Why Be Cautious? // an Interview with Low
As we conclude The Great Northern 2022, we asked writer Steve Marsh to foreshadow things to come in an interview with Low, a band committed to and shaped by life in the North.
When I visited Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker of Low in their home, high atop Central Hill in Duluth shortly after the beginning of the New Year, it was one of those deceivingly bright Duluth days, where you step out of your warm car and the wind coming off Gichi-gami dissects your coat like a predator. Mimi answered her front door with black eyeliner and a black watch cap and immediately stepped outside and said, “Let’s go to the other house.” As we walked down a driveway, evidently crossing Low’s mini compound, she explained that they bought their neighbor’s house for Alan’s mother a few years ago when it became available. Both houses share a spectacular view of the Great Lake and there was one of those hulking iron ore ships sitting out in the frozen harbor surrounded by ice, and as Alan came up to the door of the other house wearing a black watch cap with a grey pitbull wagging its tail alongside him, he looked out at that big ship with me and said that it was getting pretty late in the season for a ship to be so close into shore like that, that it would probably have to push on out into bigger water soon.
Alan and Mimi’s band, Low, is famous—maybe even a little notorious—for their slowed down, high, lonesome sound, usually showcasing their two intertwined voices with minimal instrumentation—Alan on guitar, Mimi on drums. They’ve lived up here in the first of their two houses overlooking the lake for 20 years, and they’ve been in their band for a few more years than that (29), and in their marriage for just three more years than that (32). Alan, who grew up in Seattle until the age of nine, first met Mimi in a north country grade school in a little town outside of Bemidji before they eventually fell in love and moved to Duluth as young adults. Listening to their records, it’s easy to imagine them as this ancient pair—just the two of them, isolated on the shore of this big cold lake, speaking their own archaic musical language, a much more resilient, married version of Dafoe and Pattinson in The Lighthouse.
But for most of those 32 years, Low was actually a trio, with original bass player Zak Sally giving way in 2005 to a steady succession of subsequent bass players. And for a good many of those years, Alan and Mimi have been at the head of their own family, their daughter now off studying film in college and their son still yet at home, going to high school, and sometimes playing guitar in a cover band with his dad. Alan and Mim are profoundly connected to both their Duluth musical community and their Mormon religious community, and when their 13th full-length album HEY WHAT dropped last September—their third collaboration in a row with the dark musical lord (and, to borrow a Sid Hartman-ism, one of my closest personal friends), producer BJ Burton—it was the latest reminder that their sound is nowhere near archaic, that in fact, 32 years in, Low is making music more vital and exciting than most other bands working today. They were gracious enough to let me in, and Laurel, their friend living in their second house, insisted on giving me homemade chocolate covered orange peels, before Alan and Mimi, both dressed head-to-toe in lighthouse keeper black, sat down together on a small couch in their front room, in the middle of a bunch of Hammond organs and a drum kit—it was their practice space. Alan picked up an unplugged old Danelectro guitar and kind of nervously fondled it as we talked about their whole partnership: their artistic process with BJ, the role religion plays in their music, the role guitar plays in their music, what it’s like to sing in a rock and roll band with your spouse for 32 years, all the critical acclaim their new record got, and Mimi’s recently revealed battle with ovarian cancer.
You’ve worked with some intense producers in your long career—Steve Albini, Dave Fridmann, Kramer, Jeff Tweedy. All of them have their own production philosophy and sound that they’re bringing to the studio. But your style is so distinctive and resilient—it sounds like you’ve been able to find out who you are through the process of making each album. How was working with BJ Burton different? Alan, you first worked with him on a Trampled by Turtles project?
Alan Sparhawk: Well, he had reached out to us maybe half a year before that, and kind of was like, “Hey.” He introduced himself, and said, “Yeah, I’m down in Eau Claire. Justin [Vernon]’s studio is really cool, you guys should come check it out next time you’re coming through.” So we stopped by and said hello, met him and stuff like that. And of course, then I’m like, “Okay, who is this guy?” Checking shit out, and listening to stuff, more specifically of what Justin had done with him so far at that point. Then the Turtles thing came up around the same time. So, while we’re doing the Turtles thing down in Cannon Falls, during downtime, we’d sit and talk about stuff, and listen to other people’s records and go, “Yeah, this is really cool what’s going on here.” He’d tell me what he was picturing, like, “Oh, it’d be great if Low did something,” I don’t remember the specific language he was using, but describing essentially what we did, which was something more extreme, blown out, just really going extreme with finding sounds that hadn’t been done before. Well, actually, the finding sounds that hadn’t been done before, I think that evolved more as we started working together more.
Re-listening to your first collaboration with BJ, Ones and Sixes, its palette sounds more traditionally Low than how I was remembering it.
AS: A cross between old and new. We came in with the same approach as before. Like, okay, we’re coming there for five days, and we set up in the room, track the songs, do the overdubbing fairly quickly, get the vocals on there, leave, let the engineer/producer work with it a little bit, come back, do some tweaking, and then mix. That was our old way of working, and that’s kind of how that went.
Mimi Parker: A little bit more traditional.
AS: But meanwhile as that was happening BJ was taking different approaches with different songs, and you realize, “Oh, actually, when we take this approach, it’s more interesting than the way we worked before.” So, that started evolving. But yeah, I’m not sure if I’m answering the question.
No, you are answering the question.
AS: With Ones and Sixes, we were really just feeling it out and finding the possibilities. And once we finished that, we were able to look back and go, “Wow, that was great, especially this part and this part and this part.” And we were like, “Well, it’s pretty clear that next time, if we’re going to work with this guy, let’s definitely pursue working the way that we did for that part.” It was always the stuff where we really went a little bit out there, and we’re like, “Well, you know what? Maybe we don’t have to have a normal drum, or maybe there doesn’t need to be guitar on here. Maybe I need to replace this thing with sample voices instead.”
Which songs on Ones and Sixes were most emblematic of this new approach?
AS: “No Comprende” was definitely like, “Well, we have this song...” We had demoed it at home and had this idea of that big drop. We had realized it as much as we could as a band, duplicating the way you’d play it live. But then, we went in there and did it with him and realized, “Oh, no. He took this further. He made this drop really happen.”
He added drama.
AS: It added this drama and really opens it up and lets certain elements really hit the ceiling.
So with a big personality like BJ’s in the studio, are you surrendering to each other?
AS: Yeah, finding common ground, finding a place where we were all finding satisfaction. And it’s not about compromise, it’s about realizing, “What is it really, that I want here? Is it really important to me that the guitar be this or for the guitar to be awesome? No. I want the song to be awesome.”
MP: Yeah, letting yourself go and not being precious about hearing yourself.
I remember at that time talking to BJ about him wanting to earn your trust so you would allow him to put your sound on a grid so he would be free to move parts around.
AS: Exactly. We had been used to doing it a certain way. We’d had a little experience with that stuff and knew, okay, sometimes you’d play to a click, and that makes it possible to be like, “Okay, well, let’s move this over here,” and we’d done that.
MP: And it was kind of scary. At times, we would scratch our head and be like, “Oh my gosh, what are we doing? Is this working?”
Were you worried that it would sound kind of silly, or too weird? Or maybe like your radio was broken?
AS: Well, it’s rarely, “Is this too weird?” It’s more like, “Is this just us trying to force something that isn’t there?” I don't know…
MP: It’s hard to explain.
You don’t want to distract from the words and the melodies and the things that are in the song?
AS: Right, you don’t want to just make it weird to just be like, “Oh, that’s a weird sound.” I remember running into that.
MP: Yeah, not weird for weird’s sake.
AS: You want it to be interesting. You want it to be awesome.
MP: To complement and enhance, and not detract from, or take away from what it originally is.
Ah, so wanting to feel those emotions more deeply, or be moved into directions you’re trying to go? Rather than having some kind of distortion just to make it difficult to hear what you’re trying to do.
AS: Well, sometimes you do want that.
MP: Sure, and if that’s what you want, that’s what you do.
AS: You’re trying to come to an honest place. There’s a very fine line between, “Let’s put some weird sounds on there,” and, “No, let’s actually make this awesome and interesting and original.” There’s a lot of wrong ways to do it, and it can be really obvious. It’s a cliched thing. In history, people are like, “We’re doing it this way.” “Oh no, wait. No, actually, I’m doing this kind of thing,” and then an artist will just put on the trappings of some other thing that’s not theirs, and say, “Well, now this is me.” It’s really hard to measure when that is honest. Is this really what you’re trying to say, or are you just doing this? I don't know, it’s hard to explain. There are just as many pitfalls in trying to be original as there are in trying to use stuff that’s already there or to be nostalgic. There are ways to screw that up and there are ways to do it right.
“There’s a very fine line between, ‘Let’s put some weird sounds on there,’ and, ‘No, let’s actually make this awesome and interesting and original.’”
The first time BJ played me HEY WHAT in his studio, I was like, “Oh my God, this sounds like the newest future music.” But now I’ve listened to it so much, and I know it so well, and I love so many of the melodies, and I love when your voices break through this gigantic wall of sound, and meld together. Your harmony together sounds so simple it’s elemental. But I listened to the previous record, Double Negative, on the drive up here, and the distortion on that record is much more challenging. For as futuristic sounding as HEY WHAT is, it’s a more accessible listening experience. I thought that HEY WHAT was this leap forward, when it’s actually like, I don’t know, maybe it’s such a leap forward that it’s back to just hearing your voices together.
AS: Yeah, maybe more focused.
It is future music and it does sound new, and that shock of hearing it for the first time still stays with me. But listening to it after listening to Double Negative, I don’t know, you’re not fighting anything when you’re listening to it. There’s more pure pleasure there, maybe, for me.
MP: I would agree with that. On Double Negative, we really went down, I’m not going to say a dark hole, but it’s very intense.
AS: Sort of more of the breakthrough moment. I always picture Double Negative as breaking through a wall or breaking through a door, and it’s both exhilarating and new, but also kind of distracting.
Yeah, I mean you were out in the woods on Double Negative burning microphones and playing tape backwards and stuff.
AS: Crushing tapes and burning mics. We were testing the extremes.
So Alan, your love affair with the guitar started a long time ago. When you were recording HEY WHAT BJ just told me that you wanted the sounds from this record to come from the guitar. Which wasn’t necessarily the case on Double Negative. Has this three album journey that you’ve been on with BJ changed your relationship to your favorite instrument?
AS: I mean, it's interesting now that you mention it, looking back at it, it took a little circle. The way we play live is based on guitar, bass, drums. And originally, when we're hashing out the first version of our songs, it's with those instruments. But as we started working with BJ, we started pushing away from the guitar. It wasn’t necessarily intentional, it just seemed like as we were working through sounds, I'd be like, "I don't know, this isn't as interesting to me as this other sound." We joked about this, but there was a certain point I was almost reluctant to play any guitar. So on Ones and Sixes and then definitely Double Negative, I think my inclination was to be, like, no, let's generate the sound with something else because I already know how this idea's going to sound on guitar.
MP: It was frustrating.
AS: So that was a bit of a struggle. But I think it needed to happen, and a lot of the sound of Double Negative is definitely an attitude of, like, well, we're not going to find it by using the guitar, so let’s try these other things. Keyboards, sequencers. I would make loops with random vocal things. I would make loops and use that as the tone trigger for something else and vice versa. The way the technology works with vocoder, you can have a sound going, but then have another sound manipulating that sound. It really opens up the door. Anyway, we were touching a little bit of that in Double Negative, but, again, it was with this overall, at least for me, feeling of like, no, we're going to find these interesting sounds somewhere else, not the guitar.
Mimi, what do you mean by “it was frustrating?”
MP: I just mean that Alan was pretty frustrated at times.
AS: Trying to find interesting sounds and not being able to do it with the guitar. We’d laugh about, like, well, let's find something and she would be like, “try the guitar” and I'd be, like, "Well, no."
MP: Kind of like how you'd say, "I don't want to sing."
AS: Then for some reason, with this record, I mean, I'm only seeing it now, but it switched to, "No, I like playing the guitar and I like the responsiveness." That's the thing: the guitar is very responsive. Every time you hit it, it's slightly different. Every time you hit it, there's going to be certain notes that are going to ring out a little bit differently. When you hit those strings and you strum, unless you're a computer, you're going to hit each one of those strings slightly differently. The way you're gripping it, even holding that chord sometimes will have a lot to do with how that voicing goes. And there's just something about that that's more organic and more human than pressing a button or having that much control over the exact sound that's going to come out every time I press this note. There are places for that, there's a certain consistency and intensity of music that's created repeating these same very cold things. But we were interested in how to use these cold, synthesized, and pliable sounds but generate them in a more organic way, in a way that is more indicative of the way the guitar is so organic and human and imperfect. How can we take the imperfections of the guitar and have that carry over into more of a digital world? How do we generate sound the way a guitar generates the sound without it sounding like a guitar?
“How can we take the imperfections of the guitar and have that carry over into more of a digital world?”
So the music sounds more human. Maybe some of the lyrical content or the mood of the album in general is attempting to figure out a way to be okay with human beings after we've been so fucking angry with each other and frustrated with each other for so long.
MP: That's a great observation, actually. That very well may be. It just seemed right because it seemed so parallel to the struggle of like, "what are we doing here?" BJ was really helpful with that. I mean, I came in and was, like, "I'm thinking this, and I have a few ideas about how we can actually generate this." He was right away, like, "Oh, yeah, okay, let's do this."
HEY WHAT seems to have brought the listener back to just hearing the two of you sing together. You two have known each other since you were children. When was the first time you sang together? How old were you?
AS: I don't know, maybe in high school.
MP: I don’t think we did in high school.
Can you remember?
AS: I thought I remembered playing something on the guitar, or we sang along to a couple of records. We listened to records.
MP: Maybe we’d sing along to records. But it wasn’t until we were maybe 20 or so that I remember playing and singing. We were just messing around and we would sometimes do silly songs.
And this is before you guys had the idea of bringing Mimi into the band, or making an entirely new band with Mimi?
MP: Yeah, yeah. He was in other bands. He was doing other things.
AS: There was one band early on that actually was Zak [Sally, Low’s original bassist], who was still in high school. We were maybe 20, 21, or something. I got up and sang. We played at some house party, maybe four or five songs. I think Mim got up and improvised one song.
MP: You’re right, I remember that now.
Did you harmonize on that song, or…?
MP: I think I sang the lead on that one.
AS: She just got up and sang, and I remember being surprised because she was generally pretty shy.
MP: I was shy, yeah.
So, you had heard her voice before. You had heard her sing.
AS: Oh, yeah. I knew she was a singer. Her family sang a lot together, and I knew she could sing.
But you had not seen her sing at a house party or in a rock show situation.
AS: Not in front of people.
MP: I suppose I would sing songs in front of you. And you probably heard me and Wanda. My sister played guitar and sang from when we were pretty young.
What kind of songs?
MP: We had all these big books. John Denver, some old gospel-y ones that my mom would introduce to us. More country-ish, because my parents listen to old country—‘60, ’70s country.
Where were your parents from?
MP: Well, my dad grew up in Long Prairie, and my mom has lived in Clearbrook, close to Bemidji, basically her whole life. That’s where he moved to, that’s where I was born and raised: Clearwater County, which has typically been the poorest county in the state. We were just south of Red Lake Reservation. My dad was a labor guy. He was a mechanic for a rice paddy farm. He would be working on the equipment and whatnot.
AS: Actually cultivating, growing, and processing wild rice.
MP: My mom has written many, many recipes using wild rice because we had a lot of it when we were kids. So, he worked there. Then he worked at a paper pulp plant, and then he laid cable. He was always…
AS: A day laborer.
And your folks, Alan, how did they end up in Bemidji?
AS: They came from Utah. I was born in Seattle, lived in Utah until I was nine, and then we moved to Minnesota to be on a farm because my parents were kind of like, “We want to raise our kids on a farm and get back to the land.”
When did you two meet each other?
MP: Fourth grade.
AS: She and I were in the same grade school.
Romantic?
MP: Eventually, yeah. High school.
And he’s in bands by that point, and you’re musical.
MP: He’s not in bands in high school. But he started playing guitar and bass. I was in concert band and marching band, playing percussion.
Alan, how long have you been playing guitar?
AS: I actually had a bass first. That was my first instrument.
Where did you get a guitar in Clearbrook?
AS: Kind of like a typical teenager, you get into stuff. And I remember just being, like, "Wow, this is really cool. It'd be fun to be able to play." My dad played drums in a country band and would play in bars. So the idea that even though you're living out away from society, real people make music. It is some different thing. So I remember picking up, playing a little bit, maybe trying to learn a few songs. I remember playing the bass along to the Eagles Greatest Hits or something, trying to make my way—trying to learn. And guys that my father would play with, I remember a couple of times, them giving me pointers. And it's really amazing with guitars—early on, sometimes someone can sit down and in five minutes teach you almost literally half of everything you need to know about music and how it works.
MP: But you need to say how you got your bass and your bass amp…
AS: …So yeah, I started getting into music and there were a couple buddies in school and there was a little bit of chatter in junior high, like, “yeah, so-and-so's got some drums, we should…” And I think somehow our math teacher, this woman who had formerly been a nun, caught wind that I was looking around to get some instruments. She said, "Well, I've got a bass and an amp I can sell you." So, yeah, I bought this bass from a motorcycle-driving-ex-nun-math-teacher who went on to work at Boeing and then ran a women's shelter. Anyway, she gave me my first instrument, and she was a pretty pivotal person in my life for other reasons as well.
What’s her name?
MP: Her name is Susan Eidenschenk. And she was an ex-nun and she was also my junior high basketball coach and she was a tyrant. [Giggles]
So ex-nun but still heavy nun vibes.
MP: She definitely had that “no pain, no gain” philosophy.
Wow... Alan, you said your dad played drums?
AS: Dad played drums in a band and he also was into singing. And he wrote songs. So the idea that “oh, yeah, you can write a song, I guess”—that was there early on. I think that shaped me because I remember when I first started playing guitar, I'd try to learn things and I'd be sitting there listening to Van Halen and be like, "I can't play that." I remember learning, "Should I Stay or Should I Go" by The Clash, and at the same time, I was starting to be, like, "Hey, what's with this punk stuff I keep hearing about?" And that clicked as, "Oh, not only do I like this punk stuff, it's also really easy to play. You only need to know some chords for this song." So that was the big moment.
How did you listen to punk music in Clearbrook?
AS: I remember The Suburbs came and played at the University in Bemidji a couple times, which is a great local connection. And there was this older dude I knew who was hip to what was going on and stuff. He's like, "Oh, man, there's this show, let's go check it out." So despite living in the sticks, there were a couple shows that came up there when I was 14, 15, and I was able to see some things and get a sense of, like, oh, wow, there's this whole scene. There'd be some other weird bands from Minneapolis and I was just, like, "Wow, this is really cool, man." And then when Purple Rain hit, that was a massive wake-up call, like, no, there is definitely a whole really cool world and it's literally just a couple hours away.
MP: My best friend knew that I liked listening to weird music. She was in Moorhead one time and she got me a Husker Du record. It was really great. Which one?
AS: Flip your Wig.
MP: Was it Flip your Wig? Yeah.
So eventually the two of you get into the art scene here in Duluth, and then you find that you can sing together. So over the last 30 years, how has your songwriting process evolved from that beginning? Do you harmonize after the lyrics are finished being written? When do you know when to get in there to help each other?
AS: I think early on, I knew that just from her family history that she sang harmonies a lot and just from fumbling around together over the years I knew that if I could just figure out how to sing the lead, she’d usually sing the harmony, and, “Wow, that sounds amazing.” So going into starting Low I definitely knew it’d be great if I could get Mim to sing, because I know her voice is amazing. But I also knew at the same time to ask her to be the singer was probably too much and you probably wouldn’t go for it.
MP: It was probably not going to fly.
And what about the drums?
AS: That’s the same thing. I was like, “Well, she plays drums, so maybe if I can convince her to just play simple drums.”
MP: He was working at Duluth’s Arena, the DECC, which basically, they do concerts. He was a runner. And so, he went down to the basement.
AS: I was down in the basement for something for the symphony, just had a bunch of old stuff stored in there.
MP: And maybe you didn’t even ask, maybe you just took it. I don't know. He came home with a big, deep snare drum, cymbal, and a stand.
Simple.
MP: Simple.
AS: I said, “Hey, you don’t have to play a whole drum kit, just this.” I already knew that John, the bass player, and I have been talking about music and we already knew that we were going to try to do something simple and minimal, so I thought maybe I can convince her to play the drums out of the guise that it’s going to be minimal. She won’t have to play the whole kit.
And then she wouldn’t have to be the lead singer, either. She can do harmony and take lead, occasionally? How early on were you taking your turn on lead, Mim?
MP: I have a couple songs on the first record.
Were you like, “Hey, I like these songs, I want to sing them?”
MP: Yeah. Typically if I was singing it, I had written it. Early on, we discovered that if [Alan] had written a song, it probably wasn’t necessarily my aesthetic—the way he sings his phrasing and this and that—so it was natural for me to sing the songs that I wrote.
Did it become, over time, more of a 50/50 scenario? Or is it 50/50 yet?
MP: My contribution was coming in on the chorus and my harmonies and this and that, and then, slowly, it just morphed into just singing the entire song together. And there are some…
AS: …Sometimes little breaks.
MP: Yeah, sometimes little breaks. Sometimes there’s an obvious part for him leading and then me, but for the most part, a lot of the stuff we’re doing now, I’m singing the entire song. And with BJ, we’ll both do leads and harmonies, and he would decide, “All right, I like that one better.” And I would end up doing the lead where that was never the intention.
AS: [Smiles] Yeah, you were like, “Well, it does sound good so we’ll stick with that.”
MP: Yeah. I’ve been swindled into being lead after all these years. You promised me I wouldn’t have to be.
I’m not going to ask you which songs are about what, but clearly, sometimes you guys are singing about your marriage, or relationships with other people, or fantasies about relationships maybe. And sometimes you have to harmonize on those parts. How often has the writing process been emotionally revelatory to the relationship? In those moments when you’re sharing with each other as a band, has it happened when it’s like, “Wow, I didn’t know you felt that way,” or, “Are you singing about this part of our lives?”
AS: Yeah, that comes up. Sometimes you listen to something and go, “Oh, wow.” And it’s pretty easy to... I don't know…
MP: ...See where it’s coming from.
AS: Yeah, sometimes it’s pretty easy and obvious, and you’re like, “Oh, it’s the way it is, I guess.”
MP: Never once have either one of us said to the other one, “I don’t think you should say this, because this is too personal.” We’ve never said that.
But have you ever heard something and maybe thought you had to course correct? Or have you realized, “Oh, that’s what they were thinking.”
AS: I would hope that that conversation would have happened.
MP: It’s never a surprise. I go, “He’s singing about this,” or, “He feels this way.” It’s never a surprise, so it’s not like, “What? What happened? What did you do?”
AS: Yeah, “You did what? You feel this way about me? I didn’t know that.” Sometimes it’s about difficult things that maybe you’re like, “Yes, this is about something that sucks to be reminded about.”
“It all is that it’s all human experience and emotion. It’s nothing nobody else hasn’t heard, felt, or seen. So, in that way, that’s how it connects.”
MP: But one vein running through it all is that it’s all human experience and emotion. It’s nothing nobody else hasn’t heard, felt, or seen. So, in that way, that’s how it connects. Granted, we can be pretty cryptic with the lyrics. There’s lots of room for interpretation. There are still times where we’re doing an interview and you might talk about a song and what it means, and sometimes it is like, “Oh.” Not necessarily about our relationship.
And we don’t have to include this, because I may be privy to something I shouldn’t be sharing, I don’t know. But there’s a lot of stuff about death on the new album, and obviously, death is more present within all of our lives. But Mimi, I don’t know how public you are with your health.
MP: I did an interview, actually, for Sheroes. It’s this podcast thing. And I did out myself as having my diagnosis of cancer. But honestly, I haven’t really talked to anybody.
When did you get your diagnosis and what was it?
MP: December 22, 2020. It's ovarian cancer. At this point in the scans, there's no discernible cancer, but my numbers are a little off, so we're not quite sure. There might still be something in there, but we can't see it.
And so, you finished the record in early 2021 with all that fear and worry in your heart. Wow. What stage were you at?
MP: My surgeon told me four. My oncologist told me three.
AS: Well, four first, which is about an eight-second Google search—not a great one.
MP: It's a kick in the head. You have to really face your own mortality. I mean, we always do that anyway, but yeah, you really face it. You are like, "well, what do I do with the time I have left if it's just going to be a short time?" I tend to be a pretty positive person in general. I mean, I had some extreme anxiety and despair for maybe a month, just a shock. But after that, I bounced back and at this point the eternal perspective, it's a very Mormon term, but realizing and hoping that maybe this isn't it and there's something after, and these experiences that we have are just there to teach us humility and compassion and sympathy.
So what role has your Mormon faith played in your relationship and musical philosophy? I’ve always appreciated the Mormon concept of personal divinity.
AS: I have yet to figure out a concise way to put that all in a nutshell as far as what that has meant and why. I mean, as anyone could imagine, if you were raised with a certain perspective, whether it's religion or philosophy or whatever, ideally, you grapple with it yourself and come to a conclusion about what you believe and how much of it you're basing on other examples, or someone telling you to do this or not do this. I feel like we each have different journeys with that, but I feel like we both come to a place where it really does inform our perspective of life.
Even just the concept of eternal life or the concept of us being eternal beings or the concept of us being siblings under perhaps parents who maybe know better than us, who are wiser than us, and possibly may have actually experienced the same things we are experiencing. We're children of God and we're in the process of gaining the knowledge and experience that would make us closer to having the same perspective as our godly parents, so to speak.
That concept, when you know that life is eternal, when you know and believe that the people that you love and that are around you are going to be around you forever and you're going to have some form of communion forever, it can be reassuring, it can also be terrifying. It puts a lot of weight on some things that sometimes are already heavy enough. But I don't know, I feel like it has skewed me in a more positive direction, it's given us the concept and the language to perceive the universe. It doesn't just fix everything to make it easy, but I feel like going forward in an absurd world: it's not easy. But I have to admit that having the anchor of at least a hope or at least some sort of—even if it's false—system that's been ingrained in me as far as seeing the world, seeing us as eternal beings and siblings and all these things, I feel like they are good things that have pushed me to be a kinder person. We'll joke around sometimes and be like, "Well, even if it's not true and there's no God, at least I'm glad I came across a lie that encouraged me to be a nice person."
So you find it reassuring to have a code of some kind.
AS: Yeah. And I know myself enough to know that without that, I don't think it would've donned on me. I mean, I’ve had conversations with atheist people, like, "Why can't you just be a decent person without the threat of God punishing you?" Like, yeah, I suppose that's possible, and I admire that, and I would hope that I would be like that, but at the same time, I also know, like, no, I'm a lazy person and I'm going to choose selfishness unless I'm constantly reminded. I've been in the process of writing where I felt there was something higher going on, that there was some sort of inspiration. I'm not saying that God's going, "I got an idea for a song." There are plenty of other things to deal with, but I think tiny, positive things. When the thought comes into your mind, they're like, "Hey, you should call so-and-so, talk to him for a while, see how he's doing." That kind of stuff, that's the spirit whispering. And if you believe that it's this or this or this, that's great. We recognize it in other people when something divine or transcendent is happening, and it's part of why we love music and art because, at the very least, we're watching people that are trying to transcend or trying to grapple with things, and there's something just very powerful and true about that.
And Mim, you came to this faith, this religion as an adult, right?
MP: Yeah.
And in that way, was it different from Alan's relationship with it, who was raised in the church?
MP: Initially for sure. There were just some aspects of it that made a lot of sense. I grew up in a little nondenominational country church. So when I started seeing Alan and we would talk about it, some of the things just made sense to me, they were logical. I mean, honestly, I live in a gray zone. I'm not a black and white person. I don't believe a hundred percent surety of pretty much anything. So even though I did convert, I did get baptized, I joined the church, it's taken me years to really understand it and figure out where I'm at with it. And honestly, I still don't agree with some of the things. But it’s also the death of innocence, with the Trump shit. There are people in the church, people that we know, and love, where it’s been a huge eye-opener, like, “Oh my gosh, we don’t agree on some real fundamental things.” That has been a lot. We grieve that.
AS: Some big issues.
MP: And some issues with stances the church has taken. But like Alan says, I feel like I've had spiritual experiences, I've had things that have testified to me of truth. And I mean, honestly, that's what we're looking for in this existence. When I tell my kids "whatever you do, just keep looking for truth and hopefully you'll find it."
“I mean, honestly, I live in a gray zone. I’m not a black and white person. I don’t believe a hundred percent surety of pretty much anything.”
When I hear you sing, Mim, it's really like that word that Alan used, “transcendent,” or it's like a full heart feeling. I can't imagine if the sound you make singing was coming out of my own body, but after having that black perspective of despair with the cancer diagnosis, and then coming back to finding hope—this all happened in the middle of your creative process on this album. Is there any particular song or lyric, or harmony with Alan that you were able to appreciate in a different way since coming back from that?
MP: I don't know if there was anything, like a specific song, but I'm a pretty shy, introverted person. And I remember feeling, like, "What the hell, I got nothing to lose."
AS: Why be cautious?
MP: Yeah. I don't need to worry about what people think about me. I don't run around in my underwear, but it gave me a freedom, honestly, to just not give a fuck. So, I’m not out of the woods 100 percent. I’m a lot better than I was. I guess I’m anticipating it’s coming back, or it never quite fully went away. So, I don't know.
In terms of an artistic message that’s going to resonate, I guess, it seemed the last album, Double Negative, seemed angry, bordering on despair, and HEY WHAT feels like you’re somewhere past despair and moving into somewhere between resignation and acceptance.
MP: Typically, after each recording, we go back and we listen, and it is kind of a realization, like, “Oh, that’s where our mind was.” Because when you’re in it, you can’t really see it, but when you can step back and look at it?
AS: We’re not intentional writers. We’re not going, “Okay, this is going on, let’s write some songs about this.”
MP: And we’re not telling a linear story. It’s never a linear story.
So, HEY WHAT wasn’t necessarily about the fear of losing each other or the fear of your own mortality.
MP: No, I don’t think so.
You can hear that on there, maybe because that’s what we’re all kind of experiencing.
MP: Probably, yeah.
AS: There are a few things in there that you can kind of look at. And I know just from writing the song, a lot of stuff will come in that seems to come from nowhere—random inspiration—and then to finish the song, you have to look at it and go, “Okay, what am I saying so far and how do I finish it?” So, just from that experience, and I know there are definitely songs in there that you’re like, “Oh, this language seems to be addressing this,” so there are definitely subjects that were specific to the times, whether COVID or death. And you’ve got to remember George Floyd.
MP: Yeah, Black Lives Matter was huge. Impacting our brains, realizations like, “Holy shit.”
HEY WHAT came out last fall, and you were able to play it for an audience a few times, and now you will finally be able to tour this record.
MP: If it pans out, I don't know. We’ve got tours booked. We’ve got a couple shows in February.
AS: If they stick.
MP: We were really fortunate with Double Negative, we toured it like crazy, and we were done. We were anticipating an off year. And honestly, we only canceled maybe two shows.
AS: When the pandemic hit, we only had two shows booked already. Because we had finished touring.
So, HEY WHAT maybe wouldn’t have even happened if it wasn’t for the pandemic?
AS: No, in our mind, we were like, we’re done touring, let’s go home. We’ll keep writing a little bit, maybe start working on a record that year. I think we started earlier than we would have.
MP: We felt like we needed to do something.
AS: And BJ was like, “Yeah, I think let’s try this,” because he’s stuck home with everybody else.
MP: Alan doesn’t deal with that type of stuff, at all. He can’t relax. You can’t sit still.
AS: Show me a moment where I can relax.
MP: Whereas I, besides cancer and whatever, can chill for a long time.
You weren’t able to meet your public on stage, but you’ve been able to communicate with them on social media. And I’m sure you are aware of the critical acclaim. There are so many people who have said, “Hey, it’s so great that 30 years in this band is still releasing incredible work.” It is unique. So many bands don’t last long enough to have a late-career resurgence.
AS: No, they don’t.
MP: No, we’re really fortunate.
I just watched the Beatles’ Get Back; they couldn’t even get past their 20s.
MP: And they weren’t married. Honestly, if we weren’t married?
AS: We probably would have bailed after a few years, for sure.
MP: That was our dream, honestly, when we were young and thinking about this. We were like, “Wow, wouldn’t it be great if we could do something together?”
And you did it.
MP: And we did it.
I just interviewed this guy, Godfrey Reggio, who directed the experimental film Koyaanisqatsi, And he’s like, “Sometimes success turns you into a petrified forest. It calcifies you into thinking you’re supposed to be who you think you are.”
MP: And that’s it. We’ve never had a hit, so we’ve never been beholden to playing this hit. We’re not living in that moment.
AS: I think that’s a feat: 30 years and no hits.
MP: But yet, a gradual, slow enough progression, and slow enough success that it’s kept us here.
So, can I just give you the opportunity to Kanye West this thing and be pissed about the Grammy snub?
MP: The industry is a popularity contest. And we knew from the get-go that we weren’t going to be popular. The type of music that we were playing was not going to be popular. It can only appeal to a certain amount of people.
In a way, it feels like the concept of the band from the very beginning was to go against the grain of popularity, to be like, “Hey everything is fast and loud and we’re going to be slow and quiet, and minimal, and barebones.”
MP: Not that we were the first to do this type of music, but we were one of the first. And there have been a lot of people that have taken what we’ve done, and those people are much more successful. That happens a lot.
AS: I don’t know about stealing anything.
MP: I didn’t say they stole our idea, but there are bands that we’ve toured with that have opened for us that are huge. And granted, maybe they were doing more accessible music... whatever. Honestly, after all the reviews and whatnot came in, Double Negative was the second-highest reviewed record of that year, behind Janelle Monáe, whatever her record was.
AS: In hindsight, that was a shock.
MP: That was a shock, but that was the one that probably should have been nominated because of that. This one, I think people say we’ve gotten a lot of accolades and this and that, but it’s a little like, “Oh yeah, they did that already.” A little bit, but not completely. They’re still on that same trajectory. But I don't know... it’s weird.
AS: Albini says they nominate you for the record you did before. “Oh, so-and-so, they have a new record? Oh yeah, the one before was really good. I should probably nominate them.” Nominations are interesting. I think it’s great that HEY WHAT’s nomination is about engineering. I think that is really the most appropriate thing. Because the thing that makes the record noteworthy, I think a lot of that is BJ. He’s been nominated for working on other people’s stuff in the past. It’d be great if he’d get it for this one. I love that we’re the record that he can have this freedom and do stuff that people notice. Like, “Wow, that’s really cool.” It’s an honor to be the artists that he has that freedom with.
I think he feels that you guys trust him more than anybody else that he works with trusts him.
MP: A lot of those records, like the other bands or records in this category, there’s 10 or 15 engineers. But for us, it was very intimate: just the three of us.