"I’ve smoked it in the past, but I find it funny that people consider weed a pretty normal, go-to drug, when it’s the one that can make you paranoid and want to hide in your closet. I’m not a heavy drug user. I’m a family guy."
— Kurt Vile is not nearly as stoned as you might think.
"The way I look at it, this is my job. Before all this, I was fucking washing dishes. It’s not like I’m a fucking rich boy who does music in my free time. So I don’t give a fuck what people type on the internet. If they want to say something, they can say it to my face, and then I’ll decide if I should take them seriously or not, in person. But on the internet, I respond really strongly because it’s my heart and soul that I put out there."
— Take heed: Dirty Beaches‘ Alex Zhang Hungtai takes social media— and pretty much everything else— very seriously, as Larry Fitzmaurice learned in this interview about Hungtai’s forthcoming experimental double LP.
"I went to see a doctor once, and they recommended I take something for anxiety and depression. I was put on something that was similar to Prozac for a little bit. I took maybe six or seven pills and got fed up with it [laughs], so I just stopped taking them. That stuff’s not for me. There are probably things in my life that I need to figure out, and I’m not the type of person that figures them out by talking to someone I don’t know or taking prescribed pills. As long as it’s not prescribed to me, though, I’ll take it."
— Wavves’ Nathan Williams talks about self-loathing and his new LP in Larry Fitzmaurice’s feature interview.
"I took her to this place called Pocono Palace. It’s frozen in time; it’s still 1975 there. So horrifying. From the surrounding area, it looks like the place where you’re either going to get raped or murdered, or raped and murdered. But when you open the door, it’s another world! It’s so beautiful, but also tacky and gaudy. Totally charming. There are heart-shaped hot tubs in every room, giant champagne-glass hot tubs. There are comedians, air hockey, ping-pong, mini-golf, strip night— which is actually a strip steak night— and erotic bingo. There’s a big sign that says, ‘Please, no guns allowed in dining room.’ It’s a place where your aunt and uncle would go to celebrate their 45th wedding anniversary."
— Devendra Banhart talks to Ryan Dombal about the place where he proposed to his fiancée in our latest feature interview.
"I’m just worn down and weary of bands whose lyrics are cryptic and self-referential; the lyrics on our first record epitomize a fear of being found out— you feel vulnerable and you want to hide it. But now I feel like a middle-aged woman who’s just gone through a divorce, and she’s looking in the mirror and is OK with herself."
— Foals frontman Yannis Philippakis talks to Laura Snapes in our latest feature interview.
"In high school, there was this cool guy who I wanted the approval of. So I asked him, ‘What do you listen to, man?’ and he was like, ‘If you want to get real, son, you should listen to [Can’s] Tago Mago.’ So I listened to it when I was starting to smoke hash out of the window of my mum’s house and just started freaking out… in a bad way. I was thinking, ‘What the hell is this shit? This is a fucking nightmare.’ I wasn’t ready for it. I knew there was something there, though. It’s like drugs. When you’re trying a new drug, at first you’re like, ‘No way, this is going to fuck with my life.’ But something at the back of your mind is like, ‘Give it another try.’ So you go back and realize there was some subtlety to it that you missed the first time around."
— Jamie Lidell talks about the music (and drugs) of his life in our latest 5-10-15-20 interview.
"I find this kind of folk music with guys in Wellington boots and washboards not good to listen to. That music is one step away from barn dancing as far as I’m concerned. Anyone under the age of 60 should not be wearing Wellington boots on stage."
— Johnny Marr
"We can either sit there when a female punk band comes in and buy their tape, or you can talk to your guy friends and be like, ‘Stop saying that shit about that woman in that band just because of how hot she is— just knock it off, man.’ That would do way more for women to feel welcomed in playing rock music than just being at shows. Women are smart and they’re not all just drones with good taste because their boyfriend passed them a record. That’s such a shitty fallacy."
— Pissed Jeans frontman Matt Korvette takes on punk-rock misogyny in our latest feature interview. Also: Read Ian Cohen’s review of the band’s new album, Honeys.
"We love 60s and 70s music. We’re very disillusioned; we can’t relate to modern music very well. I don’t even know any new bands. In this day and age, it’s probably difficult for some people to see us as anything other than a throwback band. People are saying stuff like, ‘Get rid of nostalgia,’ and there’s that Animal Collective song [‘Peacebone’] where Avey Tare is like, ‘Obsession with the past, make your own shit’— but there are cultural imprints you can’t explain. I have connections to these things. Maybe we’re not intentionally trying to make something original."
— Foxygen— whose recent debut album was named Best New Music— make a case for their retro style in our latest feature interview.
"Identity politics are becoming less important since culture’s being blended into one big thing, especially in younger people. Kids are starting to dress the same, listen to the same music. I look at their Tumblrs and they’re all into the same things."
— Toro Y Moi’s Chaz Bundick
