STACK #188 June 2020

MUSIC FEATURE

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The opening of TheThrill Of Doing It Right is so sonically satisfying, it ties the song's title and form neatly together. Do you think about lyrical ideas being reflected in your sound choices while you’re writing? Almost every song I write comes from me playing something harmonic, and then humming gibberish over the top. The gibberish I then either write real lyrics in that pattern, or I just turn the gibberish into the nearest words. It’ll either make sense to me immediately, or sometimes when it’s more abstract when I hear it back later on it’ll mean something more. Sometimes you don’t like your own songwriting and it’s more fun to make it seem like it’s coming from someone that’s not you. The beat in LowTo Low sounds like one of the in-built bossa nova ones on those giant old organs

You have mentioned sifting down into Twitter (and its super binary arguments) as sparking a depressed state in your mind; was it becauseTwitter is a kind of condensing of human interactions? I think that I live in a bit of a bubble in my job, and I live in even more of a bubble in my suburb in my city in my country, so I’m constantly fascinated to see what the rest of the world thinks about a particular event or issue. The problem with Twitter and sites like that is you only see the most extreme arguments most of the time – definitive statements – and life isn’t really like that. I think a lot of this record was me dealing with the degradation of my own psyche from reading this stuff too much…You have to pick and choose your times to use social media really wisely I think. Following his superb 2018 effort The Underdog , GUM (JayWatson) returns with Out InTheWorld : a darker journey into a magnificent bursts of jangly synth-nectar dusted with psychotropic crumbs, featuring introspective lyrical ponderings. He answered our questions about its creation. JAY WATSON GUM

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everyone’s auntie has, but apparently it’s from your new drum machine. Did this track begin with the “robot-latin” beat, or did it start with the brilliant organ phrase/riff we hear clearly in the breakdown? That beat is from a ‘new’ drum machine I got, but it’s about 40 years old so it’s not too dissimilar from one of those organ machines – maybe slightly more ‘modern’ sounding. It only has presets, but there are some amazing ones on there. It’s called an Electro Harmonix DRM15, for all you audio nerds out there. The song started with the organ riff, but I wrote it on the guitar. I’m not quite sure what I was going for, but I had been listening to lots of Arthur Verocai and Caetano Vaeloso, and recordings with Latin rhythms. Obviously the song doesn’t really sound like them at all, but I liked that the spirit was in there. ZKR

In Out InTheWorld the lyrics go "It’s not too late to change your life or your mind, so just stay out in the world"; in ManyTearsTo Cry you sing "Pay no mind to what’s out in the world."They seem like contrasting ideas; how do you see them sit with one another? I think my brain, like most people's, is a complete mess of contradictions.

I like to pepper my music with them, or rather I don’t filter them out when they happen naturally. Even if it makes a song or verse make no sense. I think it’s really important that music mimics real life and that it’s not all sad or all happy or all funky or all bleak. If I made one sort of music or sung one sort of lyric it wouldn’t seem genuine to me or my personality.

Out In The World by GUM is out June 12 via Spinning Top/Caroline.

ROLLING BLACKOUTS COASTAL FEVER

Singer-songwriter-guitarist JoeWhite explains how he and bandmatesTom Russo, Fran Keaney, Joe Russo and Marcel Tussie have wrung out their individual and collected pasts – looking out from, and looking into, the spaces between tour life and home life – on their extraordinary second LP SidewaysTo New Italy .

Who are we hearing in the spoken-word portions of album opener The Second OfThe First ? We're hearing an old friend Mayada, and my partner Hannah. They are both old friends of everyone in the band. It was important for us to bring our friends and loved ones into the making of this record. After being away

Sideways To New Italy by Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever is out June 5 via Ivy League.

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70 JUNE 2020

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