The Watch - This Is Donald Glover’s Moment | The Watch (Ep. 255)

Episode Date: May 7, 2018

The Ringer’s Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald discuss Donald Glover’s relevance and unique stardom as well as his new music as Childish Gambino, his 'SNL' appearance, and *this standout season* of 'Atlanta' (3:00). They also discuss the latest episode of 'Barry' (24:00), and later, Chris sits down with Elias Rønnenfelt, frontman of the Danish rock band Iceage (34:30). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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No questions asked. To see what I'm talking about, go to macwolden.com and get 20% off using promo code watch. Hey guys. Thank you for listening to The Watch. This is Chris. Andy was calling in today, and we talked about. the United States of Donald Glover. What a time to be alive.

This guy is really doing it all, pretty much in every possible way that you could do. It is as a pop culture figure in 2018. And Andy and I talked about his performance on Saturday Night Live over the weekend, his new song, This is America, Atlanta Season 2, his upcoming performance in solo,

which he has been on the press tour for. So a lot of Donald Glover. And then we talked about last night's episode of Barry, which I thought was maybe the best episode of the season, so of the show. And we had a really interesting discussion about Barry and a little bit of Killing Eve. We're going to talk more about Killing Eve on Thursday in depth, and we'll probably get into some Westworld on Thursday as well.

The second half of the pod, I actually did an interview with Elias from the band Ice Age. They've put out a record called Beyondless on Matador. It is my favorite album of the year, I think. It is a glorious, glorious record. They keep getting better and better. I'll talk a little bit about that later in the podcast, but just stick around for that interview if you're a fan of Ice Age or you're curious. before we get started, a couple of things

that you should check out on the ringer.com and the ringer podcast network and the ringer videos. You should be checking out David Shoemaker every week with a variety of guests. It's Westworld, the recapables. It keeps you up to day on everything that's happening with the Delos crew,

as well as some theories about what might be happening in future episodes. It's really good. It's basically like, I didn't understand West World last night or I think I understand Westworld last night. Please explain it to me. Shoemaker's doing incredible work on that.

We also have, updated our 50 superheroes movies list. We did this a while back, but have updated it to include Avengers, Infinity War, and Black Panther. So that is definitely worth checking out. And there's a bunch of good stuff on The Ringer this week for NBA playoffs. Rob Harvilla just wrote about Childish Gambino from the weekend. So plenty of stuff to read on The Ringer, plenty of stuff to listen to. Keep checking out that Dave Chang show, which has got a pretty awesome one coming,

which I can't reveal who's on it, but you'll want to subscribe to the Dave Chang show. let's just get into this episode of The Watch now. I ain't sports to have to clear the room. Stand up and walk now. Hello, and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at The Ringer.com, and joining me on the other line

in a gender-swapped version of Macbeth. It's Andy Greenwald. Yes, that's where I had my money. I had my money on the Gender Swap McBeth joke. Oh, Andy, that's a reference to Barry, a little show on the Home Box Office Network that we'll be talking about in a little bit. Andy is on the phone today

within the confines of the greater Los Angeles area, not that I'm trying to give any tips to kidnappers, but we are going to do this old school like we used to when we were bi-coastal, and Andy's calling in today. What's up, man? How you doing? I'd like to apologize to all the fidelity heads out there. I feel like there are people who really started listening to our podcast

when our voices became like really, like, mood and down. today, yeah. That's what I'm worried about. And so I apologize to everyone. I don't like to bring on, you know, I was out on Thursday, and so I don't like to come all the way back all at once. It's like the goldfish and the plastic bag theory of podcasting with you in the flesh. Yeah, so it was too much.

Donald Glover is just making a lot of things happen right now, so we're going to talk about him for a little while today. We'll talk about Atlanta. We're going to talk about his S&L appearance, and we're going to talk about solo and his new music that he just put out over the weekend. And then we're also going to spend a little time talking about Barry. the other half of this podcast will be my conversation with Ice Age

this incredible Danish band they have a new record out on Matador called BeyondLus which is my favorite album of the year I don't know if it's your bag per se Can I say I just want to commend you Because you first of all you're my friend You surprised me and impressed me daily But I did not know

You could do an entire interview in Danish Yeah I just did not know that was in your wheelhouse Oh fluent in Danish didn't I tell you that? Yeah It's like it's such a use I knew you had dined at Noma many times and that you were really into like C-Bucthorn as an ingredient, but I didn't know you could speak it. So, Bravo to you. Yeah, it's my, it's my interview with Elias from Ice Age will be later in this pod. And I definitely recommend everybody to check out Beyondless. But we obviously have talked before, Andy, about a lot about Atlanta, some about Donald Glover. And the last time we really spoke about him in depth. We've mentioned Atlanta a couple of times. But the last time we spoke. really in depth about him as a celebrity, as a personality, as an actor,

and as someone who is intriguing us, is when the New Yorker profile of him ran sort of at the beginning of the season of the second season of Atlanta. And it was, I think I would say, a hotly debated profile by Tad Friend. And it positioned Glover,

I think I'll use broadly the term enigmatic. He has an enigmatic figure who seemed to have a very complicated relationship with his own celebrity, with television, with the television network that was putting out his television show, and expectations of him as an artist.

And it kind of seemed like he was going through this wandering desert profit phase. There's one scene in the New Yorker article where he's like dangling his sneaker over a fire pit at some level of like house in the hills or something. And there's a lot of like debate about delivering a product that is consumable by a mass audience versus the thing that he wants to make.

It's a fascinating, fascinating piece, whether or not everybody involved in the piece or quoted in the piece is necessarily happy with how they were presented. And now we get to this point, beginning of May, just a few short weeks before the release of Solo, the Han Solo anthology movie, that Glover is co-storing in and playing Lando Calvresian.

By the way, can I just jump in and say if the sequel to Solo isn't called Duo been doing? I don't know. What are we doing? Well, here's the thing. That kind of idea sounds like the kind of thing that Donald Glover might pitch

because about two or two weeks ago, they started releasing these little featureettes, these little making of featureettes for Solo to start presenting them. And, you know, initially, I was kind of like, I wonder if Glover's, you know, going to show up to do the sales pitch on this movie because there was also rumors that this movie was bad or that this movie was, you know, had a lot of trouble.

And I clicked on the YouTube video of one of these making of, the first person I see is fucking Donald Glover being like, welcome to the Millennium Falcon. I want to show you guys around. And I was like, oh my God, this is not the dude in the New Yorker profile. And then you see him on SNL this week. And he is, here's my theory, basically. He does an incredible job in SNL this week,

selling the show, doing like the five-tool player. He's out there singing. He's out there rapping. He's out there acting his ass off. And I feel like somewhere in between when the second season of Atlanta debuted and the New Yorker profile came out and now, he must have had some revelation

about how the next five to 20 years of his life were going to go, depending on how things broke. And I almost imagine, like, I don't know. Like, can you imagine a Bob Iger phone call somewhere in there? That was just like, hey, man. Like, like, you could be a huge, huge, huge, huge, huge star for the next 20 years. Or you can not be.

And this is how the game has to go if you want to be. Now, difficult Glover is only a couple of years old. Like, before that, like, he was just definitely a dude who wrote for 30 Rock and was in community and stuff. But this has been a fascinating short-term personality transplant. plant because I feel like at a moment when we kind of lack a lot of stars like him in some ways, he is like stepped into that void and he is stepped up and his magnetism is just absolutely palpable. Am I off on my read of this whole situation? I think that you are not off.

I think that it might be a slightly more cynical read on it, but not unjustified. I mean, I think the headline here is that he is the star we've been looking for. and the subhead is it hasn't been the easiest path to get here. And he hasn't always accepted it or any of his push back against it. The last time we talked about it in relation. We also talked about terms with Donald Glover's music as childish Gambino. And I think the takeaway from a lot of that was this is a guy who has, in a way that is very come of age, very much in public.

He has been famous for a while. He has been trying to be a five tool player for a while. He has been learning and struggling and adapting and growing in public. for a while. And that can go super badly. And the highway of celebrities littered people could not make there. Somewhere Kanye West is flying in an electric plane over our heads designing housing communities. This guy has been able to do it. And I think part of the charm and the allure has been the way he has put it together piecemeal. You know, I think that in a previous generation, maybe even one with the baggage that we carry with us, to have put out records as Oldish Gambino records would

maybe be disqualifying on some level to be considered this. I think you and I still come from a place where we are into people struggling in the dark and then when the spotlight clicks on, they're ready for it. This guy has been moving towards something for quite some time. What we're seeing now, I think, is someone who is able to stimp itself. I mean, there's still a prickly Donald. The Deadpool show, he and his brother were doing for FXX, crashed and burn. We don't know why, but we know we did see the very funny fake script that he was. He and he he leaked. That wasn't the best corporate fit. He could have said, welcomes the Millennium Falcon and made, you know, it could consider the Marvel universe, too. That didn't work out. So there is still

what's truly amazing about it is, to me, it's not just watching the journey. He's seeing him, I think, come to terms not just with his enormous talent, but specifically what his talent is for. Because he's not the best actor in the world. He is not the best rapper in the world. I don't think he's saying he is, but what he is is a supernova of synthesis. Yes. His crew, which I think is called royalty, and that's him and his brother, and, you know, the phenomenal director, Hero Marai, and other writers on the show, Stephanie Robinson, the people that he likes to work with, he has found the people who make him comfortable,

who remember that Atlanta above and beyond the best show on television, it's just the best. Yeah, it's better than anything else. We're going to talk about that, but it's in a completely other category. This is a show that is Donald Glover's A Tour Star show, and there are whole episodes in which he doesn't appear. And that's a regular occurrence. I don't have the numbers of the 19 episodes that exist,

but there are at least three, four, five in which he's not in it as an actor. Yeah. Including the last week's episode. Or episodes in which he is, if you didn't know who he was, you would think he was the fourth

name on the list. Fourth name on the show. Exactly. He's just reacting in the background. So for someone who is, is the star we've been promised. He is remarkably democratic in his approach. And I think that's also pretty inspiring. So to see him, I mean, let's talk about it. He elevated everything he was a part of on the show. He gave the show that it feel relevant. It made it feel sparking. Made it feel those video is incredible. It's hilarious. A Kanye place. The Kanye place sketch is not only is it

so funny, but it's the kind of thing where you could imagine that being pitched on a week when he wasn't hosting. He's not, he's nominally the star of a sketch, but he's really just sort of driving the joke forward. His reaction is the thing of him being a rapper in the world who was retweeted by Kanye this weekend, making that joke. I mean, it gives a spark to everything around it. And I think that that's a very unique kind of stardom and talent to be able to, um, not just be lit up yourself, but to ignite everyone else around. Yeah. And I think that you're, you're right to say, and I'm not even, I'm not backtracking as much as like that. that was like my opening sort of bit about him is pretty hypothetical.

Like I definitely think there's been a change in his public persona in the last three or four weeks versus his what it was at the beginning of Atlanta Robin season. But I think to not put too far a point on it, to borrow the name of his song, this is America. This is America and our successes are often defined by our failures. And our, we are always looking for that narrative. arc in our public figures. How are you overcoming something to be this?

And maybe that's like, I'm just so trained to do that that I looked at. Well, he was sort of in a weirder place with his relationship to celebrity and Hollywood and fame three, four, five, six months ago. And now he's like, I'm ready to go for it. And I think it's unfair. It's unfair to be like he's the person we need now that Kanye has abandoned us for Maga Hats. But it is inevitable.

And he's not, you know, when you watch some. something like the video for This is America, it has that feeling of everything that you ever wanted from a Kanye song maybe. You know, everything you, it has that synthesis that you're talking about where it's like there is this void right now for this. And even though, you know, you have artists who are speaking truth to power all the time, there was something about the timing of everything that's happening with this run of Atlanta, with the S&L appearance. He had been kind of like, this is the last childish Gambino music. I'm going to put out Establish Gambino.

And I kind of thought, well, is this going to be sort of an experimental jag that you go on or whatever? But no, it's like, this is you taking the huge riot going on, step up. I know that that last record had elements of that, but to be so confrontationally, like, clear about what your message is, it was just, and here Mara directed the video, and it's probably the best music video I've seen in years. It's great.

I mean, it's such a cool moment. It sparks, I mean, it's the most exciting video that's probably since Beyond's Formation video a few years ago. I do want to talk about the video. I think the one thing I'll say, the parentheses I'll put around the idea of Star Wars is that Star Wars does people, I mean, he's a little younger than us, but

generationally for people, and he's talked about what those movies meant to him. He got to deal with his dad. And so there's a version of this where just being able to play in that universe, what it means to him, what it means to his family, and what it potentially means to his kids who are going to give you a tour of the spaceship

with a big smile on his face. But all of this, I think, in the context of the video, because the video is not just commenting on. It's also, I think, very much a comment on who he feels he is in the world, because remember, he is essentially, he's shirtless and dancing, but he is giving us a tour of the Millennium Falcon for half of the video. And at the end of the video, when he is running, as if being pursued by police or by something far worse, is a reflection, I think, of how he often feels. Well, I don't want to prescribe him, you know, I don't know how he feels, but I think that his work and he has in other ways have

communicated that to us and what it means to be a black man in the entertainment world or to be succeeding, you know. And so allowing us into that, allowing us a window into that dichotomy of like how this feels to be bearded and hunted. I mean, it was even there in the monologue when he said, you know, I was on a show called Community and I'm in solo. Right. Right. He's walking that line. And sometimes it can be frustrating when you feel like an artist that you're really into is diverging away from the thing that you love about them to the things that they love. And I think even before all this red pill stuff came up,

that was a latent frustration with some Kanye fans where you're just like, man, you're so good at making music and producing music. And God knows this is like one of the central problems for Kanye is that he feels like people are always telling him what he can and can't do or think. But, you know, I have no need for Yeezy clothing and I have no need for easy community.

community planning. You know, like, it's fine that that's like his dream in life, but you often feel like the, you know, diversify your portfolio to borrow a phrase from Wu Tang Financial can sometimes ruin artists because they just get too, they get to spread thin. And there's something about what's happening right now with Glover, where he seems to be smashing on all quadrants at once. Yes. It's such a high level.

It is actually the perfect performance of pop culture figure in 2018. Like if you were going to do it, you couldn't do it any better than what he's doing. But I also agree because what he's doing and what seems to be one of the central tenets of all the art that he makes is showing, I don't even want to say it's a generous way. It's just in a, because that would suggest much more intention behind it. What he's doing is just illustrating the complexity and totality of black existence. And one of the most brilliant things about Atlanta is super mundane. And in that mundanity, you know, we talked about it. And the last time we saw her, she was speaking very eloquently about herself and her knees.

And in this episode, she's basically setting up Instagram thirst traps. You know, she is both. Alfred is both succeed and perform and a guy who's psychologically damaged by the life that he's lived and by losing his mother. We see all of it in every episode. And the thing about the season of Atlanta is it just feels that life imbues every frame of it. And it's so thrilling and engaging and uplifting and surprising. even in moments that are, you know, in an episode that otherwise isn't one of the very best through this season, he just abjave a deep, deep sense of fear and disquiet at the heart's journey and just how he keeps getting robbed, you know,

he keeps getting his life is in danger. And it's hard to remember, it makes me feel some of the, it makes me feel viscerally some of the things like a Tanahasi Cote's essay does when he's just talking about the role of the Black Bobby in the world and in America, his show, is doing this. This is a 30 minute show. They don't even do Atlanta episodes on the average. And art is funny, and yet that feeling is being promoted too. So

it's amazing. It's just amazing what is being given and his team. I keep trying to put together my thoughts on this season because in some ways it's these little vignettes and yet I feel like at the end it's going to have built

towards something that we can really break down in the finale. But it makes me think of Yeah, you know, that's a really interesting comparison to talk about the Coates work. Sometimes it makes me think of, oh, brother, where art thou? And these odyses that people take, there's been a lot of journeys on this trip. You know, in Helen, in north of the border, and Teddy Perkins, people are going out into the world and going on these kind of grotesque adventures. And, you know, usually in the Odyssey story, it's because they're trying to get back home.

I don't know where these guys are trying to get back to. but this is a show that's so routinely incredible that even moments like the D4L moment in North of the Border a couple weeks ago where you're just like, this is just on television. This is just unbelievable that we're out and like they consistently hit those moments

so frequently that you're almost like it's like watching, it's like watching LeBron. We're just like, oh yeah, I expect you to do that. I expect this every week, this level of performance. So in that way, it's just like we should actually, in the same way that with LeBron, we should be, we should take a minute and appreciate the fact that this is happening because it doesn't happen all the time. Yeah, it did seem like everything lined up.

And I think it is an example of a successful navigation to basically do make this run in these few weeks and months of having a show come back, of having that dead cool thing happen, of navigating the press or lack of press, hitting Saturday Night Live, hitting the new music, having the video ready to pop the same night leading up to this big movie and make it look like he's a Shippetani sibling, you know, like basically make it look like he's just, he's just doing figure eights. Because this way of doing things, to inspire the kind of conversation we're having, frankly, not that he's doing it this way, but basically that's how culture works now where everything gets dumped. And then we talk like, boy, he really elevated the zeitgeist connection we've been doing on some level. But he makes it look easy. So it's funny that even thinking that, and I think, as you said,

that appreciative, that there is someone who makes this giant mess that is culture or American life in 2018, make it look at artistry to it. Yeah. I feel like we're all looking for, we're all looking for patterns right now in the static, and he's found a way to figure it out. Maybe not on such a large social scale, but definitely in terms of understanding what you can do within the framework of a more or less 30-minute show is Barry, which is along with Killing Eve and Atlanta,

probably one of the three best shows that's on right now, if you ask me. And last night's episode, Loud Fast and Keep Going, was another one of the season highlights. I think you and I spoke really affectionately of episodes four and five, and we did so with Bill Hader and Henry Winkler

when they were on the watch a couple of weeks ago. But I think with a show like Barry, it's very easy to get carried away by some of the more darkly comic moments and the absurd moments that they have put forward, especially in the elevator picture of the show in the first few episodes,

where it's like, this hit man is in an acting class. And I thought it was going to kind of be like, because that is repeatable, because you can have this fish out of water for a while, that they would stick with that for a while. And as the season's gone on, they have committed more and more to this underworld that Barry comes from

to the world of violence and emotional anguish that Barry was kind of born out of and the ways in which those world that world connects with this world of emotional anguish that is also acting apparently in the valley and they have actually challenged what I thought was a relatively superficial premise they have actually gone there with this character

in a way that feels earned and feels right. And I thought last night's episode was harrowing in a lot of ways. And I think Hater is giving an absolutely remarkable performance. And I know Allison is writing about this. I think she may have already put up, but if not, she's writing about this. I think Hater is giving like an award-worthy performance in this show.

I think the show is really, I think it's actually kind of mean that as a compliment. I think that its swing is so big. and so much bigger than I realized, because when the season started, because it is taking the consequences of everything that it introduces very seriously, much more seriously than some.

The half hour has taken, so, you know, if this were an hour-long show without a lot of the comedic element, most likely, there would be so matri that would be Barry's life for these people that would give you the full spectrum, not just playing with,

but then pushing us back and forth between in the course of the single episode. You know, there's a feeling in art when you realize that's to do it and then how they're going to. A choice that I found myself fighting against in my head only because, as you said, I'd longer. And I think that, and this is something that Allison, which her pieces, I'm referring to it, by doing low, by having Barry do what he did, I guess I'm still prison loads. That's a really interesting point. In moments when it doesn't. Like, that's interesting what you're saying, Andy.

Do you think that the killing of Chris is actually, so you feel like that's a you can't come back from that moment? Well, I just mean, I think the show is going to, I think the show has shown us that what it takes seriously is a question like that. And I think that that's going to be, that's going to be part of this going forward, you know. I think that there is a darker, maybe even darker satirical through line emerging as well,

which is what do you have to do or have done to have access to the emotional life necessary to become an actor? I have always found fascinating, and that ties into something else that goes back. Troubled, do you need to be to create art? You know, is that what you need to have done to be able to fertile ground. It makes the show incredibly worthwhile. In many ways, I feel like the most successful moment of the season was the end of the previous episode, when the car villains and then gunshots, and it's just so, again, it's this weird mundanity of the world that they are existing in.

I just impressed, and I'm very can't this season next week and then move forward. a bigger question I had, and killing Eve too, because by the very well, right now, there is an element of Barry that to me makes me feel like we are living in this post-guilded age of television. And what I mean is between everything and maybe too much of everything. What I mean is, I remember the first time I flew across the country as a working adult and like I had to go to work the next day and someone was like, oh, you should just get like some unisonable and sleep during the flight. You find that thing at the airport.

Yeah. You know, and then you, like, disappear to some, like, nether space for two and a half-fittful hours, and you're miserable. And I'm like, well, sleeping pills don't work. Then you hear about Michael Jackson, who had surgical equipment put in his home and literally anesthetized himself every night for, like, $20,000 a pop just to sleep. And I'm like, he had too much money. Right. Like, he had too much money. And it's just like, you understand the dating world, and then you become a billionaire, and the next thing you know, you're on a sex jet with Ron Burkle, doing things that you would never, ever see even in Westworld.

Andy, that's a weird business flight you were on. Are you sure about that? Well, I took a unison. It's a problem. And then, no, but the reason that the reason I make you these ridiculous analogies is because there's an element of Barry where I'm like, well, everything's been on TV. Why don't we do a comedy, but also a murder show? And we'll just see what happened.

Now, that's not the way they thought about it. But there's an element of extremity with what they're playing with and killing Eve as well to make us feel something emotionally because maybe we've been. been desensitized to it? Do you follow what I'm saying? I think that they both do the same thing. I think that they both are playing on the audience expectations and also our expectations. I think in some extent I understand you were like, this is the age of not more but too much

and that maybe we're like we're cross-pollinating in a way that, you know, Dr. Ian Malcolm would be alarmed by if he heard about. Exactly. Exactly. I think that we're going to, I think we'll talk much more about killing Eve on Thursday's show. I thought that both of these shows last night really, really played on audiences' desire for

no matter how terrible the people they're watching are and what they've done to people, their desire for those people to be relatable. And there's their desire for everything to work out for those people. And I think that there was probably... Killing Eve especially plays with this idea of the roles that Sandra O. and Jody Comer are supposed to be playing. and the roles that they're supposed to be playing.

And that idea of this silence of the lambs heat kind of like two people inextricably drawn to each other because of their mutual obsession with each other. You know? And Barry, by that same token, is like, we want this to be a quirky hitman show. And we want all the people he kills to be bad so that we can still like him. And that show got shattered last night. That idea got shattered.

I think that's a great point. And I think that's something that's with and playing with. the built-in assumption from TV that we, well, actually from all films entertainment, that we want to like the people we're watching. But it's particularly true on TV because we want to like them and invest in them and watch them week to week. So pushing that button and seeing how far we will go with people and what that is a really interesting thing, I guess I'm thrilling.

I find the experimentation thrilling. And in the case of Killing Eve, I find it totally successful. And Barry, I find it mostly successful and complete, I guess I'm using things. that I like to just maybe just... Conformation bias. But I want to dig more into that. We'll talk more about killing Eve on Thursday. We'll take a break to hear from our sponsors.

Andy will be back with me live on Thursday. We'll talk about killing Eve and some other stuff. We'll set out a watch list in case you guys need it. Until then, Andy, I will see you soon. Thank you for putting up with me under these conditions, Branskees. I appreciate it. I'll see you. I'll be right up on that mic on Thursday, I promise.

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slash watch for three months free. Don't put this off, guys. Protect your internet and data with ExpressVPN today. Elias, I got to ask you, because you're in L.A. You guys are playing a very strange residency to me. Like you're playing a series of shows in Los Angeles at this place called Gold Diggers.

Right? Yeah, yeah. Have you played any of them yet? Last night was the first one. So how to... I only know it from its all my drive home from work and I drive past it and it and it says, like I guess it says exotic entertainment on the outside.

Yeah. How did you guys come across this place and decide the play shows there? I mean, I think we provide some exotic entertainment in our own right. I think so. But it's an old strip club. Yeah. Not anymore. Yeah.

But everything's intact from those days. Yeah. Beautiful room. Everything is black and gold and sort of has this kind of like cheap decadence. too, this beautiful room It's kind of like a vestige of like old Like kind of vice-filled LA Yeah, I mean

I actually didn't get a chance to ask too much into the history yesterday But I think it's been around for a long time Yeah It certainly looks at it like they haven't changed the sign Since the 70s or something like that Yeah Do you like playing it like sort of off Non-traditional venues like that when you can?

Yeah, I mean it's it's It's interesting when you get an opportunity to play something that doesn't seem like a run-off-de-mill sort of generic gig. Yeah. And try to create sort of a more curated atmosphere that's... Because a lot of venues, they're so generic, you know? You check your ticket at the door and... There's the bar downstairs. Yeah.

Yeah, and the lights go blue, red, blue, reds, and then, you know, get the fuck out of here or something. It's a bit of a shame that a lot of venues treat, like, the gig is just something of, just another gig. It's part of, like, selling a, like, rather than an evening. Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, it's funny because, like, you guys, like, I remember when I was growing up, so I'm 40, and, like, when I started getting into punk, the coolest thing about it was going to see bands, like, Locust. at some weird, you know, like, at like a, like a Salvation Army store or something in Boston.

Or like going to see bands in like these alternative venues. We want to see them play at house shows. And it's nice that like you guys can still actually get, I know that you guys probably grew up and you were playing like wherever you could play when you were growing up, right? And Denmark, right? Yeah, I mean, like when we started out, then, I mean, nobody wanted to hear. So we had to do our own shows in each venue we managed. to set up a gig and would ban us after that because all our friends came and trashed the

interior so um so yeah that was a bit of a struggle but and and yeah had sort of a bad reputation yeah but but we managed to um to sort of play places that were letters yeah even if they were only letters once and then um eventually this this venue called mayhem showed up and sort of took in our whole community and was sort of a playing ground for us to rehearse and do non-profit shows. Yeah. And just for things to sort of flourish in our community. When you guys were first starting, what's that, like 2010-11? Our first seven-inch came in 2009.

Oh, 2009. And so when you're doing that, and that's right when I feel like there was a kind of turning point with streaming music where people could start, basically, like, you and I could sit here and we could just trade songs back and forth right now with my computer. And so, like, oh, have you heard this? Have you heard that? Have you heard this? If you heard that? But you were still right on that edge where being a music fan took a lot of work. You know, and you had to go like, you would have to just have access to record stores and have places where you could find that music. Was that the case for you growing up? I mean, I'm sort of the last generation I can remember the world before the internet, which is kind of crazy, like, explain that to your grandkids at some point.

I know, they won't even know, yeah. Yeah, I mean, like, we used, you know, illegal downloading too. Yeah. You know, like, it was harder to come across sort of more obscure things through that. But a lot of it was just like you found one thing you liked. You found whatever sort of thing you could read about that, wrote down the name of whatever X were associated. and then just went down and ordered the records, waited two weeks for the import to come in

and just hoping for the best. Yeah. And then you find out like when you get older, you're like, oh, there was like this gap. Like if you were listening to, if you were listening to LA punk, like you've listened to SST records from the 80s, you'd find out like, oh, there were these bands that I missed

because I only had access to like three or four of them. Yeah, I mean, like I'm not that statistic around record collecting, but I mean, I do remember when finding a race, record sort of felt like you owned a relic of some sort. Oh, yeah. And you treat them in such reverence. You know what I mean? You would have it.

You'd have in like your dust jacket, like in the plastic jacket or whatever. I was never that high maintenance. No. As you guys have been playing over the last few years, I'm kind of curious though how that tracks with, how the sound of the band has changed. I find that like, weirdly, like, you're just such an easy band to love because you surprise with every record

while still maintaining a core kind of attitude that the band has always had. Probably an easy band to hate as well. I suppose so, but not for me. Like I feel like it's just like every time you guys put out a record, I have that same feeling that I had like growing up with some of my favorite bands. I'm just like, I'm so excited to hear what these guys do next.

And as you guys have sort of developed and I know that you sort of, after you were, were you like, fair to say, like a little burned out after the touring of the previous record? Yeah, I mean, we had exhausted ourselves physically and mentally for a long time. Not that, like, we sort of put everything on hold and went into a fucking spa resort or something, you know, like the exultion perhaps never stopped. But, I mean, maybe a creative exultion. And like the immediate idea for the next record just wasn't there straight.

away and we didn't want to force anything or sort of to pay respect to to what our idea is about ourselves and we wouldn't like want some like half-assed sort of release to be out there so yeah like we had we had to wait till like you get that sort of feeling deep down in your stomach or something starts brewing and it's like something that wants to get out that you can't stop you know what was that feeling this time around? Do you remember? I don't know. I know. Just ideas that felt like they were leading us into some unknown territory that felt like

pushing into some unknown and felt like a shift. And I think that's really important to us to never create something without feeling like you're moving things into something unknown

or something that's perhaps risking failure. you know. That's what hurrah sounds like. That sounds like a band that's almost like tearing away from something. Like the first track of the album feels like you're almost like ripping away from something or then like casting out into something else.

I really like the way that that song opens up the album. When you... That was one of the first songs that were sort of diving board onto the really? The next material, yeah. And was that the result? It's an incredibly driving, chaotic yet still melodic song.

And was that... Do you remember, was that like a product of you guys just like playing in a room for a while? Or was that something that was like very written out? I remember in the beginning, like I just wanted to write a really dumb rock and roll record that that would take like a week to write or something. Yeah. But then, I mean, you set out to do something and you get overtaken by something else. And there's always something that, like, at least in me, if you have one idea, I know the idea will try and corrupt that first idea. So there was like a sort of a fight to struggle to try and write something really dumb

and then perhaps a natural inclination to write something that's more intricate and complicit. And that's where you guys did more overdubs, more sort of elaborate instrumentation on this record than you feel like in the previous times? Yeah. Yeah. Was the experience different? Did it feel as immediate recording it but beyond this? Yeah.

I mean, like, we always try and create, like, a sense of stress and an intensity in the studio where nobody sort of can rest or allow second thoughts to get in the way. Like, everything just has to sort of spill out and you're always in time pressure and you don't really sleep. And we find, like, to create an atmosphere that's sort of a delirium. Yeah. It's a good place for us to manifest something on the tapes that really has a sense of urgency to it. When you're doing that, does it get tense between you and the band members? Is that like a pleasant experience or is it more of like a almost like volcanic kind of thing? Pleasant, no, but massively exciting.

Yeah, I mean, I love being in a studio. It's my adult idea for a playground if the games were very, very serious. Well, you know what this means next, though, right? You have to get Rick Rubin and you have to rent a house for like a year, like the red hot chili peppers that's just like on the ocean. You have to try the complete opposite. Yeah, I don't know about that. You don't think that would work for you guys?

Yeah, I was wondering, like, if, that record where you completely overdue the studio time and sort of lose it and end up with some sort of vague result it's gonna come. But yeah, that's why we purposely sort of try and have too little time.

Yeah. Do you ever watch those behind the music documentaries and they all move into like either like a mansion or like somebody's some old movie star's house and they build their own studio and that takes three months. And then everybody's living there and stuff. I think I saw something about like a snare for some Bruce Springsteen song. I think maybe Douglas on the edge of town where they spent two weeks in a studio recording that snare.

And I can't imagine something like that. That's its own kind of delirium though, right? Yeah. I mean, I don't think that's how we work. Is that how you respond to music ever? Do you get very like, do you notice little things like snares, on darkness in the edge of town? Or do you think you have

like a much more primal emotional response to it? Yeah, I'm not I'm not that nerdy with that sort of stuff, but I think I have a pretty good sense of just taking it in without overthinking it. Now can you hear a snare that's like

damn. Yeah. I was wondering, you guys are here now. They're recording this in March. The records coming out, obviously, in early May, I think. But what's like being in States? Are you a fan? I can hear, obviously, there's like,

influences of American music and your guys' stuff, but I was curious about what it's like being here right now for you. Are you a fan of Los Angeles? Are you a fan of, like, moving around in this country right now? I mean, parts of Los Angeles is very alluring. Parts of just Los Angeles is massively off-putting. I mean, there's so much within this city. Yeah, I mean, like, of course, our music is.

is massively informed by American music history. But we get that sort of like American label put on us to us. But yeah, it's informed by country blues, soul, all that, you know. But we don't want to like get into that comic book, fucking Route 66 kind of simplified, you know. And like the primal scream record with the Confederate flag on it or whatever. I mean, yeah. Like, so, yeah, I like America. I like pissy beer.

Yeah, you came in the right place that, if that's the case. So, yeah, I was just kind of curious about some of the moments on this record where I was wondering whether or not we were talking about how we grew up finding a record, and you're not that fetishistic about it. But what was some of the stuff that you were listening to before Beyondless? What was this some of the stuff that put you in the mood that you eventually found yourself in when you were running this record and recording it? I really don't know. I mean, like, there's not that much of a chorus. I mean, my listening habits is always extremely eclectic.

Yeah. And it'll be like all across the book board. And that's something we have in common in the Ice Age. Everybody's constantly searching for like some uncharted part of musical history that we haven't found yet, you know. Do you don't find that has a correspondence? Like, well, because like, you know, I work with writers. I'm a writer. but everybody's always joking around about like,

oh, I was writing this kind of thing, so I'm listening to Portishead, or I'm writing this kind of thing, and I was listening to Hot Snakes or something. Yeah, I mean, like, there's a million influences in there, and I always try and have it remain sort of a mystery where it comes from. Like, I try and eliminate that thought process

that knows where I'm drawing a particular thing from. So at least for me, feels like a mystery. You create something out of your whole cultural understanding, you know? Everything I hear, even if it's something I don't like, makes it way in there and sort of

gets broken apart and then it's almost like some sort of black void where pieces of melody and words and images are just sort of flying in a tornado and gets broken apart and reattached in other ways. I don't know which is what.

Do you spend a lot of time on the internet because I've been finding recently for myself that it's harder it's harder to tune certain things out on the internet where it's like because it's such an overload of information but also like the stuff that I like gets jumbled up into the stuff

that I don't like and I wind up like spending all day like kind of sifting through it do you do you or do you feel like it's mostly like I mean I had to succumb to being a Spotify member because our label wanted us to make a playlist because that's what people do nowadays I started like a playlist and there's 150 songs on it. And then when it, after the last song plays out, that fucking algorithm has figured out.

So this is on Spotify now? No, no, it's a private playlist. Okay. It's not shared through the band's things. That's a short band one, but like it had 150 songs on it. Okay. So then when it stopped, it would suggest other music and I would actually find songs through that and it annoyed me greatly. that that, I mean, sometimes something that sounded awful to me would come up and I'd be like,

ha, okay? Yeah. But a lot of the time, like, oh, damn, the algorithm is pretty good. They have you figured out. Yeah. Yeah. I don't like that. I don't like that.

You have to start giving out your Spotify password to other people. Because my wife has mine. So she's like, so like she'll listen to stuff when I'm not around. And then all of a sudden that messes up my algorithm. So it makes it much more unpredictable. Yeah, but who wins in the end? She does probably. All right, Elias, I don't want to keep you any longer, man.

Thank you so much for coming by. All right, man. I love that album. And have a great time at Gold diggers. All right. Cheers.