My first super-worn-out tapes were Michael Jackson's 'Bad' and the soundtrack to 'Dirty Dancing.' The soundtrack to 'Dirty Dancing' is actually really phenomenal.
— Autre Ne Veut
I don't think I'm an intentional liar, but I'm a little bit of an exaggerator sometimes. If I'm exaggerating, and the journalist exaggerates on top of that, then we end up in funny territory.
I always thought I was depressive, and I only recently realized that I have more of an anxiety disorder than chronic depression.
Afterlife, in my mind, is pretty much nothing. This is it. This is what we get, for me.
In high school, I decided I wanted to learn guitar, so I picked it up and starting teaching myself some basic chords and started playing with friends. Guitar inherently lends itself to be guitar music, especially when you're not good at guitar.
There were no good bands in my town. You know, there's like this magic town where every kid started a band in high school, and half of them were good and have careers based on relationships built at that time? That wasn't what my life was like at all.
There's a constant anxiety that comes from having an innate sense of self, yet existing within a homogenised, aspirational culture.
I like pop music. Earnestly. Most of the greatest technicians, mix engineers, and players are working in pop music.
I spent a long part of my childhood repressing my more animalistic desire systems, and in a way, it permits me to do some of the stuff that I would want to be doing in a way that's more comfortable and doesn't break my internal rules. It expands the realm of possibility.
I'm trying to use people like Meredith Monk and Philip Glass and Terry Riley as the backing tracks for new pop songs. It's really hard trying to use the format and write a pop song on top of avant-garde music, so we'll see. It could be cool, or it could totally flop.
I feel like since I was 27, I was calling myself 30. And then, when it happened, it was like, 'I'm finally here now. This is it.
I started singing the second I could utter sound.
When I released my first record, I was really in the middle of having made the decision to follow the clinical psychology path, which is competitive, rigorous, and fairly conservative.
I definitely have a little Woody Allen inside of me. That is true.
Music, even if I ended up doing something different or do end up doing something different in the long run, it's just something that is life blood. If I'm not participating in some way, I feel like I'm wasting my time.
My mom is the type of mom who wonders why I haven't used my psychology degree to become a successful clinical psychologist.
I wanted to make a record that worked against the hypnagogic paradigm, for sure.
Katy Perry's politics I could probably do without, though I have friends who have interacted with her that say she's very nice.
I've never been to a psychiatrist so have never gotten to the point where I could be formally diagnosed with any disorder. But I definitely have anxiety.
I've never written lyrics. I get up in front of a microphone, and I just sing what comes to the top of my head.
I'd rather proliferate funny little rumors than not.
I have a master's in psychology, and depression and anxiety are considered to be cyclical.
When I was twelve or thirteen, if you liked something that was outside of your friend group genre, you had to rationalize and explain it in some way. It's totally irrelevant, I think, now. I don't think anybody cares. Not young people, at least. Maybe journalists.
In the '90s, it was cool to just like R&B. But I liked Nirvana and stuff, too.
I did a lot of choral music in high school, and that was kind of my primary, stable outlet for music because I didn't feel comfortable being a soloist. It was a cool, safe space for me musically.
There's a real existential anxiety at having to exist not just in a generalised social framework, but a capitalist social framework.
There's a certain type of indie fan who would balk at the prospect of there being value in pop music, but I think that's foolish. They're not really listening.
I've always loved singing and the catharsis of it.
I'm not good at interacting with people and am terrified to get onstage, so I just go up there, freak out and, most of the time, pack up and go home immediately after.
I like Cronenberg's early work; his '80s films had all these weird, amorphous flesh objects in them.
