Broadcast – Tender Buttons

What brought you to Broadcast? I’ve previously joked that they’re kind of like a bargain basement English Stereolab, but maybe I’m ungenerous…

It’s not something I listen to a lot now, but when I was in college this was just, like, a huge influence on me. At the time it just felt so new, all the distortion, all the blending of rock elements, electronic elements, the greediness of all the different instruments, I was just like, ‘oh wow’. I still think it’s pretty amazing the way that they produced the record. But then also I think it’s the melodies. I saw them perform once, just [Trish Keenan], she was so low-key cool. She also played her keyboard to the side, and played with her right hand, and I adopted this for a long time, I thought that this was an amazing technique. But really it’s all about her melodies, and really that was a huge influence on me, just in terms of how she constructed melodies, over the instruments.

Do you think that music that you listen to when you’re young – regardless of the quality – does just end up playing an outsize role in the sort of things that you enjoy musically?

Oh are you kidding?! So Broadcast was in college, but the stuff I listened to in high school, I loved, like Le Tigre. When I was in elementary school, I listened to Alanis Morissette, every single R&B CD available, I had a CD Booklet with like every single R&B band - good or bad - that was coming out at the time, every Backstreet record, every TLC record, but I also had some bargain basement R&B records where you don’t even remember who these people are. When I was young you couldn’t just listen to, like, ten thousand albums. You’d get like five and just listen to them over and over again. So you’re right - it didn’t matter what the quality was!

I read that you’d written some papers on Lana Del Rey… What draws you to these brooding women?

Broadcast isn’t as melancholy, but I do think there’s a bit of darkness in that music. Maybe it’s being from Birmingham, the sound of being from that city. I always identified with singers who didn’t give you emotions that are straight out there, there’s always some irony or double meaning. That always connected with me. I think it may be because I was brooding, I was sad, I was melancholy, I’ve always been that way. I’ve always felt that the world is sort of like we’re one step away from falling into this never-ending black abyss, you know? That which is like standing on the edge, you know. Total chaos or nothingness. And so I loved artists who are sort of aware of that, aware of that inevitability… maybe it’s an existential inevitability we are touching on.