I know its the farthest thing from a deep cut, but I cant play it out no matter how much I try.

01 I Will Dare

SJ: To a certain extent the subject matter pushed me in the direction of dissonance, yes. The subject matter on my records always leans a little dark, I guess, or full (depending on how you look at it), but I definitely thought that with this cycle of songs I would let the loose-ended characters and situations be reflected in the overall jagged sound. There is something about songs which could be played pretty but refuse to be revealed as such. I think they are ultimately more satisfying because it takes time before one realizes how catchy or melodic they really are. There is so much music which gives instant gratification (and that can be great too) but the records that stay with me over the years, start out difficult and reveal themselves slowly. I also decided to approach Ghosts in the manner in which I recorded my early records, setting up in a warehouse and working on it on the weekends or whenever I had free time to mess around with it. That kind of time lends itself to more experimentation. So, in a way, it ended up sounding more like an early record of mine, The Cowardly Traveller Pays His Toll, then say, Out Into the Snow or Skeleton Blues. The recording approach either frees you up or limits you and given a few days in a studio, you make quicker decisions and you don’t have as much time to try different things with a given song. That’s something I missed about recording so I decided to make time for that with this record. I also had a new band and they were eager to dirty everything up too. No resistance always helps.

I’m a fan of everything by those three acts. I remember getting Alastair Galbraith’s “Morse” and the This Kind of Punishment “In The Same Room/5 by Four” and “Beard of Bees” reissues on Ajax back in the day and being totally slayed by what I found there. Same with “Harsh 70′s Reality” by The Dead C. Really the whole New Zealand scene exported and shared with us in the 90′s had a tremendous impact on me. I felt I had found real kindred spirits and I greedily vacuumed up as much of those records as I could find. Tall Dwarfs, Cakekitchen, Bats, Plagal Grind, Terminals, Renderers, Bill Direen, The Chills, The 3-Ds, Bird Nest Roys, Able Tasmans, The Clean, etc…. The “Killing Capitalism With Kindness” boxset and “Making Losers Happy” compilations were great too.

I think so. It’s raw in a way that the early records were, which will make some people happy and upset others, I’m sure. I didn’t necessarily set out to connect with the early material sonically but I think it happened as a consequence of having more time to work on the songs and recording in my warehouse on borrowed gear! That’s the good old days for you.

I approach every project individually and haven’t ever really thought of myself as getting into any genres. I understand why the categories are there, I just never realize that I’ve gotten myself into one until I hear my name being thrown around in lists of artists in whatever genre. And yes, that seems to change. I just find myself getting into different sounds from listening to a lot of records and those records tend to bleed into what I’m doing. It’s unavoidable. It helps that I usually want to give my new batch of songs their own sonic identity so every record feels/sounds like itself only. Sometimes that’s all in the songwriting itself but it can be in the recording style or in the instrumentation too. For me, what’s important is serving the songs at hand and giving them 100% of whatever it is I’m about at the moment, or as Vic Chesnutt would say, my “stupid preoccupations” of the moment. I’d love to work with this band more and I feel like they’re a very versatile group of players who are really open to exploring musically so it would be nice to grow as a real band as opposed to just me and whoever I enlist for a given project.

Indian Rebound – 03 The Wooden Ones

isn’t it a shame – the so so glos
ice age – diarrhea planet
marikkkopa – desaparecidos
spanish bombs – the clash
anxiety block (television personalites) titus andronicus
where are they now – cock sparrer
unsatisfied – the replacements
continuous thunder – japandroids

Noisecast #6 – Summer 12′

Enjoy the rest of your summer.

04 Anchorless

yes.

The Pogues – Tuesday Morning

This demo is off the reissue of their self titled LP. If you like the femmes at all I’d suggest you try and get your hands on these demos ASAP.

Violent Femmes – Kiss Off (Demo)

I spoke to Patrick Stickles (Diplomats,Titus Andronicus) and Alex Tretiak (Dipolomats,Zombie Orgy), about their old bands from high school, bootlegs, tone deafness, back to the future, touring and various other things
—

FNR: So I’ve been listening to those diplomats recordings Mr. Tretiak hooked me up with. That was you on lead vox? I thought it was the other guy and you were on backing vocals…

STICKLES: It was mostly Sarim of Liquor Store, I sang lead on ‘Who’s Barbara Tanis’ and ‘Nobody Told Me.’

TRETIAK: Not to mention “Time Machine” and “Fuck”

FNR: How old were you guys when you started The Diplomats?

TRETIAK: I don’t remember the exact age but me and Patrick were probably 15 or 16? Which would have made Sarim 13 or 14. Most recording/show activity was the latter two years of high school.

FNR: I really dig the sample on ‘Who’s Barbara Tanis’. It turned me on to back to the future, which in turn turned me on to Johnny B. Goode, which I had never heard before, believe it or not.

TRETIAK: Go, go, go johnny go! go!

FNR: so whats the deal with the mysterious Seizing Elian? Library of Congress?

STICKLES: The Library of Congress album is the second album by Seizing Elian. Same band, same album, different drummer live…and who was that different drummer? Noted guitar slinger Andrew Cedermark’s brother, Kyle, or nowadays, Dr. Kyle.

FNR: Mr. Tretiak, you weren’t really in Titus Andronicus right? How did you end up playing on that first Titus tour?

TRETIAK: I ended up on the first Titus tour I suppose because they were between drummers and I was home from college that summer. The drummer before was himself starting college in another state or something I think? I honestly can’t remember why there was a vacancy quite then but everyone in the band were close friends of mine and I knew a lot of the songs already just from hanging out and going to their shows so Patrick asked if I would play on the tour. It was something like 10 days and super fun, and the day after the last day of tour I was on a plane to Ukraine for two months to do family history research. Needless to say that was a pretty crazy and busy summer.

FNR: I was thinking about the public enemy reference at the end of No Future Pt. 1 (which I had for a while thought was a mad max reference) when I realized that the vocals almost seemed to flow around the drum beat like a warped rap. You mention hip hop and rappers as influences quite often. Was that song originally a rap?

STICKLES: In so much as I was originally a rapper. LP3 actually has a good % of lyrics lifted from my own rap verses.

FNR: Speaking of LP3, is it true that you asked nyctaper not to record your set at warsaw? I was kind of bummed to hear that. I’m a big fan of bootlegs.

STICKLES: It is true our record company did. Yeah, they did. We said it was okay. They said it was not okay. That was the end of it. Same reason we haven’t done Dayrotter in 3 years even though we want to. Don’t really understand it.

FNR: I kind of wish you were still making an album about the Peanuts/German anarchists/Haymarket Square.

STICKLES: The Peanuts are going to be on there. The Haymarket thing will have to wait for another day.

Mr. X: “Mr. Stickles, I never knew you played the piano. Ever compose a Titus song on yr parents’ old upright?”

STICKLES: Yes, ‘Theme from “Cheers.”‘

FNR: I really dig the solo acoustic version of to old friends and new. Did you compose that on the piano too?

STICKLES: Yr talking about this hella rare version, yeah? Jesus Christ, talk about some bad singing! I was young. I wrote that song on an acoustic guitar, one night on my parents’ porch in winter 2008. Made the neighbors mad. I can’t believe we put this out and then I pouted about incessant Conor Oberst comparisons. What’d I expect?

FNR: I love that version! Now that you mention it, it does sound a bit like ‘when the curious girl realizes she is under glass’ in terms of recording style, and obviously instrumentation. Wish I had that 7″

STICKLES: It is okay, my man. I don’t even have a copy of that seven inch. New Years present for yr boy,

FNR: So how did this whole Titus TV thing get started?

TRETIAK: A year or so to right after finishing college, I was at home for long while looking for work to no avail and then I applied to grad school to become a librarian. In the interim while waiting for library school to start I was hanging out with everyone the night before they were leaving on their alleged Ted Leo tour in Oct. 2009 and I was saying how I had nothing to do social life-wise when the band goes on tour so they out of the blue invited me to come hang out on that tour. So the next morning I packed a bag and went along for the ride. I had made a few films on my own before that and thought it would be fun to do a tour doc as the band was saying they wished they were filming on the road more. So I kinda volunteered to do it for that trip that I tagged along on which ended up being the Absolute Zero episode of Titus TV. And then that turned into a few more episodes of subsequent tours that they filmed. And now I am a librarian too.

FNR: So, I heard during the recording of “The Airing of Greviances” Kevin. S. McMahon got a bit frustrated with your singing and told you to take a break / take some lessons or something like that? I’ve also heard you talk about being tone deaf. can you tell when your guitar is out of tune? If yes, you’re obviously not tone deaf.

STICKLES: I can’t tell – that is why I have to just tune it anyway at least once a song.

FNR: I think If I messed with your guitar before a show and tuned all strings to one note, you definitely would know.

STICKLES: Then I’d bust into this jam
FNR: Right on, my man.

The Jesus And Mary Chain – Just Like Honey