Life Without Buildings with Blondshell

Recorded live at the Treefort Music Fest in Boise, Yasi is joined by Sabrina Teitelbaum (a.k.a. Blondshell) to dig into Life Without Buildings, the Scottish cult band whose single and singular 2001 album, 'Any Other City,' is still worth talking about today. They discuss the band’s jagged sound, their art school roots, and the second life they found when “The Leanover” went viral on TikTok two decades after it was released. CREDITS:Host: Yasi Salek @yasisalekGuest: Sabrina Teitelbaum @blondshellProducer: Rob SundermannEditor: Adrian BridgesAdditional Production Supervision: Justin SaylesTheme Song: Bethany Cosentino Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:30Speaker 01

  For decades, a shadowy organization called the Illuminati has kept lemon on top and lime in the shadows. Look around: lemon-forward sodas, even lemon-forward songs. We ran the tracks, slowed them down, reversed them, and squeezed out the truth.

• 0:50Speaker 01

  That's lemon propaganda right there. But now, 7-Up is fighting back with their new Lime Lemon Soda. Join the 7-Uprising. Flip the sip.

• 1:05Speaker 02

  What's with this band, anyway? I don't get it, can you please explain? Wait, like, "Bandplain"? Never heard this band in my life. Oh, you haven't? I'd love that. Really? Why? Yeah, I love this song. Oh, I don't know that one. Bandplain, Bandplain, Bandplain. I really hate this band! Whatever, I'm their biggest fan. Bandplain, Bandplain, Bandplain, Bandplain. Bandplain!

• 1:46Yasi Salek?

  Hi, guys! Hello and welcome to Bandplain. How are you? What's up Boise? Is it Boise, you guys? I'm so sorry. It's so inappropriate that I don't know that yet.

• 2:00Yasi Salek?

  Who did? Jewel, like "My Hands Are Small," I know. That one? I gotta get into that part of the discography.

• 2:09Speaker 04

  Don't you feel like it's slightly inauthentic for us to hit it with Boise?

• 2:13Yasi Salek?

  Like when people say "Los Angeles," like that?

• 2:16Speaker 04

  Well, yeah, kind of.

• 2:19Yasi Salek?

  I don't know. I don't know if there's an ethnic flair to it being Boise or Boise.

• 2:23Speaker 04

  Well...

• 2:24Yasi Salek?

  It's French. Okay, you can't be racist against French people. That's not possible.

• 2:27Speaker 04

  Okay, true.

• 2:28Yasi Salek?

  I'm really loving the vibes here, you guys, I gotta say.

• 2:34Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 2:36Yasi Salek?

  Proud, proud town. All I did today was shop, if I'm being honest, but fucking I scored. I went to Graveyard Vintage. Shout out Graveyard Vintage. Got an amazing Urge Overkill shirt, which I genuinely feel like I stole from them because the price was so low.

• 2:53Speaker 04

  And you bought me a sweatshirt.

• 2:54Yasi Salek?

  I bought you a sweatshirt.

• 2:55Speaker 04

  It said "Talentless," and then the back said "Please Wash Your Hands."

• 2:59Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. In fairness, I sent it to you being like, "This is my sweatshirt of my life," and you were like, "Can I have it?"

• 3:06Speaker 04

  I was like, "You could buy it for me instead."

• 3:07Yasi Salek?

  Famously talented, but yeah, you can have it. What else did I do? I ate at Jersey Mike's. I sampled the local cuisine. I didn't have time, I'm sorry. Someone sent me a really long list of good restaurants, and I was like, "There's a Jersey Mike's right here, so we're just gonna get a quick Mike's way and hit the road." Thank you, guys, for coming out. I'm sure there's like eight really cool bands playing right now, and you guys made the choice to come listen to me and my beautiful guest here, Sabrina Teitelbaum, talk about life without buildings. That's what we're talking about today. Okay, was that like, you guys are just clapping because you're just happy to be here? Or you actually know what this band is? Yeah, like you guys know the music.

• 3:52Yasi Salek?

  Okay, amazing. And who caught Producer Dylan live and in the building just before us? Another fabulous podcast music people. Shout out Producer Dylan, always. The wind beneath my wings, still. All right, Sabrina, should we get into it?

• 4:11Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 4:11Yasi Salek?

  Oh, you guys, I'm so sorry. This is gonna be five hours. I hope you didn't make plans. Well, we're gonna be here at the turn of midnight.

• 4:17Speaker 04

  With the extensive discography.

• 4:19Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. Imagine, imagine like, actually, we're doing Guided by Voices. We're gonna be here till Sunday. Hope you brought snacks.

• 4:26Speaker 04

  Just analyze every single word of that one album.

• 4:29Yasi Salek?

  Sabrina.

• 4:30Speaker 04

  Yeah, I'll see.

• 4:31Yasi Salek?

  Can you tell me about your personal history with Life Without Buildings? Did I even say that you do Blondshell? She's also known as Blondshell, I'm sorry.

• 4:40Speaker 04

  Hi. Okay, so my personal history is basically, I was on tour like, four years ago. And we were in the van, and somebody else who's not me was sitting in the front, picking the music. And it was Juno. And I was like, what is this? I really like this. But I didn't look into it. I didn't listen to the record, nothing. I just was like, oh, I really like this song, and has like, a weird name, and it's stuck in my head. And then, I would say like, two years later, I was walking my dog, and for some reason, I was like, oh, I'm gonna revisit that album, that I heard on tour.

• 5:23Yasi Salek?

  It just came into your mind?

• 5:25Speaker 04

  Yeah. And I listened to "Sorrow," which I think is like, maybe the last song on that record. I'm not, I'm not a kind of listener, like, I go through every song in order.

• 5:37Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 5:38Speaker 04

  I just like, bop around based on the title.

• 5:41Yasi Salek?

  It's totally fine that they meticulously sequenced that album. Probably took hours or days to do that.

• 5:46Speaker 04

  I know. I myself care about album sequencing, but...

• 5:50Yasi Salek?

  Not even your own?

• 5:50Speaker 04

  Like, no, I do care about, like, when it's my own, like, I care about...

• 5:55Yasi Salek?

  You're like, when you listen to Blondshell? You better listen fucking start to finish, bitch. But when I do it, I can do it my way.

• 6:00Speaker 04

  Yes, like, the seconds at the end matter, how long it is from one to another. When I'm listening to someone else's, I'm like, I like that title, or I don't like that title, and that's how I'm gonna listen. So I listened to Sorrow.

• 6:11Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 6:12Speaker 04

  And I was walking in the old Los Feliz.

• 6:16Yasi Salek?

  Los Feliz.

• 6:17Speaker 04

  Correct.

• 6:18Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 6:19Speaker 04

  And I was just like,

• 6:23Speaker 04

  holy shit, this person's voice. It's not like an intellectualized thing. You just listen to something and you're like, oh, my life is suddenly better.

• 6:29Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 6:30Speaker 04

  I've gone from having a horrendous day to life is beautiful and every step I take is peace.

• 6:35Yasi Salek?

  Wow.

• 6:36Speaker 04

  And it was just simply one of those things. And then from there, I went back and was like, okay, now I actually have to listen to the record. And then had the sad discovery that there is only, in fact, one record.

• 6:49Yasi Salek?

  Simply one.

• 6:49Speaker 04

  There's simply one record and a live.

• 6:51Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. For like an overview, guys, Life Without Buildings is a Scottish band. They're from Glasgow. Um, they formed in ninety nine, released one album and broke up in two thousand and two. But I think there's a lot of merit to talking about them today because this one album is actually really, well, as Sabrina said, incredible, but also like, kind of unlike anything I think that had come out at the time, like, and I think it kind of launched a bunch of ships of different artists that coming into the two thousands, I can really hear a bit of that influence, or if it's not influence, at least like the wave of a thing that was starting.

• 7:33Yasi Salek?

  Also, a reason to talk about it is because they went viral on TikTok.

• 7:38Speaker 04

  Um. And are reuniting.

• 7:39Yasi Salek?

  And are reuniting. Uh, I don't know if it's because they went viral on TikTok, although I'm sure.

• 7:44Speaker 04

  When did they go viral?

• 7:45Yasi Salek?

  Twenty twenty one. So it's been, they're reuniting because they were on a subsidiary of Rough Trade and it's the Rough Trade fifty year anniversary in November. So they're reuniting, but I'm sure the TikTok virality didn't hurt. Like, I'm sure Rough Trade's not like phoning up XYZ band that made one album and no one gives a fuck about in thirty years later or whatever.

• 8:07Speaker 04

  No, so true.

• 8:08Yasi Salek?

  Well, let's take it, let's take it from the top, Ben.

• 8:10Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 8:11Yasi Salek?

  As we do. Nineteen ninety nine. It's the summer. There are a few men. Will Bradley, Chris Evans, and Robert Johnson.

• 8:21Speaker 04

  Chris Evans, isn't that also an actor?

• 8:23Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's Captain America, is it not?

• 8:26Speaker 04

  Same guy.

• 8:26Yasi Salek?

  Same guy. Yeah, he was also in Life Without Buildings. He has a diverse and storied career.

• 8:31Speaker 04

  Looks amazing.

• 8:33Yasi Salek?

  Does, is that, does, when you look at Captain America, is it giving, like, you made some, like, bizarre post-punk in 1999?

• 8:41Speaker 04

  No.

• 8:42Yasi Salek?

  You know what my favorite, one of those, we were talking about it, you guys watch The Pit? Hell, yeah, brothers.

• 8:47Speaker 04

  New episode tonight.

• 8:47Yasi Salek?

  I know, I gotta rush home right after this, sorry. I also can't see any bands.

• 8:52Speaker 04

  Wrap it up early.

• 8:53Yasi Salek?

  But Dr. Abbott, Sean Haddacy, was in bands before he was acting.

• 8:59Speaker 04

  Like, were they good?

• 9:00Yasi Salek?

  I, even with my exceptional skill set, I could not unearth any audio. If anyone out there listening to this podcast, just by a miracle, was in a band with Sean Haddacy in the 90s, he said one sounded like Tool. Bang my line, babe, I need to hear this.

• 9:17Speaker 04

  Desperate to hear it.

• 9:18Yasi Salek?

  Desperate. Anyways, we've digressed. So, these three men were ex-students of the, well, I think two of them were ex-students of the Glasgow School of Art, but they were still kind of banging around Glasgow, decided to start a band. They named it Life Without Buildings after a song, it was a 1981 B-side by the group Japan, the English new wave band. They didn't actually particularly like Japan, I think, they just liked the name of that song.

• 9:49Speaker 04

  Fair enough.

• 9:49Yasi Salek?

  Do you feel that's a good band name?

• 9:51Speaker 04

  Life Without Buildings? Um, yes. My, here's my problem, this is my only problem. Life Without Buildings.

• 10:02Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 10:02Speaker 04

  And their one album name, Any Other City.

• 10:06Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 10:07Speaker 04

  Are confusing, because they're both have that, like,

• 10:10Yasi Salek?

  Municipal feeling.

• 10:11Speaker 04

  City, concrete vibe comes to mind. So, for a while there, I was like, is the band Any Other City, or is the band?

• 10:21Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, it's a lot of, like, urban planning energy.

• 10:24Speaker 04

  It's good, though.

• 10:25Yasi Salek?

  I'm not traditionally a huge fan of, like, sentence band names, because it's like a little bit giving, like, we're playing Third Stage at the Warped Tour, come on down, you know what I mean, like?

• 10:36Speaker 04

  Yeah. It's a little like intellectualized.

• 10:39Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I've talked about it here before, but if I had a band like that, Third Stage at Warped Tour, my band name is Corner of Solace.

• 10:47Speaker 04

  I'm shocked that that doesn't exist.

• 10:49Yasi Salek?

  I know. Don't take it, you guys. There's still time for me to form my Third Stage Warped Tour band. Okay, so, Robert said, "I was at the Glasgow School of Art around the same time as Sue." Sue Tompkins, the singer. But didn't really know them very well till later, when we were all involved in the scene. So that Sue Tompkins was in an art collective. It was called Elizabeth Go. She had a couple of other female women with a Y, artists with her, including her twin sister Haley Tompkins.

• 11:23Speaker 04

  Cute.

• 11:24Yasi Salek?

  From what I understand, she was already doing a similar form of the art she continues to do to this day. It's a performance art, which involves spoken word. So they saw her kind of doing this, and they were like, "She should, we need a singer. She should be our singer." And the reason they needed a singer was because they had started a band, just in theory, like I often do, with not writing one note of music, rehearsing, or doing anything. And they got asked to play a show. And they were like, "Okay, we're gonna need a few songs and also probably a singer." They also said, Robert said, drunken conversations about the go-betweens.

• 12:03Speaker 04

  Love them.

• 12:04Yasi Salek?

  And that kind of thing, and the Red House Painters.

• 12:08Speaker 04

  Love.

• 12:09Yasi Salek?

  Tarnished, I know, but we can still say we like the music.

• 12:12Speaker 04

  Maybe if you separate.

• 12:14Yasi Salek?

  The art from the artist, yeah. Which I famously am quite comfortable doing. And Nick Drake and that kind of stuff. So they were kind of inspired by this world of music. And then also, there was a lot of talk about joy division.

• 12:28Speaker 04

  Which, by the way, every single one of the bands and artists you just named are entirely different.

• 12:33Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 12:33Speaker 04

  I guess there's like the Red House Painters, Nick Drake, kind of similarity in a way. Beautiful sounding man, sad music, sad, clear guitar tones.

• 12:55Speaker 04

  Go-Betweens is so, I mean, it's not happy music, but upbeat acoustic driving stuff.

• 13:10Speaker 04

  And then Joy Division is obviously entirely different post-punk guitar tone sound.

• 13:22Speaker 04

  Something you said to me before we came out here was that you feel like the thing with those references, even though they're so different, is that they all kind of have that same vibe? Do they give you a similar feeling?

• 13:32Yasi Salek?

  I think that, like, they were taking feelings. And also, like, I mean, we'll get into it when we talk more about the album, but there's like, an austere-ness to the production that reminds me a little of Joy Division, even though it doesn't musically sound the same. Anywhoed, you guys, we've just formed the band, though. We're forming the band. And they play their first show, they write a couple of songs, I believe it was three, and they have their first show in Glasgow. And then they've started playing a couple of shows here and there, and they play their first show in London in late 99. They, Robert said, like, "Oh, we just did it because people asked us to." They have a real Forrest Gump-ass story over here where they're just like,

• 14:16Yasi Salek?

  "We made a band, it had a cool name, then we found our singer," and then people have to do shows.

• 14:19Speaker 04

  Also, like, we have three songs and we're playing a show. Only in the 90s or before that could you play a show and have your set length be 12 minutes?

• 14:26Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 14:26Speaker 04

  Like, that would not happen today. It's like 40 minutes, no less.

• 14:30Yasi Salek?

  Because people want their money back.

• 14:33Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 14:33Yasi Salek?

  Because they're like, "Could you just do it twice?"

• 14:36Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean...

• 14:38Yasi Salek?

  I really like it when a band plays the same song twice.

• 14:41Speaker 04

  I don't know that I've actually ever seen that happen.

• 14:42Yasi Salek?

  Military Gun does it all the time, and I love it.

• 14:44Speaker 04

  Really?

• 14:45Yasi Salek?

  Oh, my god.

• 14:45Speaker 04

  Wait, I love that song, "God, God Owe Me Money."

• 14:47Yasi Salek?

  It's so fucking good. That whole album is so good.

• 14:49Speaker 04

  I would want them to just play it over and over again.

• 14:50Yasi Salek?

  But I feel more bands should do this, if you guys are listening, like...

• 14:53Speaker 04

  Maybe I'll do that.

• 14:53Yasi Salek?

  Do it. Like, what's your, like, hit?

• 14:57Speaker 04

  I don't know.

• 14:58Yasi Salek?

  I mean, if it was me picking, I would say do Olympus twice. It's kind of a downer.

• 15:01Speaker 04

  It's a little downer.

• 15:02Yasi Salek?

  Anyways.

• 15:02Speaker 04

  You can't do it depressing music.

• 15:04Yasi Salek?

  Play the jam twice. Everyone loves it. Um, I don't, this is not what they did though. They played it, I believe, a thirteen minute set. Anyway, so they do this London show and I did some digging, as is my want, because in the story, in the greater story, it's like, and then they just brought, they got a Rough Trade single. And I was like, that's something, that's, that doesn't, not even in nineteen ninety-nine does that happen. Like, you just play one show in London, someone's like, would you like to put out a seven inch? Will Bradley, the drummer's old roommate and bandmate, this guy Glenn Johnson, was the label manager at Rough Trade. And so he was like, what up Glenn, bro? Not talked in a while.

• 15:45Yasi Salek?

  Uh, I have a band. And Glenn was like, okay, I'll listen. And he said, this is his quote. My initial reaction to that tape was one of perplexity. Spars cable tight songs with complex angular signatures that reminded me much of the go betweens before Hollywood album a lot. Glenn heard go betweens. Aloft, though. Who talks like this? What I perceived to be some kind of Karawakian stream of consciousness and poetry spat with tiger-like enthusiasm by vocalist Sue Tompkins.

• 16:18Speaker 04

  My lord.

• 16:18Yasi Salek?

  Man, he described it way better than I could have to TBQH. Um, was it good? Was it bad? Was it genius? And needed a second opinion? I kind of love that though, because this is a polarizing band. I do feel like when you hear this band for the first time, it's not like some other bands where you're like, okay, like, this is very legible to me. It's immediately kind of like, wait, what?

• 16:41Speaker 04

  I have a hot take.

• 16:42Yasi Salek?

  Please.

• 16:42Speaker 04

  I think if you have good taste.

• 16:44Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 16:45Speaker 04

  And you hear this band, it's not polarizing.

• 16:47Yasi Salek?

  I think if it's twenty twenty-six.

• 16:49Speaker 04

  That's my hot take. It's amazing guitar parts and guitar hooks and every tone is fantastic. It's just a band in a tight room. Everybody's in one room.

• 16:58Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 16:58Speaker 04

  Vocals are great. Lyrics are great.

• 17:00Yasi Salek?

  The vocals are great, but they are odd.

• 17:05Speaker 04

  Odd in that they're spoken.

• 17:07Yasi Salek?

  In that they're-

• 17:08Speaker 04

  But it's not like Bjork singing.

• 17:09Yasi Salek?

  No, no, but it's like, remember like, there's no dry cleaning yet. You know what I mean? Like, I think-

• 17:14Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 17:14Yasi Salek?

  It's impossible to like, maybe hear it before this was like, so much of a thing. Although, I mean, it reminds me a little, it's a little slitsy too, which no one mentions, but... I don't know, tell me if I'm being crazy, because you know famously, I don't actually understand music, which is an absolute fucking miracle that this is the job that God gave me. Like, when I'm listening, I hear American football. Like, in the music part, like, the guitar parts to me sound really kind of American football-y. Am I crazy?

• 17:41Speaker 04

  You're not crazy. They're also both, like, I know from reading that the guys in the band don't want to be called math rock.

• 17:49Yasi Salek?

  Rap, but that's what kind of American football was doing too, right?

• 17:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, both of them have like, odd time signatures. It sounds right as a listener, because even if something has an odd time signature, it should still feel right.

• 18:03Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 18:04Speaker 04

  You should never listen to music, even if it's math rock, and be like, "Okay, now I'm following along, now here we are again." Like, it feels normal.

• 18:11Yasi Salek?

  So you've come out against noise rock here on this podcast?

• 18:13Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 18:14Yasi Salek?

  You've come out against shellac?

• 18:15Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 18:16Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 18:16Speaker 04

  But, but what I'm saying is like, both of those bands have complicated, sort of intricate time signatures and arrangements that sound very natural.

• 18:26Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 18:27Speaker 04

  And the guitar tones are so much too.

• 18:29Yasi Salek?

  So I'm not crazy, thank you. Yeah, I really hear that. Anyways, back to good old Glenn. Glenn was like, "I needed a second opinion, so I handed the tape to Jeff Travis, famously head of Rough Trade, signed the Smiths, etc., um, and waited. It didn't take long. What is this? Where did you find it? Followed by a sharp volume increase on the stereo, which was back then, Rough Trade shorthand for "pass the checkbook." I like that a little bit.

• 18:54Speaker 04

  I like that. That's, yeah, I like that a lot.

• 18:57Yasi Salek?

  So they passed the checkbook on over, and they put out the first single, which was "The Lean Over B/W."

• 19:05Speaker 04

  Miss viral.

• 19:06Yasi Salek?

  Newtown. "The Lean Over," if you guys don't know, is the song that went viral on TikTok.

• 19:16Yasi Salek?

  I mean, I'm not a TikTok hater, but I just myself just recently made a get ready with me video.

• 19:21Speaker 04

  I see you on there with that camera all the time.

• 19:23Yasi Salek?

  All the time.

• 19:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, you're always like back on the front facing camera.

• 19:26Yasi Salek?

  I love the front facing camera. Not enough that I'm good at it, but enough that I will ask you to get ready with me for the Angel Dust show.

• 19:34Speaker 04

  I feel like if you're above seventeen, it is not natural to make TikToks.

• 19:42Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I agree. Also, I'm like, what are these people, fucking Steven Spielberg? Like, I don't have time to like edit this. Like, how do, how much time does, it takes me like three hours to edit one of them.

• 19:51Speaker 04

  Also, I feel like they just have these like suction cups and then the camera will be like on the ceiling or on the computer. Do you have it?

• 19:59Yasi Salek?

  I bought some suction cups. You should put on the, how are you gonna get, how are you gonna get ready with me if it's not on the mirror? Um, anyways, back to the lineup. I don't, I don't want to talk about the songs right now because I want to do it in the context of the, uh, album, but I'll just know they put out three singles and they were all produced by a guy named Andy Miller, who has done a lot of stuff, but prior to that, I think maybe the biggest things he had done was he worked on the first three Mogwai albums. Another Glaswegian legend. Um, right before the album comes out, I believe it was right before, Life Without Buildings opened for The Strokes. The Strokes' first ever, I believe, headlining gig in London.

• 20:42Yasi Salek?

  There's like a whole myth that it was supposed to be Life Without Buildings headlining and The Strokes like bumped them down, but they say that's not true. They did say that, um, this is robbery, said, "All I remember is breaking a string. The drummer guy was nice and the others were a bit Marty."

• 20:57Speaker 04

  What does Marty mean?

• 20:58Yasi Salek?

  Marty is like bad atti- like.

• 21:02Speaker 04

  Well, of course. Of course, but we know that.

• 21:05Yasi Salek?

  Like little bitches, basically.

• 21:08Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 21:08Yasi Salek?

  I'm just, I'm simply quoting, um, I wasn't there. I don't know what Julian Casablanca was getting up to, uh, at the Camden Monarch in February of two thousand one. Um. Will Bradley was like, "We didn't play with them in any meaningful way. It was a booking accident." "I remember watching them for a few minutes, then I remember leaving." "Damn, drag their ass to hell." He was like, "That's fine." "Sometimes we really connected with brilliant bands we met on tour." "Like 99 from Melbourne, or the Desert Hearts from Belfast." "I love how he's just like, 'Fuck the Strokes.'" "He even said, 'Whatever the Strokes were, in my mind, at least, we were a fundamentally different kind of thing.'" "If we were where they were, then we were clearly in the wrong place."

• 21:50Speaker 04

  That's true.

• 21:51Yasi Salek?

  I think so. You know, I didn't see it mentioned anywhere, but another band I hear a lot of that I guess, I should have looked this up before, but I think was either contemporaneous to Life Without Buildings, or a bit after, is Block Party.

• 22:05Speaker 04

  I think of them as a bit after, but maybe that's just because they're industrial sounding, and Life Without Buildings is so not.

• 22:12Yasi Salek?

  Formed in 1999, same time.

• 22:14Speaker 04

  That's crazy. They feel so much later to me, because, well, I guess also, maybe it's just, I don't know, they feel more like they played so many American festivals.

• 22:22Yasi Salek?

  Well, they lasted much longer than Life Without Buildings, but I hear a similar, you know, like, staccato-ness sometimes to the vocals of Block Party.

• 22:35Speaker 04

  When did Silent Alarm come out?

• 22:38Yasi Salek?

  This is like a real cool t-shirt "Name Three Songs" moment for me.

• 22:41Speaker 04

  Sorry.

• 22:43Yasi Salek?

  2005.

• 22:44Speaker 04

  Okay. See, this is why I feel like they're later, because Life Without Buildings had already put the record out and broken up by the time that Block Party had Silent Alarm, which was really like, kind of the big record.

• 22:55Yasi Salek?

  Totally, which actually bolsters my theory that perhaps they were influenced by them. Because they would have definitely, I think, known about Life Without Buildings. I don't want to put words into Block Party's mouth, but for a second that Block Party existed, they were covered by NME and the British press.

• 23:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, I could see it.

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• 23:46Speaker 01

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• 24:17Yasi Salek?

  Alright, "Any Other City" is the singular album. February 26, 2001. Tugboat Records, subsidiary of Rough Trade. Andy Miller is producing. I want to talk a bit about what they said about the inspiration. Robert Johnson said, "I was listening to a lot of American kind of post-rocky stuff and earlier post-punk stuff. Things like Don Caballero, Mission of Burma. But we all had very wide tastes and a pretty keen ear for pop. Sue listened to TLC and a lot of R&B stuff." I want to ask her this. So, basically Sue Tompkins said multiple times, like, "Oh, that's cool that you guys like The Fall." I don't know who that is. Like, she was not into this kind of music. She really just liked pop music and TLC.

• 25:01Yasi Salek?

  Do you feel like, as a vocalist, knowing that that was her inspiration, like...

• 25:09Yasi Salek?

  Does it make sense to you to hear what she does with that?

• 25:13Speaker 04

  It literally makes no sense.

• 25:14Yasi Salek?

  Even, even a little bit that it sounds like rapping?

• 25:17Speaker 04

  It doesn't sound like rapping to me. It sounds sort of like scatting to me.

• 25:23Yasi Salek?

  How come it's cool when she does it and not when Anthony Kiedis does it? I must ask you.

• 25:28Speaker 04

  It's so true. You know what?

• 25:30Yasi Salek?

  I think it's cool when Anthony Kiedis does it. I'm just asking the broader question.

• 25:34Speaker 04

  It feels so of a lineage of, I'm sorry to bring it here, but just like women vocalists having that sort of attention to detail that you just don't really get from men vocalists from that time.

• 25:52Yasi Salek?

  Do you don't think ding dang ding dong ding dang ding dong ding dang was like a really inspired use of wordplay?

• 26:00Speaker 04

  Very, very. But I feel like there was sort of that like, okay, we're not allowed to do a lot of stuff, but what we are allowed to do is be like really esoteric and talk about like kind of a stream of consciousness, consciousness way of writing? I don't know.

• 26:19Yasi Salek?

  But very interesting. She said it wasn't at all a stream of consciousness. It's all very carefully crafted. She wrote and rewrote and made like, which actually makes so much sense to me because like you were saying earlier, like when you hear this, it doesn't contradict itself, like the music itself, but also I think the combination. It's because the way she places the words atop the music is like in conversation to me. Like I like, oh, this is like supposed to be there, you know?

• 26:51Speaker 04

  Yes. That's the only element that to me makes the rap reference make sense because

• 26:57Yasi Salek?

  She's a rapper.

• 26:58Speaker 04

  She's basically a rapper. But it's sort of like you listen to it and when I started hearing that record for the first time, I was like, there's just no way that any of this is planned out. You say the same word 50 times and every time you say it, it's a different delivery. And so I was like, this is obviously just like, she's scatting on top of this stuff, whatever comes to mind, but it's not a freestyle thing. It's very planned out. And that's the only thing that sort of reminds me of some types of rap because I feel like it's made to feel off the cuff and it completely works. All the diction, all the delivery makes it feel so off the cuff.

• 27:45Yasi Salek?

  That's, that's the TikTok viral song FY.

• 27:47Speaker 04

  It's so random because that's not like a standout song to me from the record.

• 27:52Yasi Salek?

  I think it's a standout song to me, but it lends itself to girls lip syncing. It's mostly women lip syncing.

• 27:58Speaker 04

  I mean, like what I was just doing.

• 28:02Yasi Salek?

  Hmm, like that part, you know?

• 28:04Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 28:04Yasi Salek?

  Oh, it's sassy. Um, I'm sorry. Okay. So back to their influences. They also said Bit of the Smith, The Fall, Velvets, which we were texting earlier, burning podcast material, um, that a lot of their guitar and especially drums, I think, kind of simple drums, sound like Mo Tucker's Velvet Underground, um, Modern Lovers, Television.

• 28:30Yasi Salek?

  He also said, we were really anxious not to be perceived as an art band. And it's like, well, good fucking, babe, can you hear yourselves?

• 28:36Speaker 04

  Literally, literally what it is.

• 28:38Yasi Salek?

  What did you think you were gonna sound like? Metal? Like this is, this is the definition of an art rock band. Yeah. He also said Sue had never heard Patti Smith or the Slits before she joined the band.

• 28:50Speaker 04

  I don't buy that.

• 28:51Yasi Salek?

  I kind of do. Why would she lie?

• 28:54Speaker 04

  Well, I don't think she lied. I'm just like, does he have the story straight? Because it sounds like horses to me.

• 29:03Yasi Salek?

  Things can sound like a thing while being in a vacuum away from it.

• 29:07Speaker 04

  But it's Patti Smith. It's not like somebody today being like, oh, I haven't heard of this band that had something like.

• 29:12Yasi Salek?

  Heard of Patti Smith, but she would have had to like go and sit and listen to it. And she was busy listening to the radio.

• 29:18Speaker 04

  I just feel like maybe it's one of those things where like she wasn't a fan, but it was just in the ether, like because the night, sort of like big songs were just around.

• 29:28Yasi Salek?

  Maybe in 1999?

• 29:30Speaker 04

  Eighty-nine?

• 29:31Yasi Salek?

  Ninety-nine?

• 29:32Speaker 04

  Well, if you, if it's 1999, you grew up with that music.

• 29:37Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, she was born in seventy-one, so in ninety-nine, she would have been like twenty-eight or whatever.

• 29:42Speaker 04

  So the timing kind of checks out.

• 29:43Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, okay. So you're calling her a liar?

• 29:46Speaker 04

  I'm not calling her a liar. I'm saying somebody doesn't have the story straight. Nobody lies.

• 29:50Yasi Salek?

  Sue Tompkins, Sabrina Tidlebaum from Blanche Alcoa has just called you a liar.

• 29:54Speaker 04

  No, Sabrina Tidlebaum from Blanche Alcoa literally loves you.

• 29:57Yasi Salek?

  She would like to do a duel with you.

• 30:00Speaker 04

  Okay. Stop lying, Gypsy.

• 30:03Yasi Salek?

  This is a quote from Sue. "I've not really heard The Fall, but I saw Marky Smith do a song about a telephone on The Old Grey Whistle Test with Cold Cut, and I thought he was pretty great." That was cute. That was like in 2001 or whatever.

• 30:17Yasi Salek?

  It's interesting, they were also really into techno and like warp records and stuff, but I also don't hear any of that in here. I don't think they did it. I think they were thinking about putting synths or drum machine, they just didn't ever do it.

• 30:32Speaker 04

  I can hear that.

• 30:32Yasi Salek?

  Another band they referenced was Noy, and that actually makes so much sense to me.

• 30:38Speaker 04

  Okay, say more.

• 30:39Yasi Salek?

  Are you a Noy girl?

• 30:40Speaker 04

  Not really, but not distinctly not.

• 30:42Yasi Salek?

  Anyways, I like Noy a lot. Noy is like, for me, very like, smooth brain lobotomy music sometimes, even though it's very complicated, but I just put it on, I'm like, that's right. No thoughts.

• 30:59Speaker 04

  I could hear that in the drums.

• 31:01Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, yeah. Thank you for bringing it back to music. They also listen a lot to Missy Elliott rap.

• 31:08Speaker 04

  Really? I just have no concept of time, because Missy Elliott feels... Okay, you know why it is? It's because when I grew up, I was listening to Missy Elliott.

• 31:18Yasi Salek?

  It's also because, how old were you in 1989?

• 31:20Speaker 04

  Two.

• 31:20Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 31:22Speaker 04

  I was listening to Missy Elliott, and that was my shit, and I didn't find "Life Without Buildings" until like, two years ago.

• 31:30Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, so it's...

• 31:30Speaker 04

  So in my mind, I'm like, they're... it's entirely different things.

• 31:33Yasi Salek?

  No, this was big, big Missy Elliott.

• 31:35Speaker 04

  Thanks for bringing that timeline.

• 31:36Yasi Salek?

  It was a little post her like, "I can't stand the random TV" big moment, and that was like more mid 90s, but...

• 31:43Speaker 04

  So Sue had taste.

• 31:45Yasi Salek?

  Sue had great taste. You mentioned esoteric, she was very into esoteric quote literature.

• 31:51Speaker 04

  Queen.

• 31:52Yasi Salek?

  I thought it was really interesting, the way they write the songs, so... Basically, Will said, Rob, Chris and me would jam out more or less finished tracks than Sue would come down and listen. If she was feeling it, a song could come together quickly with maybe a few easy changes. If she wasn't, the only option was to ditch the whole thing and start again. She was kind of the boss.

• 32:14Speaker 04

  Big time.

• 32:15Yasi Salek?

  Well, it kind of makes sense because if you're gonna write lyrics in that way and you're like, I'm not fucking with this song. Like, how could you do what she does?

• 32:23Speaker 04

  No, you can't.

• 32:24Yasi Salek?

  Over it. Yeah. Okay, I wanted to ask you a question. So you guys heard Lean Over. I want you to know that's like five full minutes of like, uh huh, uh huh.

• 32:32Speaker 04

  If I lose you, if I lose you. Uh huh, uh huh, uh huh, uh huh.

• 32:36Yasi Salek?

  How do you do that live the same all the time?

• 32:38Speaker 04

  She doesn't. So, so here's the thing. Everybody thinks it's so stream of consciousness because there's so much repetition.

• 32:47Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 32:47Speaker 04

  But I think it's structured that way with all of the repetition and all of the bringing stuff back that started at the beginning of the song, at the end of the song, because it creates the freedom for her to do a different delivery every time. Like, I think if she played 10 shows, she might have that structure to fall back on of like, here are the lyrics. But she would be like, okay, my freedom for performing this song and the performance art aspect of it is me being able to do like, uh huh, versus, uh huh. You know what I mean?

• 33:23Yasi Salek?

  Kind of.

• 33:24Speaker 04

  Her delivery, the lyrics are the same. She'll know the structure, like you're learning a song.

• 33:29Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 33:29Speaker 04

  But the delivery each time is like, I felt like saying it this way.

• 33:32Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 33:33Speaker 04

  No, I felt like saying it this way.

• 33:34Yasi Salek?

  I think it's just more like keeping up. Like, she's constantly, there's like no real breaks in her delivering her vocals. How do you, how do you, like, you can't say a totally different thing. Like, yeah, you can say uh huh differently, or if I lose you differently, but you have to say the thing and there's so many lyrics. I saw a video of them playing live and she had, she has lyrics next to her. She like is going through the sheets. Like, she can't do it. I don't think she could do it without. referencing

• 34:07Speaker 04

  but I think that's the scaffolding basically for her performance and then the art for her is being like okay now that I have these parameters I get to play around yeah and there's a muscle memory aspect to it too where like the if I lose if I lose if you lose uh huh uh huh uh huh like you don't just think about it you just remember that your brain just remembers it

• 34:31Yasi Salek?

  right it it it does it's like percussive it almost feels like playing an instrument

• 34:35Speaker 04

  yeah

• 34:36Yasi Salek?

  so maybe it feels like the same way you always remember how to play your guitar or whatever

• 34:40Speaker 04

  I think so

• 34:41Yasi Salek?

  here's what Sue said when we were in rehearsal the way we used to work with the guys would do the music and play it constantly to me but I used to really enjoy that it was no pressure looking back they were incredibly patient and natural about it it was a very natural thing it's like they let me absorb it was the only way for me to get into what they were doing could have been electronic could have been more percussive could have been anything they let me absorb myself in it and then be able to start to go okay I've got an idea in my head that goes with that and then I would make notes about that and then type them all up and then go to the guys with just mega piles of A4 pads of stuff A4 you okay absorption I think is such a good word cuz as much as I think she is very particular clearly and refined

• 35:23Yasi Salek?

  refining about exactly what words go where it feels a little bit like like speaking in tongues you know what I mean where you get caught up in a thing and then it's just like she's like oh I'm fully in this and this is what came out you know

• 35:38Speaker 04

  yeah I mean I think that's the sort of hypnotic element of it for us listening

• 35:44Yasi Salek?

  but maybe not for her doing it

• 35:46Speaker 04

  I don't know I I have to imagine I don't know if she said anything about it but I have to imagine that if it feels so comfortable to us that hypnotic part of it that makes us feel like We're not like, I wouldn't listen to one of those songs and think to myself, okay, this is the forty sixth time I've heard this word. You're just like in that world. And so I think that that has to be sort of intentional, but not in like a calculated, I'm trying to get people to like my songs by making them hypnotic way, more in like a, I need to create this world for myself to survive for some reason.

• 36:25Yasi Salek?

  How much you like dissociate from reality when you're doing that, you know, or from like even the words, like you don't need to say the same word over and over again. And it's like no longer a thing. When you listen to Lean Over all the way through, you start to hear different things. Like If I Lose Ya starts to sound like illusion. Some people thought it sounded like Flujah Street. Yeah, elusive. It just starts to completely, every time you listen to it, it's like different words, which is so cool. I can't think of another type of artist that I hear that in.

• 36:54Speaker 04

  I kind of feel like that with some of the Pixies stuff where I'll think I knew what the lyric was. And then eight years later, I'll be like, oh, this is what they were saying.

• 37:06Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I guess Black Francis is also kind of percussive in the way he's, he punctuates.

• 37:12Speaker 04

  But like also kind of lazy with pronunciation.

• 37:16Yasi Salek?

  Will, Will Bradley said about Sue, she's a genius, but beyond that, she has killer timing. She was never in the wrong place, never on the wrong beat. So much preparation and then also so many freestyle calculations. Nobody but Sue could explain how she does what she does. I think that's so cool. And it's like, when you hear it's like, it sounds like she's stuttering, but those are written stutters. She planned those.

• 37:40Speaker 04

  It also feels like today, most music that you hear is very, I think part of it is just like the collapse of the industry and the fact that the artist has to think about how to get people to hear the music constantly. There she goes. If I didn't be on this podcast, I will be saying it. Artists have to wear nine million hats. And so it's kind of like,

• 38:01Yasi Salek?

  every two days.

• 38:02Speaker 04

  So it's kind of like impossible to separate the fact that you're making music that you know you want people to hear.

• 38:09Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 38:09Speaker 04

  But when I hear this and when I hear like sorrow and there's the line that's like, Your eyes are like lotus leaves.

• 38:17Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 38:17Speaker 04

  There's, it's kind of like you're looking at two people having their own thing. You're like looking through the window.

• 38:23Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 38:23Speaker 04

  And she's, there is zero semblance of her writing this music, thinking, oh, people are gonna hear it.

• 38:31Yasi Salek?

  I don't think they did think people were gonna hear it. I think that's like a big part of the story of the band and also a big part of why they end up breaking up because I think this was just like a, a fun laugh for them. And then it got like, again, Forrest gummed its way into being like really serious all of a sudden. And then they, they were like, oh, or not they, Sue Tompkins, I was like, no, thank you.

• 38:53Speaker 04

  Fire, by the way.

• 38:54Yasi Salek?

  I don't want to do this.

• 38:54Speaker 04

  Huh? Fire.

• 38:56Yasi Salek?

  So sick.

• 38:57Speaker 04

  So, so sick.

• 38:57Yasi Salek?

  Imagine like them being like, you're in a cool band now. Me, I'd be like, thank you. Yes.

• 39:01Speaker 04

  She's like, you know, I never really felt it.

• 39:03Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. She was like, I want to go back to doing spoken word performance art.

• 39:07Speaker 04

  So cool.

• 39:08Yasi Salek?

  We talked about, a little about the austere-ness of the production, but Robert said, we did want the record to be quite unadorned. We were thinking about things like marquee moon television, that very dry, hard sound. I think we were too green to get that by the time of the album. Someone called the record mid-fi, which is probably accurate. It was hi-fi recordings of a lo-fi band. Let me tell you what, when it came out, it had some mixed reviews. Very famously, the NME, the paper of music record, gave it a four out of 10 and said, "It's tough. For some, the scrape of fingernails on a blackboard is an exquisite sensation. Dentist

• 39:48Yasi Salek?

  drills provide a satisfying tingle. Animals dying in agony make a heavenly choir. And Sue Tompkins, idiosyncratic frontwoman of life without buildings, makes a beautiful noise."

• 40:01Yasi Salek?

  Are you at least happy that they're not really allowed to be this mean anymore?

• 40:04Speaker 04

  Oh, my God. Thank God. I've thought about it so much. Thank God.

• 40:07Yasi Salek?

  Well, they're like, and she's ugly.

• 40:08Speaker 04

  No, literally. I mean, they still do that to some people.

• 40:11Yasi Salek?

  Do they?

• 40:12Speaker 04

  Yeah, but it's rare, which makes it like kind of more impactful when it happens.

• 40:16Yasi Salek?

  With the most love and respect, who's like, who even cares about, who even reads music criticism? So much love and respect. There's like three music critics that anyone cares about and everyone else is like, I didn't, I'm happy for you or I'm sorry that happened.

• 40:27Speaker 04

  This is a tough review.

• 40:28Yasi Salek?

  It's really mean. Okay, it's totally fine to be like, I hate the sound, because it is polarizing. But then at the end, he's like, Plainly, she thinks she's Patti Smith reborn with an estuary accent.

• 40:43Speaker 04

  It's giving jealous.

• 40:45Yasi Salek?

  I was like.

• 40:45Speaker 04

  It's literally giving jealous, don't you think?

• 40:47Yasi Salek?

  What are you fucking miss, miss, what was, what was the psychic? Miss Cleo. I almost said Miss Claro, and I was like, no, Claro.

• 40:55Speaker 04

  What do you miss, Claro?

• 40:55Yasi Salek?

  A beloved and wonderful, uh, pop, beautiful artist. Um, but maybe Miss Claro would be a really sick marketing thing for her to do.

• 41:03Speaker 04

  I bet you Miss Claro loves life without buildings.

• 41:05Yasi Salek?

  As she's.

• 41:06Speaker 04

  I see her Instagram post and she has good taste.

• 41:07Yasi Salek?

  She has great taste. We love Claro on this podcast. Anyways, Miss Cleo, like, I'm like, why, how do you know what she thinks she is? Do you know her?

• 41:14Speaker 04

  No, literally. It's that, it's that classic thing of a man being like, I know what this woman's trying to be.

• 41:19Yasi Salek?

  Meanwhile, she was like, I've never heard Patti Smith, bitch.

• 41:22Speaker 04

  Literally.

• 41:23Yasi Salek?

  Also, estuary, for you guys, I had to look it up. It's like a specific accent of a part of England. Just in case you were wondering what that word meant.

• 41:33Speaker 04

  It like actually makes me so annoyed to hear this.

• 41:35Yasi Salek?

  You're retro. I've been retroactively, like, extremely angry at a review written 25 years ago and like publicly dragged the person on the podcast.

• 41:44Speaker 04

  It's just like obnoxious intellectualizing of something that clearly just makes people feel good. Period.

• 41:51Yasi Salek?

  Well, I mean, it was their, their job to give reviews, I guess.

• 41:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, but this way of intellectualizing it and being like, she has an estuary accent.

• 41:58Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 41:58Speaker 04

  Blah, blah, blah. Just feels like it's missing the point.

• 42:01Yasi Salek?

  Hers is the sound of a performance artist having a self-conscious breakdown, which again, it's like so wrong. We just talked for like 10 minutes about how non-self-conscious it sounds to us. I don't want to say it, but it's men.

• 42:15Speaker 04

  No, literally. That's what I'm trying to say.

• 42:17Yasi Salek?

  Hashtag not all men, but definitely this man. The Guardian liked it, gave it three, three stars, kind of, you know, invoke, oh, we didn't silence.

• 42:25Speaker 04

  Sorry, it's my grandma. Literally.

• 42:30Yasi Salek?

  Incredible stuff. Grandma's, grandma's, should we, should we phone her in?

• 42:35Speaker 04

  Fuck, no.

• 42:38Yasi Salek?

  Does she like your music?

• 42:39Speaker 04

  Yeah, and she comes to some shows.

• 42:42Yasi Salek?

  Do you feel weird to talk about sucking dick in the bathroom when your grandma is at the show?

• 42:46Speaker 04

  Distinctly, yes. But she told me not to worry about that.

• 42:50Yasi Salek?

  Oh, oh, yeah, cool grandma.

• 42:52Speaker 04

  Literally, I didn't bring it up because why would I do that to myself? And then one day she was just like, you know, you don't have to feel weird about that stuff.

• 43:01Yasi Salek?

  She also separates the art from the artist.

• 43:06Speaker 04

  No, but the thing is, like, my set, just top to bottom, is full of things you don't want your family to hear.

• 43:13Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 43:13Speaker 04

  So I actually tried to get them to not go to the shows.

• 43:15Yasi Salek?

  That's, I think, that's smart.

• 43:16Speaker 04

  But then if the show goes really well, I'm like, oh, I should have invited my family.

• 43:20Yasi Salek?

  I've talked about doing math on this podcast, but famously-

• 43:22Speaker 04

  And do your parents listen?

• 43:23Yasi Salek?

  Absolutely. They don't know what I'm on about, so I think they've tried, but they're like, okay, that's lovely.

• 43:30Speaker 04

  Do they have the same music taste as you?

• 43:31Yasi Salek?

  My parents.

• 43:32Speaker 04

  Similar?

• 43:33Yasi Salek?

  My parents?

• 43:33Speaker 04

  Some people have cool parents.

• 43:34Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, my parents love guided by voice. No, my parents are Iranian immigrants. My mom loves Madonna and Hathaway.

• 43:41Speaker 04

  That's cool.

• 43:41Yasi Salek?

  My mom's like basically a gay man. And my dad, I actually, my dad loves like Anne Magnuson randomly, and like Persian funeral music. All right, let's talk about the album. It opens up, I know you don't care about sequencing, but we're gonna do it in order, if you don't mind.

• 43:57Yasi Salek?

  P S exclusive. I want to just mention, this song is a jam, it's an incredible opening song, and also, within it, Sue Tompkins repeats the words, "the right stuff", forty-four times.

• 44:10Speaker 04

  The right stuff.

• 44:11Yasi Salek?

  The right stuff.

• 44:20Yasi Salek?

  I do feel like it's kind of no skips.

• 44:22Speaker 04

  I agree, yeah. Also, I was reading about her saying which ones are her favorites.

• 44:27Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. And they're not the ones that are other people's favorites.

• 44:31Speaker 04

  No, she's like, I like the short ones.

• 44:33Yasi Salek?

  Well, it's because she doesn't want to listen to herself.

• 44:35Speaker 04

  Oh, right, right, right, right.

• 44:37Yasi Salek?

  Do you relate to that, or do you just like bang blonde shell at the home?

• 44:40Speaker 04

  I have a very complicated relationship with it, so it depends.

• 44:43Yasi Salek?

  So sometimes you're like, hell yeah.

• 44:45Speaker 04

  Sometimes I'm like, God sent me here to rock and roll. And sometimes I'm like, ah, why do I, why am I doing this?

• 44:53Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I think that's-

• 44:53Speaker 04

  You know, I think it's normal.

• 44:55Yasi Salek?

  I can never listen to my own voice, literally, ever again.

• 44:59Speaker 04

  But there's a whole thing about that, like, people are very uncomfortable, I'm very uncomfortable hearing my speaking voice.

• 45:04Yasi Salek?

  But not your singing voice.

• 45:05Speaker 04

  I've had to hear my singing voice a lot because when you record, you just have to like, comp vocals, which takes hours of listening to your own voice.

• 45:14Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 45:15Speaker 04

  It's more like, I think of it like utility, but with my speaking voice, I'm like, I, it's nails on chalkboard.

• 45:21Yasi Salek?

  I recommend doing what me and Prudential Dylan had to do, I mean, Prudential Dylan didn't have to do it with her own voice, she unfortunately had to do it with my voice, but- In the first like three years of Band's Plan, we had to listen to every episode multiple times before it came out. And I think my ego died.

• 45:36Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 45:37Yasi Salek?

  Like completely. It was, I was just like, I was like literally dissociating. I was like,

• 45:40Speaker 04

  I say like so many times.

• 45:42Yasi Salek?

  No, I had, you know that galaxy brain meme? I was like, oh my God, my voice is annoying. And then it was like, oh, interesting. All of my thoughts and feelings are annoying.

• 45:52Speaker 04

  My personality is terrible.

• 45:53Yasi Salek?

  Everything about me is unbearable.

• 45:58Speaker 04

  Yes, yes.

• 45:58Yasi Salek?

  And I should probably just walk into the ocean with my rocks in the pockets. And then I transcended. And then I was like, who, guess what? Who fucking cares?

• 46:07Speaker 04

  And that was your ego death.

• 46:09Yasi Salek?

  You like it?

• 46:09Speaker 04

  Ego death via podcast.

• 46:11Yasi Salek?

  You don't like it? Leave a comment. I don't give a shit. You mentioned Juno was the first song you heard. That's like interesting.

• 46:16Speaker 04

  It's Juno. It's Juno. It kind of sounds the most normal on the album, actually.

• 46:22Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I think I agree.

• 46:23Speaker 04

  It kind of sounds the most like that time and the most like kind of Scottish, kind of post punky. And it doesn't feature as much of that kind of repetition. It's more like vocal melodies.

• 46:40Yasi Salek?

  I mean, she does repeat a lot, but not as much as the other ones. I like the, like one of the three lines on here is my lips are sealed.

• 46:57Yasi Salek?

  Okay, let's talk about the lean over now. I couldn't really get, obviously, how can you ever get to the bottom of why something goes viral on TikTok or how, like who patient zero was?

• 47:07Speaker 04

  It's just up to God.

• 47:09Yasi Salek?

  God picks some weird ones then.

• 47:11Speaker 04

  I know.

• 47:12Yasi Salek?

  In my, none of that makes it to my algorithm. By the way, you guys, my algorithm is so fucking unhinged. Like if someone looked at my TikTok feed, I would be humiliated.

• 47:22Speaker 04

  No, me too. But sometimes I'm like, how did this happen? And then I look at the comments and it's like, I don't know what I could have possibly done to get me here, my FYP.

• 47:30Yasi Salek?

  No, but I know what mine's like, do you want a quantum leap? And I'm like, I do want a quantum leap. Or it's like absolute like brain dead content of like, I don't even know where these apartments exist where everything is white and like a girl is just cleaning. Nightly reset.

• 47:50Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And like the bowls of ice, like ice in different shapes and it's like.

• 47:56Yasi Salek?

  And I'm like, you do this every night?

• 47:59Speaker 04

  I love it. I want to live that life.

• 48:01Yasi Salek?

  Literally, it feels like, it feels like they've removed six layers of my fucking brain and it's just like beautiful, smooth, not a hair is pudged.

• 48:10Speaker 04

  Dolphin brain.

• 48:11Yasi Salek?

  And then I'm sitting on the couch being like, I know I should go wipe my fucking kitchen counter because that shit needs a wiping, but I'm just gonna watch this bitch.

• 48:18Speaker 04

  I know.

• 48:18Yasi Salek?

  Reset her life for the next day.

• 48:20Speaker 04

  Do you ever see those like make my nighttime cocktail?

• 48:23Yasi Salek?

  Oh, my God.

• 48:23Speaker 04

  And it's like tart cherry juice.

• 48:24Yasi Salek?

  It's always tart cherry juice, babe. Magnesium powder. My nightly mocktail. I'm like, God, please, why can't I be like this?

• 48:34Speaker 04

  I'm desperate to be that way.

• 48:35Yasi Salek?

  Remove a chunk of my brain so I can, in my Stanley cup.

• 48:42Yasi Salek?

  Um, but yeah, that's my, that's my.

• 48:45Speaker 04

  Or like, do you ever get the, I'm gonna mess it up, the like, this is my five to nine before my nine to five?

• 48:51Yasi Salek?

  Oh, totally.

• 48:52Speaker 04

  I love that shit.

• 48:54Yasi Salek?

  Some of those are really depressing.

• 48:56Speaker 04

  What, it's, well, conceptually, it's all depressing.

• 48:59Yasi Salek?

  Sure, but the, I hate, again, I hate to be a misandrist, but when it's a man, it's always so fucking dark. It's like some guy who's like in the saddest apartment you've ever seen that looks like corporate housing. Uh, yeah, like, like preparing their like Tupperware of like ground beef and rice.

• 49:19Speaker 04

  Raw chicken.

• 49:20Yasi Salek?

  Going on a, yeah, literally going on a run before they like pack their briefcase to go to their like mid-level finance job. And I'm like, why are you making, don't tell anybody about this?

• 49:31Speaker 04

  That's disgusting and sad, and when women do it, it's cute and fun.

• 49:35Yasi Salek?

  It's, it's something when women do it, but it's definitely not absolute. Should I start, I should start making my.

• 49:40Speaker 04

  The sad?

• 49:41Yasi Salek?

  My five to nine.

• 49:42Speaker 04

  You can't do it. The sad thing about it to me, even though I am a massive consumer of those TikToks.

• 49:47Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 49:47Speaker 04

  Is the like, I'm optimizing my life in every waking moment.

• 49:50Yasi Salek?

  Absolute optimization porn, yeah.

• 49:53Speaker 04

  That is evil.

• 49:55Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I'll, but then I also have a lot of TikToks about undoing the grip of capitalistic optimization on yourself. So I have a nice balance.

• 50:05Speaker 04

  Okay, put me on because I'm.

• 50:06Yasi Salek?

  I'll start.

• 50:07Speaker 04

  I'm not on that side of TikTok.

• 50:08Yasi Salek?

  Algorithm. Anyways, back to this TikTok. Can you help me say this?

• 50:12Speaker 04

  Beba doobie?

• 50:13Yasi Salek?

  Thank you.

• 50:16Speaker 04

  You would like Bebe Doobie.

• 50:17Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I've heard it's it's good.

• 50:18Speaker 04

  She's good.

• 50:19Yasi Salek?

  She's good.

• 50:20Speaker 04

  And she's cool.

• 50:20Yasi Salek?

  She has incredible taste. Like she also covered a Sunday's song, which brought a resurgence of the Sundays. I just haven't spent a lot of time listening to her music, but I in like I'm saying in theory.

• 50:30Speaker 04

  She had that song that's like, I wish I was Stephen Malkmus.

• 50:32Yasi Salek?

  Exactly. She has phenomenal.

• 50:33Speaker 04

  Great taste.

• 50:34Yasi Salek?

  Phenomenal taste.

• 50:34Speaker 04

  She's cool.

• 50:35Yasi Salek?

  And she, I do think she was like a big driver of this going viral because she did the lip sync to it. And I think it like upticked like crazy after because she has a huge following.

• 50:47Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 50:48Yasi Salek?

  Sue Tompkins said, I was immediately struck by the fact that it was predominantly young women getting into it and sharing their videos. I was really moved by that and mostly how you could see them just purely expressing themselves and hopefully feeling loads of freedom.

• 51:01Speaker 04

  That's the cutest thing I've ever heard.

• 51:03Yasi Salek?

  I love that she was like, these girls wearing like a bra and like goth makeup in the mirror, like.

• 51:11Speaker 04

  But it's true.

• 51:12Yasi Salek?

  Filming themselves is a beautiful and pure.

• 51:14Speaker 04

  I just like the term loads of freedom. Huh? Maybe your band name could be Loads of Freedom.

• 51:20Yasi Salek?

  I feel like that has like a little entendre that I'm not comfortable.

• 51:22Speaker 04

  It definitely does, but that's what's kind of like whole.

• 51:25Yasi Salek?

  Yes, different though.

• 51:27Speaker 04

  Although I know that wasn't, that wasn't the.

• 51:29Yasi Salek?

  Oh, I think it was more of the philosophical, the void. She said, that makes me feel really excited. They feel they can do that and be seen so easily and excessively. Everything is open and somehow seems incredibly sensitive and sincere and transparent at the same time. When I sang the song live in any context, really, whether it was in rehearsals with the band or actually recording it in the studio or live on stage, I think deep down, I always felt a sense of freedom and energy and I used to like that. Yeah, it's very moving.

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• 52:28Speaker 01

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• 53:00Yasi Salek?

  I want to say something, and I hope this doesn't make certain swathes of the population feel bad. Um, but my, we were talking about this offstage, but my favorite sects of the bands' fanbase, I have two.

• 53:16Yasi Salek?

  It's 22-year-old girls who messaged me and are like, "I love Pavement now." And I'm like, "I'm absolutely doing God's work on this planet." I knew you were gonna say that exact phrase. I am just as simply a mouthpiece of God here to get 22-year-old girls to know about Pavement. And then also, they're a much smaller, but also mighty, population of clergymen that listen to this podcast. That's right. There are multiple reverends and a Catholic monk who I've referenced many times. Just saying. They too seem to think I'm doing God's work. Another cool thing with a lean over, I dug around the other songs and there are some here and there, but this one seems to have the most. There's a bunch of music references.

• 53:58Yasi Salek?

  We were also talking backstage about how I love it when a song references other bands. Like that Red House Painter song that's like, we're driving around listening to Hanoi Rocks and Social D. Like, I just love that. So in this one, she's like, "What's up? What's up with you? What's up with your friends? High heels, high heels, OI, MBV, MBV, MBV."

• 54:30Speaker 04

  You think that's my bloody Valentine?

• 54:32Yasi Salek?

  A hundred percent. Yeah.

• 54:33Speaker 04

  Was it confirmed?

• 54:34Yasi Salek?

  Why would you just randomly repeat M V V five times?

• 54:36Speaker 04

  Was it confirmed?

• 54:37Yasi Salek?

  No. Oh, you thought she was just like, what sounds really cool is those three letters?

• 54:41Speaker 04

  It could be anything. It could be anything, but you're probably right.

• 54:44Yasi Salek?

  I think it's my bloody Valentine.

• 54:45Speaker 04

  This is your sleuth work.

• 54:47Yasi Salek?

  And then there's a later part where she says, days like television, days like television, did it, did it, did it, days like television. Not only is she talking about television, there's a literal television song called Days. Yeah, off Adventure.

• 55:00Speaker 04

  Timing sounds right.

• 55:01Yasi Salek?

  Couple of these were called out on Genius, but I just want you to know the couple of them I came up with that they didn't know. The annotators of Genius missed, and I did not go and annotate because that's freak shit.

• 55:10Speaker 04

  Because you're gatekeeping it for a band's plan?

• 55:12Yasi Salek?

  That's right. Yeah. Now someone else can listen to this and go. And then the last one is 12 o'clock, one o'clock, no pretending, Virginia, looking at it last night, Virginia Plain. First single by the band, Roxy Music, Virginia Plain. Thought that was cute.

• 55:27Speaker 04

  I think that's very cute.

• 55:27Yasi Salek?

  That's my band's plan moment. I really like Young Offenders. I love Phillip. Her, the thing about, you would think that, and maybe you wouldn't think this, but I would have thought that sort of like scattered vocals would not possess emotional resonance. Do you know what I mean? Like, but there's so many beautiful phrases in her lyrics, and they always get me.

• 55:58Speaker 04

  That's kind of like the whole thing about jazz.

• 56:00Yasi Salek?

  I don't know about jazz famously, and I'm probably never will.

• 56:03Speaker 04

  That's the whole shtick. That's literally the whole thing is like.

• 56:06Yasi Salek?

  Are you telling me right now that you know about jazz?

• 56:09Speaker 04

  Um, I studied jazz in college because my boyfriend liked jazz. And then my teacher pulled me aside and was like, you gotta stop wasting your time. You don't give a fuck about this. And I was like.

• 56:24Yasi Salek?

  Many such cases, babe.

• 56:25Speaker 04

  Thank God someone said it.

• 56:25Yasi Salek?

  I like that your boyfriend led you to jazz and mine led me to math.

• 56:28Speaker 04

  No, literally, my boyfriend was.

• 56:31Yasi Salek?

  Sorry. Dad, earmuffs if you got to this part of the podcast.

• 56:36Speaker 04

  I didn't know you were on that wave.

• 56:37Yasi Salek?

  Just briefly.

• 56:39Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 56:39Yasi Salek?

  Short, twice.

• 56:40Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 56:42Yasi Salek?

  I've had a rich life full of varied experiences and it's made me who I am today.

• 56:50Speaker 04

  Of course.

• 56:52Yasi Salek?

  Judgment from you, a woman that studied jazz at the behest of her boyfriend.

• 56:57Speaker 04

  No, I'm just saying, that's their whole thing is like, you're not thinking about it, but it's also kind of methodical, but you're also just like working within a framework so that you can actually be free within that framework. It's that whole idea of like, a blank page is not liberating for writers.

• 57:17Yasi Salek?

  Right, where do I start? Yeah. Within which to be creative, yeah, we always talk about that.

• 57:22Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's kind of like jazz and that kind of is like this too.

• 57:24Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, okay, I like that.

• 57:26Speaker 04

  See, that's why the guy was so mean in Whiplash.

• 57:31Yasi Salek?

  Oh, sure, great movie.

• 57:32Speaker 04

  He's like, this shit matters.

• 57:34Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, you gotta, you gotta learn the rules to break them. How come you're so pretty? You too, but that's the lyric in the song.

• 57:45Speaker 04

  I literally was like, I know there's a catch, but that sounds so nice.

• 57:49Yasi Salek?

  There's also lyric in that one that says, couldn't understand science, darling. Same bit, once again, not a woman in STEM, she was ahead of the times.

• 58:05Yasi Salek?

  Okay, this is the question I wanted to ask you about guitar.

• 58:08Speaker 04

  Yes, ma'am.

• 58:09Yasi Salek?

  Things, Envoy is, are you very familiar with this song? Do you want me to play a little bit of it?

• 58:13Speaker 04

  Can you play it?

• 58:14Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 58:22Speaker 04

  Throughout the whole album, it's like, they are experimenting with different tones that sometimes come in and are like, boop, I'm just a voice that's coming in for this song, I'm a voice because you need another texture on this song. But like, the core, like if we're baking a cake, the flour is that guitar tone.

• 58:41Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 58:41Speaker 04

  I would say. And I think there's nothing about that, that is like, wow, this is such a unique and special tone, it's just very unfiltered, like, sounds like strats going through eight Fender deluxe for the nerds. And it's just-

• 58:59Yasi Salek?

  Shout out Fender if you're listening, I would love a guitar as I'm 43 and wanting to embark on the new phase of my life where I'm in a band.

• 59:06Speaker 04

  Let Yasi learn guitar.

• 59:07Yasi Salek?

  Let Yasi rock.

• 59:09Speaker 04

  Let y'all see rock.

• 59:10Yasi Salek?

  Okay, sorry, go on in.

• 59:11Speaker 04

  It's just like a classic, like, I think they're just, you know, like, on an amp, you'll have a reverb dial and you can literally have reverb that's built into the amp.

• 59:21Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 59:22Speaker 04

  It sounds like they're using that and they're not even like, I, I don't know, this is just what I think. But I think they're not going through a ton of pedals. There's not a lot of effects. It's the same on the vocal and on the guitars.

• 59:36Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 59:36Speaker 04

  They're both like, super, kind of like, albini, raw. And that's what, shout out, and that's what makes the voice and, and the guitars as well, feel like they're right there.

• 59:47Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, that, there's an immediacy, there's a, like, which also makes it a little more vulnerable, right? Cause you feel like you're just like, hi.

• 59:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, you're like, oh, I'm in the same room as you.

• 59:55Yasi Salek?

  Hey, girl. Um, all right, thanks for that explanation.

• 59:58Speaker 04

  Also, part of what I think makes those guitars sound so good is that everything you hear now, that comes out now, is overdubbed and overdubbed and overdubbed and has layers upon layers upon layers of stuff that you would never see live, like.

• 1:00:14Yasi Salek?

  But why do they do that?

• 1:00:15Speaker 04

  Cause it makes it sound fat and good.

• 1:00:17Yasi Salek?

  Okay, do you do that?

• 1:00:19Speaker 04

  Hell, yes.

• 1:00:20Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 1:00:21Speaker 04

  Hell, yes.

• 1:00:22Yasi Salek?

  Then I like it.

• 1:00:23Speaker 04

  There are not enough guitar players on earth to be on stage for like, all of the overdubs. Because you just, sometimes, not for every song, but sometimes you just want a wall of sound.

• 1:00:32Yasi Salek?

  Okay, Phil Spector.

• 1:00:33Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:00:34Yasi Salek?

  Art from the artist.

• 1:00:36Speaker 04

  Um.

• 1:00:38Yasi Salek?

  All comes back, back to.

• 1:00:40Speaker 04

  Um, but it doesn't sound like there's any overdubs or like Frankensteining of, I'm gonna take this piece and put it here, it's all just like, performance, like, it's a live performance.

• 1:00:50Yasi Salek?

  Work with this music, right? Because I, it feels to me like her vocals would just get lost in

• 1:00:55Speaker 04

  Totally.

• 1:00:56Yasi Salek?

  A wall of sound, if you will.

• 1:00:57Speaker 04

  I totally agree, like, they're so, they're not fragile, I don't listen to her voice and feel like, oh, you have a fragile or delicate voice? But I think it would get lost, it's not like, like Dolores from The Cranberries.

• 1:01:12Yasi Salek?

  Well, yeah, she's not belty.

• 1:01:14Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's not like that, but I think it could get lost.

• 1:01:19Yasi Salek?

  I love 14 Days, cause just, cause the premise is really funny, which she's like, doing a countdown to when she's gonna break up with this guy.

• 1:01:26Speaker 04

  Tea.

• 1:01:27Yasi Salek?

  And she thought it was really funny to say, I'm leaving you in 14 days.

• 1:01:31Speaker 04

  A fortnight.

• 1:01:32Yasi Salek?

  A fortnight. She said it. She was like, it's, but you wouldn't say a fortnight.

• 1:01:35Speaker 04

  Taylor Swift said a fortnight.

• 1:01:37Yasi Salek?

  Well, no comment.

• 1:01:47Yasi Salek?

  All right, Newtown. Let's fucking go. See, I think Newtown and Lean Over being the two on the first single are also, I think, two of the kind of the polarities of this album. Newtown is more the fall to me, like more leans a little more.

• 1:02:05Speaker 04

  And Lean Over is like, spring, summer?

• 1:02:07Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. That's not what I meant. I meant the fall, the band, but yeah.

• 1:02:13Yasi Salek?

  I'm sorry.

• 1:02:15Speaker 04

  I was like, okay, I see it. Like, people are going back to school.

• 1:02:19Yasi Salek?

  It starts, "I forgot, I forgot, I forgot, I forgot, I forgot." Extremely ossian, perimenopausees.

• 1:02:24Speaker 04

  Can you explain that to me?

• 1:02:25Yasi Salek?

  Oh, my God. You have so much to look forward to. Let me illuminate you, babe. A cool thing that happens in perimenopause, a word I believe they just invented two years ago, is that you start to completely go brain dead.

• 1:02:38Speaker 04

  Oh, great.

• 1:02:39Yasi Salek?

  And then you're like, oh, that's really cool because my job is talking in, in thoughts and sentences where I need to remember words. So that's an amazing thing to happen.

• 1:02:49Speaker 04

  I have only ever been exposed to perimenopause through one thing, and it's that Miranda July book.

• 1:02:54Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:54Speaker 04

  That's the only frame of reference I have.

• 1:02:56Yasi Salek?

  We're not all like that.

• 1:02:58Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:02:58Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, but, um... Do you think this is the only rock music podcast that has mentioned perimenopause this many times?

• 1:03:06Speaker 04

  No. I feel like this could come up.

• 1:03:08Yasi Salek?

  In, in other rock music podcasts?

• 1:03:10Speaker 04

  It pertains.

• 1:03:10Yasi Salek?

  Do you think Zayn Lowe ever mentions perimenopause?

• 1:03:12Speaker 04

  You know what? I wouldn't put it past him.

• 1:03:15Yasi Salek?

  You're right.

• 1:03:15Speaker 04

  And he would be understanding.

• 1:03:17Yasi Salek?

  He's an ally. He's a total, he's totally an ally. No, I know. I'm being serious.

• 1:03:20Speaker 04

  He is.

• 1:03:21Yasi Salek?

  Hashtag not all men.

• 1:03:22Speaker 04

  No, really.

• 1:03:24Yasi Salek?

  This one, yeah, this one just has so many good lyrics. "I saw you today. You were like snow."

• 1:03:37Speaker 04

  I don't know what that means, but I like it.

• 1:03:39Yasi Salek?

  You were like snow. You're temporary. You're gonna be gone. You're gonna melt away. Or also, maybe you're cold. Wait till...

• 1:03:48Speaker 04

  Delicate, slipping through my fingers.

• 1:03:50Yasi Salek?

  Let Ya See Rock happens, and you see what beautiful lyrics.

• 1:03:55Speaker 04

  Interesting.

• 1:03:56Yasi Salek?

  Come out of this person. Scattered, of course, because I can't sing. So it's either gonna be a hardcore band, or it's gonna be a scatting band.

• 1:04:02Speaker 04

  It could be both.

• 1:04:02Yasi Salek?

  Or it might be a weird hybrid, scatting and hardcore. Do you want to talk about "Sorrow," the song that you've been extremely preoccupied with? Can we play a little bit of it?

• 1:04:09Speaker 04

  Yeah, play a little.

• 1:04:20Yasi Salek?

  She also kind of sings more in this song, right? Like, a little more, like, normal vocal.

• 1:04:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, which I think is why it feels a little bit like a good access point.

• 1:04:30Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:31Speaker 04

  But...

• 1:04:31Yasi Salek?

  If you guys need an entry point.

• 1:04:32Speaker 04

  The thing about that, to me, is like, the way, like, the tone of her voice, even though it's speaking, it sounds like if you're talking to somebody, like, your friend comes over, and it's been a long-ass day, and they're just like, "The new past, blah blah blah blah." It's not like, "I'm going into the studio to sound good and whatever." It's like, to actually achieve a vocal take that sounds like you're talking to a friend or someone you love is so hard.

• 1:05:07Yasi Salek?

  Right? We're talking about it. There's a real sense of intimacy. I don't feel like Eddie Vedder was talking to me when he's like, "Dermi spoke."

• 1:05:15Speaker 04

  You don't. I don't feel that way about him either.

• 1:05:17Yasi Salek?

  I just wanted an opportunity to do my Eddie Vedder. There was no reason for me to say that.

• 1:05:19Speaker 04

  But I think Lou Reed had that.

• 1:05:21Yasi Salek?

  Hundred percent. Hundred percent.

• 1:05:23Speaker 04

  And I kind of think John Cale has that.

• 1:05:26Yasi Salek?

  Okay.

• 1:05:26Speaker 04

  And I feel like...

• 1:05:29Yasi Salek?

  Maybe more talk-singy people have that, because it's...

• 1:05:34Speaker 04

  That's true.

• 1:05:35Yasi Salek?

  Leonard Cohen has a bit of that.

• 1:05:37Speaker 04

  Leonard Cohen, Big Time. But even Leonard Cohen, like...

• 1:05:41Speaker 04

  First of all, the lyrics are actual poems.

• 1:05:44Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:05:45Speaker 04

  So it's like, doesn't feel like you're being spoken to in that way. But for Leonard Cohen stuff, it feels like, okay, he went in and got a bunch of takes and was at the studio in New York, sounding great, and then left.

• 1:05:56Yasi Salek?

  Or in Canada.

• 1:05:57Speaker 04

  Or in Canada. This sounds like it was not recorded with that in mind, genuinely. It just sounds like you have access to, it's like a little window into somebody's life.

• 1:06:08Yasi Salek?

  This is really the way I would love to approach all of my life. With my therapist, I call it tra-la-la.

• 1:06:15Speaker 04

  Okay, tell me more.

• 1:06:16Yasi Salek?

  Just going tra-la-la mode, when you're like, okay, just, you know, you guys know what I'm saying? Like, you're just like-

• 1:06:23Speaker 04

  Like when you're busy and your day is just like not-

• 1:06:25Yasi Salek?

  Just with everything, it's just like, who cares? You know, like, and not in a who cares where you don't value what you're doing and try to do properly with, with a sense of like, you know, intention and whatever, but it's more like not getting- I think there's like, what's that, that physics, uh, theory of like the observed versus the like unobserved? How things change when they're observed? Like, I think we're all now constantly thinking about everything in the sense that it's gonna be observed.

• 1:06:55Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:06:56Yasi Salek?

  Because of social media, maybe because we make things that are meant to be observed. But it's like, fuck, I can't think about that all the time because it makes me feel insane and terrible.

• 1:07:06Speaker 04

  Totally.

• 1:07:06Yasi Salek?

  And so I feel like going tra-la-la mode is like separating out of that and just being like, I'm just doing the things I'm doing tra-la-la throughout the day. And like, it exists outside of whatever it is gonna be to other people or to their observation, to their judgment.

• 1:07:27Yasi Salek?

  You know who really fucking, I know this is corny, but that figure skater.

• 1:07:33Speaker 04

  Alyssa Lu?

• 1:07:35Yasi Salek?

  That girl was like my Buddha. I'm like

• 1:07:36Speaker 04

  But I heard something interesting. Did you see the

• 1:07:39Yasi Salek?

  Are you gonna drag her now?

• 1:07:41Speaker 04

  No, no, no. I love her. I love her. But I just think it's interesting and was thinking about it in terms of like performing and performance anxiety and like stage fright and all these things. Did you see the interview that her coach gave? And he was like, I tell Alyssa all the time, there's something different about her brain. And to be an Olympian, you have to just have this like, oh, the plane's going down. Okay, I got this. No problem. Boop. I'm just locking in. Like, that piece that would go in your brain, or I'll speak for myself, my brain. Holy shit, I'm at the Olympics and everything is on a razor thin edge.

• 1:08:25Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:26Speaker 04

  And if I'm off by like this much, I'm gonna fall and eat shit and my dreams are crushed.

• 1:08:32Yasi Salek?

  Right.

• 1:08:33Speaker 04

  She doesn't have that piece.

• 1:08:34Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:35Speaker 04

  Which is so fascinating. And just like, I don't know, I just was like, holy shit, I don't know how it's possible, but

• 1:08:42Yasi Salek?

  Well, I think it's cultivated because I do think there's other Olympians or athletes or whatever that just do well under pressure, right? Which I do think is a skill, but a different skill. Whereas I genuinely think she has like cultivated a worldview where she's like she's, there was a thing I listened to her saying and I was like, this is trial and error mode where she was like, it doesn't matter if I win or lose. It literally materially doesn't matter. Like, it doesn't matter if I go in the championship or if I don't go in the championship. None, that just doesn't matter. Like

• 1:09:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, and she quit for a while.

• 1:09:17Yasi Salek?

  You know?

• 1:09:17Speaker 04

  And like, I feel like the perspective of having like taken years away and been like, maybe this isn't what's making me happy.

• 1:09:26Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:26Speaker 04

  And then be like, oh, actually I'm missing it in my life and coming back to it is like kind of trial and lot, like perfect soil for trial and lot.

• 1:09:36Yasi Salek?

  Totally.

• 1:09:37Speaker 04

  To take some time away and be like, oh, what do I miss? Now I actually enjoy it.

• 1:09:41Yasi Salek?

  Yeah. And like, what, what is important and what is not? And I don't know, I think it's just like if, and I'm sure there are people who are thriving in this world who care very deeply what other people think about them. And I'm not saying I don't, but like, I, I do better mentally if I'm just like Okay, this podcast sucks. This podcast sucks. I'm sorry.

• 1:10:06Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:10:07Yasi Salek?

  I'm just gonna keep.

• 1:10:08Speaker 04

  God make me small.

• 1:10:09Yasi Salek?

  God make me small, yeah. So, um, I'm, we've, but I, okay, I can bring it back. I feel that part of the experience of listening to Life Without Buildings is you feel that that was very much the energy of, at the very least, Sue Tompkins, but maybe all of them. And it is so imbued with that, that when you listen to it, you feel it too.

• 1:10:32Speaker 04

  I completely agree. Like, this thing that you have, that you pulled, an interviewer asked, basically, like, what are your goals?

• 1:10:41Yasi Salek?

  They were like, what are your plans after this album? This is when they were still a band. They hadn't broken up yet.

• 1:10:45Speaker 04

  So like, career-wise?

• 1:10:47Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:47Speaker 04

  What are you trying to do? And she straight up said, I think I'm not ambitious enough. So I find that question hard.

• 1:10:57Speaker 04

  Like, that is exactly what you're talking about.

• 1:10:59Yasi Salek?

  Exactly what I'm talking about. And I have a real, I have a real bone to pick with ambition. I found.

• 1:11:05Speaker 04

  Interesting.

• 1:11:06Yasi Salek?

  You guys, I'm gonna reveal something to you. I hated Martin Supreme.

• 1:11:11Speaker 04

  Mar- it's called Marty Supreme.

• 1:11:13Yasi Salek?

  I'm just saying the government name. But I, I was like, okay. Very confusing, because like, so beautifully shot, everything gorgeous, like.

• 1:11:23Speaker 04

  OPN soundtrack.

• 1:11:24Yasi Salek?

  OPN soundtrack hitting, like, costume design fucking perfect, production design perfect. Even the way it was shot, gorgeous. Performance is amazing. I don't care about this story, because the whole thing was like, ambition is a virtue, and I don't think ambition is a virtue. To me, it was presented that way. And I was just like, I don't care if Marty falls off a building in minute six, because I don't care about him as a person, because he has one note.

• 1:11:50Speaker 04

  I don't know that ambition is a virtue.

• 1:11:53Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:54Speaker 04

  But I do think it's a reality for a lot of people.

• 1:11:57Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:57Speaker 04

  And I think you're born with it, or you're born without it. I think it's one of those things. And you don't.

• 1:12:02Yasi Salek?

  Do you think so?

• 1:12:03Speaker 04

  I, I think so personally.

• 1:12:04Yasi Salek?

  I think you kind of have to like, monitor the situation. I think ambition is egoic. So like.

• 1:12:11Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:12:11Yasi Salek?

  I think you just have to be very aware of like, to what end.

• 1:12:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, of course. I mean, that's the thing of like, people who their whole life is to become an incredibly successful politician, musician, whatever. And the more successful they get, the goalpost moves and they're less and less happy because the thing they thought they'd always have, they didn't do the thing they wanted.

• 1:12:36Yasi Salek?

  As what, someone said this to me a long time ago and it's always stuck with me that it's like, if what makes you feel fulfilled comes from outside of yourself, there's never enough. You'll never be thin enough, you'll never be famous enough, you'll never be rich enough, you'll never be hot enough. There's never enough.

• 1:12:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think it also, it's also a bit of like, like how much were you bit by the capitalism bug? And how much did you believe it?

• 1:13:04Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:05Speaker 04

  Like, someone said something that blew my mind the other day, where I was like, I have this whole thing as a singer about wanting my voice to sound the same every single show. I would kill, I would give anything to have my voice sound the exact same because it's just reliable and it's vulnerable to get up in front of people and your instrument is inside your body and your body has fluctuations. And some days it sounds fantastic and you're like, I was sent here to rock and roll. And some days you're like, I cannot fucking sing, but somehow it's my job. And I was complaining about it and somebody was like, don't you think there's so much capitalism and so much masculinity in the idea that you're supposed

• 1:13:48Speaker 04

  to show up and sound the exact same like you're stamping it every single time?

• 1:13:54Yasi Salek?

  Like you're a cog.

• 1:13:55Speaker 04

  Like you're not only a cog in a machine, but you don't have like a cycle that changes your hormones, hormones that literally changes the tissue in your vocal cords.

• 1:14:05Yasi Salek?

  So like, I cried today at the Blanche L's act because I'm extremely ludial. I was like, why did I cry during this fucking podcast?

• 1:14:11Speaker 04

  But if, I mean, if you're ludial, you're, the tissue in your vocal cords is thicker.

• 1:14:16Yasi Salek?

  Do you think Zane Lowe talks about the ludial phase, making the tissue in female vocals?

• 1:14:21Speaker 04

  No, but I bet you if I wanted to talk to him about it, or you want to talk about it.

• 1:14:25Yasi Salek?

  Can you talk about it?

• 1:14:26Speaker 04

  He would be down.

• 1:14:26Yasi Salek?

  I think, I already said he's an ally. I'm just curious.

• 1:14:29Speaker 04

  I think he would.

• 1:14:30Yasi Salek?

  The differences between what we do. Yeah, okay.

• 1:14:34Speaker 04

  But to bring it back to them. I just think, like, the ambition aspect, if, if you're, if we are thinking about it as like, how much of this sort of like, virus do you have in you?

• 1:14:52Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:53Speaker 04

  That you're focused on other people and what, how they're hearing your music? I think she has had very little of that.

• 1:14:59Yasi Salek?

  And I do think, I'm sorry, I don't want to be reductive. Obviously, I think it's, I have ambition. We all have, like, maybe not, we don't all. There's lots of artists I love that I know. We were talking off, off mic about Billy Corgan, I think one of the more known to be ambitious artists ever, and like, he made some of the greatest albums of my lifetime. So like, no, no shade, no, no dissing, but just thoughts I had during the research of this podcast. So, Life Without Buildings, that's what we're talking about.

• 1:15:29Speaker 04

  It pertains.

• 1:15:31Yasi Salek?

  They tour a bunch after the album comes out. They tour with Bell and Sebastian, which apparently turned out to be a huge mistake, in their words, because everyone in the audiences were very mean to them, and they got heckled a lot. And quote, "There are few audiences more conservative than the white indie rock audience."

• 1:15:47Speaker 04

  So true.

• 1:15:48Yasi Salek?

  That's shade. But also G.

• 1:15:51Speaker 04

  It's not really that much G. I mean, there's like, certain pockets of indie rock that are, indie rock as a whole is extremely white, as you obviously know.

• 1:15:59Yasi Salek?

  I've seen it, yep.

• 1:16:00Speaker 04

  You've seen it. It's, there's just no denying that. It's also incredibly male. So it makes sense that it ends up being kind of conservative in those spaces.

• 1:16:09Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, and again, this is like 2001, but, or 2002, whatever. So, I'm sure that didn't help, that tour, but in 2002, the band kind of quietly breaks up. Robert said, "We did want to carry on, but I think at the same time, we were struggling to write new material, and there were tensions in the band, mostly me wanting to do more noodley stuff. I kind of felt that unless we completely changed direction, we wouldn't get another album out." They did, they recorded one last song called Love Trinity, um, which actually came out a couple of years ago for like a Record Store Day thing. It's on their live album. Um, Sue said, "When we stopped being a band, looking back on it, I think I stopped for really personal reasons. It was getting too bandy. I'd never done it before, and it was just getting too much. Like, there were tours to do, and t-shirts, and badges, pins, and stuff."

• 1:16:53Yasi Salek?

  And now I think I would actually go with that a bit more because these things become part of what you do, but it was all quite new and it was a bit scary that side of it. This is very much you being like, I don't want to play shows.

• 1:17:03Speaker 04

  I like playing shows.

• 1:17:04Yasi Salek?

  Sometimes I don't want to play shows.

• 1:17:05Speaker 04

  It's just, you know, it's like anything where sometimes life's hard for a given reason.

• 1:17:10Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I think, I don't think anybody is like, I want to go on a hard tour for 10 weeks or whatever. Like, I want to do it, but like-

• 1:17:18Speaker 04

  Like, week eight, you're like-

• 1:17:20Yasi Salek?

  I'm tired, yeah. Of course you love connecting with the audience, that's not what I was saying. Like, I'm playing, but like, I can imagine you being Sue Tompkins, like, I started this as a fun lol, lolz apalooza, and then they're like, you have to go tour with Belle and Sebastian, and there's men yelling at you.

• 1:17:37Speaker 04

  Especially like, in an opening situation like that, she's like, okay, I play my set, and men yell at me to like, take my top off, and then I have to go stand at the merch table with like, the money box, and like, I don't like this.

• 1:17:50Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, I have to make t-shirts.

• 1:17:51Speaker 04

  Which like, you know, fair.

• 1:17:56Yasi Salek?

  That was, that's all of Life Without Buildings. They put out a live album in 2007. No real answers as to how this happened. They, it was recorded in Sydney at the Anandale Hotel. The band members were like, we had no idea this shit was being recorded, but it's a cool album, I guess we're glad it came out.

• 1:18:13Speaker 04

  How do you not know?

• 1:18:15Yasi Salek?

  Don't know, it came out on a thing called Gargle Blast Records. Um, I don't, I don't know what kind of like-

• 1:18:22Speaker 04

  Okay, I have a question for you, I have a question.

• 1:18:25Yasi Salek?

  Gargle Blast?

• 1:18:26Speaker 04

  If you were starting a label today, what are you naming it?

• 1:18:31Yasi Salek?

  Gargle Blast, no. Um, Corner of Soul.

• 1:18:35Speaker 04

  No, you can't have that because that's the first band signed.

• 1:18:37Yasi Salek?

  Right, of course. Um, what would I call it? Yes, babe.

• 1:18:42Speaker 04

  Yes, babe.

• 1:18:44Yasi Salek?

  This is really hard. Do you have one?

• 1:18:47Speaker 04

  Oh, I don't. I was asking you.

• 1:18:51Yasi Salek?

  You don't have your own answer?

• 1:18:52Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:18:54Yasi Salek?

  Okay, Ludiel, Ludiel Records. Actually, that's pretty good.

• 1:18:58Speaker 04

  Ludiel Records?

• 1:18:59Yasi Salek?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:59Speaker 04

  I like that.

• 1:19:00Yasi Salek?

  Okay. Perimenopause.

• 1:19:02Speaker 04

  You could like, Perimenopause, perfect.

• 1:19:05Yasi Salek?

  There's a couple of songs, by the way, guys, if you want to check it out on the live at the Anandale Hotel that aren't on uh, the regular record, um, that are also quite good.

• 1:19:14Speaker 04

  I didn't know Frank Ocean was a fan.

• 1:19:16Yasi Salek?

  Okay, yeah, so I did a little research as I'm want to do. And I was like, who, who be name checking Live Without Buildings besides Blanche L? Um, we already said Beba Doobie? No.

• 1:19:30Speaker 04

  Beba Doobie.

• 1:19:30Yasi Salek?

  Beba Doobie. I really wanted to be Beba Doobie.

• 1:19:34Speaker 04

  Beba Doobie.

• 1:19:35Yasi Salek?

  Beba Doobie. Yes, Frank Ocean, who also has deep and wonderful taste, uh, played it in 2018 on his Beats One radio show, pre TikTok virality.

• 1:19:46Speaker 04

  Taste.

• 1:19:47Yasi Salek?

  Um, Matty Healy from the 1975 has, uh, said they influenced, uh, his music. Cloud Nothings.

• 1:19:59Yasi Salek?

  Wishy? Wishy's a great band. Have you guys heard Wishy?

• 1:20:01Speaker 04

  I love Wishy.

• 1:20:02Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, we really fuck with Wishy. Um, and then this year, Sleepford Mods, who are such a fucking cool band, um, put out a new album called The Demise of Planet X, and there's a song with Sue Tompkins on it.

• 1:20:13Speaker 04

  Oh, really?

• 1:20:14Yasi Salek?

  It's great, yeah. They also have, um, Alda Hux, Aldous, is it Aldous?

• 1:20:18Speaker 04

  Aldous, Aldous.

• 1:20:19Yasi Salek?

  Who I love. Um, she's also on a song on here.

• 1:20:22Speaker 04

  That makes sense. That's like, uh.

• 1:20:23Yasi Salek?

  Yeah, the kind of like in a similar, um, strange woman.

• 1:20:27Speaker 04

  I feel like Jessica Pratt would love her.

• 1:20:29Yasi Salek?

  Would love Sue Tompkins.

• 1:20:30Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:20:31Yasi Salek?

  I don't know. I don't know.

• 1:20:32Speaker 04

  The weirdness of it all.

• 1:20:34Yasi Salek?

  Um, well, you guys, we, wow, we nearly went, we went to 7:40. Um, thank you so much for coming down to the Boise Contemporary Theater. Oh, my God. Boop, boop. Perimenopause, she's still got it. Um, and spending your time with us. I'm really happy that, uh, you guys came out. It was really fun to do this. Thank you, Sabrina.

• 1:21:01Speaker 04

  Thank you, Yasi.

• 1:21:01Yasi Salek?

  For joining me and come back next week for a new episode of Bandsplain.

• 1:21:05Speaker 04

  Woo-hoo!

• 1:21:16Yasi Salek?

  If you liked what you heard today, subscribe for more episodes of Bandsplain. Our guest today was Sabrina Teitelbaum. This episode was recorded live at Treefort Festival in Boise, Idaho. It was produced by Rob Sunderman and edited by Adrian Bridges with help from Justin Sales. Video production by Max Sharpe. Executive producers for Bandsplain are Gina Dalvec and me, Yasi Salek. Our gorgeous and catchy theme song was composed and performed by Bethany Cosentino and Jennifer Clayton and graciously recorded by Carlos Delagarza in Los Angeles, California. Special thanks to our producer emeritus, producer Dylan, AKA Dylan Tupper Rupert, and also Sean Fennessy and the Treefort Festival. Come back every Thursday for a new episode of Bandsplain on Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.

• 1:22:03Yasi Salek?

  The Go-Go's and Fun Boy 3.

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  My lips are saying, that one.

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