60 Songs That Explain the '90s - “Fade into You”—Mazzy Star

Episode Date: July 26, 2023

Before highlighting Mazzy Star and their moody hit “Fade into You,” Rob shares his new favorite song with us and dives into all things slowcore. Later Rob is joined by cultural columnist at De Los, the new Latino vertical at the Los Angeles Times, Suzy Exposito to discuss all things Mazzy Star, her goth yeehaw playlist, and more (1:06:00). Host: Rob Harvilla Guest: Suzy Exposito Producers: Jonathan Kermah and Justin Sayles Additional Production Support: Chloe Clark Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Sean Fennessey. I'm Amanda Dobbins. And together we host The Big Picture, The Ringers Film Podcast for new releases, career retrospectives, director interviews, movie drafts, top fives, and so much more. Twice a week, we break down the latest releases,

argue about whether movies are doomed, and debate our modern film canon. Listen to The Big Picture on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. I have a new favorite song. My new favorite song starts like this. Before.

My new favorite song is very slow, and I'm very concerned about how to play you little legally permissible excerpts for my new favorite song without breaking the essential hypnotic spell cast by my new favorite song, but we're going to get through this together. My new favorite song is from 2005, but we're going to get through that together as well. My new favorite song is Cue the Strings by the Duluth, Minnesota rock band Lowe from their 2005 album, The Great Destroyer, which is their seventh full-length album out of 13 total, a super daunting body of work that stretches from 1994 to 2021. This is the record that got me into Lowe. I had a lot of listening, a lot of work to do from here to fully wrap my head around the, majestic, eternal, primordial essence of Lowe. But I did grasp one essential fact about this band immediately. This is Lowe singer and guitarist Alan Sparhawk singing, but what was super obvious to me on first contact is that Alan's voice is lovely and grave and primordial and soothing and alarming and arresting. But Alan doesn't sound quite right unless Mimi Parker is singing with him.

Alan doesn't sound complete without Mimi. Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker were high school sweethearts. They first met in grade school, actually, in a small town near Bimigi in northern Minnesota, near Lake Bimigi, the northernmost lake that feeds into the Mississippi River. The geographical, the geological, the elemental quality of this band strikes you immediately. Lowe's music can feel tremendously cold. But that only underscores the startling warmth generated by Alan and Mimi's voices, the physical, the tangible warmth between them. These are two intertwined voices that can warm you just by listening to them. This is a supernatural vocal and spiritual harmony that can keep you alive if that's what you need them to do for you.

Alan and Mimi got married in 1990. He grew up in the Mormon church, she converted. They formed the band Low in 1993 as a trio with a bassist Joe Nichols, one of many different bassists in this band over the next few decades. Here in 2005 on The Great Destroyer, we got Zach Sally on bass. Mimi sings and plays drums, usually standing, almost always with brushes, not drumsticks. And the simplicity has an unfathomable complexity to it. The softness has this.

colossal hardness and heaviness to it. Here on this song, on cue the strings, we got a lot of electronic action, a digital pulse. But if you're wired into this band's whole vibe, as synthetic as any of this might feel, it also feels like a heartbeat. It feels like her heartbeat.

I read an interview with Lowe once in Uncut in 2011, and Alan and Mimi were talking about their, respective tumultuous upbringings. And the writer says Sparhawk is as intense as he describes his family to be, though pointedly self-deprecating, while Parker exudes a droll serenity.

They finish each other's sentences and watch each other obsessively, as if the interview is actually between themselves. End quote. Yeah, you get the sense in this band's music as well, that you're eaves dropping. That your presence listening is unnecessary. Your presence is welcome.

They're happier here. They're happy to have you. But they're not singing to you or for you. Alan and Mimi are singing to and for each other. The Great Destroyer is produced by Dave Friedman, who's worked a lot with the Flaming Lips and Mercury Rev and Maguire. Ooh, Maguire. Artie bands and psychedelic bands.

and quite often tremendously loud bands. Also in 2005, Dave produces Sleader Kinney's album, The Woods. Sleader Kinney's loudest and densest and heaviest record. Dave's the guy you turn to when you want to sound louder and denser and heavier. And that's how Lowe want to sound here. And Lowe will spend most of the rest of their career pushing in a louder, denser, heavier direction. So Dave's doing his job on cue the strings. But also you can just tell that Alan and Mimi's intertwined voices are dominant and indestructible and like neutron star dense, no matter how much noise and chaos any producer throws at them.

I just looked up what's the densest matter in the universe and it said a neutron star. And I said, all right. So yeah, description wise, neutron star dense it is. That's how the sausage gets made around here, my friends. I hope this rhythm worked out okay. I hope we managed to preserve the essential hypnotic spell of cue the strings, despite having to parcel it out in eight-second installments. This is my new favorite song.

I'm extremely protective of it. We got just one word left. The last word takes up eight seconds all on its own. I don't know if you can tell in eight-second installments or whatever, but listening in headphones over the course of the full three minutes and 30 seconds of cue the strings Alan and Mimi's intertwined voices are panning slowly from the far left to the far right.

They start off singing solely into your left ear and end up singing way more into your right ear. If you picture your head, if you see yourself as facing north, then Alan and Mimi's voices travel in a slow arc over your head from the west to the east and they're far to the east when they hit the word sunrise. It's pretty cool, if you ask me.

Can I play you this song's last two climactic instances of the word sunrise, after everything has gotten way louder and denser and heavier? This is my new favorite song. I just decided that I loved the Great Destroyer when it first came out in 2005, and this record got me heavy into low. And this was always one of my favorite songs. on this record, but I upgraded Q the Strings to my new

favorite song status just recently. It's the sunrises, I think, all three sunrises, the triple sunrise. This is the third and last sunrise. So it's time to get heavy into Lowe, my friends, as daunting as this catalog

might be. Let me show you what I mean. Lowe put out their first album called I Could Live in Hope in 1994. for. This song is called Lullaby. It is nearly 10 minutes long, and that one word, lullaby, takes up the whole 10 seconds here. And the first syllable of the word lullaby takes up most of that time. And even though you're braced for the last two syllables, believe me when I tell you that you are not prepared for how exactly Mimi Parker delivers them. Respectfully,

reverently, oof, you see what I mean about the softness and the quietness radiating a colossal hardness and heaviness? I suppose we should get it out of the way that Lowe historically are often described musically as

slowcore. That's the actual name, musical subgenre of slowcore on account of this music's hardcore slowness. And we can agree certainly that basically all music

musical subgenre names are pretty stupid. We can further agree that as a musical subgenre name, Slowcore is extra pretty stupid. Yeah? There's a taxonomy. There's a lineage. There's a legit constellation of bands united by this term, even if, as usual, this term was foisted upon those bands.

There are uses for this term, slowcore. But nonetheless, it sounds pretty stupid. I listen to some other slowcore affiliated bands. codeine, bedhead, duster. There's a thematic through line in just the band names, perhaps. And those bands are rad and hypnotic, but vocally, they don't quite cut it for me.

What they don't have is an Alan or a Mimi, and certainly they don't have an Alan and Mimi. And anyway, Slow Corps feels quite limiting and insufficient in terms of describing the majestic eternal primordial hypnotic spell that low are casting. Okay, next album, next song, next word. Just the one syllable this time.

Lowe's second album called Long Division comes out in 1995. That song's called Shame. That's glib of me, actually. You hear Mimi Parker's voice and you stop dead in your tracks, man, and wherever you happen to be, wherever you happen to be walking, whatever the weather is, wherever you are, and wherever you're going.

You hear Mimi Parker's voice and you stop dead in your tracks in, suddenly, two feet deep snow. It's five degrees outside. You're wearing every sweater you've ever owned simultaneously and you're still freezing until the moment you hear her voice. Only Mimi's voice can warm you. Here's how Mimi kicks off shame, actually. A neutron star of beauty right there, density-wise. A? Mimi's brushes on the drums, the subaquatic pulse of that baseline, the unbearable shattered prettiness of that stretched-out guitar chord. Oof, do you find music like this to be particularly tremendously intimidating? I do. In 2004, I think it was, I walked into a low concert halfway through it at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco. I don't know why I showed up halfway through it. I don't like doing that. It feels disrespectful.

It's like walking into a movie or into a baseball game or into church halfway through. But I have this memory of being instantly dumbstruck by the ecstatic and overpowering stillness of this show, the reverence, the absolute deep space hush, the spell low, had clearly already fully cast over several hundred people. Your heartbeat slows, your breathing slows, your internal monologue slow. hopefully, mercifully. They rewire you. You get on this band's wavelength and you never want to leave. Will's next album from 1996 is called The Curtain Hits the Cast. And you wouldn't call this a hit single necessarily, but in context, that's kind of what it is. Sorry, the word I'm took 10 seconds on its own. This song's called Over the Ocean. It's kind of a hit single. They made a video for it everything. However stupid, the term slow core strikes you, and however, you personally would classify

music like this in a broader sense, college rock, alternative rock, indie rock, this music feels politely but defiantly non-mainstream. Yes, as a matter of both tempo and vibe, low are gloriously radio unfriendly. But starting with their fourth album, Secret Name from 1999, you do sense an appropriately slow motion blossoming, a sense that if mainstream or even semi-mainstream radio ever gets its shit together, then the radio can one day prove itself worthy of playing a low song like Two Step. From there, Lowe put out nine more albums. The Great Destroyer from 05 is for sure the best.

Shout out When I Go Deaf, that song kicks ass as well. The last few low albums are extra noisy. and electronic and bombastic and quite alarming and super great in 2018 they put out the album double negative uh which in 2018 summed up how they were feeling and how many of their fans were feeling as well the guardian called this record a document of contemporary social collapse and as such the most important devastating album of the year end quote this song's called always trying to work it out good luck with that. The last time I saw a low in concert, I was there from the very beginning, thank you very much, and they were deep into this harsh digital overload phase, but their shows

were still dominated by that overpowering stillness, that reverent funereal deep space hush and standing there with a couple hundred people in total silence. My phone in my pocket somehow started blaring the first few seconds of a podcast. I believe it was an NPR ad for a Malcolm Gladwell podcast. And I did the scramble where I frantically dig through my pockets as though I'm trying to find a live grenade. And that's just about as mortified as I've ever been at a live music event in my whole life. Lowe's last album is called Hey What. It came out in 2021 when there was even more devastating societal collapse type shit to try to work out.

No, you're never going to fit. No, you're never going to be. This song's called Days Like These. And it's just a touch upsetting to me now to listen to this and hear Mimi Parker's voice increasingly subsumed in the distortion, the noise, the harshness, the neutron star density, the rising, all-consuming technological flood. Or maybe I'm supposed to take a perverse sort of comfort in all the subsuming harshness. Maybe I'm supposed to welcome our new robot overlords as just another sort of cold sunrise. On November 6th, 2022, the low Twitter account says, Friends, it's hard to put the universe into language and into a short message, but she passed away last night, surrounded by family and love, including yours.

keep her name close and sacred share this moment with someone who needs you love is indeed the most important thing end quote there was no need to even name her mimi parker died of ovarian cancer on november 5th 22 she was 55 she is survived by alan and their two children together hollis and cyrus in a later tweet responding to somebody's question about the band's future, Alan wrote, Lowe is and was Mimi. It was amazing. I'm grateful. End quote. There's a photo from Mimi Parker's funeral that's just all of Lowe's former bass players together, arms around each other in mourning, but grateful to have each other to hold on to. and man, I get such an outrageously, almost unbearably heavy feeling looking at this photo, the grief radiating off it. But the comfort, too, even if it's appropriately enough, the coldest comfort imaginable.

All of these people who dedicated even a little part of their lives to sinking up their cool, modest, hypnotic little bass lines to the delicacy of Mimi Parker's drums and the even more delicate grandiosity. of Mimi Parker's voice. They synced their own heartbeats to her heartbeat. You can sense that unbreakable connection somehow in this photo, the bond they still share with her and with each other, and with all the hypnotized listeners out there who synchronized their own heartbeats to hers. The closest little ever got, by the way,

to sounding like a mainstream rock or maybe even pop radio band was when they put out an EP of Christmas songs in 19. They called that EP Christmas, and they called this song just like Christmas. And coincidentally, that's just about as fast as low ever got as well. Maybe that's not a coincidence. Slow stuff doesn't hit big on the radio, generally speaking. Or at least if it's a radio hit you're after, the slower you get, the more bombastic you got to get, too. Hence the power ballad, you know, with the bonkers guitar solo and the climactic key change, maybe a dude jump through the wedding cake.

A power ballad with no obvious blatant physical power is just a ballad. And the radio, as a monolithic entity, the radio in general ain't got much use for ballads, for slowness, for stillness, for unbroken serenity. In 90s, All Rock Radio specifically had no idea what to do with low. As 90s, alt-rock radio hits went, you cherished any slowness or stillness or serenity that you could find. And you could, on a few precious occasions, find it. My name is Rob Harvilla. This is the 101st episode of 60 songs that explained the 90s in this week. We are talking about Fade Into You by Mazzie Star from their 1993 album, So Tonight, that I might see.

I dig the sublime chillness. of even just the first 15, 20 seconds of fade into you. I dig the immediacy of its profoundly refreshing total lack of immediacy, especially when you slap this song on alt-rock radio in 1993, amidst all your various types of bombast, served up by your pearl jams, your becks, your tools, your nirvana's, your smashing pumpkins, fade into you by any sort of comparison with anybody ever,

is very much at its leisure. Here is another simplicity as density proposition. Another perfect song. Another perfect tangible human-to-human sense of harmony. Another perfect voice. Another cold sunrise. But the songs in no hurry to actually let you hear the perfect voice. You'll hear the perfect voice when you're ready for it.

Our Mazzy star is fade into you slow. core, no, not really. Fade into you is more dream pop, perhaps. You know, who cares? The pretty stupid subgenre taxonomy, the Venn diagrams, the constellation of bands you'd even consider taring with any of these pretty stupid subgenre names, the R-I-L of it all, if that acronym means anything to you. Recommend it if you like, just in case that acronym means nothing to you. Who cares about any of that, really. What I'm after here is a feeling. A super heavy late night feeling.

An extra mopey, super heavy late night feeling. A super heavy late night moping with headphones on feeling. A super heavy late night moping with headphones on and preferably listening to the radio feeling. The radio part is important. The fact that fade into you is a super mopey top 40 hit is important. It peaked at number 44 close enough. You need the radio. You need the sense that you are,

literally and figuratively, plugged into a collective entity. You are having a solitary, super heavy headphones on, moping-type experience. But part of what makes this moment super heavy and kind of lovely is the palpable sense of all the other lonely

or not so lonely souls out there listening to the exact same song as you. Part of what fascinates, me about fade into you is the way it's so slow and deliberate and unbothered and transcendent and uncompromising, but it nonetheless crossed over, not from one genre to another, not from the underground to the mainstream, but simply from one solitary moping person's stereo to everyone's stereos. Once upon a time, that time being 1993, can I tell you about the single most intense late night radio listening experience I have ever had.

Ain't nobody ever called this song Slowcore or Dream Pop, but it's a spiritual vibe I'm after. And this is the spiritual vibe I'm after personified. No, you are not mistaken. That is Maggot Brain by Funkadelic. From their 1971 album, also called Maggot Brain. Yeah. George Clinton's Funkadelic, not some obscure 90s alt rock band jokingly named Funkadelic.

There's a popular electronic musician right now named George Clanton. Apparently, is that even legal? It's the real maggot brain, all right? Early to mid-90s, I'm a teenager. I don't know shit about shit. I know very little about not very much shit, and I don't know it yet, but you now know full well that I'm about to learn some shit. dig the unhurried delicacy of those drums, man.

I'm living in the suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio, and I am listening to Beloved Cleveland Rock Radio Station 100.7 WMMS, The Buzzard. Love the buzzard. This other time in high school, I won a case of peach snapple by calling the WMMS Morning Show. The hosts, the DJs were Brian and Joe.

I believe Brian and Joe were doing a contest called Beat You to the Pugel. where if you called in and you told them a joke and they couldn't guess the punchline to your joke, you won a case of peach snapple, like 32 glass bottles, a peach snaple with the caps. I won. The punchline to my joke was, Lady, you don't need a condom. You need a golf bag.

My mom had to drive me all the way downtown to the station to pick up my snapple. I forget the setup to that joke. By the way, don't ask me what the setup was. The point is I won. That was another time, though. This time it's the dead of night. Or at least like one or two in the morning. Way past my bedtime.

But I'm a teenager, man. I ain't got a bedtime no more. I can't be contained. I conduct my own affairs as I see fit. Everybody on the house is asleep. I'm sitting on the floor in my bedroom. My headphones are plugged directly into my CD, tape deck, radio tuner.

combo stereo, right? And I'm listening to the buzzard. And I had never heard Funkadelic's Maggot Brain before, all right? I do apologize for that. You got to hear Maggot Brain for the first time sometime. And I'm listening to this. I'm like, what is this? And then I'm like, oh, Magot Brain is basically a 10-minute-long guitar solo. Shout out Eddie Hazel, that tops pretty much every formal or informal list of the greatest guitar solos of all time, or at least it oughta. When Eddie Hazel died in 1992 of liver failure, at the age of 42, the equally godtier author and critic and musician and Oracle, Greg Tate, wrote in the village voice that Maggot Brain was Funkadelic's very own answer to John Coltrane's Love Supreme. Anybody comparing you to John Coltrane.

is a huge compliment, of course. Greg Tate comparing you to John Coltrane is as huge as compliments get. I don't know any of that at the time, obviously, is a no pretty close to nothing teenager listening to Maggot Brain for the first time. I don't know that George Clinton quite famously told Eddie Hazel play like your mother just died right before Eddie played this solo. I don't know George Clinton or Greg Tate or even much John Coltrane. I do know, however, at first contact, that I'm listening to one of the greatest guitar solos of all time. And suddenly, my usual late-night teenage mopingness has taken on a supernatural, a profound, a heroic aspect.

I am moping harder and more soulfully than any teenager has ever moped. I am dumbstruck. I am transfixed. I am mesmerized by Maggot Brain. And I just sit there on my bedroom floor in the relative dead of night with my headphones on, tripping balls. Even though I am, you guessed it, the least drug-taken human being you ever even heard of in your whole life. 10 minutes of this incomprehensible radness. I think my favorite part of Maggot Brain is roughly six minutes.

minutes into it when the guitar solo very quietly vaporizes all the other instruments surrounding it. And I'm sitting there totally mesmerized and doing the thing where you physically press your headphones into your ears to more directly commune with the music you're moping to. And I'm thinking, well, this sounds like it's over. But no, it ain't. But it does wind down eventually, maggot brain. And I'm sitting there, absolutely quiet, absolutely stiff. exhilarated and exhausted and vibrating at a higher plane of consciousness or whatever.

And this is the single, holy, pristine moment when my heartbeat permanently synchronizes with the radio's heartbeat. And then the DJ came back on. Now, as it turns out, the DJ is a gentleman by the name of Bill Lionel Freeman, better known to 100.7 WMMS listeners as the BLF. The BLF Bash, a delightful and beloved and gregarious and extremely loud, famous local DJ. I'm reading up on this now, and the BLF Bash is a Cleveland Overnight Radio legend who played Maggot Brain in full at 1.30 a.m. or so every Saturday night in the Sunday morning on the buzzard for years. is his signature move.

Now, here is what the BLF bash sounds like. I am going to play you a sample of this man's voice from apparently a 1989 air check tape, but hearing this man's voice will somehow still not do justice to this man's voice. Nonetheless, I want you to imagine that you are a soulfully moping teenager, sitting alone on the floor in your darkened bedroom at 1.30 in the morning with your headphones on, and your hands pressing your headphones into your ears and the volume all the way up, but you are perfectly still, perfectly quiet in a state of ocean floor deep concentration, tenderly swaddled into a transcendent state of heightened consciousness and extra sensory awareness,

having just experienced all 10 minutes of maggot brain for the first time, and maggot brain finally trails off, and suddenly this guy shows up. And there's the moodie blows you enjoy. Magnificence in high-fi, BLF fans. And checking right now, the latest from Delkin, Budweiser, and the buzzards we find Saturday night. That this will be a good time. And I hit the fucking ceiling. Maggot Brain slowly trails off, and the BLF badge goes.

Oh, yeah, there's maggot brain for you. And I go, wow, my limbs are flailing. My headphones fly off across the room. I am physically knocked, flat on my ass, onto the ceiling. I am as frightened as I have ever been. The most blood-curdling, pants-shitting jump scare in world history perpetrated upon me by the BLF bash via maggot brain. and I have never recovered.

I am still perched, terrified, upside down on the ceiling of my teenage bedroom like Spider-Man. But yeah, that song is the kind of transcendent, mellow, psychedelic late-night headphones vibe we're looking for here. David Roeback was born in Los Angeles in 1958. In 1981, he co-founded the band Rain Parade. It's a great name, which became part of L.A.'s vaunted Paisley Under A string of super cool 80s rock bands distinctly channeling 60 psychedelic rock, the garginess, the jangliness, the scruffy harmoniousness, the don't ask me, but presumably mild drugginess. You get the picture. The Paisley Underground is a slightly less dorky quasi-genre name than slowcore, at least. That song is called What's She Done to Your Mind. David sings and plays guitar, but a couple other dudes in this band sing as well, including.

including David's brother, Stephen Roback, who played bass. The Rain Parade's first album called Emergency Third Rail Power Trip came out in 1983, and David Roback wrote this tune called Carolyn's song. And this is even more of the transcendent, mellow, psychedelic late-night headphones kind of vibe we're looking for here. I get the feeling that David might have left Carolyn alone, feeling lost and sad. David leaves rain parade as well. Next, he forms a band called Opel with a singer-songwriter named Kendra Smith, who played bass in the Dream Syndicate, one of the other big whoop-paisley underground bands. Opel puts out one full-length album in 1987 called Happy Nightmare Baby.

It's a great name. This song's called She's a Diamond. Listen, this kind of music, either you leave them alone feeling lost and sad or they'll eventually leave you alone feeling lost and sad. It's not going to be all right for long, buddy. Opel put out this record and go on tour, and Kendra quits the band midway through the tour. And she is replaced by Hope Sandoval, a singer and guitarist born to Mexican-American parents in East Los Angeles. Hope and David finish out that Opal tour, and they go home, and they start writing songs together, and they change the band's name to Mazzie Star. Okay, at long last, we get to hear her voice now.

That was rude with me. I apologize. The snare drum and tambourine combo, the psh of it all is going to be tremendously important to this band, but still it's rude. I'm sorry. Okay. I think I see another side. Maybe he just up. It's never like that shines.

Hope Sandoval's voice sounds like a slide guitar. Every note, every syllable is either sliding up or sliding down or somehow sliding. sideways for as mellow as chill as leisurely as her voice might sound there is a tangible slipperiness to it she's on the move always syllable to syllable she is evading capture she's made of the exact opposite of stone and that's all right she is sliding in her socks in slow motion on a polished hardwood floor with her voice this song is called halla and it is the first song on Massey Star's debut album. She Hangs Brightly, released in 1990. Chorus. Surely don't stay long now. Missing you now. On YouTube, there's a great live version of this song

from 1994, where David and Hope were on the roof of the EMI Records building in London, on a small green tarp ringed with plants. And David's sitting there, playing guitar with a beret and sunglasses, looking as distant and as 1960s as you could possibly look in 1994. And Hope standing there completely still singing in this soft but neutron star dense voice. And they are both radiating absurd physical quantities of diffident cool. And they are moving as little as possible. They are exerting themselves with the bare minimum amount of exertion necessary to generate sound. It feels like they could both vanish out of existence at any time,

or maybe you will vanish. The cover of the first Massey Star record, She Hangs Brightly, is just an old-timey-looking black-and-white photo of a hotel lobby in Brussels, Belgium. And I keep catching myself staring at this cover. the staircase winding upward, the swirling patterns on the floor, the ornate wire gates, nobody's there and nothing's happening, but I keep staring at this photo waiting for something to happen until I realize that me staring at this photo is the thing that's happening.

That also sounds like an ultrestone revelation, but as we've established, it is very much not that at all. The upward and downward Sox slide on the word goodbye there. Oof. Reverently, oof. Those last few quick guitar chords there, it's nothing fancy, but anything this band does that occurs at normal speed sounds like it's going 200 miles an hour. Hala is also one of these songs where every time I hear it,

I double check to make sure they wrote it. Every time I hear this song, I think, is this a Loretta Lynn song? Maybe extra chill, Janice Joplin. This welcome disorientation, this unstuck in time loveliness is central to Mazzie Star's appeal. The lyrics are less central to the appeal. The songs, really, usually, are less central to the appeal. What you want from this band is vaguely Gothic Dark Night of the Soul atmosphere.

And most of the time with this band, you get. what you want. This song's called She Hangs Brightly. The echo on Hope's voice here that makes it sound like she is singing at the bottom of a well inexplicably located in an ornate metal

staircase railing type hotel lobby in Brussels. The echo on Hope's voice conveys more emotional information than any of the words she's singing here. This song goes on for six minutes and change, but I'd have been fine viving with it for another 45

or so. That's not exactly a super bonkers drum solo occurring right there, but any percussion type action beyond the simple of the snare drum and tambourine combo, and suddenly this music sounds like Prague rock or thrash metal. Listening to Mazzie Star, you get hypersensitive to any minute change in tempo or volume or temperature or degree of chill. This record, she hangs brightly. it made it on a Kirk Cobain's pretty famous list of his 50 favorite albums, by the way. It was the 49th album he wrote down, right between wipers and swans records. Does this sound familiar, by the way? This song's called Be My Angel.

It sounds familiar, don't it? Chord-wise, vibe-wise. You got the snare and tambourine. We're getting there. We're not quite there on this one, but we're sliding. in our socks in slow motion across a polished Belgian hotel lobby floor toward there.

It says it's me that makes you do things you're not done if I was away. The lyrics don't matter half as much as the vibe. The electric guitar is a little loud vibe-wise, but we're getting there. Genre-wise.

You want to call this music something. You can call it dream pop. Sure. Fine. You can establish a lineage. You can make up your own constellation. Velvet Underground, Galaxy 500, Cocteau Twins, Mazzie Star. There you go. A little cowboy junkies in there someplace as well. Perhaps. Cowboy junkies from Toronto. That's funny. They blew up with their 1988 album, The Trinity Session. I don't know how many alt-rockin teenagers first heard the Velvet Underground song, Sweet Jane, when the cowboy junkies covered it. But it wasn't. zero alt rock and teenagers. And anyway, you gotta hear Sweet Jane for the first time from somebody sometime. And as alternative rock radio rises from the primordial swamp in the early 90s, the cowboy junkies get a ton of airplay, preferably in the dead of night, the witching hour,

the headphones pressed your ears hour, the maggot brain hour. It's mood board time, my friends. We've reached the point in our program where I play you a bunch of songs from the mid-90s to early 2000s that do not share in a particular stupid genre name taxonomical DNA with Massey stars fade into you but I associate them with fade into you anyway because I heard them on the radio at some point in my wayward adolescence and I got the same super mellow super heavy feeling let's get the trolleest one out of the way immediately shall we yeah December by collective

soul. I spent the night at a friend's house once. We were up until all hours of the night, probably playing Battle Toads or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or some other way too hard Nintendo game. And I had to work in the morning, right, bagging groceries. It's the dead of winter. So I stagger out of my buddy's house and into my freezing cold piece of shit car like 6.30 in the morning on three hours sleep or whatever. And I'm guessing we never even got past the Battletoads snake level, so I feel no sense of accomplishment. I crank up my car heater and nothing happens and I yawn 50 times in 30 seconds and I turn on the car radio and that's what I hear.

December by Collective Soul and it speaks to me. And what this song says to me is this whole situation sucks, but here's a lovely song so you'll remember it for the rest of your life. And I go collective soul though, really? And the song goes yes. really and I appreciate the conversation truly and I still shiver a little to this day whenever I hear December and then I yawn an appreciative yawn not a derisive yawn okay Ebo the letter by REM which can make 1.30 in the afternoon feel like 3.30 in the morning

real quick yeah I start moping about something instantly when I hear this while we're here late in college. I was in a kinko's at like 4.30 in the morning, scrambling to finish some bullshit project in REM's day sleeper came on. And now, to this day, whenever I hear day sleeper, I still smell printer ink. Maybe a little on the nose location-wise, day sleeper at kinkos at 4.30 in the morning. I told the music supervisor of the movie of my life to maybe tone it down a little. after that. Cat power? Oh yes, absolutely cat power.

Okay, I heard this on the radio because I played it on college radio. That counts. When she comes off the top rope with I'm found there, that's the shit. That's my shit. Metal heart by Cat Power. Finish the line, Cat Power. This song rules. And I've never heard this song. while the sun was up, not even once. It's the way Cat Power harmonizes with herself. That's why this shit is my shit. That self-harmonization makes me miss low. Makes me miss Alan and Mimi again, though. Where can I get some Alan and Mimi-style, transcendent, somnolent, devastated,

gorgeous marital harmony action? Oh, wait, I know where. Yola Tango. tears are in your eyes. Georgia Hubley, drums and vocals, and her husband, Ira Kaplan, guitar and vocals. Perfect. There we go. That's where you go to get some low type peak marital harmony action.

I read in a magazine somewhere that Lucinda Williams, the extremely famous and deified singer-songwriter Lucinda Williams, she first heard Yola Tango's tears are in your eyes while she was driving and she had to pull over to the side of the road to cry. writing a song that makes anybody pull off to the side of the road to cry is a huge compliment, of course. Making Lucinda Williams pull off to the side of the road to cry is as huge as compliments get. Okay, there's your mood board. You know what all of those songs have in common? Aside from my beloved super mellow, super heavy feeling, I didn't hear any of them 10,000 times a piece on alternative rock radio, other than collective soul, of course. course, too mellow, too heavy, most of them, for what I perceived, at least in high school and college as the big time. But this song is different. Let's try to figure out what makes this

song different. Her voice. Hope Sandoval's voice. Start there. Absolutely. Still socks sliding on every note, morosely, gloriously, in super slow motion. I want to hold the hand inside you. The slightly macabre mash note, ultra-romanticism of that image. I had a college radio morning show with my good buddy Jeff for several years. The show is called The Creeping Edge of Condescension. I don't feel like explaining that name to you right now to the extent I could ever explain that name. We were polluting the airwaves from 7 to 10 a.m. two or three days a week to just deafening campus-wide indifference.

but sometimes they'd play our radio station in the student athletic center in the workout room. So people would be lifting weights and listening to us play space ghost skits involuntarily. The weightlifters were listening involuntarily. We were absolutely playing Space Ghost on purpose. Whoa! Hey! Go judgment! I'm so sorry, but so one time I'm flapped out on the couch.

I'm recuperating from my usual exhausting lack of effort. And Jeff's alone in the DJ booth. And Jeff puts on fade into you. And Jeff gets on the mic while the song's going. And she sings the line. And right after she sings it, Jeff goes, Please do. And one of Jeff's buddies who happened to be lifting weights

in the Athletic Center at that precise moment. He later told Jeff that all the weightlifters laughed when Jeff did that. Without question, the single most successful moment of community outreach in the three-year history of our stupid radio show. I want to hold the hand inside you as a great line, is my point.

And this is an even better one. I want to take the breath last tree. I want to take the breath. That's true. That's a fantastic line. That's the best line in the whole song. What strikes me now about fade into you is how tranquil, how steady, how unflappable it is. Across four minutes and 55 seconds that feels like six hours, but could also easily go on another 24 hours.

This song does not get one iota louder or faster or more intense. It does not escalate. It does not crescendo. It does not jump into the wedding cake. It certainly does not change key or even change facial expression. It does not call any more attention to itself in the last 60 seconds than it does in the first 60 seconds. It does not have to escalate in any fashion because you are paying the maximum amount of attention the whole time. And to my mind, an underrated element of the magic trick here.

What secretly anchors your attention this whole time is the snare drum and the tambourine. Never changes. Never draws any attention to itself. Never fails. All right, Rob, that's enough. Play the chorus. I dig that the chorus to fade into you takes 10 seconds per line. I dig the slowness, the patience, the unbotheredness immensely.

I dig that this was a huge alternative rock radio hit. that slowed everything down to a sumptuous crawl. Compared to every other song on any other radio format in 1993, Fade Into You sounds like it's moving in reverse. When this song ends, you are somehow physically younger. The other thing about this song, and I've heard this mention casually from time to time, how do I approach this?

The grocery store where I worked, where I bag groceries. One day I show up and we're selling a smooth jazz CD. We got a little boom box playing smooth jazz sitting on top of a couple crates of some smooth jazz compilation that we're selling for $12.99 a pop or whatever.

We got to move all this smooth jazz. And so we just stick this blaring boombox in the cereal aisle or whatever. And I'm dumping giant cartons of milk onto fragile cartons of eggs or whatever. But when it's slow up front, I wander on back to the cereal aisle and I just stand there next to the boom box bumping smooth jazz. And I hold one of the CDs and these ladies, these suburban mom types, they pass me by with their full shopping carts.

And when one of them catches my eye, I say, good afternoon, ma'am. Can I interest you in some makeout music? And they just look at me funny and walk away. Then finally my manager wanders by and he's like, what the hell are you doing? And I'm like, I don't know. And he shoes me away. 525 an hour you get what you pay for

fade into you as make out music energy is my sense of things I don't wish to elaborate on that factually or anecdotally other than what I just said about the smooth jazz but I figured it bears mentioning okay the piano

two David Robax on piano as well as guitar the piano is an underrated element of this song every individual element of this song is underrated element of this song is underrated, including Hope Sandoval's voice, even as highly rated as her voice is, it's still underrated. I get this weird feeling where I'm inclined to respect Mazzie Starr's privacy. Is that weird? David Roeback and Hope Sandoval did not appear to give a shit about being famous to the extent that fade into you made them famous, which it kind of did. Their approach to

the press, whether it's a TV spot or a magazine interview or whatever, They're not awkward or combative. They're just sublimely disinterested. They are radiating fade into you energy, even when fade into you isn't playing. They ain't got much to say for themselves. It's a little awkward, but it's serene awkward,

not discomforting awkward. They're glad you like the song so much. They didn't necessarily think this was the one song everyone would like so much, but, you know, cool. So tonight that I might see as a full album, is a super 1993 type situation where everyone loved fade into you so they ran out and bought the whole album for 20 bucks and you don't get another fade into you off this record but you do get

nine more chill droning purring unbothered full attention span jams most of them pretty slow even if you don't want to call this music slow core most of it pretty dreamy even if you don't want to call this music dream pop and all of it expertly designed for 1.30 a.m. with the lights off and the volume cranked and your headphones pressed as forcefully into your skull as possible. My personal favorite, not fade into you song, is the last song and the title track. So Tonight that I might see for the transcendent state of heightened consciousness drone action of it all. It goes on like wind and refuse to lie.

Come so close that I might see, see the light, you're down to me. It goes on like that for 48 hours. It rules. But people also really, really love this song called Into Dust, which is super minimal, even by this band's super minimal standards. All this song really needs are her voice

and a little acoustic guitar and your undivided attention. And you can hear in this song how intensely you personally you personally are concentrating on this song while it's playing. That is not a stoned observation. That is simple, audible, verifiable fact. I am respecting their privacy. Manzi Star put out one more album in the 90s, Among My Swan in 1997, which is better than you remember,

even if you remember it as being really good. And then that was it, Mazzie StarWise for 17 years or so. Their next and last album, Seasons of Your Day, came out in 2013. And talking to Rolling Stone about it, David Roebuck says, we never stopped writing or recording. We just stopped performing and releasing things, end quote. And I love that, truly. I can almost hear all the music Mazy Star made that they never performed or released, and I never actually heard because they never wanted me to hear it.

And that's how I hear Mazzie Star and also how I see them as two strangers turning into dust. That David Roebuck line about how they never stopped writing or recording, that also appeared in his New York Times obituary. David Roebuck died of cancer on February 26, 2020. He was 61. I think of him fondly whenever I hear the slide guitar solo riff in fade into you. That part of the song is super underrated also, even if it's your favorite part of the song, even if you already totally love it. Here comes that cold sunrise.

And your impulse, naturally, as the rapt listener, when that slide guitar solo hits, is to lean in, to reach out, to try and pull this song and pull this band closer to. you. But what made them truly great is that Mazzie Star's impulse, no matter what the song says, was always to stay outside your reach and fade away. We are delighted to welcome back Susie Exposito, who is a culture columnist at the Los Angeles Times as part of a new Latino vertical called Delos. You may have also read her work in Rolling Stone, Vogue, and Rookie. Susie, thanks so much for being here. Thanks so much for having me back, Rob.

Of course, of course. You wrote a fantastic piece for Vogue a while back about being a goth teenager in early 2000s, Miami, and like your wallet chain heating up, you know, to dangerous temperatures and getting into your parents' old alt-rock tapes. And I was wondering if Mazzie Star factored into that at all. I can imagine you listening to Fade into you wearing all black, you know, in a hundred-degree heat. That was absolutely my. high school experience. But I have a very fun tidbit for you.

I did not get into Mazzie Star through my parents. I first heard Mazzie Star in the Angus movie from 1995. I don't know if you remember. That soundtrack. That soundtrack is elite. It's like a pop punk holy grail. And Fade Into You did not make it into the same. soundtrack, but it made it into the scene in Angus where, like, you know, he's crowned, like,

king of the dance or something. And, like, he and this girl, they have to do a slow dance to fade into you. And- Oh, that's beautiful. I remember looking for that song. I mean, I was, I was, like, six years old when the movie came out. I saw it, like, a few years later. And I remember just, like, looking for it going on Yahoo at the time, because it was still the 90s. Sure, sure. Love Yahoo. Absolutely.

But I remember looking up the lyrics because I was obsessed and I just didn't know where I could find the song and turns out it was Mazzy Star. Oh my God. Angus is legitimately one of my favorite soundtrack from the 90s, but I had forgotten that Mazzy Star were involved at all. That's another reason. That's one of the secretly greatest movies of the 90s right there. Incredible taste.

Yep. So that was the, it makes sense that that was the first song you heard from them. Were you into stuff like that at the time, like sort of quieter, you know, folk country type stuff? However you would describe or would have described Massey Star at the time, like, did you like that kind of thing in general? You know, I did. Because this was also, I mean, you know, Fade Into You officially came out in in 93 or 9. and then, or 94, I think they made the music video. But I grew up on Lilith Fair.

Sure. My mom was, that was so her era. She and Hope Sandoval, they're the same age. So my mom was all about Cheryl Crow, Alanis Moriss, Tori Amos, Sarah McLaughlin, Fiona Apple. That was my mom's shit. And so it became my shit.

I just like kept albums like that on repeat. I mean, especially if Fiona Apple, I was just like constant. I mean, you know, I was such a fan of that era. And so Mazzie Star made a lot of sense. I mean, I love how psychedelic they get. I always, you know, I also, my mom also listen to the Indigo girls. She's heterosexual. But maybe that was like one of, and I'm queer, but maybe that was one of my like entry points.

I know, Ani DeFranco, she would play that. Yeah, yeah. So I saw, I don't know, I felt like something resonated with me when it came to like these sensitive and yet righteous women of the 90s. Yeah. It's cool that you ran toward that and not away from it in like a rebellious teenage sense, right? Like it's cool that you and your mom could agree on that at least.

My mom was cool, you know? I mean, she is cool. She's like a Gen X girl. And I think it just really resonated with me too. Like just being a girl. And I think from early on, you know, I was kind of a tomboy. And I loved grunge too. I loved a lot of angry music too.

But I just, you know, I would play soccer when my teachers would be like, girls don't play soccer. And, you know, I would get all up in the dirt. Yeah. A couple years back, you put Mazzie Star on a playlist you made called Goth Yehaw. And this is a fantastic playlist, first of all. We got Johnny Cash, Depeche Mode, Wicked Game, Lana Del Rey. Like, I get the broad idea, of course, but what does goth Yehaw mean to you specifically?

I think it's like the shadow side of like country folk Americana, you know, that triad. If you dig deep enough, like it's some of the. songs are really dark. You know, there's, there's like the Southern Gothic element, which I was always, I always gravitated towards that, you know, like I split my, my childhood between Miami and Jacksonville. My mom moved to Jacksonville when I was a teen, and my dad stayed in Miami. But when I was in high school, I worked at these horse stables that like the Girl Scouts ran a camp out of. And so there would be all these like quiet moments, you know, at night in the swamp. And me and it was so funny, there was like a there was like a punk goth clique of us,

like, you know, who worked at the stables. And I mean, we listen to a lot of like, we listen to a lot of trash. Like, I mean, I would still, you know, there's some no effect songs that still go hard. Yeah, that's fine. Timeless. But yeah, we would listen to a lot of pop punk, but then sometimes, you know, like, I don't know, I think the environment really inspired me. It was, you know, there was a dark side about being out in the country and especially me and like there were other like brown girls, like black girls who there were, I had friends who lived at a, in a Native American reservation down the road from the stables. And so we kind of like, you know, we made like a click.

But we also couldn't, we couldn't go out after dark to certain places, you know, like once work was over, it's like you shouldn't go to that gas station or, you know, oh, they set fire to this church like a bunch of times, you know, things like that. And this is the 2000s. And so I always appreciated like, you know, folk music, Americana music. I always appreciated the grit. of it and the beauty, but sometimes it's a dark beauty. And, you know, that's what I'm all about. Massey Star came out of the 80s, L.A. Paisley Underground scene. But like, even looking at this playlist you made, it makes so much sense to compare them or to put them with Echo and the Bunnyman with Nancy Sinatra, Fleetwood Mac, like PJ Harvey, and then forward to Lana and Taylor. Like, where does this music come from? Does Massey Star feel rooted at all to 90s, L.A. for you? Or do they feel sort of timeless and rootless? You know, I wish that in hindsight,

I asked Hope Sandoval about her connection because she's, you know, she's a Chicana from East L.A. I live very close to where she grew up in, you know, she went to high school in Alhambra, and she and I, I mean, I have so many similarities with her. I think it's like, you know, she was the L. eldest of like nine kids you know i was the eldest of five kids okay and she kind of you know escaped her present through the music of the past i also went through like a psychedelic period

me and my me my my friends like we went to see bob dillon in high school and it's pretty cool for two thousands yeah totally yeah we were just we were into that um you know i went with my my best friend who's Venezuelan and like and his dad you know they immigrated here but could still appreciate the music of the 60s and in the 70s so and I feel like my parents they grew up with that stuff too so in a way I think for Hope Sandoval it was a kind of escapism for her you know she like dropped out of high school would stay home listen to records um so I find that uh she fit in I mean the Paisley underground, I feel like, was a very nostalgic movement. I think about people who make, who were making pop punk, you know, in 2020. It's the same thing. It's similar, right? Or like

people making industrial music at this time. It strikes me as very similar, a similar kind of nostalgia. And for her, it's just her vocal range is so well suited to that kind of music. She's got that dusky sound that I really love. I feel like with the goth-ye-ha vibe that I was trying to set, it was a lot of similarly like dusky tones, you know, in the music. And, you know, with a little bit of a Western vibe, something very, you know, sinister even. Yeah, yeah.

I just in terms of pure vocal style, like the softness of her voice, like the purr of it. Like I hear a lot of Lana Delray and even Billy Elish like at her quietest and calmest. Like is hope a big influence on modern singers like in an appropriately sort of quiet and understated way? I would hope so. I would hope that if you asked, you know, Billy or Lana that they would know who she is. But yeah, I feel like Lana, when I first heard Lana, I was like, this sounds like Massey Star. Yeah, yeah.

I never thought of that before, but I feel stupid for not thinking of that immediately. Now it makes all the sense in the world now. Yeah. You interviewed Hope, as you said, for Rolling Stone, I think in 2016 for a record she made with her other band. I get the sense that she might be sort of a challenging interview, or at least she strikes me as being super, super, super quiet, like in every sense. like what was it like to be around her even you know i spoke to her on the phone i spoke to her in column o kiosig um who's her bandmate in the warm inventions from my bloody valentine that's right yeah yes and he he was a member of my bloody valentine or still is and the two of them are so funny

i think we were on the phone for like almost two hours and they have like a secret code it was very I mean, we're talking, I mean, I think both of them are introverted, but they were also kind of silly, you know, like they had silly moments where sometimes, you know, like, calm would just like stop mid-sentence and just kind of whistle and then hope would be like cracking up or, or he would like, he would like just grunt as an answer and she was like, yeah. Wow. That's, yeah, that's both cool and very frustrating, I imagine, if you don't know the secret code. Yeah.

But it was also, there was something charming about it, you know, and Hope is, I think she has a bit of a silly side because every once in a while, you know, she was like, you know, I would ask her about writing a song or something. And she'd be like, yeah, you know, we just sit down, have a little wine about it. You know. There you go. We signed off and I was like, I was like, all right, well, I hope to see y'all the next time you come to New York. She was like, yeah, let's kick back, have some wine. It's really into the wine. I get it.

I appreciate that. She's in her wine era. What can I say? So am I, honestly. Another parallel. There you go. You're just, it's, you're in sync. I've always been curious about the Mazzie Star dynamic, like with her and David Roback.

because I see pictures of them or like videos or whatever, and he's just wearing sunglasses and looking like he's a million miles away from wherever he is, right? Like it's, I just, I'm trying to figure out why they work so well together and like what their connection is, but it's based on this total, like stillness.

Like they, as you say, they don't even have to talk. Like, it's just they communicate and grunts. That makes a lot of sense to me. Yeah, David Roebuck,

rest his soul, he passed away. in 2020 of cancer. I love watching videos of them, like, in their early days, because it's so strange. But I think that there are, you know, some artists, I really appreciate the way that they use negative space, you know, as artists would call it, you know,

just all the vacancy, you know, in the air. And I feel like the two of them, they know how to use it. There's like a very subtle way of how they maneuver it. But that's what makes their music so great is that some of it, it's just so vast. Every song feels so vast that you're just, you know, soul traveling through the ether with them. Yeah. But a lot of their songs, too, are so simple. Whether it's Massey Star or like the warm inventions has a lot of these songs that trail off.

Right. I just, I love that when you have, you know, two kind of reserved people making music, they can become these masters of negative space. So that's how I see it. Now, that's a beautiful way to describe it. And that applies to fade into you. Like, I appreciated it on the radio. It just felt so different from everything else.

And then the quiet to it and just the slow crawl of it compared to almost every song in the radio. like that the song itself was like a piece of negative space between like your usual alternative rock like clamor or whatever and that's what I always loved about it. When are you most likely to put on Mazzie Star like from a situational or emotional standpoint? Like this always struck me as like Primo like 2 a.m. like sulking music or at least extreme as you say like floating away into the ether music. Like what are the ideal circumstances for this band? I feel like there are two situations in which I would put on Mazzie Star. The first one is definitely if I'm like feeling bummed out about something, you know,

like going through a breakup or, you know, maybe after having an argument and needing to simmer down, you know. And then the other scenario is like when I'm feeling really inspired, you know, Like, if I'm with someone I'm, like, really excited about and, you know, want to just, like, vibe with them. Or, like, okay, okay, a third scenario is when I'm feeling really creative. Yeah, I think, like, if I feel like staying up writing, you know, I also draw. I, like, I illustrate things sometimes. And so when I'm making art, I find that it lends itself to that kind of energy. I can totally see that because I can't write to music that's too dense, like usually

lyrically or even in any sense, like too fast, too much noise, like too much chaos coming at me, however it's coming at me. So Massey Star actually makes like absolutely the most sense in like a creative space. That totally makes sense. That's great. Great writing music. Yeah, yeah. I fade into you as obviously by far their biggest songs,

but they've made great records and like immersive song to song, like fantastic, like atmospheric records. Like I've had among my swan on repeat here all morning. Like what albums, what songs do you find yourself turning to the most now? You know, I love every album they've released, but I always go back to the first one. it's a little

it's called she hangs brightly and it's a little rough around the edges I think Hala is my favorite Mazzie Star song it's a great song I always think it's not them it always sounds so classic to me

that like I always look at for the liner notes or whatever to see if like it's it's like a classic country song or something like it's unbelievable as the first song on your first record is that song Yes, like what a way to kick it off, right? Like I just, I love the slide guitar.

I just love the idea, too, of like Hope Sandoval at that time. You know, she's really young and like kind of her voice sounding like a thousand years old. Right, right. No, she does not sound however young she was in that exact moment, she sounds much older than however old she was. I Fade into you was such a massive hit for them, but it didn't really seem to affect them at all, right? Like it's, they weren't bothered by fame or success,

but like they didn't seem to care. Like it didn't affect the music that they made or anything they did. Like talking to her for that piece, like, do you get the sense that she thought about Fade into you or like that era at all as like a weird blip or like a nuisance or anything? Or does she just not think about that at all?

If she does, she didn't, talk about it very much. Yeah. I know that when I went to see her live, she, um, you know,

told the audience basically like, you know, don't take pictures with me. Um, and people, and like, what really frustrated me was seeing, you know,

I was behind these two guys, you know, they, they looked like middle age guys. They were in front of me. And, um, they like,

it was like she had someone, I guess, or, or security removed someone who was taking pictures of her. And she stopped the show, you know, so that they would be removed. And there were signs everywhere that were like, please, like, no photography. And these guys in front of me, that was like the first thing they did. They pulled up their phones to take photos of her.

And it really bothered me, you know, just the lack of concern for her boundaries, you know, and for consent. And so I could only imagine what, you know, her career's been like, you know, especially because I think Mazzie Starr, they released their first album. And before that, she was in a, she was in a band with David Roebuck called Opel. She'd been playing music for a few years, but she was like in her early 20s and just knowing about sexism in the music industry and how it really comes. at at you from like all sides um especially when you're like a young woman it is almost like impenetrable you know getting past that um it's it's everywhere so i could understand why she um you know established a rule like that at her show at that time even even back then

I think I saw her. I must have been like 26 when I saw her 26 or 27. And so I could relate to that. I think there's a line in the piece like somebody yells out, I love you and like other people are talking. And she's like, if you love me, like make those people stop talking.

Like she wanted silence or like reverence at least. And I can like her music works best in total silence with a certain amount of respect, you know, and understanding, you know, especially lives. Like, it's got to be doubly frustrating. It's never great to be the guy, you know, to be behind the guy who's taking pictures or chattering or whatever. But in that situation, it's got to be like extra maddening, you know, for her not to get

what she wants. Yeah, it's like a desecration of the sacred space that she's trying to hold, you know, with all these people. And just going back to what we were saying, like, that is the, that's the key. to like the artistry of a band like Massey Star is they work with the silence. You know, they work with the emptiness or the vastness of space. So I could totally understand that. I think it's possible my favorite song that she's ever sung was sometimes always, like the duet she did with the Jesus and Mary Chain back when she was dating Jim Reed for a while. Like the Jesus and

Mary Chain is such a super doodly enterprise. Like was it was a, was it, was it, was a. it cool to hear her like yeah sort of sparring with jim a little bit on his own band song like i think they get together again at the end of this song but like she fights him a little bit and i felt like that was cool just to hear that play out she has fight in her that's that's the thing that i respect you know at the end of the day it's so funny because i um i tried to talk to her about all the i don't know all the scenarios and like her in her songs because she sings them from like different viewpoints. But sometimes, you know, she sings from the viewpoint of a man. And, you know, she had a song like about, about a woman on her album with the Warm Inventions. And I'm trying to remember which one it was.

But anyway, I was like, who are the people that you sing about? And she's like, they're all real. And I was like, what about this woman that you sing about? And she's like, oh, she's real. And I'm like, Who is she, though? Yeah, yeah. Like she has to be, I don't know, she's very cryptic, but I do love the way that, you know, she does harbor this certain, there's a very subtle fire, but it exists nonetheless, you know,

and it comes out in different songs. Just to wrap up, you wrote another great piece earlier this year for the times in praise of the moody, deadpan Latina. I think that was after Aubrey Plaza and Jenna Ortega went viral for like an award show a bit. Like, does Hope fit into that larger universe for you? Did you sort of recognize that in her from the beginning? Oh, 100%.

I feel like Hope Sandoval was like the prototype for Aubrey Plaza and Jenna Ortega. You know, she mastered it. I mean, you just watch her performances. And she's so like both like, you know, blasé but also so far away. You know, there's something so profound about how little she cares, you know, about being super present with the audience and like, you know, dynamic or, I don't know, busy, I guess. She's not a busy performer. No, she is not.

And I love that because I, you know, I could relate to that, especially growing up. And enjoying all of this sullen music. Like, just let me be, please. You know, like working behind the counter at my dad's cafe, like, and being offended that, you know, I was, I was a barista. Sure. So when I was in high school, I had a few jobs in high school. Yeah. Just like, you know, I'm just thinking to myself, like, I'm so annoyed that I have to actually, like, talk to people.

Interact. Yeah, it's a real chore. How dare you disturb me? Meanwhile, it's like, I'm literally at my job at like a Cuban cafe. And so I feel like, you know, Hope Sandoval, that's, she has very similar energy about her. Please don't bother her. Right. You know, just respect her powers, you know, her powers, you know, to wield the, the ether, I guess. She just wants a glass of wine and to be left alone.

That's the impression that I get. personally. Yeah. So relatable. We have to stand. Absolutely. Susie, this has been wonderful. Thank you so much for your time.

I really appreciate it. Thanks again for inviting me, Rob. Of course. Thanks very much to our guest this week, Susie Exposito. Thanks, as always, to our producers, Jonathan Kerma and Justin Sales. Thanks to Chloe Clark for additional production help. And thanks very much to you for listening. And now I really must insist that you go listen to Fade Into You by Mazzie Star.

We'll see you next week.