Tag: Pavement

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Ep. #263: Jay Arner (& Jessica Delisle)

Jay Arner is a gifted rock and pop songwriter and musician based in Vancouver, British Columbia. Over the past five years or so, Arner has garnered critical acclaim for his solo records, which tend to feature synthesized instruments and cloudy vocals but are ultimately infectious and thoroughly satisfying. His new album is an excellent, endlessly enjoyable one called Jay II, it’s out June 17 via Mint Records, and he’s playing a couple of shows in Calgary at Sled Island on June 24 and June 25 with more tour dates to follow to tell people about it. Here, Jay and I discuss Music Waste in Vancouver, Adrian Teacher and the Subs, Apollo Ghosts II, roman numerals, enrichment and remedial classes, a 3-D Parthenon, boredumb, belonging and being in your head all the time, Vancouver’s lack of support for underground music venues and its punk scene, venue closures, the Railway Club, Vancouver real estate and rich people, purposeful psychology, happenstance carpentry, mangling mansions, Vancouver’s punk and pop legacy, Burnaby born, adolescent anxiety, no direction, super cool parents into home recording and guitars, Pavement, the drumming in Led Zeppelin but also the singing in Led Zeppelin, tennis racquets, I invent the term post-prog, punk myths, late 70s/early 80s music and songwriting and melodies, synthesizers and drums, the golden age of studio recording and the advent of multi-tracking, it’s a brand new era it feels great, Neu! and Harry Nilsson, the song “Earth to Jay,” Jessica Delisle joins us, her popular podcast Retail Nightmares, their band Energy Slime and Mint Records, their working dynamic, practice makes better, how they met, being a creative couple, what Jessica thinks Jay is like, touring the U.S. during a Presidential election year, Jay’s sense of humour and sense of self, the joy of being self-absorbed, lyrical misinterpretations, not going to clubs on the Granville strip, the story about my son mishearing a curse on “Back to School,” clean versions, all all the rules, cussing on your hits, one percent punk, including legit digits in a song, screening his calls, giving everyone in the world your phone number versus your email, Shotgun Jimmie’s ‘kids only text’ story, more than the bio, playing Sled Island and touring with Supermoon, the video for “Crystal Ball,” my 18 month-old daughter is not a huge Jay II fan, Beastie Boys, the song “Earth to Jay,” and then it was time to drive away in our flat cars.

Related links: jayarner.bandcamp.com mintrecs.com vishkhanna.com

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Ep. #165: Bob Nastanovich of Silver Jews

Bob Nastanovich is an American musician who currently lives in Des Moines, Iowa. Though best known for playing keyboards, auxiliary drums, and shouting in the hugely significant and influential rock band Pavement, Nastanovich also co-founded another immensely important band called the Silver Jews. Highlighting the inimitable songwriting and singing of the American poet David Berman, Silver Jews called it a day in 2009 after a remarkable 20-year run. In the past few months, after cryptic social media posts and photographs, there seems to be something stirring in Silver Jews land and the band seems to be active again in some capacity. Here, Bob and I discuss repping Des Moines, dogs and kids, Pavement’s juvenile sound, Stephen Malkmus’ attitude towards reunion tours, how the Pavement reunion tour ended, a failed pitch to get the band going again, the history of Bob, Stephen, and David and the NYC scene of the early 1990s, an infamous Nirvana show that Bob and David disrupted by heckling the band and angering Krist Novoselic, Kim and Thurston’s home phone number, when Kurt Cobain asked Pavement to play the Reading Festival, recording horse racing calls utilizing the same technology as the Silver Jews on their early releases, Drag City might be magic, David’s new obsession with making unique sculptures, the times David has kicked members of Pavement out of the Silver Jews, Harmony Korine and David are close friends now, David is writing new songs and it sounds like he’s going to record them, Cassie Berman and therapy for horses, wi-fi addiction, funny people on the internet, Tanglewood Numbers, when David feels like things are getting too Pavement-y, not talking to David for over a year, why Bob is releasing little tidbits about this new Silver Jews activity, music for sculptures and people, pushing Brian Kotzur, Searching for Berman, the night owl, @silverjews, @dronecoma, @bnastanowich, the song “New Orleans,” and that was all.

Related links: mentholmountains.blogspot.com vishkhanna.com

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Ep. #86: Destroyer

Destroyer is the music-making moniker of Dan Bejar, a very gifted lyricist and musician who originally hails from Vancouver, British Columbia. He has been creating an idiosyncratic kind of pop music as Destroyer for almost 20 years and can also claim membership in bands like the New Pornographers, Swan Lake, and Hello, Blue Roses among others. His latest work as Destroyer includes the lovely 2013 EP Five Spanish Songs and his brilliant ninth LP, Kaputt, which were jointly released by Merge Records and Dead Oceans in 2011. On Friday April 11, Destroyer plays a solo set at the Dublin Street United Church in Guelph, Ontario as part of Kazoo! Fest. Here, Dan and I discuss why, despite living in Spain for a spell, Vancouver remains his home, that year he played SappyFest and first spent time in New Brunswick, why playing small towns is refreshing, how Destroyer has evolved into a ‘heavy touring machine,’ Will Oldham’s interesting tour routes and how Dan envisions a touring pattern of his own, how his solo performance process and execution has evolved, how he and his family moved around a lot when he was growing up and whether or not that impacted his ‘cosmopolitan’ outlook, how bands in the Vancouver scene like Superconductor and Blaise Pascal first drew him to appreciate and play music, what he studied in school and why he dropped out, how Carl Newman’s early work resonated with him, why Vancouver in 1992 was the best irrespective of what else was happening in the Pacific Northwest, Dan’s uncertainty about his band leading skills and his lack of any real aesthetic, the reception to Kaputt compared to previous records he’s made, an update on the Destroyer recording sessions he’s beginning this week and also his two ‘unfamiliar’ contributions to a New Pornographers album due later this year, his interest in enigmas and mysteries, what his ‘words first’ approach to songwriting might say about him, his reservation about engaging with music by younger artists, our mutual adoration of Bill Callahan’s Dream River and Bill Callahan generally, the somewhat unappreciated humour in Destroyer’s songs and how Dan amuses himself as a writer, how this podcast is going to change everything, what material his solo shows have been consisting of as of late, whether or not he might learn to play a Pavement song, my son’s insistence that Bob Dylan and Jim Guthrie wrote a song together called “Colourbook Face,” the Destroyer song “Certain Things You Ought to Know,” and nothing more.

Related links: mergerecords.com/destroyer kazookazoo.ca vishkhanna.com

Destroyer1

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