transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:46] Hi, guys.

Speaker 2:
[00:48] Hello and welcome to Bandsplain. 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. Who did? Jewel, Like My Hands Are Small, I Know, that one? I'm gonna cry out if I can. I gotta get into that part of the discography.

Speaker 1:
[01:09] Don't you feel like it's slightly inauthentic for us to hit it with Boise?

Speaker 2:
[01:13] Like when people say Los Angeles, like that?

Speaker 1:
[01:16] Well, yeah, kind of.

Speaker 2:
[01:19] I don't know. I don't know if there's an ethnic flair to it being Boise or Boise. Well, it's French. Okay, you can't be racist against French people. That's not possible.

Speaker 1:
[01:27] Okay, true.

Speaker 2:
[01:29] I'm really loving the vibes here, you guys. I gotta say. Okay. Proud, proud town. All I did today was shop, if I'm being honest, but 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.

Speaker 1:
[01:53] You bought me a sweatshirt.

Speaker 2:
[01:54] I bought you a sweatshirt.

Speaker 1:
[01:55] Said talentless, and then the back said, please wash your hands.

Speaker 2:
[01:59] Yeah. In fairness, I send it to you being like, this is my sweatshirt of my life, and you were like, can I have it?

Speaker 1:
[02:05] I was like, okay.

Speaker 2:
[02:07] 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 going to get a quick Mike's way and hit the road. Thank you guys for coming out. I'm sure there's 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. Was that like you guys are just clapping because you're just happy to be here, or you actually know what this band is?

Speaker 1:
[02:50] You guys know the music.

Speaker 2:
[02:51] Okay. Amazing. 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? Yeah. Oh, you guys, I'm so sorry. This is going to be five hours. I hope you didn't make plans. We're going to be here at the turn of midnight.

Speaker 1:
[03:17] With the extensive discography.

Speaker 2:
[03:18] Yeah. Imagine. Imagine like, actually we're doing Guided by Voices. We're going to be here till Sunday. Hope you brought snacks.

Speaker 1:
[03:26] Just analyze every single word of that one album.

Speaker 2:
[03:29] Sabrina.

Speaker 1:
[03:30] Yasi.

Speaker 2:
[03:31] 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.

Speaker 1:
[03:42] Okay. My personal history is basically, I was on tour 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 the 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 going to revisit that album that I heard on tour two years ago.

Speaker 2:
[04:23] It just came into your mind.

Speaker 1:
[04:25] Yeah. And I listened to Sorrow, which I think is like maybe the last song on that record. I'm not a kind of listener, like I go through every song in order. I just like bop around based on the title.

Speaker 2:
[04:40] It's totally fine that they meticulously sequenced that album. Probably took hours or days to do that.

Speaker 1:
[04:46] I myself care about album sequencing, but-

Speaker 2:
[04:50] Not even your own?

Speaker 1:
[04:51] No, I do care about that. When it's my own, I care about-

Speaker 2:
[04:55] You're like, when you listen to Blondshell, you better listen start to finish, bitch. But when I do it, I can do it like that.

Speaker 1:
[05:00] Yes, 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, and I was walking in the old Los Feliz.

Speaker 2:
[05:16] Los Feliz.

Speaker 1:
[05:17] Correct. And I was just like, holy shit, this person's voice, it's not like an intellectualized thing, you just listen to something, you're like, oh, my life is suddenly better. I've gone from having a horrendous day to life is beautiful and every step I take is peace.

Speaker 2:
[05:35] Wow.

Speaker 1:
[05:36] 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's only, in fact, one record.

Speaker 2:
[05:48] Simply one.

Speaker 1:
[05:49] There's simply one record and a live record.

Speaker 2:
[05:53] For an overview, guys, Life Without Buildings is a Scottish band. They're from Glasgow. They formed in 99, released one album and broke up in 2002. 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, kind of unlike anything I think that had come out at the time. And I think it kind of launched a bunch of ships of different artists that coming into the 2000s, I can really hear a bit of that influence. Or if it's not influence, at least the wave of a thing that was starting. Also a reason to talk about it is because they went viral on TikTok.

Speaker 1:
[06:38] And are reuniting.

Speaker 2:
[06:39] And are reuniting. I don't know if it's because they went viral on TikTok, although I'm sure.

Speaker 1:
[06:44] When did they go viral?

Speaker 2:
[06:45] 2021. So it's been. They're reuniting because they were on a subsidiary of Rough Trade and it's the Rough Trade 50 year anniversary in November. So they're reuniting. But I'm sure the TikTok virality didn't hurt. Like I'm sure Rough Trade is not like phoning up XYZ band that made one album and no one gives a fuck about it. And 30 years later or whatever.

Speaker 1:
[07:07] That was so true.

Speaker 2:
[07:08] Well, let's take it from the top, Bib. Okay. As we do. 1999. It's the summer. There are a few men, Will Bradley, Chris Evans and Robert Johnson.

Speaker 1:
[07:21] Chris Evans, isn't that also an actor?

Speaker 2:
[07:23] Yeah, is Captain America? Is it not?

Speaker 1:
[07:26] Same guy.

Speaker 2:
[07:26] Same guy. Yeah, he was also in Life Without Buildings. He has a diverse and storied career.

Speaker 1:
[07:31] Looks amazing.

Speaker 2:
[07:33] Does when you look at Captain America, is it giving like you made some bizarre post-punk in 1999?

Speaker 1:
[07:41] No.

Speaker 2:
[07:42] You know, my favorite one of this, we were talking about it. You guys watched The Pit? Hell yeah, brothers.

Speaker 1:
[07:47] New episode tonight.

Speaker 2:
[07:47] I know, I got to rush home right after this. Sorry, I also can't see any bands.

Speaker 1:
[07:51] Right after.

Speaker 2:
[07:52] Gotta catch up on The Pit.

Speaker 1:
[07:52] Wrap it up early.

Speaker 2:
[07:53] But Dr. Abbott, Sean Haddisey, was in bands before he was acting.

Speaker 1:
[07:59] Like, were they good?

Speaker 2:
[08:01] 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 Haddisey in the 90s, he said one sounded like Tool. Bang my line, babe, I need to hear these.

Speaker 1:
[08:17] Desperate to hear it.

Speaker 2:
[08:18] 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, 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.

Speaker 1:
[08:48] Fair enough.

Speaker 2:
[08:49] Do you feel that's a good band name?

Speaker 1:
[08:51] Life Without Buildings? Yes. Here's my problem. This is my only problem. Life Without Buildings and their one album name, Any Other City, are confusing because they're both have that city concrete vibe comes to mind. For a while there, I was like, is the band Any Other City or is the band-

Speaker 2:
[09:21] That's a lot of like urban planning energy.

Speaker 1:
[09:24] It's good though.

Speaker 2:
[09:25] I'm 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. Do you know what I mean?

Speaker 1:
[09:36] Yeah. It's a little like intellectualized.

Speaker 2:
[09:39] 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.

Speaker 1:
[09:47] I'm shocked that that doesn't exist.

Speaker 2:
[09:48] I know. Don't take it, you guys. There's still time for me to form my third stage Warped Tour band. 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 until later when we're all involved in the scene. So that Sue Tompkins was in an art collective. It was called Elizabeth Goh. She had a couple of other female women with a Y, artists with her, including her twin sister, Haley Tompkins. And 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, which 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 cause 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 going to need a few songs and also probably a singer. They also said, Robert said, drunken conversations about the go-betweens.

Speaker 1:
[11:03] Love them.

Speaker 2:
[11:04] And that kind of thing. And the Red House Painters.

Speaker 1:
[11:08] Love.

Speaker 2:
[11:08] Tarnished, I know, but we can still say we like the music.

Speaker 1:
[11:12] Maybe if you separate the art from the artist.

Speaker 2:
[11:15] 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.

Speaker 1:
[11:28] Which, by the way, every single one of the bands and artists you just named are entirely different.

Speaker 2:
[11:32] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[11:33] I guess there's like the Red House Painters, Nick Drake, kind of similarity in a way.

Speaker 2:
[11:39] Beautiful sad music, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[11:40] Beautiful sounding man, sad music, sad, clear guitar tones. Go-Betweens is so happy, I mean, it's not happy music, but upbeat acoustics driving stuff. And then Joy Division is obviously entirely different post-punk guitar tone sound. 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. Yeah, they give you a similar feeling.

Speaker 2:
[12:32] I think they were taking feelings. And also, we'll get into it when we talk more about the album, but there's an austere-ness to the production that reminds me a little of Joy Division, even if it doesn't musically sound the same. Anywho, you guys, we've just formed the band, though. We're forming the band. And they play their first show. They write a couple songs, I believe it was three. And they have their first show in Glasgow. And then they've started playing a couple shows here and there. And they play their first show in London in late 99. Robert said, like, oh, we just did it because people asked us to. They have a real Forrest Gumpass story over here where they're just like, we made a band. It had a cool name. Then we found our singer.

Speaker 1:
[13:18] And then people 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.

Speaker 2:
[13:26] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[13:26] Like that would not happen today. It's like 40 minutes, no less.

Speaker 2:
[13:30] Because people want their money back.

Speaker 1:
[13:33] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[13:33] Because they're like, could you just do it twice?

Speaker 1:
[13:36] Yeah. I mean.

Speaker 2:
[13:38] I really like it when a band plays the same song twice.

Speaker 1:
[13:41] I don't know that I've actually ever seen that happen.

Speaker 2:
[13:42] Military Gun does it all the time and I love it.

Speaker 1:
[13:44] Really? Wait, I love that song God owes me money.

Speaker 2:
[13:47] That whole album is so good.

Speaker 1:
[13:48] I would want them to just play it over and over again.

Speaker 2:
[13:50] But I feel more bands should do this if you guys are listening.

Speaker 1:
[13:52] Maybe I'll do that.

Speaker 2:
[13:53] Do it. What's your hit?

Speaker 1:
[13:57] I don't know.

Speaker 2:
[13:58] I mean, if it was me picking, I would say do Olympus twice.

Speaker 1:
[14:01] Kind of a downer. You can't do it with depressing music.

Speaker 2:
[14:04] Play The Jam twice. Everyone loves it. This is not what they did though. They played it, I believe, a 13 minutes set. Anyway, so they did this London show and I did some digging, as is my want, because in the greater story, it's like, and then they got a Rough Trade single. I was like, that's something. That doesn't, not even in 1999, 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. 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, sparse 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 perceive to be some kind of Karawackian stream of consciousness and poetry spat with tigger-like enthusiasm by vocalist Sue Tompkins. He described it way better than I could have, TBQH. Was it good? Was it bad? Was it genius? I 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, OK, like, this is very legible to me. It's immediately kind of like, wait, what?

Speaker 1:
[15:41] I have a hot take.

Speaker 2:
[15:42] Please.

Speaker 1:
[15:42] I think if you have good taste and you hear this band, it's not polarizing.

Speaker 2:
[15:47] I think if it's 2026.

Speaker 1:
[15:49] 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.

Speaker 2:
[15:57] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[15:58] Vocals are great. Lyrics are great.

Speaker 2:
[16:00] The vocals are great, but they are odd.

Speaker 1:
[16:05] Odd in that they're spoken. But it's not like Bjork singing. No, no.

Speaker 2:
[16:10] But it's like, remember, there's no dry cleaning yet. You know what I mean? I think it's impossible to maybe hear it before this was 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. When I listen to it, I hear American football. In the music part, the guitar parts, to me, sound really kind of American football-y. Am I crazy?

Speaker 1:
[16:41] You're not crazy. They're also both, I know from reading that the guys in the band don't want to be called math rock.

Speaker 2:
[16:49] But that's what kind of American football was doing too, right?

Speaker 1:
[16:53] Yeah, both of them have odd time signatures. It sounds right as a listener, because even if something has an odd time signature, it should still feel right. 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. It feels normal.

Speaker 2:
[17:11] You've come out against noise rock here on this podcast.

Speaker 1:
[17:13] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[17:13] You've come out against shellac.

Speaker 1:
[17:15] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[17:16] Okay.

Speaker 1:
[17:17] But what I'm saying is like, both of those bands have complicated, sort of intricate time signatures and arrangements that sound very natural.

Speaker 2:
[17:26] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[17:27] And the guitar tones are so much too.

Speaker 2:
[17:28] Okay, 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., 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.

Speaker 1:
[17:54] I like that. Yeah, I like that a lot.

Speaker 2:
[17:57] So they passed the checkbook on over and they put out the first single, which was The Leanover B slash W.

Speaker 1:
[18:05] Miss Viral.

Speaker 2:
[18:06] New Town. The Leanover, if you guys don't know, is the song that went viral on TikTok. I mean, I'm not a TikTok hater, but I just myself just recently made a Get Ready With Me video.

Speaker 1:
[18:21] I see you on there with that camera all the time.

Speaker 2:
[18:23] All the time.

Speaker 1:
[18:24] It was like back on the front facing camera.

Speaker 2:
[18:26] 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.

Speaker 1:
[18:34] I feel like if you're above 17, it is not natural to make TikToks.

Speaker 2:
[18:42] Yeah, I agree. Also, I'm like, what are these people? Fucking Steven Spielberg. Like, I don't have time to edit this. Like, how much time does it take? It takes me like three hours to edit.

Speaker 1:
[18:51] Also, I feel like they just have these suction cups and then the camera will be like on the ceiling or on the computer.

Speaker 2:
[18:58] Do you have it? I bought some suction cups. How are you going to get ready with me if it's not on the mirror? Anyways, back to The Leanover. I don't want to talk about the songs right now because I want to do it in the context of the album, but I'll just note 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. 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. 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, this is Robert, he said, all I remember is breaking a string, the drummer guy was nice, and the others were a bit murdy.

Speaker 1:
[19:57] What does murdy mean?

Speaker 2:
[19:58] Murdy is like bad attitude, like... Well, of course.

Speaker 1:
[20:03] Of course, but we know that.

Speaker 2:
[20:05] Like little bitches, basically.

Speaker 1:
[20:08] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[20:08] I'm simply quoting, I wasn't there. I don't know what Julian Casablanca's was getting up to at the Camden Monarch in February of 2001. 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.

Speaker 1:
[20:50] That's true.

Speaker 2:
[20:51] I think so. You know, I didn't see it mentioned anywhere, but another band I hear a lot of that I guess I'd have to, I should have looked this up before, but I think was either contemporaneous to Life Without Buildings or a bit after is Block Party.

Speaker 1:
[21:05] 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.

Speaker 2:
[21:12] Formed in 1999, same time.

Speaker 1:
[21:14] 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.

Speaker 2:
[21:22] Well, they've lasted much longer than Life Without Buildings, but I hear a similar staccato-ness sometimes to the vocals of Block Party.

Speaker 1:
[21:35] When did Silent Alarm come out?

Speaker 2:
[21:38] This is a real cool T-shirt name three songs moment for me. 2005.

Speaker 1:
[21:43] 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 kind of the big record.

Speaker 2:
[21:55] 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.

Speaker 1:
[22:11] Yeah, I could see it.

Speaker 2:
[22:17] All right, 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 about this. Basically, Sue Tompkins said multiple times, like, oh, that's cool that you guys like The Fall. I don't know who that is. She was not into this kind of music. She really just liked pop music and TLC. Do you feel like, as a vocalist, knowing that that was her inspiration, like, does it make sense to you to hear what she does with that?

Speaker 1:
[23:13] It literally makes no sense.

Speaker 2:
[23:14] Even a little bit that it sounds like rapping?

Speaker 1:
[23:17] It doesn't sound like rapping to me. It sounds sort of like scatting to me.

Speaker 2:
[23:23] How come it's cool when she does it and not when Anthony Kiedis does it? I must ask you.

Speaker 1:
[23:27] It's so true. You know what?

Speaker 2:
[23:30] I think it's cool when Anthony Kiedis does it. I'm just asking the broader question.

Speaker 1:
[23:34] 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.

Speaker 2:
[23:52] You don't think ding-ding, ding-dong, ding-ding, ding-dong, ding-ding was like a really inspired use of wordplay?

Speaker 1:
[24:00] 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 really esoteric and talk about a stream of consciousness way of writing. I don't know.

Speaker 2:
[24:19] 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. I like this is like supposed to be there, you know?

Speaker 1:
[24:51] Yes, that's the only element that to me makes the rap reference make sense, because... She's a rapper. 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.

Speaker 2:
[25:45] That's the TikTok viral song, FYI.

Speaker 1:
[25:47] It's so random, because that's not like a standout song to me from the record.

Speaker 2:
[25:51] I think it's a standout song to me, but it lends itself to girls lip syncing. It's mostly women lip syncing.

Speaker 1:
[25:58] I mean, like what I was just doing. Badalut, badalut, badalut.

Speaker 2:
[26:02] Mm, like that part, you know?

Speaker 1:
[26:03] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[26:04] Oh, it's a sassy, 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, that a lot of their guitar and especially drums, I think kind of simple drums sound like Moe Tucker's Velvet Underground. Modern Lovers Television. He also said we were really anxious not to be perceived as an art band. And it's like, well, good fucking luck, babe. Can you hear yourselves?

Speaker 1:
[26:36] Literally, literally what it is.

Speaker 2:
[26:38] Did you think you were going to sound like metal? Like 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.

Speaker 1:
[26:50] I don't buy that.

Speaker 2:
[26:51] I kind of do. Why would she lie?

Speaker 1:
[26:54] Well, I don't think she lied. I'm just like, does he have the story straight? Because it sounds like horses to me.

Speaker 2:
[27:03] Things can sound like a thing while being in a vacuum away from it.

Speaker 1:
[27:07] It's not like somebody today being like, I haven't heard of this band that had something.

Speaker 2:
[27:11] I'm sure she had heard of Patti Smith, but she would have had to go and sit and listen to it. And she was busy listening to the radio.

Speaker 1:
[27:18] I just feel like maybe it's one of those things where she wasn't a fan, but it was just in the ether. Like, maybe because the night sort of like big songs were just around.

Speaker 2:
[27:28] Maybe in 1999.

Speaker 1:
[27:30] 89?

Speaker 2:
[27:31] 99?

Speaker 1:
[27:32] Well, if you were... I don't know how much Patty said horses was getting played. If it's 1999, you grew up with that music again.

Speaker 2:
[27:37] Yeah, she was born in 71. So in 99, she would have been like 28 or whatever.

Speaker 1:
[27:42] So the timing kind of checks out.

Speaker 2:
[27:43] Yeah, OK. So you're calling her a liar.

Speaker 1:
[27:46] I'm not calling her a liar. I'm saying somebody doesn't have the story straight. Nobody lied.

Speaker 2:
[27:50] Sue Tompkins, Sabrina Teitelbaum from Blondshell just called you a liar.

Speaker 1:
[27:54] No, Sabrina Teitelbaum from Blondshell literally loves you.

Speaker 2:
[27:57] She would like to do a duel with you. And you changed her life.

Speaker 1:
[28:00] Stop lying, Yasi.

Speaker 2:
[28:03] This is a quote from Sue. I have not really heard The Fall, but I saw Marky Smith do a song about a telephone on the old gray whistle test with Cold Cut, and I thought he was pretty great. I thought that was cute. That was like in 2001 or whatever. It's interesting, they were also really into techno and 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 put drum machine, they just didn't ever do it.

Speaker 1:
[28:32] I can hear that.

Speaker 2:
[28:32] Another band they referenced was Noi, and that actually makes so much sense to me.

Speaker 1:
[28:38] Okay, say more.

Speaker 2:
[28:39] Are you a Noi girl?

Speaker 1:
[28:40] Not really, but not distinctly not.

Speaker 2:
[28:42] Anyways, I like Noi a lot. Noi is for me very 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.

Speaker 1:
[28:59] I could hear that in the drums.

Speaker 2:
[29:00] Yeah, yeah. Thank you for bringing it back to music. They also listen a lot to Missy Elliott rap.

Speaker 1:
[29:08] 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.

Speaker 2:
[29:18] It's also because of how old were you in 1989?

Speaker 1:
[29:20] Two.

Speaker 2:
[29:20] Yeah, that's why.

Speaker 1:
[29:22] I was listening to Missy Elliott, and that was my shit, and I didn't find Life Without Buildings until like two years ago.

Speaker 2:
[29:29] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[29:30] So in my mind, I'm like, it's entirely different things.

Speaker 2:
[29:33] No, this was big, big Missy Elliott.

Speaker 1:
[29:35] Thanks for bringing that timeline.

Speaker 2:
[29:36] It was a little post her like, I can't stand the random TV big moment, and that was like more mid-90s.

Speaker 1:
[29:43] So Sue had taste.

Speaker 2:
[29:45] Sue had great taste. You mentioned Esoteric. She was very into Esoteric quote literature.

Speaker 1:
[29:51] Queen.

Speaker 2:
[29:52] 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, then 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.

Speaker 1:
[30:14] Big time.

Speaker 2:
[30:15] What kind of makes sense, because if you're going to write lyrics in that way, and you're like, I'm not fucking with this song, like how could you do what she does over it? Yeah. OK, I want to ask you a question. So you guys heard Leanover. I want you to know that's like five full minutes of like, uh-huh, uh-huh. If I lose you, if I lose you, if I lose you, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh. How do you do that live the same all the time?

Speaker 1:
[30:38] She doesn't. So, so here's the thing. Everybody thinks it's so stream of consciousness, because there's so much repetition.

Speaker 2:
[30:46] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[30:47] 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, hey, 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?

Speaker 2:
[31:22] Kind of.

Speaker 1:
[31:24] Her delivery, the lyrics are the same, she'll know the structure, like you're learning a song, but the delivery each time is like, I felt like saying it this way. No, I felt like saying it this way.

Speaker 2:
[31:34] 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 remember, like you can't say a totally different thing. Like yeah, you can say a haunt 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.

Speaker 1:
[32:07] 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.

Speaker 2:
[32:18] I can kind of play around.

Speaker 1:
[32:19] 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.

Speaker 2:
[32:31] Right, it does, it's like percussive, it almost feels like playing an instrument. So maybe it feels like the same way you always remember how to play your guitar or whatever.

Speaker 1:
[32:40] I think so.

Speaker 2:
[32:41] Here's what Sue said. When we were in rehearsal, the way we used to work was 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. 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, okay. Absorption I think is such a good word. Because as much as I think she is very particular, clearly and refining about exactly what words go where, it feels a little bit 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?

Speaker 1:
[33:38] Yeah, I mean, I think that's the sort of hypnotic element of it for us listening.

Speaker 2:
[33:44] But maybe not for her doing it.

Speaker 1:
[33:46] I don't know, 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 46th 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.

Speaker 2:
[34:25] I wonder 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 The Leanover all the way through, you start to hear different things. Like if I lose you, it starts to sound like illusion. Some people thought it sounded like Fallujah Street. Yeah, elusive. It just starts to completely every time you listen to it's like different words, which is so cool. I can't think of another type of artist that I hear that in.

Speaker 1:
[34:54] I kind of like that with some of the Pixie 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.

Speaker 2:
[35:06] Yeah, I guess Black Francis is also kind of percussive in the way he punctuates.

Speaker 1:
[35:11] But also kind of lazy with pronunciation.

Speaker 2:
[35:14] Yeah. 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.

Speaker 1:
[35:33] It's so cool.

Speaker 2:
[35:34] When you hear it, it sounds like she's stuttering, but those are written stutters. She planned those.

Speaker 1:
[35:40] It also feels like today, most music that you hear is very, I think part of it is just the collapse of the industry and the fact that the artist has to think about how to get people to hear the music constantly.

Speaker 2:
[35:53] There she goes again.

Speaker 1:
[35:54] There she goes. If I didn't be on this podcast, I will be saying it. Artists have to wear 9 million hats. And so it's kind of like TikTok every two weeks. So it's kind of like impossible to separate the fact that you're making music that you know you want people to hear. 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. Yeah, there's it's kind of like you're looking at two people having their own thing. You're like looking through the window. Yeah, and she's there is zero semblance of her writing this music thinking, oh, people are going to hear it.

Speaker 2:
[36:30] I don't think they did think people are going to 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 fun laugh for them. And then it got like, again, Forrest Gumped its way into being like really serious all of a sudden. And then they were like, or not they, Sue Tompkins in particular, was like, no thank you, I don't want to do this.

Speaker 1:
[36:54] Fire.

Speaker 2:
[36:56] So sick. Imagine them being like, you're in a cool band now. Me, I'd be like, thank you, yes, but I would take it off every day.

Speaker 1:
[37:02] I never really felt it.

Speaker 2:
[37:03] Yeah, she was like, I want to go back to doing spoken word performance art.

Speaker 1:
[37:07] So cool.

Speaker 2:
[37:08] We talked a little bit 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 drills provide a satisfying tingle. Animals dying in agony make a heavenly choir. Sue Tompkins, idiosyncratic frontwoman of Life Without Buildings, makes a beautiful noise. Are you at least happy that they're not really allowed to be this mean anymore?

Speaker 1:
[38:03] Oh my God. I thought about it so much. Thank God.

Speaker 2:
[38:06] Well, they're like, and she's ugly.

Speaker 1:
[38:08] No, literally. I mean, they still do that to some people.

Speaker 2:
[38:11] Do they?

Speaker 1:
[38:11] Yeah, but it's rare, which makes it kind of more impactful when it happens.

Speaker 2:
[38:15] Also, with the most love and respect, 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...

Speaker 1:
[38:25] This is mean, though.

Speaker 2:
[38:25] I'm happy for you or I'm sorry that happened by every step.

Speaker 1:
[38:27] This is a tough review.

Speaker 2:
[38:28] 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 estuary accent.

Speaker 1:
[38:43] It's giving jealous. I was like, it's literally giving jealous. Don't you think?

Speaker 2:
[38:47] First of all, what do you fucking miss? Miss? What was the psychic? Miss Cleo, I almost said Miss Clare. And I was like, no, Clare is a beloved and wonderful pop, beautiful artist. But maybe Miss Clare would be a really sick marketing thing for her.

Speaker 1:
[39:03] I bet you Miss Clare loves Life Without Buildings. I see her Instagram post and she has good taste.

Speaker 2:
[39:07] She has great taste. We love Clare on this podcast. Anyways, Miss Clare, I'm like, how do you know what she thinks she is? Do you know her?

Speaker 1:
[39:14] No, literally. It's that classic thing of a man being like, I know what this woman's trying to be.

Speaker 2:
[39:19] When she was like, I've never heard Patti Smith, bitch.

Speaker 1:
[39:22] Literally.

Speaker 2:
[39:23] 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.

Speaker 1:
[39:32] It actually makes me so annoyed to hear this.

Speaker 2:
[39:36] I've been retroactively extremely angry at a review written 25 years ago and publicly dragged the person on the podcast.

Speaker 1:
[39:43] It's just obnoxious intellectualizing of something that clearly just makes people feel good, period.

Speaker 2:
[39:51] Well, I mean, it was their job to give reviews, I guess.

Speaker 1:
[39:53] Yeah, but this way of intellectualizing it and being like she has an estuary accent and blah, blah, blah, blah, just feels like it's missing the point.

Speaker 2:
[40:01] Hers is the sound of a performance artist having a self-conscious breakdown, which again, it's 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.

Speaker 1:
[40:15] No, literally, that's what I'm trying to say.

Speaker 2:
[40:16] Hashtag not all men, but definitely this man. The Guardian liked it, gave it three stars, kind of, you know, in a vote. Oh, we didn't silence. Sorry, it's my grandma. Literally incredible stuff. Grandma's grandma's. Should we phone her in?

Speaker 1:
[40:35] Fuck, no.

Speaker 2:
[40:37] Does she like your music? Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[40:40] And she comes to some shows.

Speaker 2:
[40:41] Do you feel weird to talk about sucking dick in the bathroom when your grandma is at the show?

Speaker 1:
[40:46] Distinctly, yes. But she told me not to worry about that.

Speaker 2:
[40:50] Oh, oh yeah, cool grandma.

Speaker 1:
[40:52] 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.

Speaker 2:
[41:01] She also separates the art from the artist.

Speaker 1:
[41:06] No, but the thing is, like, my set just top to bottom is full of things you don't want your family to hear.

Speaker 2:
[41:12] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[41:13] So I actually tried to get them to not go to the shows.

Speaker 2:
[41:15] That's smart.

Speaker 1:
[41:16] But then if the show goes really well, I'm like, should have invited my family.

Speaker 2:
[41:19] I've talked about doing math on this podcast, but famously my parents...

Speaker 1:
[41:22] And do your parents listen?

Speaker 2:
[41:23] Absolutely not. They don't know what I'm on about. So I think they've tried, but they're like, OK, that's lovely.

Speaker 1:
[41:30] Do they have the same music taste as you? My parents.

Speaker 2:
[41:32] My parents.

Speaker 1:
[41:33] Some people have cool parents.

Speaker 2:
[41:33] Yeah, my parents love guided movies. No, my parents aren't Iranian immigrants. My mom loves Madonna and Hadaway. My mom's like basically a gay man. And my dad, I actually, my dad loves like Anne Magnusson, 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 going to do it in order if you don't mind. PS 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, 44 times. The right stuff. The right stuff. I do feel like it's kind of no skips.

Speaker 1:
[42:22] I agree, yeah. Also, I was reading about her saying which ones are her favorites.

Speaker 2:
[42:27] Yeah, and they're not the ones that are other people's favorites.

Speaker 1:
[42:30] No, she's like, I like the short ones.

Speaker 2:
[42:32] Well, it's because she doesn't want to listen to herself.

Speaker 1:
[42:34] Oh, right, right, right, right.

Speaker 2:
[42:36] Do you relate to that, or do you just like bang Blondshell at the home?

Speaker 1:
[42:40] I have a very complicated relationship with it, so it depends.

Speaker 2:
[42:43] So sometimes you're like, hell yeah.

Speaker 1:
[42:45] Sometimes I'm like, God sent me here to rock and roll. And sometimes I'm like, why am I doing this? Yeah, I think that's a common.

Speaker 2:
[42:55] I can never listen to my own voice literally ever again.

Speaker 1:
[42:59] But there's a whole thing about that. People are very uncomfortable. I'm very uncomfortable hearing my speaking voice.

Speaker 2:
[43:04] But not your singing voice.

Speaker 1:
[43:05] I've had to hear my singing voice a lot because when you record, you just have to comp vocals, which takes hours of listening to your own voice. It's more like I think of it like utility. But with my speaking voice, I'm like, it's nails on chalkboard.

Speaker 2:
[43:21] I recommend doing what me and producer Dylan had to do. I mean, producer Dylan didn't have to do it with her own voice. She unfortunately had to do with my voice. But in the first three years of Bandsplain, we had to listen to every episode multiple times before it came out. And I think my ego died completely. I was literally dissociating. I was like, well.

Speaker 1:
[43:40] I say like so many times, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 2:
[43:43] I had 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.

Speaker 1:
[43:51] My personality is terrible.

Speaker 2:
[43:53] Everything about me is unbearable. And I should probably just walk into the ocean with my rocks in the pockets. And then I transcended. And then I was like, guess what? Who fucking cares?

Speaker 1:
[44:07] And that was your ego death.

Speaker 2:
[44:08] You like it?

Speaker 1:
[44:09] Ego death via podcast.

Speaker 2:
[44:10] Listen, 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 interesting.

Speaker 1:
[44:18] It kind of sounds the most normal on the album, actually.

Speaker 2:
[44:22] Yeah, I think I agree.

Speaker 1:
[44:23] 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 sounds more like vocal melodies.

Speaker 2:
[44:40] I mean, she does repeat a lot, but not as much as the other ones. I like one of the three lines on here as my lips are sealed. Okay, let's talk about The Leanover 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?

Speaker 1:
[45:06] It's just up to God.

Speaker 2:
[45:08] God picks some weird ones, then.

Speaker 1:
[45:11] I know.

Speaker 2:
[45:12] 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.

Speaker 1:
[45:22] 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.

Speaker 2:
[45:29] 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.

Speaker 1:
[45:49] Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And like the bowls of ice, like ice in different shapes.

Speaker 2:
[45:54] And it's like, and I'm like, you do this every night.

Speaker 1:
[45:58] And I love it. I want to live that life.

Speaker 2:
[46:01] 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 as gorgeous.

Speaker 1:
[46:09] Dolphin brain.

Speaker 2:
[46:10] 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 going to watch this bitch reset her life for the next day.

Speaker 1:
[46:20] Do you ever see those like, make my nighttime cocktail? And it's like tart cherry juice.

Speaker 2:
[46:24] It's always tart cherry juice, babe. Magnesium powder, my nightly mocktail. I'm like, God, please, why can't I be like this?

Speaker 1:
[46:33] I'm desperate to be that way.

Speaker 2:
[46:35] Come remove a chunk of my brain so I can, in my Stanley Cup, chink, chink, boop, boop, chink, chink, chink. But yeah, that's my outcome.

Speaker 1:
[46:44] 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.

Speaker 2:
[46:51] Oh, totally.

Speaker 1:
[46:52] I love that shit.

Speaker 2:
[46:54] Some of those are really depressing.

Speaker 1:
[46:56] It's, well, conceptually, it's all depressing.

Speaker 2:
[46:59] Sure, but the, I hate, again, I hate to be a masandrist, 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. Yeah, like preparing their like tupperware of like ground beef and rice.

Speaker 1:
[47:19] Raw chicken.

Speaker 2:
[47:20] 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 content? Don't tell anybody about this.

Speaker 1:
[47:31] That's disgusting and sad. And when women do it, it's cute and fun.

Speaker 2:
[47:35] It's something when women do it, it's cute and fun. It's definitely not absolute. I should start making my five to nine.

Speaker 1:
[47:42] You can't do it. The sad thing about it to me, even though I am a massive consumer of those TikToks, is the like, I'm optimizing my life in every waking moment.

Speaker 2:
[47:50] Absolute optimization and porn.

Speaker 1:
[47:53] That is evil.

Speaker 2:
[47:55] Yeah, but then I also have a lot of TikToks about undoing the grip of capitalistic optimization on yourself. So I have a nice balance.

Speaker 1:
[48:04] Okay, put me on because I'm not on that side of TikTok.

Speaker 2:
[48:07] I'll start to agree to your algorithm. Anyways, back to this TikTok. Can you help me say this?

Speaker 1:
[48:12] Beepadooby.

Speaker 2:
[48:13] Thank you.

Speaker 1:
[48:15] You would like Beepadooby.

Speaker 2:
[48:17] Yeah, I've heard it. It's good.

Speaker 1:
[48:18] She's good.

Speaker 2:
[48:19] She's good.

Speaker 1:
[48:19] And she's cool.

Speaker 2:
[48:20] She has incredible taste. She also covered a Sunday song which brought a resurgence of the Sundays. I just haven't spent a lot of time listening to her music, but like I'm saying, in theory.

Speaker 1:
[48:29] She had that song that's like, I wish I was Stephen Malkimus.

Speaker 2:
[48:32] She has phenomenal taste. Phenomenal taste.

Speaker 1:
[48:34] She's cool.

Speaker 2:
[48:35] 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 upticks like crazy after it because she has a huge following. Sue Tomkin 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.

Speaker 1:
[49:01] That's the cutest thing I've ever heard.

Speaker 2:
[49:03] I love that she was like, these girls wearing a bra and goth makeup in the mirror, filming themselves is a beautiful and pure freedom of expression.

Speaker 1:
[49:14] I just like the term loads of freedom. Maybe your band name could be Loads of Freedom.

Speaker 2:
[49:19] I feel like that has a little entendre that I'm not comfortable with.

Speaker 1:
[49:22] It definitely does. But that's what's kind of nice, like whole.

Speaker 2:
[49:25] Yes, different though.

Speaker 1:
[49:27] Although I know that wasn't the intention.

Speaker 2:
[49:29] 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.

Speaker 1:
[49:53] Yeah, it's nice.

Speaker 2:
[49:54] Very moving. I want to say something, and I hope this doesn't make certain swaths of the population feel bad. But my, we were talking about this off stage, but my favorite sects of the Bandsplain fan base, I have two. It's 22 year old girls who messaged me and are like, I love pavement now. And I'm like, I am absolutely doing God's work on this planet.

Speaker 1:
[50:23] I knew you were going to say that exact phrase.

Speaker 2:
[50:25] I am just 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. God's work. Just saying. They too seem to think I'm doing God's work. Another cool thing about The Leanover, 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. 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. I just love that. So in this one, she's like, what's up with you? What's up with your friends? High heels, high heels, OI, MVV, MVV, MVV.

Speaker 1:
[51:30] You think that's My Bloody Valentine?

Speaker 2:
[51:31] 100 percent. Yeah. Why would you just randomly repeat MVV five times?

Speaker 1:
[51:35] Was it confirmed?

Speaker 2:
[51:36] No. You thought she was just like, what sounds really cool is those three letters?

Speaker 1:
[51:40] It could be anything. It could be anything. But I think you're probably right.

Speaker 2:
[51:44] I think it's My Bloody Valentine.

Speaker 1:
[51:45] This is your sleuth work.

Speaker 2:
[51:46] And then there's a later part where she says, days like television, days like television, da-da-da-da-da-da-da, days like television. Not only is she talking about television, there's a literal television song called Days. Yeah, Off Adventure. A 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.

Speaker 1:
[52:10] Because you're gatekeeping it for Bandsplain?

Speaker 2:
[52:12] 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. I thought that was cute.

Speaker 1:
[52:26] I think that's very cute.

Speaker 2:
[52:27] That's my Bandsplain moment. I really like Young Offenders. I love Philip. 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.

Speaker 1:
[52:57] That's kind of like the whole thing about jazz.

Speaker 2:
[53:00] I don't know about jazz famously.

Speaker 1:
[53:02] But that's the whole shtick.

Speaker 2:
[53:03] That's literally the whole thing is like, are you telling me right now that you know about jazz?

Speaker 1:
[53:08] Um, I studied jazz in college because my boyfriend liked jazz. And then my teacher pulled me aside and was like, you got to stop wasting your time. You don't give a fuck about this.

Speaker 2:
[53:22] And I was like, many such cases.

Speaker 1:
[53:24] Thank god someone said it.

Speaker 2:
[53:25] I like that your boyfriend led you to jazz and mine led me to math.

Speaker 1:
[53:28] No, literally, my boyfriend was...

Speaker 2:
[53:33] Dad, you're most of you got to this part of the podcast.

Speaker 1:
[53:35] I didn't know you were on that wave.

Speaker 2:
[53:37] Just briefly. Very short, twice. I've had a rich life full of varied experiences. And it's made me who I am today.

Speaker 1:
[53:50] Of course.

Speaker 2:
[53:52] Judgment from you, a woman that studied jazz. At the behest of her boyfriend.

Speaker 1:
[53:56] No, I'm just saying, that's their whole thing. You're not thinking about it, but it's also kind of methodical, but you're also just working within a framework so that you can actually be free within that framework. It's that whole idea of a blank page is not liberating for writers because they're like, wow, where do I start?

Speaker 2:
[54:18] Limitations within which to be creative. Yeah, we always talk about this.

Speaker 1:
[54:21] That's kind of like jazz, and that kind of is like this too.

Speaker 2:
[54:24] Yeah, okay, I like that.

Speaker 1:
[54:26] See, that's why the guy was so mean in Whiplash.

Speaker 2:
[54:31] Oh, sure, great movie.

Speaker 1:
[54:32] He's like, this shit matters.

Speaker 2:
[54:33] Yeah, you gotta learn the rules to break them. How come you're so pretty? You too, but that's the lyric in the song.

Speaker 1:
[54:44] I literally was like, I know there's a catch, but that sounds so nice.

Speaker 2:
[54:49] There's also a lyric in that one that says, Couldn't understand science, darling. Same bit.

Speaker 1:
[54:53] Tea.

Speaker 2:
[54:54] Once again, not a woman in STEM. She was ahead of the times. Okay, this is the question I wanted to ask you about guitar.

Speaker 1:
[55:08] Yes, ma'am.

Speaker 2:
[55:08] Things. Envoys. Are you very familiar with this song? Do you want me to play a little bit of it?

Speaker 1:
[55:13] Can you play it?

Speaker 2:
[55:13] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[55:22] 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 flower is that guitar tone, 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 Stratz going through a Fender Deluxe for the nerds.

Speaker 2:
[55:57] And it's just 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.

Speaker 1:
[56:05] Let Yasi learn guitar.

Speaker 2:
[56:07] Let Yasi rock.

Speaker 1:
[56:09] Let Yasi rock.

Speaker 2:
[56:09] Sorry, go on.

Speaker 1:
[56:11] 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. It sounds like they're using that and they're not even like, 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. They're both like super kind of like albini raw and that's what, shout out, and that's what makes the voice and the guitars as well feel like they're right there.

Speaker 2:
[56:47] Yeah, there's an immediacy. Which also makes it a little more vulnerable, right? Because you feel like you're just like, hi.

Speaker 1:
[56:53] Yeah, you're like, oh, I'm in the same room as you.

Speaker 2:
[56:55] Hey, girl. All right, thanks for that explanation.

Speaker 1:
[56:58] 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.

Speaker 2:
[57:13] But why do they do that?

Speaker 1:
[57:15] Because it makes it sound fat and good.

Speaker 2:
[57:17] Okay. Do you do that?

Speaker 1:
[57:19] Hell yes. Hell yes.

Speaker 2:
[57:21] Then I like it.

Speaker 1:
[57:22] 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.

Speaker 2:
[57:32] Okay. Phil Spector.

Speaker 1:
[57:33] Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2:
[57:34] Art from the artist. All comes back to.

Speaker 1:
[57:40] But it doesn't sound like there's any overdubs or like Frankensteining of, I'm going to take this piece and put it here. It's all just like performance.

Speaker 2:
[57:48] Like it's a lot of work with this music, right? Because it feels to me like her vocals would just get lost in a wall of sound, if you will.

Speaker 1:
[57:57] 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.

Speaker 2:
[58:12] Well, yeah, she's not cut through.

Speaker 1:
[58:13] Yeah, it's not like that. But I think it could get lost.

Speaker 2:
[58:19] I love 14 Days because just because the premise is really funny, which she's like doing a countdown to when she's going to break up with this guy. And she thought it was really funny to say, I'm leaving you in 14 days.

Speaker 1:
[58:31] A fortnight.

Speaker 2:
[58:32] A fortnight. She said it. She was like, it's but you wouldn't say a fortnight.

Speaker 1:
[58:35] Taylor Swift said a fortnight.

Speaker 2:
[58:37] Well, no comment. All right, Newtown. Let's fucking go. See, I think Newtown and Leanover 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.

Speaker 1:
[59:05] And Leanover is like spring summer?

Speaker 2:
[59:07] Yeah. That's not what I meant. I meant the fall, the band. But yeah. I'm sorry.

Speaker 1:
[59:15] I was like, OK, I see it like people are going back to school.

Speaker 2:
[59:18] It starts, I forgot, I forgot, I forgot, I forgot, I forgot. Extremely Yasi and Perry Menopause.

Speaker 1:
[59:23] Can you explain that to me?

Speaker 2:
[59:25] Oh, my God, you have so much to look forward to. Let me illuminate you, babe. A cool thing that happens in Perry Menopause, a word I believe they had just invented two years ago, is that you start to completely go brain dead.

Speaker 1:
[59:38] Oh, great.

Speaker 2:
[59:38] And then you're like, oh, that's really cool because my job is talking in thoughts and sentences where I need to remember words, so that's an amazing thing to happen.

Speaker 1:
[59:49] I have only ever been exposed to Perry Menopause through one thing, and it's that Miranda July book.

Speaker 2:
[59:54] Yeah, she.

Speaker 1:
[59:54] That's the only frame of reference I have.

Speaker 2:
[59:56] We're not all like that.

Speaker 1:
[59:57] Okay.

Speaker 2:
[59:58] Yeah. But do you think this is the only rock music podcast that has mentioned Perry Menopause this many times?

Speaker 1:
[60:05] No. I feel like this could come up.

Speaker 2:
[60:08] In other rock music podcasts?

Speaker 1:
[60:10] It pertains.

Speaker 2:
[60:10] You think Zane Lowe ever mentions Perry Menopause?

Speaker 1:
[60:12] You know what? I wouldn't put it past him.

Speaker 2:
[60:14] You're right.

Speaker 1:
[60:15] He would be understanding.

Speaker 2:
[60:16] He's an ally. He's an ally. He's absolutely an ally. No, I know. I'm being serious.

Speaker 1:
[60:20] He is.

Speaker 2:
[60:20] Hashtag not all men. This one just has so many good lyrics. I saw you today, you were like snow.

Speaker 1:
[60:37] I don't know what that means, but I like it.

Speaker 2:
[60:39] You were like snow. You're temporary. You're going to be gone. You're going to melt away or also maybe you're cold.

Speaker 1:
[60:45] A gay poet.

Speaker 2:
[60:47] Wait till, wait till.

Speaker 1:
[60:48] Delicate, slipping through my fingers.

Speaker 2:
[60:50] Let Yasi Rock happens and you see what beautiful lyrics.

Speaker 1:
[60:54] Interesting.

Speaker 2:
[60:55] Come out of this person, Scatted, of course, because I can't sing. So it's either going to be a hardcore band or it's going to be a scatting band. 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? You want me to play a little bit of it?

Speaker 1:
[61:09] Yeah, play a little.

Speaker 2:
[61:20] She also kind of sings more in this song, right? A little more normal vocal.

Speaker 1:
[61:26] Yeah, which I think is why it feels a little bit like a good access point. But the thing about that to me is the way, 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 there's 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.

Speaker 2:
[62:06] The intimacy, right? We're talking about it. There's a real sense of intimacy. I don't feel like Eddie Vedder is talking to me when he's derrame-spoken.

Speaker 1:
[62:15] I don't feel that way about him either.

Speaker 2:
[62:16] I just wanted an opportunity to do my Eddie Vedder, there was no reason for me to say that.

Speaker 1:
[62:19] But I think Lou Reed had that.

Speaker 2:
[62:20] 100%, 100%.

Speaker 1:
[62:23] And I kind of think John Cale has that.

Speaker 2:
[62:25] Okay.

Speaker 1:
[62:26] And I feel like-

Speaker 2:
[62:29] Maybe more toxin-y people have that because it's-

Speaker 1:
[62:34] That's true, that's true.

Speaker 2:
[62:35] Leonard Cohen has a bit of that.

Speaker 1:
[62:37] Leonard Cohen big time. But even Leonard Cohen, first of all, the lyrics are actual poems, so it doesn't feel like you're being spoken to in that way. But for Leonard Cohen's 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. Or in Canada. Or in Canada. This sounds like it was not recorded with that in mind, genuinely. It sounds like you have access to, it's like a little window into somebody's life.

Speaker 2:
[63:08] This is really the way I would love to approach all of my life. With my therapist, I call it tra la la.

Speaker 1:
[63:14] Okay, tell me more.

Speaker 2:
[63:15] Just going tra la la mode when you're like, okay. You guys know what I'm saying.

Speaker 1:
[63:23] When you're busy and your day is just not thinking.

Speaker 2:
[63:25] She's with everything. She's like, who cares? Not in a who cares where you don't value what you're doing and try to do properly with a sense of intention and whatever, but it's more like not getting. I think there's like, what's that physics theory of the observed versus the unobserved, how things change when they're observed? I think we're all now constantly thinking about everything in a sense that it's going to be observed 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.

Speaker 1:
[64:06] Totally.

Speaker 2:
[64:06] And so I feel like going tra la la mode is separating out of that and just being like, I'm just doing the things I'm doing, tra la la throughout the day, and it exists outside of whatever it is going to be to other people or to their observation, to their judgment. You know who really fucking, I know this is corny, but that figure skater, Alyssa Liu. That girl is like my Buddha. I'm like, the shit that she was saying, I was like-

Speaker 1:
[64:37] But I heard something interesting. Did you see the-

Speaker 2:
[64:39] Are you going to just drag her now?

Speaker 1:
[64:40] 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.

Speaker 2:
[65:11] Boop.

Speaker 1:
[65:12] 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. And if I'm off by like this much, I'm gonna fall and eat shit and my dreams are crushed. She doesn't have that piece, 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.

Speaker 2:
[65:41] 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 cultivated a worldview where she's like, there was a thing I listened to her saying and I was like, this is trawl alone 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, every day is just the day, you know?

Speaker 1:
[66:17] 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. And then be like, oh, actually, I'm missing it in my life. And coming back to it is like kind of tra la la, like perfect soil for tra la la.

Speaker 2:
[66:35] Yeah, yeah, totally.

Speaker 1:
[66:36] To take some time away and be like, oh, what do I miss? Now I actually enjoy it.

Speaker 2:
[66:41] Yeah, and like 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 do better mentally if I'm just like, okay, this podcast sucks, this podcast sucks, I'm sorry. Like, I'm just gonna keep.

Speaker 1:
[67:07] God make me small.

Speaker 2:
[67:08] God make me small, yeah. So, but I, okay, well, 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.

Speaker 1:
[67:32] I completely agree. Like this thing that you have, that you pulled, an interviewer asked basically, like, what are your goals?

Speaker 2:
[67:41] They were like, what are your plans after this album? This is when they were still a band. They hadn't broken up yet.

Speaker 1:
[67:45] So like career-wise, what are you trying to do? And she straight up said, I think I'm not ambitious enough. So I find that question hard. Like that is exactly what you're talking about.

Speaker 2:
[67:59] Exactly what I'm talking about. And I have a real, I have a real bone to pick with ambition, I found.

Speaker 1:
[68:04] Interesting.

Speaker 2:
[68:06] You guys, I'm gonna reveal something to you. I hated Martin Supreme.

Speaker 1:
[68:11] It's called Marty Supreme.

Speaker 2:
[68:13] I'm just saying the government name. But I was like, okay, very confusing because like so beautifully shot, everything gorgeous, like-

Speaker 1:
[68:22] OPN soundtrack.

Speaker 2:
[68:24] 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.

Speaker 1:
[68:50] I don't know that ambition is a virtue, but I do think it's a reality for a lot of people. 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-

Speaker 2:
[69:01] Do you think so?

Speaker 1:
[69:03] I think so personally.

Speaker 2:
[69:04] No, I think you kind of have to monitor the situation. I think ambition is egoic. So I think you just have to be very aware of to what end.

Speaker 1:
[69:15] Yeah, of course, I mean, that's the thing of 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.

Speaker 2:
[69:35] 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.

Speaker 1:
[69:53] Yeah, I think it's also a bit of like, like how much were you bit by the capitalism bug and how much did you believe it?

Speaker 2:
[70:04] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[70:05] 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 to show up and sound the exact same like you're stamping it every single time.

Speaker 2:
[70:53] Like you're a cog.

Speaker 1:
[70:54] 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.

Speaker 2:
[71:05] So I cried today at the Blondshell set because I'm extremely luteal. I was like, why am I crying during this fucking podcast?

Speaker 1:
[71:10] But if I mean, if you're luteal, you're the tissue in your vocal cords is thicker.

Speaker 2:
[71:16] Do you think Zane Lowe talks about the luteal phase making the tissue in female vocalists?

Speaker 1:
[71:20] No, but I bet you if I wanted to talk to him about it or you want to talk about it.

Speaker 2:
[71:25] Can you talk about it?

Speaker 1:
[71:25] He would be down.

Speaker 2:
[71:26] I think I already said he's an ally. I'm just curious what are the differences between what we do.

Speaker 1:
[71:33] But to bring it back to them, I just think the ambition aspect, if we are thinking about it as how much of this virus do you have in you, that you're focused on other people and how they're hearing your music, I think she has had very little of that.

Speaker 2:
[71:59] I'm sorry, I don't want to be reductive. Obviously, I think I have ambition. We all have, maybe not we don't all. There's lots of artists I love that I know. We were talking off mic about Billy Corgan, I think one of the more known to be ambitious artists ever. And he made some of the greatest albums of my lifetime. So no shade, no dissing, but just thoughts I had during the research of this podcast. So Life Without Buildings, that's what we're talking about.

Speaker 1:
[72:30] It pertains.

Speaker 2:
[72:31] 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 a few audiences more conservative than the white indie rock audience.

Speaker 1:
[72:46] So true.

Speaker 2:
[72:47] That's shade, but also jeep.

Speaker 1:
[72:51] It's not really that much jeep. I mean, there's like certain pockets of indie rock that are, indie rock as a whole is extremely white, as you obviously know.

Speaker 2:
[72:59] I've seen it, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[73:00] You've seen it. 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.

Speaker 2:
[73:09] Yeah. And again, this is like 2001 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 change direction, we wouldn't get another album out. They recorded one last song called Love Trinity, which actually came out a couple of years ago for a record store day thing. It's on their live album. 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. There were tours to do and t-shirts and badges, pins and stuff. 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.

Speaker 1:
[74:02] I like playing shows.

Speaker 2:
[74:04] Sometimes I don't want to play shows.

Speaker 1:
[74:05] It's just, you know, it's like anything where sometimes life's hard for a given reason.

Speaker 2:
[74:09] 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 week eight, you're like, I'm tired. Yeah, of course you love connecting with the audience. That's not what I was saying. Like I'm playing. Like I can imagine you being Sue Tompkins. Like I started this as a fun, lol, lols, a palooza. And then they're like, you have to go tour with Bell and Sebastian.

Speaker 1:
[74:35] And there's men yelling at you, especially like in an opening situation like that. She's like, OK, 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.

Speaker 2:
[74:47] Right.

Speaker 1:
[74:48] Like I don't like this.

Speaker 2:
[74:49] Yeah, I have to make t-shirts, which like, you know.

Speaker 1:
[74:54] Fair.

Speaker 2:
[74:55] 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 Annandale Hotel. The band members were like, we had no idea this show was being recorded, but it's a cool album. I guess we're glad it came out.

Speaker 1:
[75:13] How do you not know?

Speaker 2:
[75:14] Don't know. It came out on a thing called Gargle Blast Records. I don't know what kind of like.

Speaker 1:
[75:22] Okay, we have a question for you.

Speaker 2:
[75:25] Gargle Blast?

Speaker 1:
[75:26] If you were starting a label today, what would you name it?

Speaker 2:
[75:30] Gargle Blast. Corner of Souls.

Speaker 1:
[75:34] No, you can't have that because that's the first band signed.

Speaker 2:
[75:36] Right, of course. What would I call it? Yes, babe.

Speaker 1:
[75:41] Yes, babe.

Speaker 2:
[75:45] This is really hard. Do you have one?

Speaker 1:
[75:47] No, I don't. I was asking you.

Speaker 2:
[75:50] But you don't have your own answer?

Speaker 1:
[75:52] No.

Speaker 2:
[75:53] Okay. Ludial records. Actually, that's pretty good.

Speaker 1:
[75:58] Ludial records?

Speaker 2:
[75:58] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[75:59] I like that.

Speaker 2:
[76:00] Okay.

Speaker 1:
[76:02] You could like Perrymanipos. Perfect.

Speaker 2:
[76:04] There's a couple of songs, by the way, you guys, if you want to check it out on the live at the Annandale Hotel that aren't on the regular record that are also quite good.

Speaker 1:
[76:14] I didn't know Frank Ocean was a fan.

Speaker 2:
[76:16] Okay, yes. So I did a little research as I want to do. And I was like, who be name checking Life Without Buildings besides Blondshell? We already said Bebobadooby? No.

Speaker 1:
[76:29] Bebadooby.

Speaker 2:
[76:30] Bebadooby. I really want it to be Bebobadooby.

Speaker 1:
[76:34] Bebadooby.

Speaker 2:
[76:35] Bebadooby. Yes. Frank Ocean, who also has deep and wonderful taste, played it in 2018 on his Beats 1 radio show, pre-TikTok, by reality. Taste. Matty Healy, from the 1975, has said they influenced his music. Cloud Nothings. Wishy. Wishy's a great band. Have you guys heard Wishy?

Speaker 1:
[77:00] I love Wishy.

Speaker 2:
[77:01] Yeah, we really fuck with Wishy. And then this year, Sleaford Mauds, who are such a fucking cool band, put out a new album called The Demise of Planet X, and there's a song with Sue Tompkins on it.

Speaker 1:
[77:13] Oh, really?

Speaker 2:
[77:13] It's great, yeah. They also have Aldous Huxley, who I love.

Speaker 1:
[77:19] Me too.

Speaker 2:
[77:20] She's also on a song on here.

Speaker 1:
[77:21] That makes sense. That's like a...

Speaker 2:
[77:23] Yeah, the kind of like in a similar strange woman.

Speaker 1:
[77:26] I feel like Jessica Pratt would love her.

Speaker 2:
[77:29] Would love Sue Tompkins. I don't know. I don't know.

Speaker 1:
[77:31] The weirdness of it all.

Speaker 2:
[77:34] Well, you guys, we... Wow, we nearly went... We went to 740. Thank you so much for coming down to the Boise Contemporary Theater. Oh my God. Whoop, whoop. Peri-meta-pause. She's still got it. And spending your time with us. I'm really happy that you guys came out. It was really fun to do this. Thank you, Sabrina, for joining me. And come back next week for a new episode of Bandsplain. 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 Sundermann and edited by Adrian Bridges with help from Justin Sayles. Video production by Mack Schar. Executive producers for Bandsplain are Gina Dalvak and me, Yasi Salek. Our gorgeous and catchy theme song was composed and performed by Bethany Cosentino and Jennifer Clavin and graciously recorded by Carlos de la Garza in Los Angeles, California. Special thanks to our producer at Meredith's, producer Dylan, aka Dylan Tupper Rupert and also Sean Fennacy and the Treefort Festival. Come back every Thursday for a new episode of Bandsplain on Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. The Go-Go's and Funboy3.

Speaker 1:
[79:05] My lips are sealed. That one.

Speaker 2:
[79:07] Can you do more?

Speaker 1:
[79:09] Whoa.