Make this 30-minutes and you have yourself a yearly Halloween special. That’s how good this story is from Dylan Chase. In a nutshell you have girl scouts away at summer camp battling pyscho killers and monsters. But there’s a twist, cause there aways has to be! A completely immersive and entertaining package that will get adapted in some way in the near future. Just you wait!
Crosstown rivals CAN make a trade! Cubs, White Sox make a deal for Jose Quintana
Crosstown rivals CAN make a trade! Cubs, White Sox make a deal for Jose Quintana
Over the offseason the Chicago White Sox loaded up on prospects when they traded their star ace Chris Sale to the Boston Red Sox and outfielder Adam Eaton to the Washington Nationals.
Since then, baseball has been waiting for the team to trade their next best starter after Sale, Jose Quintana. It was never a question of “if” but a question of “when, where and for how much.”
Dream Pop Project Comes To Full Fruition
by Dylan Chase
Jack Tatum is living a digital-age story of artistic success that’s threatening to become something of a cliche; prodigiously young artist records an initial set of songs under a nascent alias (preferably during a period of personal strife or uncertainty), posts them online with little expectation outside of having their friends hear them, gets plucked off the web by either A) legions of cool-crashing bloggers or B) an in-vogue independent record label, and then gets swept up in a cyclone of media chatter, performance responsibilities, and newfound fan expectations that all culminate into what has come to be the modern hype cycle. We’ve seen it, in fact, with most of the current canon of young “independent” music stars; Washed Out, Neon Indian, Toro y Moi, King Krule, Nathan WIlliams, and, in the case of Tatum, Wild Nothing.
In fact, so much attention has been given to his Wild Nothing project in the short time since his debut, 2010’s bedroom-recorded Gemini, that even recapping his backstory in a lead-in to an interview with Tatum has become something of a journalistic standard. Which isn’t to say the attention, or the fascination with an artist having such sudden and inauspicious success, is undeserved; Tatum’s brand of tenderly swooning dream-pop ballads found on his debut seemed startlingly mature for an artist of just 21, and the songwriting muscle he exercised there seems to have filled-out considerably on his latest album, Nocturne. Likewise, it makes sense that all of the writing available on the Internet about Tatum seems to be equally focused on his biography as on his music; while his songs portray a strong connection with music of the past (enforced by his claim that most of his listening habits center around ‘old stuff’), the story of his development as an artist is entirely of-the-moment. Even as recently as 2002, young bands like The Strokes, The Walkmen, The Yeah Yeah Yeah’s and Interpol spent long periods of time honing their identity in the clubs of their big-city music scenes before even releasing their debuts; Tatum’s case is the hyper-modern bizarro reversal, where someone in their college dorm room in Virginia makes music first, and then is faced with the challenge of locating themselves as a performance artist and dealing with a never-ending stream of interviews.
When I met with Tatum at Pitchfork Music Festival in Paris this past week, it was already the fourth press meeting he had committed that afternoon before he was to play before a crowd of around 20,000 on a nighttime slot. The reception around Nocturne has been almost universally glowing (as his billing at the festival would seem to suggest), he recently toured as the opener to Beach House in a year that saw them debut a new album at the top of industry sales charts, and his newest video features a widely renowned Hollywood starlet. Tatum’s strides are precocious enough that despite all these honors, he admitted that calling himself a professional musician is “still kind of a weird thing to say.” While I found Tatum in good spirits, the responsibilities of success that press attention represent are still responsibilities, and he seemed kindly relieved that our talk would be his last commitment of the day not centered on actually playing music. Read on to see us discuss the pressures of sudden success, his conflicted feelings on the double-edged sword of Spotify and Internet culture, and his affection for The Bee Gees.
You’re a part of the Captured Tracks roster, which is a label that prides itself on being especially supportive of its artists. How did your association with the label come about?
That was really early on, they got in touch with me, and it was really just a matter of luck. I had just posted a few songs online. Mike from the label happened to hear them- I think I had, like, added the label on Myspace when people still used Myspace- so he got in touch with me and wanted to work with me. I didn’t know what was up with anything or how things worked but I knew I wanted to do it. It’s just grown since then and been really fun because we’ve grown with the label and they’re massively supportive. More so than other labels would be, I think, because they’re so small. They care so much about music and they really take care of their bands.
Now that you probably have a few more resources available to you than when you recorded Gemini in your bedroom in 2010 , how has your concept of what a Wild Nothinglive show should be developed along with the recording process?
Well, when we first started I had done everything on the first record myself- just on my own- and then had to kind of form a band around that to play those songs. [That’s] kind of a difficult thing to do, because its not like you’re starting a band, its starting as a recorded project which you have to figure out how to make into a living thing. But it’s been good, we recently expanded into a five-piece; we did a tour with Beach House and it was our first tour with that set up. The new record I thought a little bit more about how things would sound live, so it’s been a much smoother transition from this album to the live setting rather than with Gemini to the live setting.
At what point in your recording process do you start thinking about how these songs are going to translate live- or where the line lies between Wild Nothing as Jack and Wild Nothing as a band?
Well, it wasn’t something I thought about at all on the first record, and I still did everything on the new record except the drums. But its kind of weird when you write every part all yourself because its different as if you wrote it with a full band, because there isn’t the same give and take between members- it’s very much like a direct vision of how its gonna be.
With this record, it was important to me to kinda change things a little bit or consider how things would sound with only five people. You can only do so much so you have to keep it somewhat contained.
Would you call that artistic restraint?
Yeah, which is good! It’s something that you need sometimes, because otherwise I might go overboard and fill up tracks with, like, useless nonsense that you can’t do live.
Do you feel like that was a problem for you in the past?
Yeah, I think so. I mean, just because I wasn’t even concerned with playing live music with Gemini- it wasn’t really important to me, as it is now. With the first record it was just creating that particular thing, so I could do whatever I wanted with recording.
Does that sense of expectations ever stress you out now?
Yeah, I mean, it is stressful. It’s stressful to have fans that expect something out of you, but it’s not really a problem anymore. It used to be, just because I wrote the first album when I was 21; I didn’t know what I was doing or what it meant to be in a touring band or to be a professional musician. It was something that I’ve had to learn very quickly.
WIth that in mind, you worked with another producer for the first time while recording Nocturne. How did that influence your process, and would you consider more collaboration moving forward, or is this more of a one-man vessel?
I don’t know. I don’t know what is going to happen after this. I just knew with this recent album I wanted to have someone else there to help with the recording process, to produce and just be another voice in the process. I think it was really beneficial for me just learning how to do certain things and compromise on certain ideas- I think he [Nicolas Vernhes, from Rare Book Room studios] became an integral part of the process. Not only in just getting the sounds I had in my mind, but he was really good at having an idea if I showed him a song that had the drum sounds I wanted, he could help facilitate that in a way I couldn’t have done on my own. That was huge, and if I presented an idea and he didn’t like it he would just tell me-. He could point me in different directions. As far as furthering any sort of creative relationships, I don’t really know where the band is going- if it will always be me or if it will eventually become more.
You mentioned touring with Beach House, how did that experience influence you?
It was really fun- they’re amazing. It was definitely inspirational, just watching them on a performance level and watching how they do things. They have a huge operation now and watching that from a behind-the-scenes perspective was really good for all of us I think. They’re really nice lovely people, too.
GIven your well-known backstory- recording in your bedroom and being discovered off the web- what are your feelings on the role the Internet is playing in music, as services like Spotify make music accessible at a really low price? How does that conflict make you feel as a working musician?
It’s kind of a weird topic; I feel like I’m always having to view it from new angles. I can look at that as a musician who relies on that for my well being but also just as a music fan who understands why websites like Spotify are so convenient...and I use them, I’m not going to act like I don’t, because I do. It is different though, because as a musician I still buy music and collect records and that’s really important to me. But I’m not bothered by how accessible music is. I have a lot of qualms with the internet and the music culture it’s created, I think there’s a lot of negatives about it, but I still owe my career to the Internet, so it’s love/hate,
Do you feel like we’re better off now as a music culture than we were in the past, when you would walk into a record shop and, like, buy a Funkadelic record because it had a cool cover?
I think we are better off in the sense that more people can get their music out there and more people like me are able to get their music out there now because of it. I think theres a lot of good music that wouldn’t get heard out there otherwise, but I think it’s totally lessened the value of music and lessened peoples attention span with music. I don’t think people spend the proper amount of time with music that they used to- because it doesn’t mean as much. I always think of it like if you go to a record store and see a cover of a record that looks interesting and you just buy it on a whim. That used to be a very real thing that I don’t think happens as much anymore. So if you do that you’re going to give it time because you randomly bought it, not just go, “this sucks,” and toss it. It’s not, like, a stream, its something you’re willing to spend time with. I think that kind of doesn’t exist as much anymore, which is unfortunate.
So commitment is the issue?
Yeah, I think the Internet is great because you can find not just new music but older music, which is what I do, constantly looking back and finding music and bands I didn’t know before. I don’t know, but I don't really like contemporary internet music culture.
What are you listening to now?
A lot of older stuff, as always (laughs). A lot of 60s stuff, The Byrds. There’s this early Bee Gees album I’ve been listening to. New bands though, I don’t really know. I think I’m one of those people that unfortunately only pays attention to things in the same routes as me, bands that I play with or happen to cross paths with. So I’ve been listening to the DIIV record a lot but mostly because we went on tour with them.
Do you even have guilty pleasures music-wise? A lot of artists might be afraid to name-drop a group like the Bee Gees...
No, I don’t really feel like you need to be guilty about anything you like music-wise. I could understand for some other things (laughs). If anything, I still have a lot of affection for a lot of the awful music I liked as a kid, like pop-punk music and stuff.
I think we all might have a few Offspring cassettes tucked away somewhere...
You’ve said before that you’re lyrics are generally written to fit the mood of the song. However, if I were to tell someone who hadn’t heard Wild Nothing that pervasive themes include shadows, night, addiction, strangers, death, and chains...they’d probably think it’s a death metal band. So, if you’re writing lyrics to fit the mood of the song, do you feel like you write sad songs or that at least that’s the creative space you get into?
I don’t know, because I don’t consider much of what I do sad, I don’t think the mood is necessarily sad, that is. There’s definitely moments on the first record that came from real places, shitty experiences or whatever. I don’t know, I mean even after its done I don’t really think about what I was saying. It never comes from like a conscious place, and a lot of times it was rushed. Like with this record, the song would be pretty much done and Nicolas [Vernhes], who was producing the record, would be like, “it’s time to record vocals,” and I’d be like, “Shit, it’s time to write lyrics now.” (laughs) So, it was always kind of last minute- not in a bad way, but just to not put too much thought into it or over-think it. But there’s definitely a lot of self-doubt in my songs, whether it’s questioning certain things, whether it be relationships or your place in life. I don’t know, I think it had a lot to do with where my head was at. I think a lot of my songs are about being in transitional places, because I feel like I’m constantly in a transitional period.
Speaking of transitions, you recently released the video for “Paradise”, starring Michelle Williams. This is what some would call “kind of a big deal”. How did that come about?
Totally just coincidence. Matt [Amatto], who directed this video,had wanted to work on a project with her, so I guess after he got in touch he told her he might be doing something with Wild Nothing and asked her if she’d want to listen to some of these songs. She did and it ended up working out, it came together quickly and went really smoothly. We were really happy she did it, obviously its a really big boost for the band. Not that that’s something I’m necessarily interested in but I don’t think it’s bad, obviously it’s a good thing to get exposure for the band.
So what’s next on the docket?
Going back home in December, then a show in Miami, then a few months off, then we go to Austrailia, then Japan, then back over here to do shows in London and Paris. As far as I know thats it for now, there’s always stuff being added to the agenda and that’s how it will be for the year.
You probably don’t want to look too far down the line.
Yeah, exactly (laughs).
