8. Patti Smith – Horses
This is someone who rejected what would be expected of a "woman" at her time, or even really any time. Gender is an important issue for you, as well as performance and fluidity.
It’s required to put Horses on a list like this. Just the cover, alone. I count the cover as an influence. She’s defiant but not overt. She’s not trying to hard to be defiant, she just is. The goal for me is to have some sort of live exorcism. [Laughing] Even when I’m just writing.
Oh my god, never do a show on a cliff.
I would! [Laughs]
How important is that physical or emotional immediacy in music?
It’s kind of dangerous, because even this album, there’s some dissonance to it. You’ll catch a really beautiful wave, but it’s always kind of threatening to go somewhere … it never really fully resolves into something truly corny beautiful. I would kind of pick and choose the songs that were a little less scary to truly fall asleep. I don’t know. Maybe I’m just super dramatic. [Laughs] I don’t even really understand why I’m anxious sometimes. It’s just this buzzing thing, nowhere to put it, and nowhere to go. Sometimes when I lay down to go to sleep, that buzzing is very clear.
