Are you in New York?
No I’m, on the road. I’m in Portland, Oregon. We’ve been touring America for the last two weeks, we’ve been all over the place. You know, it’s funny how you work so hard finishing up a record and then you start doing all the press and stuff and then finally it’s like you’re ready to take and a break and then you start going on tour, cause that’s how it works…
I’ve not heard the entire new record admittedly, but I did see that Pitchfork gave you a 9.3 which if fucking excellent so congrats on that.
Thanks.
On that note though, I hear your opinions of the internet are pretty lol [Telling Pitchfork “even the word ‘blog’ sounds a little grandma-y”]. Would I be correct in hypothesising that you don’t actively seek out reviews and press?
Well I don’t have a low opinion of the Internet, I’m addicted to the Internet and on my phone as much as anybody –
[Interrupts] Oh no! I said lol as in “L-O-L”- not low. Sorry about that.
Oh! I thought you were saying I have a low opinion of The Internet and i didn’t wanna sound like some weird old man who hates the Internet… but, you know, I’ll read a review here and there but I can’t say that I’m 100% above checking in but I definitely don’t have to read everything and sometimes, honestly, my desire to know what people are saying is much lower than in the past but to pretend that I’m not gonna be curious about the general tone of certain reviews, of course. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t pay attention somewhat. The truth is, i think every year that you’re in a band, your desire to know what people are saying gets a little bit lower. Maybe its also because of Twitter. It’s like you already hear what so many people are saying every day when you look at Twitter, its sort of like, you don’t really need to take the next step to start Googling your own name.
Totally. Everything around digital communication just gets more meta and more meta; quicker and quicker again. So reading full reviews takes the backseat when the 140 character feedback is at your fingertips.
Yeah exactly.
I actually came across your college blog that you obliterated some seven years ago [ED Note: It’s called Internet Vibes and the tagline reads “To feel the internet vibes and understand them”]. It was cool, some enjoyable stimuli on there… do you dabble much in non-music related writing nowadays?
Not too much. I do write sometimes just to gather my thoughts and maybe because a lot of lyrics on the first album came from short stories I’d written. with every album id try to just write up little stories or notes to kind of like help me get ideas. Sometimes it helps sometimes it doesn’t. but at the moment I’m not actively working on anything. When we do press sometimes we’ll have the opportunity to write a little something here and there. I’ve written things about other artists occasionally or little essays and I do find it fun, but writing lyrics is still my favourite form of expression.
Nice. How did the concert-film collab with Amex come about? Mostly Steve Buscemi though, how did you get together with him?
Well they asked us if we wanted to do this thing they do where they stream your concert. It sounded like a good idea so we said yes, and we talked about what director we wanted to do it with. We threw out a lot of names and at one point he came up and we already had certain connections to him. He’s from NY and we were used fans of his movies and after his name came up he was kind of the only person we wanted to do it with.
What’s your favourite Steve Buscemi career moment?
Hmm. I’d like to think it was an example like more off the beaten path but the truth is it’s hard to top Big Lebowski. He’s just such a legendary part of it.
Plans to get back to Australia?
We’re definitely talking about it, we don’t want it to be too long, I’m hoping this year actually; that’s the goal. We haven’t officially booked anything but we want to come back before 2014. We love Australia.
And, because it’s on topic, here is the “Donnie you’re outta your element!” scene from The Big Lebowski:
