2. SmogDongs Of Sevotion
I think I was 20, 21, 22… I don’t think it’s the first record I discovered, but this is the one I listened to the most. I love the first track, ‘Justice Aversion’, it starts with a controversy. And I like when there is a thinking in the form that looks raw. If you go back to Robert Ashley’s Perfect Lives: An Opera for Television, I find that in terms of their version, it’s like really short stories of Raymond Carver. There is little thinking through very simple forms.
I was listening to it and thinking, ‘I’m not going to make that, I can’t, I don’t have the voice, I don’t know how to play the guitar like this.’ It was excluding me, but it fascinated me completely. The storytelling evolves with the personality of Bill Callahan, it’s really interesting. But this one in particular, all those little stories that are told and the weird blood flow in the middle, there’s so many things happening in this record and everything is pure emotion.
I would read a comic book by Daniel Clowes or Adrian Tomine, and at the same time, I would listen to this. It’s like a little painting, a little vignette. There is something about telling a story and having distance with it – there is a song called ‘Distance’, actually – this is something that interests me a lot in music.
I come from a drawing and painting background, and I’m interested in perspective. I think those are things you can do by listening: what’s in the background? What’s close? What’s near, and what’s not? How to change focus, to make some things blurry or very distinct? And my music, obviously, I think about that a lot. I feel that in pop music, you have that, because you have the lead and the background. Sometimes, it’s really creative, because the levels change and what goes in the background comes closer.
