell it out for somebody, but then it's not interesting. Its like you rob the listener of the opportunity to make their own connections and learn their own lessons, and relate it to something. You’re taking that really important part of interacting with a piece of art away from them. So I think about that a lot – how can you present them with enough proof of content, and enough of those “breadcrumbs.” Its kind of like this promise you make to the listener, like “I put something here. You aren’t wasting your time. Its here. You might find it, or you might find something else. You can trust me.” I think about that a lot – that line of making it too opaque or too clear, which is kind of an interesting tightrope you can walk there.

That’s fantastic. So you’re basically utilizing your experience to allow the listener to heighten their own.

 Right. Well I’m not much of a lyricist, and I don’t really love singing on records. [Laughs] So I have one opportunity to do the thing a lyricist would do, kind of. I have that tiny bit of real estate to kind of give [the listener] a hint of context.

Speaking of lyrics on a Made of Oak track – what can you tell me about your collaboration with Well$ and Professor Toon on the “Side Rides” remix?

That all just came about from doing that [“Side Rides”] video. I had that concept for that video, and kind of talked through my idea of what I wanted it to feel like, and they were both way into it. I just thought when we shot it, that they were going to come and freestyle, because for the music video, we wouldn’t actually hear it. But both of them showed up to the shoot with written verses, like they wanted to be doing the same thing in every spot, and they were just super pro about it. So then over the course of that two-day shoot, me and all of the other people there just kind of got obsessed with the idea of eventually releasing a totally different version of the song that would showcase them instead of showcasing the track. It just took us forever to actually do it. It was interesting, I think when the video came out, there was this misunderstanding that I had made a decision to mute the vocals or something, which was a real bummer to me. It just missed the point really heavily, and I just thought “Oh, bummer.” But when it came out, everyone was like “Oh cool, where’s the vocals?” Which was ironically the initial, kind of snotty joke of an idea that I had - a reference of how people think of instrumental music. It kind of weirdly up like the snake ate its tail [Laughs], because the irony was everyone was writing about – at least everyone who took that angle on it – “how interesting” or “how stupid, he muted the vocals,” but the thing was, we didn’t even have the vocals recorded. That wasn’t even a thought, until after we actually made the video. [Laughs] So yeah, it took like months for us to get it done, because its three really busy dudes’ schedules; we’re all playing all the time. But yeah, it was great when it finally came together.

Do you like being able to collaborate with other artists from “The Triangle” in North Carolina, and kind of help maintain a healthy music scene out of the area?

Oh absolutely! That’s like one of the first things that drew me to the area in the first place. That’s actually like the main thing that drew me to [Durham, NC], because I moved there four years ago to play with this band, Megafaun. So it was like a no-brainer to move there, because the music scene is so diverse and rich, you can do almost anything and people will show up and pay to see it. So the level and the volume of talent there is, its like this weird secret; [Laughs] it's crazy. But yeah, the hip-hop scene is nuts there right now, like Well$ and Professor Toon are obviously two of my favorites, but there’s like so many young dudes coming up that are really cool. This dude Ace Henderson just put out an amazing mixtape, they’re all over the place. And then there’s this other cool thing that’s started popping up is bedroom producers have started to emerge. I think that making electronic music has kind of made other people be like, “Oh, I’m not the only one that does this here. I can show up at stuff,” so that scene has gotten really cool. It's all the same group of 200 people, so if there’s constant intermingling, then everybody is really excited to work with everybody else, but it makes for a lot of weird output.

It's a cool, otherworldly collaboration, it sounds like.

Yeah, that’s the thing, I think especially in hip-hop, how that scene works is either by total chance or “Hey, why don’t you send this guy a packet of like twenty beats;” one is happenstance and the other is kind of depressing. [Laughs] That’s the cool thing about The Triangle, you’re around everyone all the time where legitimate collaborations happen, and you can work together and you can take the time to make something cool, which sounds like a low bar, but it actually doesn’t happen. So its only in places like that - well there are crews and scenes that are really good about that - but its cool to see it in action. To take something further than just sending a guy your beat. Its nice to really make something together, it's really cool.

So do you think that microcosm within The Triangle, and more specifically, Durham could be viewed as the “catalyst” for some of the area’s civic growth? Do you think it has a direct impact on the proverbial, “revitalization” of Durham?  

Air quotes revitalization is the perfect way to put that. [Laughs] It's tough right now, there’s a lot of tension right now, and I think the correlation between the creative scene of people and developers is that developers tend to capitalize on places that are very rich in creative people. It's kind of been the thing since the dawn of real estate development [Laughs] more or less. So that’s the only real correlation I see there – any time a place has cool shit going on, people tend to build condos there. But, I think culturally, the interesting thing is that there’s just a lot more people in the area, and that means inherently, there’s a lot more creative people, or people who want to make music, or go to shows. So that has been really great and welcomed, and it’s a crazy scene of a lot of very different kinds of people there, and that makes for some really awesome chance happenings. But yeah, I’m not sure I’d credit it or correlate them more than that. I think we could have a whole other conversation about the successes and failures of the Durham City Council [Laughs], whether that went right and where its going wrong. And again, its tough for me to even talk about, I mean I’m a white guy in my thirties whose only lived there for four years. I’m not sure its really my thing to talk about.

I was just curious. I had noticed some similarities in the developmental struggles amongst fast growing secondary markets like Durham or Nashville in that regard.

Oh absolutely. I mean, it's not just a “your city versus out city” thing. It’s a ton of places right now, and its all at so many different level. In Durham right now, they’re trying to make it a startup town, like enticing startups to move here and stuff. So I think the biggest conversation I see, at least in regard to other cities that have been startup targeted as startup hubs is “Well how do we not make it turn into San Francisco?” It's everywhere, man.

What has Made of Oak allowed you to do that past and other projects – The Rosebuds, Megafaun, Sylvan Esso – haven’t been able to? Or is it all focused on getting out and playing for people?

Well it's definitely that. Everything has the same end result, its “Let’s all do something or make something, let’s communicate something.” It's like “There’s so many of us and we’re all going to die, so let’s just try to connect for a second.” I think bands are all different because bands are all different groups of people, its just like a conversation over dinner – every conversation between two, to four, to ten people will have this different dynamic, so a different thing will come out of it. I think if you’re being honest as a band – like if you didn’t get together before you made music and said “Let’s make this kind of music,” which I think is a silly thing to do – if you’re doing that, every band feel totally different, and feel different when you play it, and feel different when you write it, and feel different to an audience member. So in that way, the nice part about the Made of Oak stuff, I don’t feel like there’s any potential for it to get fenced in to sounding any one way; its just however I’m feeling at that time in my life. So in that way, the biggest difference is both the burden and the freedom of not having to compromise or split the direction or inspiration with anybody else. But outside of that, that is both freeing and limiting. I think when I first started doing the shows, the band I had been in, Headlights, had broken up, and I was kind of in this zone of “I need to take control of my creative life,” I can’t be dependent upon someone else to write songs, to book a tour, and somebody else to do something. I just have to stop being a fucking baby and just do it. So really, that’s kind of the other big difference, unlike my other projects, this is the only one born out of a desire to grow up.

I was up at Eaux Claires this past summer, and I know you’re from Wisconsin, so I was just curious about how that experience was for you to play a festival like Eaux Claires, because it felt different from most other festivals in my mind.

Didn’t it though? It’s a little weird getting asked just about Eaux Claires, because I don’t want to come across as hyperbolic, but no joke, we talk about this all the time – that is the only festival I would recommend that a music fan go to. I’d recommend other musicians go to it. Every other festival I go to, and I have a great time working them, but at some point that weekend I thought “I can’t imagine how anyone would pay go to this,” [Laughs] which sounds terrible, but Eaux Claires is the one that genuinely feels like it’s a celebration of music. It feels like that’s actually what it is, in every way, playing it felt that way, being backstage felt that way, walking out in the crowd to watch the shows felt that way, everyone in the audience felt like that was their purpose. No one was trying to wear some crazy thing to get their photo on a fucking blog or something; it’s the opposite of all that other shit. I think out of that comes genuine no bullshit, no pretense moments, and collaboration, because that’s the only environment where that can happen and not feel forced. I did an improv set with Chris Rosneau there last time, just off the cuff. Like two days earlier, we were like, “Oh, we should do this, so let’s see if we can do it.” And now we’re coming back this year to do that as an actual thing. That would never happen at any other festival. Imagine going to the organizer of Coachella two days beforehand and being like “Hey, can me and another guy in another band do a noise set on this day at this time?” and them being okay with it. That just doesn’t happen.  And then [at Eaux Claires] they’re like, “Hey, that was great. You should come back and do that next year.” I’m excited about this year. I really hope it continues, because if it can stay – I hate to use the word “pure” – but if it can stay “pure,” and focused on its precision and not lose the plot, then it stands to become this incredibly important thing. 

Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros Eulogize Their Eponymous Leader on 'PersonA'

It seems PersonA is the end of the ephemeral Edward Sharpe as we’ve known him; just the cover alone implies that the all-father of New Millennium folk-pop, Alex Ebert, has chosen to end his warbling messianic stage sobriquet in martyrdom. During a conversation with Transverso preceding the album’s release, Ebert explained, "There was no character to begin with, so why not kill him? He never really was there. If anything, and at most, Edward Sharpe was a vehicle for me to get to slough off whatever I had become up until that point, and to get back to or sort of allow my pure self to come forth into sort of a clean slate." This reinvention is paralleled with a disillusionment with the impact particular whistle stomp clap laden tracks from his catalogue have made on the current music landscape; "As an artist that cares about moving things forward, it makes me not want to do that music anymore," he told us.

PersonA, ostensibly a sort of portmanteau of "persona" and "Person A," aligns almost narratively with Ebert’s desire to jettison himself from the moniker altogether, as the album acts as a revelatory eulogy for Edward Sharpe, with his vocals - and thus persona - clearer and more focused than usual along the way without the back-and-forth dynamism brought by former bandmate Jade Castrinos for the first time.

Within all of his musical endeavors, Ebert has remained inherently spiritual, with melodies ranging from gospel chorus odes to fear-of-god folk confessionals. PersonA leadoff “Hot Coals” intertwines both musical provinces, dancing from brooding folk ballad to bouncing gospel pop doo-wop as Ebert’s harsh “Get the fuck out my sight” ushers in distressed feelings of incendiary love turning into nothing more than memorable embers. One could argue that the “hot coals" could act as metaphorical introduction to Edward Sharpe’s musical exeunt, but whether or not that is the case remains unseen.

“Uncomfortable” elicits feelings of forced unease in order for Ebert to progress – “Uncomfortable / You got be uncomfortable” repeating throughout the track before shrieks and a piano crash bring it to a jarring close. Only the second song on PersonA, it’s seemingly the gospel confessional Ebert needs to atone for the constant that Edward Sharpe has inevitably become. “Somewhere” returns to Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros’ natural proclivities, as the “Here Comes the Sun”-esque folk picking tenderly prods lyrics of “She’s got a belly full of baby” and “Now we’ve come together and we’re wandering home.” For the usual cacophonous nature of The Magnetic Zeros, “Somewhere” is a softhearted, sort-of throwback to early Edward Sharpe love letters, but eschews the delightfully campy Jade days past with seemingly more honest anecdotes of current real-life relationship and child.

From the album PersonA - Available 4.15.16 LP & CD - smarturl.it/PersonAMerch iTunes - smarturl.it/PersonAiTunes Amazon: smarturl.it/personaPreOrder Spotify: smarturl.it/NoLoveSpotify Tidal: smarturl.it/NoLoveTidal Director - Olivia Wilde Production Company - Anonymous Content Executive Producers - Eric Stern, Nina Soriano Producer - Saul Germaine Producer - Barbara Burchfield Co-Executive Producer - Bryan Ling Directory of Photography / Camera Operator - Reed Morano, A.S.C.

It seems fitting that “No Love Like Yours” would be the heavy hitting cleanup track on PersonA, primarily because of the song’s well intentioned demands of “Show me love” throughout. Combined with its video, the track extends the proclamation to all who may have listened to Edward Sharpe as a sort of humble request to be happy with what Edward Sharpe became, and know that his purpose as been fully realized and fulfilled - as he willingly enters his own coffin. “Wake Up the Sun” almost feels like a Fela Kuti track mixed with big band jazz/rumba from Dave Brubeck, while the classic Ebert vocal warbling is in full force on the track, as it echoes familiar sentiments and features of Edward Sharpe songs passed. It's here he also further severs himself from the spirituality firmly wrought to his character: "I'm tired of Buddha / So bored of Abraham / I'm tired of Krishna / Feels good to say I am" he admits, soberingly stripping away yet another fabled layer.

“Free Stuff” is one of the sweetest sounding diss/beef/callout tracks in recent memory, as Ebert spends the majority of the song mocking the folk pop styling that his songs “Home” and “40 Day Dream” brought to the mainstream way back when, with Of Monsters and Men and The Lumineers even being mentioned by name during the track's live debut. Ebert has spoken out against the continual imitation that was flattering initially, but eventually wore upon his creative process, telling Transverso, "To my mind, it’s more palatable than eras of sort of alternative pop that I’ve lived through. But if something’s already happening and I’m just gonna reiterate that all I’m doing is participating in a commercial venture." For those introduced to the bearded figure via Volkswagen advertisements, be glad you got on board when you did.

PersonA then begins to build a head of steam with a capricious repurposing of hope into reverence for the Edward Sharpe of old, as “Let It Down” speaks of allowing “it” to turn into a memory, running as far and as fast as possible to escape the ensuing perpetuity of the act, before evolving into a rapturous tribal breakdown. “Perfect Time” is a loving recounting of past exploration for purpose in a world that is unequivocally fucked up, with Ebert literally asking for guidance from a higher power, questioning the need and timing for a love injection into the world paired with hopeful brass melodies. Despite - or in spite of - rampant misfortune in the world, the hippie archetype rears its head again; it's always time for love. As he sat on the edge of stage during this song's first performance he mentioned resisting the artistic urge to be vague and "poetic," saying the subject at matter at hand deserved to be conveyed bluntly for a change. And that's exactly what you get.

As PersonA comes closer and closer to its end, songs like “Lullaby” feel increasingly comforted by the fact that the album is issuing Edward Sharpe’s death, juxtaposing it with the new beginnings of his three year old daughter. Thoughts of incredible struggle, immovable stubbornness, and painful education map the narrative for Ebert’s loving letter to his child, before “The Ballad of Yaya” presents the exuberant “end” of his PersonA with glowing affirmation: “The movie’s over / Lay that dirt on me.” The cinematic reference is an appropriate metaphor, alluding to Ebert’s extensive film scoring work in the bands off-seasons. Where other tracks on the LP only marginally felt like issuance of Edward Sharpe’s curtain call, “The Ballad of Yaya” is the culmination of his collective body of work, as it ends with a frenetic chorus and cheerful barrage of horns while Ebert sings of resurrection and not fearing death, only looking to the future. 

Read our interview with Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros here.

Gallant's Debut 'Ology' Is a Study Of His Diverse R&B Abilities

It's hard to believe that the ever pensive and introspected musical styling of Sufjan Stevens would some how be involved in launching the public facing career of a full blown R&B debut, but such is the case when it comes to Los Angeles/Columbia, MD transplant Gallant. Christopher Gallant, better known solely by his surname, supported Detroit’s favorite songwriting son on Stevens’ Carrie & Lowell tour in 2015, which featured the most Snapchat-able moment of Stevens’ career – a collaborative cover of Drake’s “Hotline Bling,” with Stevens and Gallant exchanging verses. The pairing of Gallant, a slick dancing, falsetto pitched R&B singer as Stevens’ opener felt oddly appropriate, mostly due to Gallant’s vivacious stage presence, prohibiting anyone in attendance to question his right to the opening slot.

Cross-genre pollination can work to an artist’s benefit or detriment, and in the case of Gallant, it's safe to assume that his time spent on the road with Stevens paid off in spades. Gallant’s long overdue debut record, Ology, recalls the most beloved R&B truisms while invigorating the overall landscape for a cornerstone genre that grown predominantly stagnant. The new school of R&B features futuristic samples warped through auto tune and Serato, something uniformly absent from the crisp organic sounds of Gallant’s sound. Furthermore, the lyricism in Ology is distinctly different from the coke-lined confessions of The Weeknd or trap music lyrical passiveness of Bryson Tiller; Gallant opts for the more vivid and warmer waters than his subdued contemporaries. In short, Ology is the R&B album no one knew they were missing.

Gallant has the honey-resin vocal tendencies that feel like melodic allusions to Usher and MJ, but his avant-garde leaning intricacies help him avoid any direct creative connections. Ology opens with single note echoes as they usher in a fever dream entry into the album’s first full length track, “Talking to Myself,” which wastes no time showcasing Gallant’s exceptional falsetto range amongst a shifting soundscape of R&B 808s, dubstep leaning drops, and coarse baritone saxophone; where Gallant’s melodies are wholly R&B, his instrumentals are other-worldly. “Shotgun” is an early album contender for best track of the record, as it stretches the genre confines of soul and R&B in a more modern mold. Gallant’s lyricism is a refreshing apologia from the cynicism of other contemporary R&B artists – “my God forsaken weakened pulse / I knew I have to admit this / I never was a force to be reckoned” – who would rather imbue stubborn self-righteousness. “Bourbon” is a pop R&B throwback with an injection of space age mysticism, harkening back to late '90s and early 2000s shimmery pop R&B tracks from the likes of Boyz II Men and Anthony Maxwell.

Gallant’s Ology presents an interesting movement within R&B, where he and fellow R&B disciples like Daniel Caesar further the genre bounds with gospel-esque runs mixed with heavy pop R&B production. Where Caesar straddles the line of Gallant and Bryson Tiller, Gallant operates in a realm of Usher-esque confidence that is propelled by his vocal chops. Songs like “Bone + Tissue” and “Weight in Gold” are Gallant’s vocal breakouts in the album’s first half, as if his capabilities (which are indeed more than capable) were so immense that he could no longer take holding such epic runs for later in the album.

As the record continues into its latter portion, the songs begin to explore other sonic realms, as “Episodes” flirts with surf rock, glam rock and '80s synthpop top-lined with effusive lyrical questioning of a relationship gone awry. Following “Episodes” comes “Miyazaki” – presumably named after the famed Studio Ghibli animator – a proverbial 180 from its predecessor, as a cool jazz rhythm allows Gallant to make short vocal runs before hopping into a The-Dream-esque vocal whisper. The lyrics of “Miyazaki” aren’t the most inspired – “If you want, I can make your body tremble” – but it somehow makes the song feel like an earnest mid-90s R&B panty-dropping ballad. “Miyazaki” fades into “Counting,” one of those obligatory R&B love lost nostalgia trips, but the track is revamped with light afro-beats over inspired lyrical vignettes – “I lost my pride in the crater / In ancient coal mines” – that suggest a truly thoughtful writer.

As Ology progresses, the vocal analogue for Gallant becomes more and more apparent – Gallant sounds startlingly similar to a young Seal that happens to have more vocal range and better taste is instrumentation. “Jupiter” kind of moves like a galaxical version of a Seal song, but Gallant deftly maintains his unique falsetto timbre as Moogs and shimmery percussion glimmer and glow. With Ology’s end in sight, we see the album’s first feature artist – new age hip-hop and R&B collaborator extraordinaire, Jhene Aiko - on “Skipping Stones.” It’s a nice R&B noir that sees light production, clean sounding drums and guitar, along with Motown adjacent horns that allow for Gallant to make some of his most impressive vocal arrangements. Aiko’s unique and affectation-less voice make for a nice addition on the duet portions of the track, but when she leads into her feature, the hip-hop singer as a lounge singer comes off as a bit of a stretch. Nevertheless, “Skipping Stones” is a true standout on the album, and a nice penultimate track. Ology closes with its most hopeful track, “Chandra,” where we hear Gallant opine, "Maybe there’s a home behind these eyes," which make for sweet sentiments within an emotionally confounding song that ranges from hope, to faith, to despondency, to attraction; all over a spacious orchestral arrangement.

Ology operates on a plane, which most debut records should aspire to achieve – it presents a cohesive sonic presence for Gallant, all the while allowing him to explore other musical pathways for future endeavors. Gallant is certainly not an avant-garde artist, but his willingness to consider other musical realms implies that his creative output could resemble something of a conceptually based artist. Gallant has entered an R&B arena that is already saturated by “new” and “groundbreaking” artists staking their claim to unforeseen R&B adaptations, but Gallant remains unfettered. His nouveau riche take on classic R&B is less of a gamble, and his diverse talent makes Gallant seems poised to experience a long standing career in and out of the genre. 

'Junk': Not as Bad as Its Name Implies, Still Not M83's Best

There’s been an unspoken trend in pop that’s seen the genre separate into two distinct factions: morose, trippy bedroom beats, or '80s synth-pop nostalgia. One is unchartered territory that allows for its adopters to act as the pioneers of the genre subversions, while the latter requires deft mimicry that Flock of Seagulls and Soft Cell probably wouldn’t be able to replicate. Nevertheless, the '80s revival throne is as ready and willing as ever to be assumed by some intrepid sonic soul, someone looking to create the next “Take on Me,” or produce the Millennial era’s answer to Tears for Fears’ Songs From the Big Chair. No one has managed to stake a substantial claim as heir apparent to synth pop sovereignty, but when pressed to identify a frontrunner, you’d be hard pressed to find a better candidate than Anthony Gonzalez and M83.

The French electronica pseudonym for Gonzalez and company, M83 has been in operation for over a decade and a half, as an outlier in the French house music scene. While most French DJs and techno artists fall under the Ed Banger Records or Thomas Bagalter (Daft Punk) umbrellas, Gonzalez has managed to chart a path unlinked to the two French powerhouses. For a decade and a half, Gonzalez has developed M83’s nebulous sound - equal parts cinematic, ambient, and non-derivative – but commercial success was never met until Gonzalez released his first double album Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming, in 2011. The album has garnered extensive critical praise, as far as being heralded as one of the best albums of the decade. M83’s supporting gigs of The Killers and Kings of Leon, along with Gonzalez’s transatlantic move to Los Angeles, heavily influenced the album, as the optimistic and dreamlike freneticism helped propel M83 into further unforeseen synthpop adulation.

While M83 had originally started out as a conceptual and indistinct vehicle for Gonzalez to imbue his perspectives upon the world, Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming’s unprecedented success unfortunately cemented M83 as a synthpop group (at least in the public’s eye). It certainly didn’t help that the album’s most popular track was the most synth heavy track on the tracklist - the infectiously melodic “Midnight City.” In that moment, M83’s original mission statement was enveloped in flames, stoked by label money grubbing and public perception, Gonzalez was more or less forced to expel the next M83 record under the expectation of it being yet another a synthpop leviathan.

When 2015 rolled around, word got out that Gonzalez was indeed working on a follow-up to Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming (the Oblivion soundtrack doesn’t count), and eventually, it was announced that M83 would release its much anticipated 7th full length release, Junk. As part of the mandatory album release press circuit, Gonzalez gave insight into the process of creating his long awaited follow-up, stating that Junk was inspired by the cheesy pop and electronic music of the 80s, along with “old-fashioned shows” like Punky Brewster and Who’s the Boss?. For most, that answer was sufficient and fun description, nowhere remotely close to being a red flag, but for others, the nostalgia tie-in felt to be a little too strong.

Junk is M83’s first album without longtime vocalist and keyboardist Morgan Kibby, having been replaced by Kaela Sinclair, via a crowd sourced audition process. Sinclair’s addition isn’t necessary pertinent to the album in particular, but the departure of a Kibby presented a foreboding omen for how the LP itself doesn’t feel like an M83 album, to the point of which it almost feels like a joke.

Junk opens with the album’s first single, “Do It, Try It,” keeping up with the punctuated titling preferences Gonzalez made apparent on Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming. The track is, well, fun? It does sound reminiscent of “Midnight City,” and the intermittent synth explosions feel akin to another Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming track, “Reunion,” but something just feels off. It feels like Gonzalez placing M83 at a weird intersection of Daft Punk meets Neon Indian meets Giorgio Moroder.

Granted, M83 is a concept driven band, so the notion of adopting features of some titans of synth pop – along with some not so (sorry, Neon Indian) – but for the first time on Junk, M83 begins to sound a little too derivative. The album’s second track takes an interesting turn as the track maintains an anthemic group vocal personality with a grating guitar riff that would sadden the likes of Niles Rodgers (whom it seems Gonzalez was looking to emulate). “Walkaway Blues,” feels jarringly moody, which could more or less be inferred from the cringe worthy song title, but the track itself manages to sound too busy and too vacant at the same time. Effectively, there’s no conceivable substance to the track that has so much going on, as if to mask the fact.

Cleanup track “Bibi the Dog” reveals itself as Junk’s first francophilic crossover, as the familiar M83 trend of French spoken word paces the track over a bass heavy rhythm. After the first three tracks, “Bibi the Dog,” almost seems too cool for Junk, up until the odd vocoder manipulations that break any of the song’s concentration. “Moon Crystal” is a track title that might raise hopes of casual M83 listeners looking for Junk’s “Midnight City,” but instead, “Moon Crystal” is one of the finest elevator music interludes I have heard on a French pop-nostalgia record (i.e. – the only one).

On “For the Kids" vocalist Susanne Sundfør croons in a mix of Cher and Yumi Zouma, asking “when will I see your face again?” It is clichéd to feature such an exhausted lyric, yes, but on a track titled “For the Kids,” at least it comes as a surprise. Luckily, the song features another children’s voiceover a la “Racounte-Moi Histoire,” which drapes an oddly somber tone over the track, a total misdirect by Gonzalez resulting in arguably the most finessed track on the album. Then, in an instant, the listener is torn from the first truly dream-like moment of the record and placed back in the unsettled platform that is most of Junk. “Solitude” sounds like Gonzalez’s attempt at creating a brooding James Bond theme, and “The Wizard” sounds like Gonzalez’s failed Frank Ocean demo, only further confusing the Junk landscape.

“Laser Gun” gives a sneaking suspicion of being a possible “Midnight City,” replicant, with similar percussive piano, and dream allusions of grandeur – “A place where dreams are played like comic strips” – but it just doesn’t feel quite as playful, it just feels tired. The track ends with a series of cheerleader chants that sound like a straight rip from any The Go! Team album ever. “Road Blaster,” “Tension,” and “Atlantique Sud” once again sound like M83 trying out parallel sounds of a listeners’ choice of piano poppers – though “Atlantique Sud” is a lovely French ballad, just not in a M83 fashion.

“Time Wind” is likely to be Junk’s second single, namely because of the track’s high profile feature, the world’s “coolest” scientologist, Beck. It's filled with lyrical cliché’s – “The harder you try makes it harder to let go / I know enough to know it's wrong” type stuff – and the instrumental backing is almost too open to bring in any substantial conviction to the track. Junk closes with a very quiet end that would have been foreign to most M83 albums, but at this point in Junk, anything goes. Overall, Junk feels like Gonzalez trying to maintain the concept driven heart of M83 all the while creating a record that would continue to satiate the less “cultured” musical palates that made Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming such an unprecedented success. Whether or not such a notion is true or not is beside the point, Junk is not a concept album; instead, it’s a stepping stone record for Gonzalez and M83 to navigate the choppy waters that are follow-up records. Junk simply buys time for Gonzalez to right the M83 ship and continues to shift and expand upon the band’s sonic membrane.

SBTRKT Steps Out of Familiar Sound On "SAVE YOURSELF"

If we’re still looking for nicknames to describe the musical year that’s been in 2016, might I suggest “The Year of the Surprise Release”? Granted, two of those “surprise” releases were at the hands of Doug from TIDAL (The Watch plug - hello Andy Greenwald and Chris Ryan), in which Rihanna and Kanye worked to assert their social over financial currency preferences. Then we saw Kendrick release untitled unmastered., a left field release that somehow operates on the level of To Pimp a Butterfly and somewhat dethroned Kanye from his throne atop the musical zeitgeist. Obviously, there’s a common denominator amongst all three of these giant releases (no, its not that they were all featured on The Life of Pablo, thought you’re headed in the right direction) – they’re all hip-hop based albums, even with Kanye’s constant assertions of TLOP being a gospel record.

Don’t worry, that’s all the Kanye talk this review has in store, but long-winded intro aside, there’s something to be said for hip-hop lending itself to being a disruptive force that would benefit from guerrilla style releases rather than the usual promotional cycle. Keeping with the recent slew of first quarter surprise releases, collaborator/producer extraordinaire SBTRKT has added his name to the heavy hitting list.

SBTRKT is a producer that I’ve come to become increasingly fond of with each subsequent release – not necessarily for his musical handiwork (though I do enjoy it), but rather his ability to get such fantastic features on his records. Early SBTRKT featured Jessie Ware, Little Dragon, and other releases included Raury and Ezra Koenig, making each of his records a stimulating exploration in collaborative coordination and SBTRKT’s understanding of musical cohesion.

Newest release to date, SAVE YOURSELF, is also his most cohesive – continuing the trend of steady and substantial maturity as a producer and creative mind. Outside of the aged development of the record, SAVE YOURSELF also touts itself as the most intrepid release by SBTRKT, with effectively one week’s worth of promotion leading up to the surprise release of the album.

Most of SBTRKT’s albums are at least ten tracks deep – the longest of his long-play efforts, Wonder Where We Land, featured a tracklist twenty-two songs long. SAVE YOURSELF is an interesting diversion from SBTRKT’s prior releases, as the record only contains nine tracks – making SAVE YOURSELF some strange convergence between an EP and LP. Furthermore, the production on SAVE YOURSELF is an interesting departure from the heavy-jungle rhythms of past – SAVE YOURSELF sounds like a heavy mixture of Chrome Sparks meets Madeon style house music. There are still the apparent hip-hop, R&B, and funk amalgamation that’s considered a SBTRKT touchstone, but SAVE YOURSELF also features more adventurous studies into trap music, as well.  

In terms of the house vs. trap music contention present in SAVE YOURSELF, the record opens with the aforementioned Madeon-esque bright beat driven opener “GEMINI,” reminiscent of a hopeful space odyssey as synth drive the song along with twinkling piano and tones with little to no percussion at all before fading into the album’s truly introductory track, “GOOD MORNING.” As mentioned before, SBTRKT is an artist/producer who is largely defined by those he collaborates with, and in terms of past collaborations, his collaboration with The-Dream on “GOOD MORNING” is arguably one of his best to date. The song focuses largely on celebrating the commitment to remaining steadfast in love; exploring marriage, child rearing ("Here’s to the baby that you’re going to carry”) and loyalty. It’s a stunningly mature and specific track for a SBTRKT song considering most of his songs in the past have focused largely on vague interactions or allegorical scenarios. The lyrical focus should be credited to The-Dream, who has found second life as a songwriter after his brief stint as a solo artist in the early to mid 2000s.

SAVE YOURSELF is SBTRKT’s best long-play release by a long shot – for starting out as a self-taught producer, the growth over three album’s time makes for an impressive coming of age record on SAVE YOURSELF. It also features SBTRKT’s finest collaboration with frequent collaborator, Sampha, on “TBD.” The track opens with 808 beats eerily reminiscent of Chrome Sparks as ominous guttural noises layered over chimey hits before Sampha begins to wail over the track at its first break. Having followed SBTRKT’s journey since his first EP, its safe to say that “TBD” sees SBTRKT and Sampha connecting in such a collaborative manner that the shifts from house to soul to trap in a single song issues no obstacle for the two.

Following Wonder Where We Land, it started to appear as though SBTRKT was an A&R gem that had begun to run out of creative juice, and a follow-up to the robust sophomore effort would need to see some substantial changes made, or at the least explored. SBTRKT had become an artist who needed to show some growth, with self-taught production only extended so far on the A&R plane. Luckily, SAVE YOURSELF allows SBTRKT to really grow and live within some unchartered territory that is so considerably divergent, its hard not to be impressed that such a gamble would be made in the first place. It almost feels as if SAVE YOURSELF was a representative manifesto of SBTRKT’s mindset in regard to continuing his young and verdant career.

Margo Price Catalyzes the Country Renaissance on 'Midwestern Farmer's Daughter'

If you don’t live in Nashville, then you may or may not be privy to the country music “resurgence” happening within the city. The critically condemned bro-country supposedly (I only say this because it's not like bro-country has been eradicated) has met its match at the hands of “throwback” country artists like Christ Stapleton, Sturgill Simpson, and for some reason, Jason Isbell - whose Americana stylings are lazily thrown into the mix.

That being said, there’s nothing wrong with bro-country if you enjoy a little dirt road chilling or whatever, that’s cool - sure, Florida Georgia Line sucks, but Luke Bryan seems like a pretty nice guy, and Sam Hunt is doing some cool stuff. Granted, I am grateful for some much-needed country-western escapism in music, but there in lies the problem – non-country connoisseurs consider it as nothing more than deft escapism that is slowly building into a trend.

While the emergence of Stapleton – a man who spent over a decade as the songwriting king of Nashville – and his recent run of headlining festival announcements has helped provide a more substantial stage for country artists of all creeds, there’s still a substantial underrepresentation of the number of exceptional female “throwback” country artists such as Kacey Musgraves, Nikki Lane, and Aubrie Sellers. Now, some of these kick-ass country queens have gotten their just share of media coverage – namely Musgraves – but their records still go largely unnoticed by the masses. I understand that music is a largely subjective field, and it would be unfair to try and shove artists down listeners’ throats, but artists like Musgraves and the criminally underrated Lane deserve to be heard.

My best guess as to why the new-school of old-school female country artists have yet to get their due recognition is the awful taste of country Taylor Swift and Big Machine left in the mouths, eyes, ears, and minds of listeners. We grew rightfully sick of her calculated precociousness, but an unfortunate casualty in the annoying nature of T-Swift’s modus operandi were the real women of country music. After years of genuinely talented artists being largely underappreciated, old school country music may have finally found its queen to properly rule along Stapleton –the hard-drinking, heavy-living country balladeer turned Jack White protégé – Ms. Margo Price.

Price is the first country artist signed to Jack White’s Third Man Records label, and such an ascription might finally be the big name endorsement necessary for a country artist to be taken seriously by the non-country masses. Chris Stapleton is a certainly a self-made man who has had his fair share of help along the way, but he received a “legitimizing” bump from his and Justin Timberlake’s duet performance of his song “Tennessee Whiskey” at the 2015 CMA Awards. Jack White is of course one of those musical entities that has achieved demigod status – a la JT – that offers a “can do no wrong” standing amongst many music aficionados and casuals alike.  It’s an unfortunate reality within country music – the political style endorsement needed to validate an artist’s cultural relevance – but such is the nature of those who are afraid to venture into new sonic realms (listeners, that is, not Stapleton or Price).

Order the "Hurtin' (On The Bottle)" 7" single with non-album B-Side "Desperate and Depressed" from Third Man Records HERE: http://thirdmanstore.com/margo-price-hurtin-on-the-bottle-7-vinyl "Hurtin' (on the Bottle)" is the first single from Margo Price & The Pricetags upcoming record MIDWEST FARMER'S DAUGHTER, coming March 2016 on Third Man Records.

Price has been picking up some considerable steam in relation to the release of her debut record, Midwestern Farmer’s Daughter, thanks in large part to a stellar SXSW run and a slew of fantastic television appearances – peek her killer Colbert debut – that have manifested into a fever pitch of anticipation for a consummate country record. In short, Midwestern Farmer’s Daughter is a country record through and through, but it features some new age sensibilities in regard to its lyricism and occasional non-country tonalities.

Midwestern Farmer’s Daughter opens with “Hands of Time,” a title that might possibly imply the much-ballyhooed nature of Price’s overall “sound,” a little bit Dolly Parton meets clichéd fictionalism, as the fun country sentiments of yesteryear – prosaic references of working hard at a young age, wanting to do right by her parents, busting her ass, etc. It seems a little too purposeful with its sentiments, almost as if to sucker in nostalgia addicts who bought into the heavy “throwback” country hype. It’s a lovely song, as a steady stream of percussive string hits and meandering banjo and steel guitar present a set lovely (but underutilized) scene.

Second track and one of two singles, “About to Find Out,” is a highlight. Price opines new age feminism through the lens of Southern cynicism, with some fantastic breaks for her stellar backing band to hit hard on licks and drive the unapologetic country girl vibe home. It's a sort of testosterone ridden woman’s rally cry to warn any man that might cross her. “Tennessee Song” feels like an obligatory addition to Midwestern Farmer’s Daughter - as she references both I-65 and 440 West – familiar country motifs that feel more like placeholders than personal signifiers. The chorus of “Let’s go back to Tennessee” feels like another latitudinarian sentiment that becomes a recurrent theme on the album; on one song Price might be a hard-nosed, kick-ass woman (when she’s at her best), while on the next song she’s love-addled and pining for her man (not quite her best).

Cleanup track “Since You Put Me Down” acts as an open letter to a former lover that left Price – or her unnamed narrator for the record, its never quite clear – wilting and dejected, as she “been trying to turn [her] broken heart to stone.” It’s a fun song that echoes the classic sentiments of Dolly or Emmylou Harris doing their damndest to stand upright while expressing petty sentiments with little remorse. “Since You Put Me Down,” is one of the smoothest tracks from a musical standpoint, as well, as the cool ballad turns into an ambling country manifesto for Price’s steel guitar player to display his immeasurable chops. Now that we’ve hit the meat of Midwestern Farmer’s Daughter, it seems fitting that Price would throw a curve ball in the form of “Four Years of Chances,” that resembles the strange country/disco era, as Price reminds the anonymous recipient of her ire that he’s been given more than enough time to atone for his shortcomings. Once again, the lyrics leave a little to be desired – mostly in regard to the modern woman with old school influences versus the modern woman trying to capitalize on nostalgia for a certain sound – which effectively means there’s not much lyrical depth, but damn does her band sound good. Like really good.

We pass the halfway mark of the record and we finally get our first taste of Price’s Nashville story – or at least a story revolving around Nashville – “This Town Gets Around.” Judging from the song title, one might assume that the title personification might provide an allegorical subtext for the track, but not quite. That being said, it’s one of Price’s best tracks in terms of tongue in cheek word play like “Well as the saying goes / It's not who you know / But it's who you blow that’ll put you in the show.” It's by far and away the most endearing track, mostly for the smack-you-in-the-ass-then-give-you-a-wink writing paired with a classic country swing.

The next few tracks are more or less familiar reimagining’s of earlier tracks – highlights being the preeminent country western swing sound of “Weekender,” a habitual drunk tanker’s manifesto which leads into the track that started the Margo-mania, “Hurtin’ On the Bottle,” an early favorite for best song title of 2016 – but also begins to highlight one of the troubling realities of Margo Price: a far too familiar sound that’s more reminiscent than fresh. It almost feels like country music as desperate for their Chris Stapleton female analogue, and Kacey Musgraves and Nikki Lane were far too well established to shoulder the burden, so the onus was ascribed to Price. Its an interesting consideration when you consider that Price and Stapleton’s stories are somewhat parallel – Stapleton spent years as a member of The Steeldrivers, a formidable, but middling country group; in congruence, Price fronted Buffalo Clover, but took off once she went solo.

Midwestern Farmer’s Daughter goes out with a whimper, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing – “World’s Greatest Lover” is a well meaning ballad that expresses the sweetest country love sentiments, but its all too formulaic to invigorate the records grand finale, “Desperate and Depressed.” A song title that might elicit an eye roll from those who are familiar with the most recurrent country motifs, but “Desperate and Depressed,” actually works as a serviceable sendoff of Price’s first record. Midwestern Farmer’s Daughter is a damn good debut record, but a so-so country record – it doesn’t quite reach Kacey Musgraves’ Pageant Material and pales in comparison to Stapleton’s opus, Traveller, but it makes for an interesting experiment. Stapleton and Musgraves benefit from major label backing, while Price works independently, either as the pioneer of indie-country, or the eventual martyr who never quite found her “own” sound. Price means well on Midwestern Farmer’s Daughter - and she hits a lot of great notes - which certainly point to a tenured and exceptional career, but a part of me fears that she could end up falling victim to a recent nostalgia trend. She’s the type of girl to go her own way, and hopefully in the future, she begins to carve a more substantial path that builds upon Midwestern Farmer’s Daughter.

Iggy Pop Signals His Departure On 'Post Pop Depression'

Iggy Pop has got to be the single most overlooked “legend” in music (settle down, Mudhoney and Tears for Fears fans, it's just an opinion) – the guy has outlived contemporaries, pivoted with coming trends, more than stayed afloat following his departure from The Stooges, and never failed to impress with his frenetic style on stage despite being a spry 68 years old.

Pop is also the source of some of the finest tour diary anecdotes, including my personal favorite: Iggy Pop was once duped into opening for Flock of Seagulls in the 1980s. Understandably flummoxed by the disregard for his pedigree, Pop did what Pop does best – cause a scene. Enlisting the help of the tour’s production crew to craft a giant wooden cross, he painted his face green, and would drag the giant cross out on stage every night with the bewildering face paint only heightening his stage histrionics, which eventually got him kicked off the tour. It’s artists like Iggy that allow for present day “mavericks,” “renegades,” “free-spirits,” “weirdos,” etc. to perform in deranged manners minus any real career detriment.

A bastion of punk, proto-punk, art rock, and everything in between, Iggy has spent a lifetime of cavorting and writhing around on stage, and for 23 albums – including 5 Stooges records, one James Williamson collaboration, and 17 solo records (which includes a cover album recorded entirely in French, Apres) – he has managed to maintain his status as rock music’s most adept chameleon. His seamless transition from collaborator extraordinaire on his Skull Ring record in 2003 – featuring Green Day, The Stooges, The Trolls, Peaches, and Sum 41 – to his jazz record inspired by Michel Houllebecq’s novel La Possibilite d’une iˆle, Preliminaires in 2009; we’ve seen Iggy Pop cover just about every musical base a punk rocker from Ann Arbor, Michigan could conceive.

To that notion, anything that Iggy Pop puts out from this point on – be it a solo record, a compilation, b-sides, demos, or covers – should be celebrated as yet another fine accoutrement that adorns the already spectacular apparatus that is Iggy Pop’s discography. Unfortunately, when music legends release projects in the twilight of their careers, the efforts do necessarily ensure a maintenance of the gravitas that’s become synonymous with their name (looking at you, Bob Dylan’s Shadows In the Night). Fortunately, such a shortcoming is not the case with Iggy Pop’s most recent release, Post Pop Depression - a record so incomparable with past Iggy efforts, it could be argued that the former Stooges front man’s collaborative effort with Queens of the Stone Age front man-turned-super-producer Josh Homme could be the finest release of Iggy Pop’s career to date.

A nine-track sonic exploration of Iggy Pop’s Joshua Tree retreat – where Homme’s studio is located – Post Pop Depression features an unofficial “supergroup” as Iggy’s backing band – Josh Homme (Queens of the Stone Age, Them Crooked Vultures), Dean Fertita (QOTSA, The Dead Weather), and Matt Helders (Arctic Monkeys) – helping provide some of the fullest sounds ever featured on an Iggy Pop record. Post Pop Depression opens with “Break Into Your Heart,” a track that prominently features Iggy’s vocals asserting the affirmative recognition of Pop’s career, fueled by physical force and creeping persistence. The Homme production influence is practically instantaneous, as the warping synth and guitar sound akin to QOTSA’s Era Vulgaris tones, melded with the Arctic Monkeys’ Humbug style-rhythm and unobtrusive percussion (recorded at Joshua Tree by Homme), both of which provide the robust sonic anchor as the perfect inverse to Iggy Pop’s sinewy vocal proclivities.

As Post Pop Depression ventures further, the Homme hand becomes more and more noticeable – but in the best of ways – as “Gardenia” sounds like QOTSA’s “The Blood is Love” meets “Make It Wit Chu;” playful with hints of indignation. The bellowing timbre of Iggy Pop’s voice makes the poppy chorus – “All I wanna do is tell Gardenia what to do tonight.” – sound purposefully comical.

Third track, “American Valhalla,” is an interesting congruence of Iggy Pop ideology mixed with fairly unconventional instrumentation – at least for Iggy Pop. A song that originated from a Homme instrumental demo title “Shitty Demo,” featuring vibraphone and steel drum “motifs.” Interestingly enough, the vibraphone is turned off the entire track, so the noise adds yet another peculiar facet to an already strange steel drum melody. The Valhalla – an afterlife destination for only the most indomitable of warriors - focus stems from Homme and Iggy Pop’s text dialogue oriented on whether or not there is in fact an American Valhalla. Iggy Pop then spent the following day singing along with the track, eventually settling on possible answers to his original question – “I’ve shot my gun / I’ve used my knife / This hasn’t been an easy life  /I’m hoping for American Valhalla.” The rest of the song is considerably moving for an artist best known for societal skewering and romping around on stage.

The middle portion of Post Pop Despression begins to groove in a more familiar Iggy Pop fashion. “In The Lobby” features some deft stick work from Arctic Monkeys drummer Matt Helders – a man whose involvement in his primary gig is already criminally under-acknowledged – helping provide a tight winnowing beat for Iggy Pop to prance around lyrically. Iggy Pop explores the realities of his inevitable age, and his shift from his peak to his his considerably more restrained present; death and disconnect becoming more and more apparent as album motifs.

Being a 68-year-old master of punk music, Iggy Pop could have accepted his peremptory status, continually speaking out against societal niceties and pitfalls (though “Sunday” explores Iggy Pop’s thoughts on corporatized living), but instead, he grapples with the banality of his eventual departure – well aware that his death is inevitable. It’s a perspective in music that has rarely been explored – someone totally comfortable with their life’s work, but still trying to feed the beast that is “purpose.” Songs like “Vulture” concern themselves with the unfortunate reality of being an aging public figure, running into people angling for some sort of financial reward for their end-of-life courtship; thus the songs title. “German Days” sees a return to the heavy-Homme’d soundscapes – thick base lines paired with airy guitar licks, as Homme even provides backing vocals that basically whittle German culture down into a four minute and forty eight second ode. “Chocolate” is an unexpected surprise for an album that has already established its rock-heavy trappings, featuring bells and chimes over a cool disco beat, it’s the first track on the album that really suggests this may be the last album we ever see from Iggy Pop.

If Post Pop Depression is in fact Iggy Pop’s definitive punctuating mark on his famously ungovernable career, it’s about as good a note he can go out on as any. Pre-meditated closing statements can be sad affairs – Glen Campbell’s Ghost on Canvas – and other times oddly premonitory – David Bowie's ★ – but this closing statement feels nothing like either of those sentiments. Post Pop Depression feels like the first of many further installments in Iggy Pop’s marathon-man career – forever indomitable in every aspect, and wry as ever – but then again, for a guy that’s been frolicking around shirtless on stage for the past 50 years, that may be the best way to go out.

Aidan Knight Talks About Overcoming Trepidations and His Ultimate Triumph on 'Each Other'

Photo by Brian Van Wyk

Every once and while, there's an artist that operates "under the radar" - a rather tired notion, I know - where the majority of an artist's journey goes unknown by the masses, making things all that sweeter for those privy. I'd say it's a safe assumption that Aidan Knight is such an artist for many, but not for lack of trying. One of the most unflagging and insightful guys working in music today, the Vancouver Island native took a moment during his tour in Italy to speak with Transverso Media about his most recent effort, Each Other, the politics of recording, and Ennio Morriconne.

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TRANSVERSO: How’s the tour going?

AIDAN KNIGHT: It's been going great so far. We’ve been having pretty good luck – no flat tires, nothing too crazy so far – so knock on wood it continues.

How does it feel to have Each Other out in the world for a few months now? Cathartic?

Yeah! It feels great to put anything out, but especially something that takes a long time to make. It’s hard to convey all of the stuff that goes on behind the scenes when making a record, if that makes sense, but it feels like... I don’t want to use “cathartic” because it kind of sounds like a fancy word. [Laughs]

Right, sorry about that! 

[Laughs] No! I just try and dumb it down when I talk about these things. But yeah, it's kind of like there’s a bunch stuff that no one really sees but I think the end result was really great. And I’m glad that its out now, because there’s a lot of stuff that happened in between the recording process to the release date that kind of was like “I don’t know what’s going to happen here.” So it’s nice to make it definitive that its out now.

I saw that you did run into a number of obstacles during the recording process for Each Other. Did that come to influence the album at all?

Most of the sort of struggles came after the recording process. Around the time that we were doing the vocals and the mixing and stuff is when some things started coming together. Our bass player was starting to have his hearing issues and eventually our drummer just had to go back to school. So we pretty much lost two of the five people who were instrumental in sort or putting the record together, but it didn’t really affect the songs that you hear. I think it just mostly affected my sort of - how to put it eloquently - just my thoughts on how to keep going, you know, whatever the future was going to look like. And that seems really dramatic for me to say that now, but at the time it really felt like, “Oh, maybe I just kind of hang up the towel here." We had already spent the time and already spent the money on recording it so we would have needed a bunch more money to produce the songs and release the record and all, so maybe we cut out losses? Then something just kind of turned around – and I wish I could really put a finger on what that was – but I think it was sort of the support of the people who I work with, and my family and friends, and the people I was sharing the record with, and they were saying like “No there’s actually some really good stuff on here!” [Laughs] Surprise, surprise.

That’s great, I’m sure that support was an awesome thing to have.

Yeah, well that’s sort of the frustrating thing about working on music – is not having the perspective to see what’s good or bad anymore – you’re just seeing this stuff go off the rails or wondering whether or not there’s still enough good stuff on the rails to sort keep the stuff moving along. So it felt like that for a very small chunk of time – I don’t know – a month or two? And then it just kind of, eventually I just snapped out of it and realized that it was something worth releasing at the very least and at the very best, that there was actually good stuff on there. And now with being able to actually step back and listen to it, and to be able to play it now every night – I’m just really enjoying the songs. So I feel very fortunate that there are people in my life who can sort of direct me away from my bad decisions.

How has it been performing it live? It sounds like that’s changed your view even further?

Yeah! Yeah it has. I think that it’s a really great live. Again, I don’t want to be too… sometimes I feel like I’m being too over the top saying, "It’s a great live record!” But by the nature of us, all five of us: Colin, Dave, Julia, Olivier, and myself all playing these songs really together in a room and more or less making that the sort of basis of the recording. Now that we’ve taken those recordings and put them up on stage, the translation is better than anything else I have ever worked on before, because everything else I’ve ever done has really been a studio record. Like multi-track recording, where you go in and you record the drums and the bass and the guitars, and this was more. Everyone was kind of feeding off of each other, and so its easier to do that on stage, but also, I just think the songs are some of the strongest stuff we’ve worked on so far. So yeah, I’m really liking it so far. That being said, we’ve only played it really for Europeans, not a whole lot of North Americans yet. So we’ll see what North America says about it.

Do you think you’ll continue the “off the floor” recording as opposed to studio?

I think I’m going to do a blend of things. It's nice to kind of know what works in both approaches. There’s a lot of records that I love that were made in a short amount of time – live off the floor. But I have a real love for great studio recordings – I mean like Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is one of the best studio records that I can think of. And in Canada, Broken Social Scene’s You Forgot Their People, is an amazing record. So those are two good indie-rock examples of great studio recordings. But I don’t know, there are also these two other little bands called The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and Led Zeppelin. You know, there’s a power to both of them, and I’d like to investigate and sort of explore melding the two. I don’t know what that looks like yet, but I already have the desire to do some more recording, but I don’t have any time this year, because we’re busy with touring right now, which is great.

There’s a lot of great minute detail throughout the record, “Funeral Singers” in particular. What was the process in creating that track?

Yeah, that was one that we had the idea for that song off the last record in 2012 called Small Reveal. It was one of the songs, or a song idea that we had, that we tried to develop, and it just didn’t pan out. So we kind of kept it and kept working on it at sound checks, rehearsals, and jams. And when it came time for this record, it was probably the first or second song that we knew that we were going to do for the recording. And it was like, again, it was hard to explain when you can’t see the behind the scenes of how the songs came together, but that song changed so much from the original idea and was rewritten many times. Eventually when it came time to record it, we spent the first two days of recording time getting set up and just working on that song. And that was maybe the hardest two days of the whole recording process where Marcus Paquin (The National, Local Natives, Stars), the producer of the record and I just sort of got together on the second day and were talking together and saying “What’s going on here? It seems like there’s a lot of tension going on between the control room and the tracking room.” I was just like “I just don’t think the song is turning out the way I thought it would turn out. I don’t know it just doesn’t seem right.” So there was this moment where it really felt tense, almost to the point that we were going to walk away [laughs] in a similar kind of way to the two months after we had finished recording.

It was like, "Okay, we’ve already flown all the way out here, we’ve booked all the studio time. Maybe we can just cancel it and get some of the money back and revisit it in two months when we have a little bit of a better idea.” But Marcus, he’s just got incredibly great ears, and he has all the best attributes of someone whose sympathetic and can compromise but also has a vision for what he thought things could and should sort of sound like. So he just said “Look, its your record. You have to be happy with it. I have this idea and I think its going to work, and I think what’s going to make this sound really great is if you guys all get into the studio and all record together at the same time.” And I was just kind of taken aback at that, I didn’t think we were making this live recording going in. I thought we were going to put on a click track and the drums were going record, the bass was going to record, I was going to record my guitar part, and we were going to tweak out on some stuff. He just had this other idea and we hadn’t talked about our sort of approach to the recording. So for “Funeral Singers,” it was like two days banging our heads against the wall and on the third day we just got it all recorded in this one, maybe two-hour session. And then from there we just added a couple of overdub and background sounds, but for the most part that song is just the right off the floor. It was just really captured really well, which really made the detail. And the clarity that you hear in the song is actually us realizing what was going on, really getting behind it, really playing together, and Marcus and Niles at the studio really just nailing it on the recording.

Director: Ft. Langley Producer: William Wilkinson Cinematographer: Oliver Brooks Actress: Shannon Emery Key Grip: Justin Steele Colour: Mikey Rossiter @ The Mill Production Assistants: Rowan Mackenzie & Madeline Collier Special thanks: Todd Hooge @ Hooge Studios Don Knight

As far as the overall structure of the record, was that mostly your final decision? Or did Marcus have some influence as well?

I think for the most part, I came up with the track order. I just sort of had a general idea. I kind of have this bizarre process of listening to the recordings in a bunch of different orders. What I like to do is either walk really late at night out on Vancouver Island which is where I was when we finished up the recording - it's definitely not a big city at all, it's more rural in parts - but there’s an urban center. So you can walk through a lot of different landscapes and I like to sort of walk, run, and drive with the record on and sort of see how it makes you feel in motion. For this record, it was mostly driving – I think it’s a really great 34 minutes of music- if you’re driving somewhere it has a great sort of wave that happens to it where it builds and comes back down, and goes up and down in the right places, and it sort of takes you - again, there are some words I really hate to use – but it sort of takes you on this emotional kind of crest. I think that’s really important in a record, that it directs you, or at least that’s my intention, and I know not everyone is going to listen to all eight songs in order, or maybe they come up with their own sort of playlist of stuff, or maybe they only listen to three or four. But I think if you really listen to it, particularly if you’re listening to it… well, I don’t think you can drive with a record player, but if you could, side A side B is another thing that I think a lot about. So side A ends with “What Light Never Goes Dim,” and then side B ends with “Black Dream.” So its two very different sort of feeling sides, but I like it.

I noticed that! It seems that side B kind of has a more disparate tint to it, and in particular going from “St. Christina” straight into “You Are Not Here.” I assume that was done intentionally? Would you be willing to elaborate on how those two songs became connected?

It became intentional, but at first it was not. [Laughs] “St. Christina” was actually a longer piece of a song that sort of devolved into a lot of noise and static, and sort of turned into this more soundscape-y thing, but we just could not figure out how to make that piece of audio and how to make it work. At that time, Colin and Dave had sort of stepped away, and I felt like the conflict for me was that I didn’t want to make more audio without the input of those two guys. So “St. Christina” just somehow ended up being harmonically – in terms of the chord structure – just worked really well, and just had a little bit of noise that perfectly segues into “You Are Not Here.” Its one of those great things that I just love about making creative stuff – you can plan, and plan, and plan, and plan but sometimes the unintentional, the accidental work so much better than anything you would have thought. So those two songs are a great example of that happening.

There seems to be a personal aspect to your lyrical approach – almost a verbalization of an internal dialogue. Do you ever wonder how those would be interpreted once they’re let out into the world?

I’d say that’s a pretty good insight… kind of freaky for someone that’s never met me. [Laughs] Here’s what I will say – I don’t have a lot to say on lyrics – I think of myself as on any day being and extrovert or an introvert, but I hope that I’m becoming a better performer. Through touring and playing music, but the thing that I like the most about music is having nothing expected, nothing in front of me, starting with nothing, and there being really no pressure or ego, or anything in the way. And then stepping back when something has been created, looking at it and seeing myself and the stories and people and things that are in my life. But I don’t think about them in the process of making them so much. So I think that when you hear it when talking to journalists and other musicians, and people who are asking me about my music, they say they kind of come across as confessional, and I think like “Yeah, of course.” I don’t know what else there is to write about. And even if I mask them, and I’ve tried writing from other perspectives, but I think there’s always something that sort of leaks out from your own history that has to go into the stories. So yeah, I’ve been saying a little bit more often that I don’t keep a journal, but the journal that I do keep just happens to be a very public one. And that’s the songs, and they get released out into the world, and people get to hear my little stories and little songs, and I’m becoming okay with it. I didn’t love the aspect of releasing music at first, but its hard not to get caught up in the echo? Or something on the other side – having people come up to you and be like “Your songs meant something to me,” that’s a great feeling. I don’t mind that at all. It’s still embarrassing to have people read so deeply into your lyrics, but I get it as well. I do listen to other people’s music and it means something to me. It’s a great thing.

How does the record compare to your previous releases: Small Reveal and Versicolour?

I think there is a line that goes through all of the records. I mean you could just say that’s just myself, my sort of lyrical perspective. But I think Each Other is to me in some ways the first record, and the other ones were developments, like a learning stage. I still think there’s lots of value in them, but I think of this record being one of the first ones where I’m not so concerned, I’m not so precious. To me this is sort of my letting go record, where I sort of just really play with my friends in the bands, and make music together, and not have to be so fingers in everything. I was listening to this podcast with Albert Hammond Jr. from The Strokes, and he was saying his most recent record, he was also feeling if he didn’t hold everything, the whole thing would become fucking awful. And I was just like, man, I felt the same way, and now I don’t feel that way so much. It was like now I don’t have to micromanage every little thing. This is kind of a glimpse into my history, I wasn’t able to let people come in on the thing, but now I think if you let people do the thing that they do really well and can let them feel good about it, then I think the result has to be better. It actually sounds and comes across as more complete and more human, and better over all if you just let people do things where they’re really excited about it, and they have more free reign to do interesting, unexpected stuff. So that’s the biggest change between the records.

That sounds like a very liberating experience.

Oh it feels good, man, it feels good!

Who informs Aidan Knight’s style?

I mean, its kind of corny, but my parents have a pretty huge influence on me – they’re both musicians. They’re not professional musicians, but they both enjoyed music and I was sort of able to grow up in a really uninhibited house. I was able to really listen to any music that I wanted, and sort of learn any instrument. We never really had a lot of money, but that was never really a barrier for me. If I wanted to play drums, my dad would be like, “Alright, lets find you a drum kit,” and my mom would be the first person with sticks and say, “Okay, go for it.” So to have that kind of access, I mean, I could downplay that and say some famous musician, but I don’t think anyone’s been more influential on me than my family.

Dream bill of people you’d like to perform with?

Yeah. I like the idea of sort of more reclusive artists. Here’s the thing, there’s a bill of artists I would like to see perform, because I don’t deal that well with the pressure of playing with living legends or anything like that. But I’d love to get on stage and perform a couple songs and just watch like, I don’t know, Kate Bush, Tom Waits. I’d love to see Tom Waits and Run the Jewels play a show together. I think that they’d be really political, but then musically just super out on the fringes. I think that could be really awesome.

That’s about as good an answer as any that I’ve ever heard. So do you have a dream venue you would like to play at one day?

We’re getting to play a lot of them, to be honest. A lot of them are on this tour we’re doing right now with Half Moon Run. We got to play at Paradiso in Amsterdam, which is historic, and we’re playing at Roundhouse in London. Its got to be over 3,000 people. It’s a great venue in the capital city. On our last American tour we got to go to Lincoln Hall in Chicago. That venue was awesome. It wasn’t huge or anything but it was probably one of the best shows of our American tour last time. That one was really great. We’re doing a really small venue in the town that I grew up in Victoria called Lucky Bar. It’s just this little, like 200 person bar that I haven’t played at in six or seven years. That one just feels like a really fun venue to play at. I mean, I’d love to play at Carnegie Hall or somewhere like that. Here’s what I will say – I never would have thought that I would have gotten to play at places like Paradiso and Roundhouse and Lincoln Hall when I was first starting. When I was sixteen and had a little guitar and working on my first songs, so really, any venue that we go into that has an audience that’s ready and wants to see us play music feels like a huge accomplishment. I’m looking forward to just pursue that.

I saw that you’re a fan of Italian composer Ennio Morricone. Were you excited to see that he finally won an Oscar for best score this past year?

Yeah, [laughs] after what, like 60 years or something? Yeah, we were over here when that happened, so the Oscars were happening a little too late for us to stay up all night and watch it live. So I missed it live, but I watched a recap of all of it, and everyone was excited for Leo to win. I was most excited for Ennio to win, because you can feel however you want on award shows, but we should be recognizing people who are... I can actually say that he literally generated a genre of soundtrack music. He created a style that is maybe the most cinematic of music. This moving style of orchestral soundtrack music, so it seems insane that he wasn’t recognized when he was in sort of his prime, but I haven’t seen Hateful Eight to really comment on it, but I’m sure that its amazing, because he is a great composer and thinker of sound. So yeah, I’m totally excited.

Have you had a favorite meal so far on this tour? I understand you’re a pretty big fan of good food.

[Laughs] Yeah. We are about to go into France this week, so I guess I’ll tell you then. I mean, we just got into Italy, so we haven’t gotten a chance to really eat anything too crazy, but we’re in the region where like polenta and gorgonzola cheese [are from], so we’re in the area where there is a lot of good food. I’ll have to catch up with you after I’ve had what I’m going to eat in the next two weeks. 

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Read our review of Aidan Knight's Each Other here. See his tour dates here.