ALEX IZENBERG
Hi Alex and thanks for taking time out to speak with us at Musicology. Firstly congratulations on the new record Caravan Château. In terms of the writing and lyrical content, was there an overarching narrative tying the album together or an assortment of topics and inspirations that zig zag throughout the record?
I think women are a big topic on the record but also there are a lot of poetic moments. I think it was a bunch of different songs coming together. It wasn’t like I sat down and made a record over the course of a couple of months, it was more that it came together over a few years and I chose my favourite songs that I made out of probably thirty five.
An album can be a lifetime worth of experiences concentrated and refined into a body of work that encompasses many years and phases in life. Other times it is a snap shot, a brief period in time crystallized into a record covering a specific epoch. Was it a case of either / or for Caravan Château?
It was a bit of both. There is a few moments of me sitting down and writing about my feelings which in retrospect I don’t really want to do that again, I would rather just write a song. I don’t want to write about me, my experiences or something I went through. I don’t think that is interesting, I would rather write about something more poetic or something that stimulates the listener as opposed to “I woke up, she broke my heart blah blah blah”. I think it is the culmination of being alone for a long time and just writing a bunch of songs that I thought were cool.
Would that make a lot of your subject matter fictional if it isn’t your emotions and experiences that you are drawing upon for inspiration?
Yeah totally. Songs like Ann In Strange Furs, Caravan Château or Requiem are all pretty fictional. I think of the words and the melody like an eel that goes through your head and when the song is over, it leaves your head. You can listen to a song and before you know it the song is done and I like that because it means you are able to let go.
That is a great way to describe the process and for you does that mean you work on a track and cannot move onto the next one until that eel has slid in and out of your head?
Yeah but not consciously. There are literal, non-fiction songs on the record like December 30th and Bouquets Falling In The Rain which are based on true accounts.
You worked with a range collaborators on Caravan Château including Chris Taylor (Grizzly Bear), Jonathan Rado (Foxygen, Whitney, Lemon Twigs), Ari Balouzian (Tobias Jesso Jr). In what ways did they each bring a certain something to the record that without their contributions, the album would have taken a different shape?
I don’t know, they are just people but it was cool to work with them. I was really in the driver’s seat the whole time. If I had of worked with three other music industry type people, it probably wouldn’t have worked out too different but that said Ari actually wrote the song Lady and I just sang on it. That was an instrumental composition of his that he made for a movie and he showed it to me over Facetime and I thought this was so sick, can I sing on it? He always shows me stuff he is working on in the studio, kind of teasing me a little bit and showing it off and I just loved it and asked him if I could sing on it but to answer the question I think it the record would have turned out pretty similar, aside from Lady even if I didn’t work with Chris or Rado because I had the idea for the record. I wasn’t thinking that Chris was going to make it sound like Grizzly Bear or that Jonathan was going to make it sound like Foxygen. I was just thinking that it would be cool to collaborate with Chris because he has experience and he could help me achieve my ideas for the record sonically.
Was the film clip for Lady one that had already existed considering that the song was originally for a score?
No that was just something that Bráulio Amado the director came up with after the fact. When I say that “the devil is alive in America” I was referring to mind control, the devil and fear. I made the song prior to the Black Lives Matter explosion but it could be applicable to that in a way I guess.
Diagnosed in 2012 with paranoid schizophrenia, did the formal diagnosis make greater sense of your world and specifically how music for you was created, interrupted and the cathartic role it played in your life?
Well for the first number of years it just stunted me because it made me feel stupid, like I wasn’t worth the time and that is kind of how it made me feel and that affected how much effort I put into things and how I actually perceive things. In hindsight it’s bad but I went through it and now I’m on medication and I feel fine and that I am going ok despite the circumstances. Something like one out of three have a mental illness so I don’t feel like an outcast and in regards to having a mental illness.
Given the clarity that hindsight affords, can you pinpoint a few select moments, decisions, outcomes that have occurred during your career that have proved to be pivotal?
Well I remember on my first record when Harlequin came out and I got a negative review on Pitchfork and it made me feel like wow I need to get my shit together. So many people have told me don’t take your validation from them but it did make me feel like I should shit or get off the pot. That was in 2016 and so soon afterwards in 2017 I started working on Caravan Château and I did my best so now it’s almost show time.
Lastly, on a philosophical level, what does music give you that nothing else does?
It gives me a lot of things and it depends on what song or record it is too. It is like each song I listen to on Spotify can be like a pill and so when I take it I feel the pills effects. Not always that intense but a lot of time it is. It’s like doing drugs without doing drugs. Music gives me a sense of calm and awareness that and if I didn’t have the comfort from music I would feel more anxious and go down mental rabbit holes that would lead me to a dead end.
