Words by Darren Grayer, image by Elizabeth De La Piedra.
Genre spanning American artist, Bartees Strange, visits The Joiners in Southampton on Tuesday 26 August to showcase his latest album, Horror, which has received critical acclaim from The New York Times, Rolling Stone and NPR Music.
In Common caught up with him shortly before his appearance at the Way Out West festival in Sweden, to try and gain some more knowledge about his background and his song-writing.
You were born in Ipswich in the UK but left for America at a very young age – do you look forward to coming back to tour?
Yeah, I love coming back and every time I do there are people in the crowd who wear Ipswich Town jerseys, which is really sweet. I watched them a lot in the Premier League last year hoping they wouldn’t get relegated.
Well it’s probably best to end the football chat there then *laughs*. I’m fascinated by the things that appear to drive your song-writing, can you provide a bit more insight into that, please?
I think I just grew up as a very curious person, and my parents are very curious people.
My parents moved around a lot and they brought us everywhere with them.
My mom is a singer, and my dad is like a record collector. He worked as an engineer in the airforce, but he’s a big music fan, and I just grew up hearing all sorts of music.
When I got into high school and college and started wanting to play music, I really didn’t care about what was a rap song or what was a country song and what was jazz, I was like I just wanted to touch all of it.
I was also curious about all of it, so I started joining bands and playing from around 18 right to 30 years old.
Then when it came time to start making my own stuff, I was like, ok, I think these country songs and rock songs can sound like rap songs, but with jazz chords. Then it all starts to become one big ball of sounds.
But, like I said, I was curious about music, I was curious about politics, I was curious about travelling. I worked in politics for a while, and I ended up working for labour unions, and did a lot of climate change work on the way, and then playing in bands at night.
Music was my second job, until it became my main job, which was a huge moment in my life – because I didn’t think that was possible.
Genre spanning is a very frequently used phrase to describe artists’ work these days, but listening to your music, there appear to be many influences within. Having already touched upon those a bit, would you share those influences further?
I grew up playing a lot of country music, that was the first thing I started doing on guitar. There was a guitar shop close to our house. There was this old country guy called Dale who used to run it, and I would watch him play and just learn stuff from him.
Then when I got to high school, I had friends who would go to hardcore shows, and that’s how I found Norma Jean and Battles and Lightning Bolt and Botch, and then eventually bands like Glassjaw.
It really grew from there, I got into hardcore and punk and then TV On The Radio popped up, and I was like, woah, that’s what I wanna do!
Although I was still a little nervous about music, cos my mom was an opera singer, and I always thought to do music you’d have to be highly skilled and trained, but when I saw TV On The Radio, I was like you can make a mass that works, you know, because I couldn’t understand what I was hearing.
I also spent a lot of time fuckin around with drum machines, I loved Burial, I loved Jai Paul, I loved Four Tet, and I remember when In Rainbows came out, and the first song, 15 Step – I was like how are these people making those drum sounds.
Looking back, I can see how all these things kinda folded into one.
How do they do that was always my first thought. Like the first time I heard MF Doom or Viktor Vaughn or King Geedorah, I was like who the f, who made this?
That whole world of rappers and beat-makers, I was just wow, how amazing would it be to be part of a community of people who were this creative and just did what ever they wanted to do. I was in love with that thought, same thing with The National. Watching them grow from this little band to this huge band, seeing all the lives they touched with their music.
I fell in love with not just the music but the world that music can create.
I read that the thought process behind your latest album, Horror, came to you very spontaneously…
Yeah, I was writing a bunch of songs, and I didn’t know which songs were going to be on which project.
I was just writing, and then four or five of those songs kinda felt a little different, and I was like maybe that’s a thing, so I put it to the side for a year and then came back to it.
You’re quoted as saying fear is a driving force behind Horror…
Yeah, I mean Horror is about all these things that are really scary to me.
I think fear is one of the biggest and powerful emotions that people face, and I think a lot of people are afraid of being afraid.
I think that I am. I’m afraid of fear itself, and I know that’s a cliché, but I’ve really started to face that in the last few years, like, why am I so afraid of being afraid, you know, I’m a pretty non-confrontational avoiding person.
The record was a way for me to begin to kinda poke at some of the things that scare me.
The world is quite a scary place to be, do you feel that to be the case in America?
There’s a lot of uncertainty.
I was talking the other day about coming to Europe right now, and specifically Scandinavia, and saying how people pay so much in taxes, but there are so many things that get taken care of, like they don’t have to worry about their retirement, or hospitals, or schools, or child care.
While living in America, all of those things could ruin your life, and it’s like if you don’t make every right decision from when your 16 to 60 years old, you’re going to be a destitute, sick and pained person, and that is awful.
I think about this stuff all the time, like the need to buy a house so I can potentially sell it one day to retire. And, it’s like, what if I didn’t think about those things? What would I be doing with my time?
It was a weird thought, I was like I don’t know a life without being scared shitless about what to do, so yeah, America is weird!
Tickets available here.
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