St. Vincent Interview Transcript

MM: Yeah, I would recommend ninjas.

AC: Ninjas are really cool.

MM: Ninjas have the mysterious factor too, it's like all their little toys and weapons.  Well, they're definitely not toys,

AC: No, they're not toys. You don't want to mess around with them, with the nunchaku.

MM: Well, I would like to ask what music has influenced you over the years, what you listen to now and how it's changed.

SM: We mean, personally, my musical tastes as a kid changed after high school and now in college.

MM: I liked Nickleback when I first heard them.

AC: Wow.

MM: It was one song and then I realized I went wrong.

AC: Well, I think the thing with Nickleback, right, is that if you like one song, you like all of their songs.  Right?

SM: (laughs)

MM: No, I don't like them anymore.

AC: (laughing) Ok, but do you know what I'm talking about?

MM: Yeah, they all sound the same.

AC: The same BPM, and pretty much the same chord progression.  I mean, I don't know. It's phased in and out of a lot of different things. I mean right now, what have I been listening to in the van, maybe I like can narrow the question down a little bit.  I like the new Washed Out EP, er not new, it's the only Washed Out EP that I've heard.  It's not so much that you... it's like the music is just how you want to feel some of the time, like Ambien, you know what I mean, or Quanapin.  Not that I know necessarily what these are like, but what I imagine prescription drugs to be like.  Just mellow, just like super mellow. I don't know, I was like listening to the Cinderella Broadway score in the van too and that was really good. And I mean a lot of Steely Dan, because I've always loved Steely Dan.

SM: Do you have any guilty pleasures?

MM: Like Nickelback?

AC: Like Nickelback? No, I mean I tend not to think that if I like it is, you know, guilty. I don't want to assume some sort of superiority.

SM: Something you wouldn't tell other people that you have?

AC: Well that's what I mean. Do I have TLC on my iPod?  Hell yes. Do I listen to it? Yes. You know? I mean, it's not a guilty pleasure. It's like, oh man, this is slammin'. I haven't heard this in a while.

SM: Speaking of different types of music, nowadays lots of music just gets generally clumped together in genres.  For example, the category indie music is very vague, and terrible for describing any of the music in there.  What do you think about music that gets labeled indie?

AC: I guess things that get typically labeled indie, it's not so much a comment on the content of the music as much it's sort of a comment on the label. I mean, and of course we associate that with certain things, like DIY, because you know the labels were springing up in the late 70's and 80's, and you know 4AD had been around for almost 30 years in a very DIY way.   Indie doesn't necessarily refer to what you're going to hear necessarily.

MM: How would you describe indie music?

AC: I'd try not to. (laughs) I would really rather not.

SM: So then would you like to describe your newest album "Actor?"

AC: I don't know if I could, I'm a little too close to it to sort of qualify it exactly.  But I can let you know a little bit about what was behind it. It was just that I was watching a lot of Disney films, in an un-ironic way. Of course, when you sort of revisit them after you've watched them when you were six or seven, you're going to go "oh woah, this is like really dark, or really a kind of messed up message to send to kids."  But I really liked the scores, particularly from the Disney films of the 1940's, the Golden Age of Hollywood, so I wanted to combine that with, I don't know, these little themes.  I was also watching the Wizard of Oz, and Woody Allen movies, and just a bunch of films and trying to kind of re-imagine the scores to them.  What they would sound like if I could redo the scores.

SM: When you were scoring it, I mean you were watching scenes and watching these movies, and you were scoring scenes, did you have certain parts that you liked and you tried to build the sound around it or did you just have a large idea of a sound and then kept trying to refine it?

AC: It was more about, kind of using the film for inspiration, even just color-palette wise, like "ok this is in Technicolor, how could I make up something that sounds like Technicolor", so it wasn't so directly like, "ok this is what's happening in this scene, let me try to totally re-orchestrate it".  It was a little bit more impressionistic then it was literal.

SM: You scored your album in your apartment on your computer, which is pretty interesting.

MM: On GarageBand.

AC: Yeah, well I couldn't make noise in my apartment.  I just moved out to New York and the walls there are paper-thin.

MM: Was that in Brooklyn?

AC: I live in Manhattan now, but I was living in Brooklyn at the time.  But yeah, the key thing I think was that it took me away from my motor skills, which can be prohibitive, and allowed me to just kind of make music out of what my ears, my brain, wanted to hear, instead of what I was physically capable of doing.

MM: The first time you played it then was?

AC: When I was recording. I re-recorded, you know, all of it, but it was pretty much mapped out before I went in to record.

MM: I'm pretty sure your first tour was with Sufjan, your first major tour as a solo artist?

AC: Yeah, mhm.

MM: Well, first of all I don't know if you know, but he's from Michigan.

AC: No I do, actually I know most of what I know about Michigan from Sufjan's songs.

All: (laughing)

AC: Seriously, like, "Saginaw, Saginaw, duh duh duh, Windsor Park, Windsor Park." And then you're like "oh!"

MM: We'd love to have you in Ann Arbor.

AC: Yeah, I feel like we played Ann Arbor. A college there. The college there?

MM: U of M.

AC:  No, it was a small Michigan college.

MM: Well we'd like to see you play there. I know you'd draw a crowd there for sure.

AC: Yeah, I really like Michigan.

SM: Even before you were touring with Sufjan, you were touring with Polyphonic Spree, which was a very big conglomerate type band, and then you tapered off into your solo career, so what led you to leave Polyphonic?

AC: Well that's not exactly how it all happened.  I was actually there working. I mean, since I've been playing music and all, I've been writing.  I've wanted to be a songwriter and make my own music, and have been making my own music for ... a lot of years (laughs) yikes. So anyways, so I was working on the record that was to become "Marry Me" when I joined Polyphonic Spree, and then when I was in Polyphonic Spree I met Brian Teasley. He plays drums on the record, and I finished the record over the course of being in the Poly Spree. And I think when I was even still in Poly Spree, yeah I was still in the Spree and Sufjan heard the "Marry Me" record, which hadn't been released, it was just making the rounds, and he liked it.  He needed to replace Shara Worden, who's wonderful and now lives in Detroit, because she was going to be going on-tour with her own project, so he asked me to open for him and play in his band.  So I did that in Europe, and while I was over in Europe, opening for him, I got signed to 4AD, or Beggar's Banquet, which is you know 4AD.  So it all kind of happened symbiotically, it wasn't like "oh, I just play in a band and decided to do my own thing one day."

SM: So it just came together then?

AC: Yeah, it all kind of worked out really well, really really well.

MM: And even before Polyphonic Spree, you went to Berkeley and then dropped out and moved to New York.  

All: (laughing)

MM: So for our college audience, what was going through your mind when you decided to do that?

AC: Oh, well the thing I think, and I'm sure you guys obviously have an art program at your school and are involved in it, but when you just go to an art school it's a really interesting dynamic because art, you know, is very projective and intuitive, but there has to be a curriculum.  You know there has to be a sort of set things, quantifiable things, and I think that I've never been that good at learning the quantifiable things.  They don't stick in my brain so much as the intuitive aspects of it.  I mean that's not to say I didn't learn anything, but you know I went in as a guitar player and you know I went in and they had these guitar proficiencies and I went in and nine is the best and one is the worst, and you know you shouldn't even be there if you're scoring one's, and I got two's. That was like when I first got in and I retested like two or three years later and I got twos.  You know, I was like "aaah!"

SM: So really they weren't reflecting your musical talent, it's like your efficiency or things.

AC: Yeah, your efficiency and I mean that's not to say there aren't good things to be learned and it's also not to say that, I mean, I think knowing a lot about what you're doing is very powerful and you can use that.  But also I think there tends to be in situations like that a push towards the athleticism of it, which I mean I enjoy, but I've always been more interested in the creative aspect of it.  I think a lot of people went in there "ok, I'm going to be the best athlete I can be" because that's the quantifiable goal and "If I do that then dot dot dot I'll walk out of this school and I'll have a job because people will want my all skills," when you know in fact a lot of the time it's not really about your athleticism, athletic abilities, it's about like can you invent a new sport. So that's not to totally talk bad on art schools. I think you have to learn a lot of what you learned in art school. You know, only take what's sort of useful to you in helping you be your most creative person.

MM: Ok so, this is a different note, your La Blogothèque video was amazing.

AC: Oh yeah, thanks.

MM: So La Blogothèque is known for its really unique stylization of their videos. I'm a huge, huge fan.  I just wait for that new video to come out.

AC: Yeah they're really good.

MM: I was wondering what's the behind the scenes on that. How does that come together?

AC: Well it sort of comes together exactly how you see it on the video, of course, but it's Vincent Moon, and it's Chryde, and also this girl Nora, but I think she moved to Montréal, and they're all very amazing people, and so you go, they just seem energetic and French and passionate, so they can figure and do things you wouldn't normally do.

MM: Something like singing "Paris is Burning" in Paris?

AC: In Paris! (laughs) I don't think very many people, didn't really, get it.  Yeah, but then when it comes back through the lens and you see it later, they really captured the magic of the spontaneity.

MM: I saw your "Soirée de Poche" with Andrew Bird, you toured with him later and I actually saw you guys in Kalamazoo,

AC: Oh yeah, that was great. I loved that show! That was really fun.

MM: I have two questions, how was touring with him, and did he ever propose to you, because you two are amazing together.

AC: Oh that's great, Andrew's the best. He's like the best. The best.

MM: I've seen him four times, but seeing you at that show and him, then seeing you and him on the La Blogothèque video, I mean you guys are amazing together, and I was like these two need to get married right now.

AC: He's so good, I love Andrew Bird. Such a great guy, just like the best, just one of the best people. And that was really, doing that La Blogothèque party, was sort of a funny coincidence since we were both in Paris at the same time.  We met before you know, oddly enough, in Australia, or like always never in the states, you'd like run into him, "Oh, we're checking into the same hotel, in Brisbane, Australia," like "Cool, hey Andrew."  Yeah, we just ended up being in Paris at the same time and I think that show, I mean I had actually played a show that night, like as part of a French festival that was going on in Paris, and so we had to pack up and throw our things into the van, and run over to the La Blogothèque party and people are waiting and they... ahh, it was just so hectic.  And you know we didn't rehearse, we didn't do anything, we just kind of went for it and it was really fun.  There were lots of cute French people sitting on the floor and drinking wine and I thought "yeah this is pretty cool, pretty cool I get to do this for a living."  It was a really special night.

SM: So it was a very intimate setting, it was very small and very beautiful, but I mean when you go on tour you go to very different venues, some places smaller, some places [like] stadiums.

AC: (laughs) Whoa, stadiums? 

SM: I meant a broader term.

AC: Who am I, Jon Bon Jovi?

SM: ...is he still making music?

AC: He's a fixture, that guy's not going away.

MM: It's to compare the Kalamazoo show as opposed to La Blogothèque, you know a little venue like that.

AC: Oh right, I know what you mean.  The Kalamazoo one, that's the one that looks like "Caligula".  Have you seen "Caligula"?

SM: No, which "Caligula"?

AC: Caligula, like the Peter O'Toole "Caligula". You haven't seen it? (laughs) I'm going to encourage all your Gargoyle readers to rent "Caligula".  It's horrifying and awesome.

The stage manager comes in and tells us we have five minutes left.

SM: Ok, well I guess we have to wrap things up.

All: (laughing)

SM: So my last question would be what can we expect from you in this upcoming year?

AC: I don't know, oh my god. So much pressure.

SM: Touring and then...

MM: You have a lot of festivals this year.

AC: Yeah right, some are festivals, Asia and New Zealand in March, and then I don't even know after that.  Maybe another record, I guess.  I hope so.

SM: Well, thank you for this, and I hope it wasn't too awkward.

AC: No no, awkward is good. (laughs) Awk-ward. Alright, thanks you guys. See you at the show tonight.