Jeff Rosenstock on NO DREAM, Neil Young and the 2020 Experience
Jeff Rosenstock on NO DREAM, Neil Young and the 2020 Experience
"I'm probably going to be a person who's performing music and playing music forever. Whether or not it's successful, who fucking knows?"
If you caught the very first installment of Sonic Breadcrumbs — respect to my day-one’s — then you already know that I crowned Jeff Rosenstock’s fourth record No Dream the best album released in the cascading train-wreck that was 2020. If memory serves, I believe I referred to it as a “benevolent atom bomb of sanity.” Perhaps that sound like hyperbole, but I assure you…..it rips.
The Long Island punk rocker has actually enjoyed a pretty impressive artistic spree these last few years. Following the demise of the collective Bomb the Music Industry! around 2012, he struck out for a solo career, issuing a series of increasingly intense and culturally prescient albums like Worry and -Post in which hardcore, ska, indie, power pop, folk, and ambient music all fuse together into these vivid pocket-anthems of uncompromising catharsis. Okay, maybe a *little* bit of hyperbole there, but not much.
My first encounter with Rosenstock occurred about three years back during his somewhat “infamous” appearance at the Pitchfork Music Festival. I didn’t make it through the gate in time to watch him, “give a really sincere shout-out to the person at Pitchfork who got fired by letting us play this festival!” or hear him commit the cardinal sin of revealing how much he was being paid to perform — “Seventy. Five. Hundred. Dollars.” — but I DID get to see him wail away on a saxophone while crowd-surfing over the heads of the most joyful afternoon mosh pit I’d ever personally experienced. If we ever make it out of this and can catch live shows again, Rosenstock is absolutely one of the first artists I’m lining up to see. Seriously. I might even catch a flight. I literally do not care.
I recently reached out to Jeff Rosenstock to see if he’d be interested in having a chat about No Dream, songwriting, his favorite Neil Young albums, as well as his personal experience living through these *extremely dramatic voice* UNPRECEDENTED TIMES. Fortunately, he hit me back and said that he was, and I quote “Down to clown.” Thus, our conversation below.
You moved from New York to LA right around the beginning of the quarantine, right? I also actually moved around that time too, from Chicago to Seattle, and was curious what it felt like to live in a new environment under those circumstances after spending so many years in a place that felt very familiar?
It's weird. I mean, you must feel the same, having done that. I've lived in New York for so long and I feel like it's a very much a part of who I am. Growing up in Long Island and then living in Brooklyn as an adult I kind of figured I was going to make trips back there throughout the year too. I was like, "No, it'll be cool." I've got family and friends and stuff out here and there was just a lot of things [where] it was like, "Man, it would be so much easier if I just lived in Los Angeles. I could just do all this other shit." Whether that be with stuff on Cartoon Network with Craig of the Creek or whether that be with the other half of the band that lives out here or the Bruce Lee Band, which is a ska band I play in. Or with Chris Farren, who I did Antarctigo Vespucci with. It was just like, "Yeah, it'd be chill." I was kind of excited to live in a new city and check out different things and just kind of explore; be really close to mountains, so I could go hiking and stuff like that.
Totally.
And then I don't know, then everything kind of got weird. It's just kind of like you're just home all the time, but at the same time, it kind of just feels like I'm staying in a nice Airbnb or something. I have all my stuff and it was just kind of in limbo, just kind of waiting for the next thing to happen. It's been nice to just move somewhere where I have more space. Where I have outdoor space. Where I have more space in my studio, which I'm in all day long. Those things are really good. The main thing is that my sister lives really close to me, so I could see my sister and my niece a lot. But I don't know, it feels weird. How do you feel about it?
It definitely has been really weird. I had a lot of things planned that basically went entirely up in smoke. We moved into the city itself and so I ended up taking a lot of long walks with my dog in abandoned downtown Seattle. All the Amazon, Facebook and Google buildings were closed and all the tech people were sent to work from home, which really enhanced the whole surreal aspect of it all. Then you had the CHOP and everything going down up on Capitol Hill. Just a wild-ass year.
Has everybody noticed that this year's been weird?
You mean, these profound, unprecedented times we’re live through?
Yeah. Why isn't everybody talking about it, right?
I know, you'd think we'd get at least a story or two about it?
At least one.
I don’t know about you, but as a music journalist, I’d been pretty stuck inside the album release cycle for a long time. Going to shows to check out bands, writing about records expecting to hear the songs live a few weeks or months down the line. Then that all kind of got ripped away just as I'm sure it got ripped away from you. It made me reconsider a lot of different things in my life, and I’m curious what that’s been like for you?
I was feeling exhausted from doing those cycles already. Before this year we had taken 2019 pretty much off the road, because I was just like, "I need to kind of reprioritize." I don't know, just existing. It was nice to just kind of learn, or not learn, but understand a little bit more about myself. I feel like I figured it out and I was like, "Okay, cool. I'm going to go on to 2020. We're going to go back out on tour and I'm not going to basically just feel like an anxious, nervous wreck all the time." And then all this happened. So, it was weird. Because I feel like I had taken that time to do that on my own, right before all this happened.
Well, that’s inconvenient.
During the pandemic is I realized that there is some sort of physiological thing or mental thing within me that I'm probably going to be a person who's performing music and playing music forever. Whether or not it's successful, who fucking knows? There's something that's missing from my life that's very important when I'm not playing. When I'm not playing music with my friends, when I'm not playing shows and seeing people, when I'm not traveling around, all of that. I think my body likes having that physical momentum of just always kind of moving forward, always traveling. I think that there's a feeling that a lot of touring musicians get, that when you come home from tour, it's just kind of real serious depression.
Really?
I guess it's not having that dopamine rush or, adrenaline rush or whatever of playing every day. And you're just physiologically different in your body. Chemically, your body's doing different shit and it could get pretty dark. And I felt kind of the ups and downs of that, throughout this whole year, in a weird way. So, I think I'm just like, "Okay, cool." For whatever time it took in 2019 to be like, "Hey, I need to reprioritize," 2020 kind of really solidified all that. But then also I'm like, "I don't know, what if in 2022 there's still not shows happening?" I'm going to have to fucking get real about what my life is going to be like. I think everybody else is, too.
It wasn’t a live show, but I really loved the performance you did on Late Night a few weeks back with the band.
Oh, thanks. That one was particularly special. It felt so good to just be in a room with [my bandmates] Kevin [Higuchi], Mike [Huguenor] and [Dan Potthast]. It was really sad that John [DeDomenici] couldn't be there, but what John sent over from New York was just so perfect. And it was fun to learn how to be in video editor a little bit more by putting all that together. It was very funny to me that I mixed something and edited something that was on late night television on NBC.
Add it to the resume, man!
Yeah, right? Edited one thing. “Might remember Adobe Premier” will be on my resume.
Couldn’t hurt.
It's just so nice to play and felt so nice to be around everybody, to hang out with Jack. It felt so weird, because when I finished mixing No Dream, I drove home from Oakland, went to a friend's house, where he was having a bonfire in the backyard and we were just sitting around and being like, "Oh, shit. I don't know if COVID is going to be serious. It seems like it's serious in these other countries, I wonder if it's going to come here?" And then like three days later, everything was done. And then to drive back up to that same studio and just see those same people four or five months later when we shot that, was a weird time jump thing.
Let’s talk about No Dream a little bit. It was definitely my favorite album of 2020. Listening to songs like “State Line” and “f a m e” and “Scram” made me feel like I wasn't so fucking crazy worrying about everything that was going on in the world throughout the year. Like, I grew up in a kind of a conservative family and that line in “Scram!,” "I've been told for most my ‘Try to see the other side’ / By people who have never tried to / See the other side” hit me like a ton of bricks. The first time I heard it I paused the song and said aloud to literally nobody, "Fucking yes! Exactly!” Do you consciously try to articulate about the larger forces at work in society, or does it come from a more personal place?
I'm very much trying to voice what I'm feeling. You know? I don't know, I think it would be pretty arrogant to think that I can understand how anybody else was feeling. But a lot of people write songs with that in mind, and they write very good songs. Very popular. I have not been able to connect to as much of my own writing, but it feels good. In makes me feel like I'm less alone, because I'm also feeling those things, so it's kind of the same thing. I'm just like, "Okay, somebody else doesn't think that I'm fucking crazy when I'm saying that." And then also, "Or somebody else is also fucking crazy, like I am." You know?
Exactly.
Music has just played a really big part of my life and I feel like it’s emotionally guided me through a lot of really, really tough times. And not necessarily just when I was growing up and listening to say Operation Ivy or something. And you're like, "Oh, wow." Not even the stuff where the first time I heard it, I kind of discovered that I wasn't the only person who felt a certain way about something, but just throughout forever. There's still lyrics that just kind of destroy me or chord changes or melody that just kind of get in there. You know?
Absolutely.
So whenever anybody says that about anything that I've made, I feel like I've done a good job, which is a good feeling. And I just feel really thankful that I'm part of that persons or part of your, or part of anybody's journey with connecting with music, because it's so important to me…that's why I'm never going to play it again. [Laughs]
Right? Exactly! Hang it up. You said what you've got to say, walk away now.
That's it. And fuck you, Corbin.
There's seems to be a recurring theme on No Dream about empathy; or a lack thereof. Do you identify that as one of the major problems with what's going on in the world? Or at least in this country?
Yeah, of course. And that's everything. This isn't like a unique or profound point of view or anything, but the more that we just get into our own bubbles, the more our own suspicions are confirmed. Confirmation bias, as they say. It makes us less empathetic to other people's points of view. And then that makes them less empathetic to ours. And then we don't really talk to each other about stuff. And then it makes it difficult for all of us to move forward together.
Sure.
But then also at the same time, I don't know…I don't want to have anything to do with a white supremacist. I want that person to wake the fuck up. I'm not trying to have a conversation or trying to meet in middle with that point of view. So, it's weird. There is the issue of empathy that we don't really understand. And also, we do not admit to our own shortcomings or our own faults. I think we all just kind of like project this avatar of the ideal version of whatever, a conservative or an anti-capitalist or whatever fucking side you land on. I think we present ourselves in a certain way and ignore our own faults, which is troublesome. But then also there's some evil that's been empowered. That's super fucking hardcore. That's kind of taken over everything. Empathy is part of it, but there's a lot of unlearning that needs to be done by people who are not ready to unlearn their shit. You know? It's just kind of dicey.
In addition to No Dream, you also released some songs as part of a Bandcamp compilation called 2020 Dump which I also really enjoyed. “Department of Finance” is a great song. So is “Collapsed.” How much music do you write in a day? What does your process look like?
Well, it's always different. My process right now is that I have 19 song titles on a piece of paper that one day I was like I've got 40% written a lot of songs that I think are good, but I'm just freezing up and not finishing them because it's kind of difficult to focus for some reason these days. Currently, I’m just looking at those and being like, "Okay, I need to crack this song open and figure out what I was trying to do and just do it and stop being so afraid that it's not going to be good or I'm going to say something that feels wrong," or whatever. That's just kind of where I'm at now, but it's always a little different. And then there's also the fact that I spend eight to 14 hours a day, at least half of the year, writing music for Craig of the Creek.
Damn.
I'm always writing and so it kind of, in a way, encourages me to do stuff that I had not necessarily done before or discovered. Like chords or melodies or just weird patterns and stuff. I don't know. I don't really feel like I have a process. I feel like the only thing I've ever read that has made sense in regard to how to write songs or how to be a better songwriter or whatever is something that Neil Young said, when you just said, like he has no rules, just if he has an idea for a song, he stops what he's doing, he tries to see it all through. And that's been the only thing that comes close to process for me. If an idea for a song pops in my head, I will sit down with a guitar and see where the whole thing goes. And that's probably why I just have a lot of output is because I try and just find those ideas and just try and turn them into something. You know? It stresses me out to have songs kind of sitting in there that don't end up becoming songs.
What's your favorite Neil Young record?
Oh, fucking, On The Beach, for sure.
You can't go wrong with that. I'm a Tonight’s The Night guy, but I respect On The Beach immensely.
Tonight’s The Night is pretty hardcore, and I like it a lot too. I really like After The Gold Rush, and there was a record he put out in the year 2000 called Silver and Gold, which I think is really, really underrated. That has become my go-to, slow wake up music.
Nice. I've been beating the drum for Psychedelic Pill for a long time, even though it's Crazy Horse, to its absolute limits.
I think, when it comes to Neil Young, I don't think I'm there for the jams or for the rock and roll. Although I like the newer stuff. I'm just like, "Eh, I get it. You're soloing."
Homegrown rules. I don't know if you've heard that yet?
Homgrown’s pretty sick, yeah. I can't believe Homegrown came out this year.
I know, right?
I read that biography, Shakey. And I also read Waging Heavy Peace, which is a book he wrote. Which is maybe the most insanely paced piece of writing I've ever read. Did you read Waging Heavy Peace?
I love Shakey, but I got maybe halfway through Waging Heavy Peace and was like, “What the fuck? Where's this going?" It’s so oddly paced.
See, that's...you're there for the jams. I'm there for that. That rules. He's funny. He does not follow any rules. He does not give a fuck. There's ads for Pono in the middle of it. The first 40 pages is him writing about trains.
There’s one song I wanted to ask you about specifically. “Let Them Win” from your album Post. I returned to that one over and over again across the last few years when times felt pretty dark. I’m wondering how you feel about that song now, and what you were thinking about when you wrote it?
I think I have a weird, conflicting kind of feeling about it towards this year because whereas yeah, [Trump] did not win, my memories of February are of the way Bernie Sanders was basically pushed out the democratic party or we would have had a person who actually cared about people as our president. And then we got who I considered to be the worst of the pack. Somebody who was trying to reach across the aisle now towards people who have enabled white supremacy versus trying to reach to progressives who voted for him. That doesn't necessarily feel like a win. And I'm sorry that that is not an optimistic way to look at it. I know that it is also a win, obviously, but so I feel a little conflicted about it.
I hear what you’re saying.
But also still, I think I played it as it was going down, so I understand that I don't just write songs for how I feel about them. Some would argue it doesn't fucking matter how I feel when I was writing it. It comes from kind of a dark place though. When I was writing it, I think the original line wasn't, "We're not going to let them win." It was "Who would want to let them win?" Because I just couldn't fathom how people were rooting for evil basically.
Right? Exactly.
It was just batting around in my head as I was running. It was a really slow song and I was just like, "Oh Jesus, this is how I want to end a record?" It's a valid point of view, but is it a point of view worth articulating? I don't know. Sometimes voicing the way that you feel about something negative, at least in my world, complaining about something, just reiterates that and doubles down on that being the truth in your head. I didn't want to do that.
For sure.
I'm friends with Chris Gethard, who's a comedian. We both lived in Greenpoint at the same time and we would hang out and just be like, every now and then. So I think we had one of those conversations and after that, I kind of just realized that I wasn't talking about the current moment, whatever it is. I think what I was talking about is just the feeling of being bullied and the feeling of like you have to stand up for yourself and you have to just not be, you can't just say, "Fuck it. I can't do it anymore." You're going to take some shit sometimes, but that doesn't mean you're going to just let somebody walk away with it. You know what I mean?
Absolutely, I do.
I felt like that was something that I could maybe relate to a little more. I wanted to aspire to feel a little bit more, you know? Getting picked on or getting shit on sucks to deal with, but that's just the truth of it. But it's also like you can't just go into shutdown mode and that's kind of what that song is about for me. That's why it ends with like 10 minutes of ambient music. Because it's just kind of like this thought of leaving you space to kind of, or maybe leaving myself space or leaving everyone space, to kind of reflect and reprocess how we're feeling about all these things in the context of, "Okay, we're getting shit on. There's bad things happening, but we can't just like shut down," you know?
Before I let you go, do you have any other recommendations for music, books, movies, or anything else that you've really enjoyed this year that you'd like to recommend that maybe people aren’t aware of?
I just put a whole long thing of a bunch of stuff that I liked this year on Brooklyn Vegan. That would probably be a better place to go for that. But as far as other stuff goes, I think that the show -- the cartoon -- Infinity Train is fucking awesome. The third season that came out this year was really, really powerful and really great. I really liked the video game Hades this year. I don't think I'm alone in that. I think a lot of people really like that game. Is just really button mash-y, smash them up, cutting shit up, fun stuff. It's good. And I think, Vanishing Half is probably the only book that I've read that came out this year, but Vanishing Half is fucking awesome. That's another thing that's just like on a billion lists, so you might've heard of it. If not, you should read that book. It's really good.
I haven't, but I’m stoked to check it out.
Sick. It's a wild ride.
(This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity)