Do you remember lying in bed,
With the covers pulled up over your head,
Radio playin' so no one can see,
It was just fairly recently when I realized that liquid swords was an allusion to alcohol.
Then suddenly last summer the new days now rolled back. Rooney looked much different that just a year ago, Roon now like some darlinged new wave hooker dashed in crinoline.
And Rooney wouldn't ever be caught dead in some Bad Brains shirt—bc that's just some post hipster normie shit and you can't never fool old Roon.
And Rooney in NY kind of reminded me of Jeff Simmons.
And what the page had said, her words like hymen, I was baffled by, — I just wanted to know exactly what, where it all came from—there would be no way of knowing really, and although I wanted to press Rooney so, I really just didn't, or I just accepted or accepted it coming from somewhere in her mind, like, as if from some somewhere from edge of the universe or at the bottom of a lake.
Fish have no feet,
So steap me like tea,
Rent me apart,,
Outside on wooden pavement,
In September you can't drink sluce grape juice mashed,
White as lapland,
Not really ever a Narc,
But she got a style,
Whenever she never turnstile turns.
Stars like stones,
Forget my sins,
Two-tonged,
And
Shawling,
Like a gong bombilating,
A bizarre piece of paper,
Never to be red.
Spitting and snarling,
Longing and lisping,
Hustling and missing,
In shut laces where you noticed to mask,
Like never wanting to be seen again.
He pawns her off
On you
It's a No,
You pawn her off
On him,
It's always go.
He pawns her off
On you
It's a No,
You pawn her off
On him,
It's always go.
Generating words and lyrics for Rooney was like just something she did, or you had some very impression she had occupied herself this way, say perhaps, in front of the parlour nightingale wainscotting when she was younger—and when a lot of female writers seemed to be stuck on their self obsessed narrow voice, I always appreciated how Rooney was able to stretch her words into some vague semblance, even into some masculine kind of bent or sympathy, which seemed to draw her lyrics further into their forlorn star lane weight.
And to the wingless, the Archies had well broken up by now, the archive got replaced by index, and it was all just so death of author, birthing a wrench out of events administrators, shitting duck admins, all the like, all so masters of ceremony. Braying post-rock littered the shaled air, false consciousness skulldruggeries party music that was so un-party to the confidence of bunkum legion, avec stadiums of sixty thousand losers all bouncing up and down in some shorn fjord-ed unicen. There's a photo of Woodstock, where the band implodes to legion of fans becoming the band—vampire hordes taking on the band's dress cues, but now so we, so far in future, even all that that seems quaint. What punk didn't never know or couldn't never ever tell, was the dead end come crashing once the audience becoming a participant was taken well past beyond it's point of logical conclusion, to where user generated ecosystem of the network, ostensibly democratizing—only became preposterous inversion invention, and the worst now only rose to assendance, anything reputable and needing protection faced grave misuse through constant self-reinforced distraction of inattention caused by any just about any infructuous second cousin hat drop color-way grey market content—it was all so quash.
But here were Roony's words now like bulwark against all the toil of secular bore, Ronnie's fear signal handwriting sitting on the paper clattering out, moving us back into some tremulous semblance, somewhere back grounded—at least that's how it felt, or how I felt, or that's the best way I can try to describe it. Rooney wouldn't write the usual generic thing like, Lonesome Dove, or House of Cards or Happy.
Hackett, Jim, Melinda and someone else were talking in the makeshift break space out over in the course corner, saying something about some stepdaughter from Nogales apparently, they weren't really paying attention to me anyways now—Rooney was probably outside or something, and I looked at the page out on the ganged vinyl fold out card table, the page right there beneath the book.
Tom Sachs Job Application
I'm doing a song about Picasso's muse,
Cause she must have been a real piece of work,
She kept her pony tail too long,
And never deigned a thong,
At least that's what I had heard
About Picasso's girl.
Did you hear the news about Picasso's muse,
I read somewhere, they weren't even allowed to kiss,
When it was time to paint her late cubist nude,
He had to do it all alone and use his imagination.
Towards the dorms she'd had fled,
That's what the curator said,
Don't so much touch her on the shoulder in the studio,
Paint her with a big bobble head,
And she'll still look much better than you,
Cause there was no messin' around with Picasso's girl.
I know Picasso painted his studio assistant,
She didn't even need no Tom Sachs job application,
Though she looked like a wreck out at the French discoteque,
Late into night she danced nose glue'd and wide awake.
She was never impressed,
Was famously always depressed,
They even complained about her giant
Sculpture out in Rotterdam.
They say she's not much into older men,
Even if they are short, bald and fat,
Or at least that's what I know,
About Picasso's muse.
Ten was the hour of appointment for our studio session today—in sky child's haste, Roon jumps into her motorcar, as the half hour marks slip to conspire and expire harried on circle jerk off of clock's face—another plate of cold porridge surely R's punishment for such infraction and yet again—and when, whenever shall R learn? When will R ever learn?—you want to know when R learns? Never, never and never shall she ever.
A tenuous authority always wanted to seize itself in the studio, Fork over the lyrics, Joa in a productive impatience, towards Roon now.
Ya know, it takes 4 or 5 five political leaders, or 7 or eight hack writers, artists just to send us all, all the the way back, back a half century, I brayed saying to Kate, Kate, who had kind of become my new buddy maybe crush during the sessions.
Con-yeah South West by North Normie West, avant-normie—Joaquin leant forward, preoccupied at the deck, but still registering what I had said, sounding like an electrician making clinical observation.
That's so, yeah, Roon taking a drap drag, accidentally blowing smoke in her own face, wiping away the immediate air.
Linda, those pale blue buttons don't mean a thing and Jim Jim, don't touch them, still, Joaquin steeping up command now, really coming into himself in the studio—the studio activating, pulling something out of Joa, Joaquim like a cartoon struck by lighting as you can see his skeleton smile.
Joaquin rushed back to the floor from behind the bay, parried over to the piano, standing up to hanging mic leveled to mouth, Okay, okay—we ready to go, let's take it here from the top . . .
Joaquin summoning boogie woogie from the finger'd off piano press, a Paul's Boutique like tiny fragment.
R: I got a nickel!
J: And I got a dime!
R and J: So let's go to the store and buy some wine!
Great. That was kind of good actually—you know, we do have extra time leftover today, so let's, Jim Jim let's—we just may as well, well—let's just do it again shall we?, jus for fun—
Joa in on the spot distraction of release, pounding on the keys in a completely unrelated though equally complex melody, now sounding like a saloon from 1920's Galveston,
Joa paused to silence piano grandly, beginning then again into the original melody back now, OK, a one, two, a one, a two, a three, a four—
R: I got a nickel!
J: And I got a dime!
R and J: So let's go to the store and buy some wine!
Again.
So let's go to the store and buy some wine!
So let's go to the store and buy some wine!
So let's go to the store and buy some wine!
Months prior, we started out in the music room at Rooney and Joaquin's Lauren's Canyon house, just fucking around about on the piano. Joaquin had these like real silly and hilarious and quite very devilish boogie woogie fragments he could just toss and loss out, noodling, rolling lolls he learned from when perpetually grounded in trouble stuck home as teengenerate, most likely. At his studio, Joaquin just started recording these like fragments or fragments with us, but they didn't never end up really yielding nothing—no major basis for any of the songs or the songs— though, some were cut in or ended up in as tiny iddy biddy bit flourishes, which stylistically, really didn't much effect the over-all of the recordings. Recording Dormers, like cooking an elaborate twelve course Vegas dinner, and starting with growing the parsley sprigs first,
Rooney is not Jet Girl, but I thought about Jet Girl a lot during the sessions. There's no song Jet Girl, but there should be. There are Jet Girls though—and no, it's not about jet setting. It's closer to motorcycle, or 1970's motorcycle, even though motorcycles are objectively Nissan leather Skywalker jaket normie lame. It's not motorcycle necessarily though, but long tall Sally Jet Girl is certainly renegade. Jet Girl is Rock N' Roll only. Jet Girl is the ultra economic bohemia avant la lettre real deal-y deal. Jet Girl is rainbow grease chrome New York Trawmps honky tonk metal machine rouge 70's Dickensian destitute pauper's pier, menacingly menace so—a characteristic potent dystopian N. Sponge hipness that at one point it's so hip that it's not even hip anymore. Jet Girl, a spike chain dripping oil so, that such would beckon one wanting to retreat back to their own original Wanksta provinces. You can't be friends with Jet Girl—maybe no one can be friends with her except a couple of people, like a couple of gay dudes, but by some point, they become weary or got burned by her in the past. And don't go celebrate Jet Girl ever. Don't fan out on anybody—but especially, do not ever never fan out on Jet Girl. It would just seem that being unassuming and sceptical would be the best approach in interacting with Jet Girl—distancing herself so she comes to you. But she's still going to make fun of you somehow, she's still gonna put you in your place. She may go out of her way, unprovoked in an insensitive getting ahead of herself overstimulated charismatic dumbness, especially when you are out with other people. You won't never get no credit with Jet Girl, and it's worse than that, because she could very well incriminate you by pointing out something about you that is inaccurately applicable, or she may take something and call you out on it, and it's all wildly exaggerated or overblown. Because her voice is loud, anything she may say will have sway. Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball. There's nothing fair about Jet Girl—that's the encroaching price and inevitable toll to be in place in next to her. Jet Girl is Kierkegaard aesthetics over morality, tough as burner burnt teflon, though very essential in it's own right—in a city where otherwise everyone lame else you know, who's nice as kind, but again, lame in comparison. Jet Girl is: you are an outsider, but she's queen of the outsiders, and you are ostracized from even the outsiders now. That's Jet Girl. Like a bird of prey, Jet Girl doesn't mind putting you out of business, and after she's done splitting, it's quite doubtful she ever on her own will think about it or you ever again. I don't know which I prefer. Actually, gun to head always, I'd Jet Girl, bad girls, bad girls, bad girls.
It beggars belief Rooney wasn't Jet Girl. Rooney was too far into stable upbringing, as from on the dish cloth street where Rooney was raised, and perhaps the William Morris wallpaper she grew up in front of would so attest. Rooney was metaphorically our little piano playing champ though (Roon couldn't play a lick of any instrument). Rooney was the end and center of the universe. Rooney was the barrier of creation you would dead end on. Rooney is all splendid possibly dead ending on the precipice right at her. All splendid possibility is possible in theory, but all splendid possibility is actually not ever possible, because of always the actual conditions of everything. The limits of body against the yearn of soul. I stop at Rooney. There's no getting past that something in myself that prohibits me from interacting with her just like some normal person, let alone speaking to her with actual charisma I am sometimes known to little possess in front of people I otherwise care not to impress. In such respect, I am disabled in self inspection in the teeth front of Rooney. Rooney sitting on the sofa, her dress over knees, her silks, scissors scissor as scissors legs. People make you feel a certain way and people turn you into something else—but with Rooney, it was always just . . . me—Roon, so naturally, wildly existing all against all my own limitation and temperament. Rooney existing past my expectations of what I thought possible about creation—creation creating her and putting her spot in front of me, but also saying no. Does God have to refuse for him to exist? I'm not even talking about becoming best friends with Roon, though also I kind of am—I barely crawl to other side of the Roon room of yellowing valley, stammering off any bit of any of our causal interaction.
I always put too much emphasis on the supplement, supplement over substance, that is—substance was not, or was never within my grasp—I thought, though, supplement could be smoke screen or like, like substitute at least until substance is possible, Joaquim taping the hanging mic to the over head stand, heartily biting the tape ribbon to break from spool.
Some people get real far on a supplement—it's probably more effective than like prayer sometimes, Hatchett faithfully holding the stand in jointed place.
Livin'n on a supplement—okay, I think that should be fine, well, that should, should do the . . . trick, Joaquin firm in taskmaster assurance, Joaquin inspecting the stand so that it holds in place. While I got this, I may as well tape down the cords . . .
The studio chambermaid gibbered over the playback uselessly, over some otherwise virtually imperceptible technical issue, which gave one quite such impression she was just imposing her jaded attitude onto us needlessly and so needlessly, in her own like little micropolitical channel of control way—but for some reason, we had to humor her, or at any rate we just did, just sheepishly went along with it out of harried distraction, when maybe we should have otherwise taken back control over the session and told her to exit—it was almost as if the chambermaid was creating some atmosphere problem that jammed us all up, out of some formed over time sense of stingy knowingness and studio jade that she now foisted upon us on the very time we were paying good money for—
No, one more time, or do it again . . .
Manny says, we gotta go, on a train to Mehico, but it looks, but it looks, but it looks like, looks like I won't see you tomorrow—
Again,
Tomorrowww—
Tomorrowww—
You lie, and lie, and lie, and lie, and lie and lie, Roon looking like some frieze like arrangement now, giving it her all in front of the recording mic, reeling full commitment, emotional risk of no holding back on full display here. Even for someone like Rooney, it was apparent this still took a full wind of courage.
I steeped outside of the front of the studio to get a breath of air and break—clouds like pitched hedges, muddy and violet and consumed the desire entire sky, I walked to the street and looked down down the boulevard—it was as if we were on a hill looking off towards a beach above, as if looking out at the sea visibly close and unfolding forward and above in the sky, but instead of being the ocean, how you would wish, it was just really only sky.
I came back in and Roon and Joaquin were working in their very characteristic couple's way.
I had four, or four dice pairs . . . , Roon, like an odd neglected plant, taking off her bolero, darting it all the way back behind her.
An enormous task surely, Joa the mountain stabilizer of the studio now, Joaquin, who in direct regards to Roon, would have made John Gregory Dunne look like Ike Turner.
Oh, I shall sink to the bottom of the sea, if this can't get sorted, Roon despairing almost unnecessarily, a haunted look on her face.
Roon, it's like fine—not if, but when, or when is like an hour, twos tops—
I'm just, I'm meantime, don't know what to do with myself.
Go drug a Nehi. Better yet, just sit, sit,—sit with me while I tackle these tabs, Skink.
I noticed earlier when Roon said out loud that she wanted this next track to be treated more as a foley session than the proverbial melodic application—I mean, it basically was still recorded in a fairly conventional way with instruments and all anyways, but it was like you could kind of tell the chambermaid wanted to counter whatever Ronnie said, and was making great pains to stay quiet, the chambermaid subtly arranging her face in the knowingness of muted condescension. And I know Rooney definitely picked this up immediately, if not Rooney probably predicting this in her head ahead of time.
The chambermaid dimly retreated in self important wrapping the wiggling cable in quiet and careful and pathetic best over-methodical reverence, as if saying that Shangrillah D Studios was just some fount of resource that she had to so ceaselessly, so selflessly, all the time just maintain behind the scenes so unsung—protecting the space from whatever abuse the people actually paying to use it were of course always going to inflict upon it's so pious sinkhole quarters. The other day she was wearing a Ramones shirt and I know Rooney kind of felt sorry for her, and maybe out of pity, we all kind of just allowed the chambermaid to very subtly longhouse our sessions.
Water never bleeds, scatter work Rooney, extemporizing in mist of sewer tunnel echo of dentist drilling feedback, sweaty black bangs cutting a cold curtain, as if helping push out her mouth, vocals like she was having Rose Mary baby.
Water never bleeps, Roon seeped again, Rooney like a peeved pertard, in the grey space of the Hawaiian decorated vocal fried booth, as if channeling all the self destructive elements of her and her to be.
Water never bleeds, as there is no vacume that is empty, and her singing carried itself amplified throughout the live room, regnant in promise, as if the space was activated by pre chorus now birthing itself.
Rooney beak—chirping like black bird in bent storm gutter slutter, and I can see now how Rooney searches for no one because she's so self centered . . .
Whitemen go . . .
Whitemen go . . .
Whitemen go peaces in the tropics . . .
I bet that is a topic . . .
They'd rather not broach . . . .
The chambermaid was such a scold though, she really was, like some humorless slotted computer machine, who's sole purpose was to make sure the user's soul is eventually destroyed by ghosts, practically. The irksome chambermaid certainly didn't seem too terribly much impressed now during playback with something that otherwise was to us happenstance revelation and true miracle, and indeed she was just killing the mood, and increasingly more so now, and then more and more, and then you would predict her about to say something and she would swerve and be fake nice, but whenever she was in the room, whenever she was around, always passing exactly just enough noisily about—and now in bothersome merry go round talking too loud to Dave so unnecessarily—the spiritual redhead chambermaid ramping up, giving us something to now kind of strain against whilst performing now.
There was a knock on the side door, Kate had gotten locked out and I let her in. It seemed like with Kate she was never in the room long enough.
Hey Kateee,
I'm, keep getting locked out, she moaned.
No, yeah, yeah, that does happen . . .
Kate sat on the couch and did not take off her yellow nylon lightweight rain jacket. The way she sat, she didn't lean into the back of the sofa, and sat straight in a formal way, like she was waiting at the clap clinic for her ride who gave her clap. The way she sat said she was still at some remove from the situation, which I may have intuited was spurred by maybe some dynamic she had going on with Roon—though to be fair, that was probably inaccurate, as they seemed to have a fairly healthy sister sister relationship. Maybe it could have been something else—I didn't really know what was going on with Kate, but I must have really liked seeing Kate play tambourine though, I kind of liked having her around. Kate playing tambourine for minimum wage, and all.
We started talking about the chambermaid, and I may have latched onto it too a bit too much like emergency raft getting closer to Katie, through the working dynamic of having the same common adversary. But although Katie engaged with me, she still kept it cool though, and I did notice that. She probably knew I might have liked her and wanted her to be on this spaceship and maybe I liked the idea of her also possibly hanging with me (like Roon and Joaquin were together),and Kate's demeanor was maybe saying neither were going to happen, coach—Kate just didn't seem too terribly enthused to be included in the sessions as you would think, really.
I do know that Kate thought the chambermaid was a total drip though, and like I said, I may have leaned on it a bit too much it in my overstimulated way.
And but here's the thing, and the thing is, and the thing was, was, was as cool as the chambermaid thinks she actually like is Kate, Kate, or like as she thinks she is, she still has that insipid post hipster Ani Difranco nose ring. You know, I once worked with a redhead from DC named Josh—who claimed he 'knew everything about music', and was a freelance drummer, or some kind of drummer. At the cafe we worked at, we were like able to play our own music, and this was when, or when I was in my twenties, and I played like Black Dice—and Josh just dug in on hectoring and mocking the chorus—just like over-obnoxiously, and unnecessarily there, like Black Dice is hardly a totally stupid or inappropriate song—but he went out of his way, in what was so unnecessary, and it was like, why, why don't you wait for something better to make fun of me for, and it was this kind of going out of your way to heckle, that Therese is performing on us, or like doing, ya know. Anyways, Josh ended up quitting and worked for a bar that was opening across the street, and started drumming in some stupid band that was just normies who listened to like The Killers—and it really was that bad, or a little worse, actually, if you want to know frankly, or it is kind of really hard to describe accurately—Josh's band—like normies who listen to Strokes giving them credibility is to what boomers who listen to the Beatles is. I was dating a girl and she was bragging about her father, loving the Beatles, like congradufuckinglations, yeah, yeah, yeah everyone loves the Beatles.
Well, geez I dunno, I rather like the Killers, Kate flatly.
What do you mean you like the Killers,
I mean I don't hate them a whole hellavalot as you seem to, is what I'm saying, that's all, Kate now coming off like she's Polynesian royalty practically.
Kate noticeably and painfully not connecting, and in a further show of her disinterest in me, Kate may have even said something favorable about the chambermaid—completely contradicting what I was trying to get at.
Kate then got up and briskly, went outside not saying anything, in what in the moment now seemed like a silent devastating catastrophe. She sure didn't have to do that, but she sure did, or you know she did. I needed to talk to Joaquin as soon as possible now, as someone to bounce off my now freaking out on, and maybe now get Joaquin's opinion about it all, and maybe gin up some illumination about Kate and what was perhaps going on with her. Kate likes the Killers—jeez, what a lightweight.
A blues clueless Rooney, eyes drawn with doubt, slumped like a ply-ed off shore, now Roondogg sat next to Joaquin practicing his plonking bass part tabs to now calm her overstimulated self. She sat in front of the optimistic wall wall-papered in the doo wop neapolitan like stripes of sparkle vinyl—a thick stripe of pink glitter, next to a slightly less thick band of ochre glitter, next to a skinnier band of icterine yellow sparkle, and perisimone yam orange glitter, and then another pink glitter band that ran widest and finished off the rest of the wall. Over the wallpaper hung vintage kitsch carved frames containing dust frame pictures of sixties advertisement bee-hive and Ford Buick lady models. The studio's decorated thematic motif was in line with the Riverdale Archies soda pop surf rock we were now approaching sonically though, some pizza parlour devilish riff of 1950's ideal, and 1950's devilish still—as if its shadow-self beyond the clean cut idealism and perfect town square buildings and hay seed banks, also projected that people also were always going to be excluded, people were always going to be excluded afterall (Archie comics needed Dalton, and Midge and Moose to keep the story line churning), and so people, always excluded standing next to the bloodthirsty stands outside of friday night football game of twilight dark, people excluded from even the outsider's revelry of rebel without applause motorcycle rev drag race of ditching pep rally ideal as well, even—or especially, or not to mention, in the 1950's then, also excluded, not just minorities, but even the too given and un-considered skinny white girls in the neighborhood, who in this modern era would no doubt now be seen as beauties (Pre population explosion obesity had not yet reached epidemic levels and skinny girls then were far too prevalent and not yet unicorn), and even these straight haired beauties in the 1950's discounted and underrated and too taken for granted if not born hourglass (To think, a beauty like Donna Reed in It's A Wonderful Life would have become relegated to spinster librarian if Jimmy Steward would not have been born). Rooney knew, though. Rooney knew whatever era, whichever mookish era it would ever so be, it would always all like be a total scam.
Though Joaquin was a card most of the time, in the studio I really saw him rise like overlord to occasion—Joaquin, now like a horny big brother, calling Roon Dogg over to settle her in new distraction.
Look, babe—this time, this time, she goes one time zero times down on Avenue E . . . Open E,
And a seven, seven, five does she go on down all the way to Avenue A . . . Look—seven, seven, five.
Love me five times turns to six times and then turn to seven up on Avenue D. . . Five, six, seven—easies.
E5, 7 7 A, 7D, 7A again, E5, 7A—3A, 5 5 D,
The next part is a little tricky— A zero, 5 5 D, 5 avenue G, 5D, 3A—then of course . . . 5D again.
Well, I do like how your twittering fingers look fretting—that's a good sign, Rooney distracted in some tiny relief in being able to locate now.
The chambermaid apparently wheeled her eyes right when Rooney made such observation, which in the thick of moment I must have missed—the chambermaid reminded me exactly like some irksome mid-range lesbian or obnoxious bi-girl, or just reminded me of that, one could not see this because it was a quite a personal association for me—but she did certainly remind me of the dull kind who would try to just weedle her way, pussy block in on your date out on the bar patio—your otherwise nearly impossible date, which you had spent weeks of fraught weeks and painstaking emotional work and work and stress to cultivate, and you now just have to just take it, in what is otherwise a total casual threat and assault to all your most tender interiority—well the chambermaid certainly reminded me of the pitiless bitch boots needling date gate crasher, some treacherous lecherous she monster mouth, wide mouthed with her stupid Spindoctors nose ring too, as she too may get too much due, as alas, girls don't judge the looks of other girls at all like men do (and with girls, surely girls give girls far more leeway regarding looks than they do towards their men suitors), come on that's enough for now—and doubtless the gall of the date crasher she exactly reminded me of so, she who feels she is actually more attractive than she actually really is. Anyways, the maddening chambermaid may have made me plum think of something or something like that—it was enough to drive anyone madd about the bend.
What. Rooney turning her head, cold-bloodedly lapsing through mashed teeth at the poor chambermaid now, What, sucking all air up out of the studio room, jumping even me to attention. Roon in total shift before all our tired eyes, now in full razorcake form, that which clearly had now been suppressed all along.
Nothing, the chambermaid tartly, deflecting in her quite vicious disdain masking as superficial innocence.
No, it's not nothing. Say it now Bitch!, Rooney muzzle off, never to be intimidated, unhurtable Rooney, firing off like curse shorn dagger aimed at the soft of throat.
Well, just hearing you talk in the studio, I can now kinda say maybe, I have heard it all, the chambermaid now, worse than Portuguese autotune reggaetron on IG.
Is that what that little tattoo around your wrist tells you everytime you look at it?, thrill-kill Roon thundered at full breadth of all her merciless cruelty, which was kind of awesome to witness, and hilarious in retrospect.
Quiet as prayer hour now, neither I nor Joaquin, nor square-necked Dave the engineer, said anything in intervention. It was as if Toluca Lake Dave could do much little nothing else but just see it all play out like another tape hiss song he produced, Dave now like some enfeebled pedestrian even or especially in his own studio.
Theresa in full display of all her own owlish cynical knowingness dismissively nasals back, Your sound is flat that's all. But, Hey don't worry Honey, maybe you'll get it better, better next time. Maybe, after your next movie.
Theresa! That's like enough now okay, Dave the eunuch now intervening, in what one could only imagine was what he had to deal with working with the chambermaid. And why should Dave getting out of his comfort zone even now ever be worth the trouble, especially with us surely gone in next few weeks, and with Dave only left to then resume perpetual eye pawing and iris petting and zipper area scam scanning of Therese as she over-studiously wraps the control cords (yet again) knowing she's being watched even if by someone she's not attracted to, Theresa Bugbee, knowing full well she's being watched like she was a gooey pair of panites on the laid stranger's floor—or what about Dave needlessly giving Theresa extra hours on the skeleton of weekly schedule that still existed, as she just organises and re-organizes the pedal and microphone shelves next to where they keep the extra battered drum sticks, Theresa rearranging the disgruntled American gypsy tambourines, Theresa taking inventory of the lain studio maracas—Theresa Bugbee unnecessarily Kmart realist re-taping all the otherwise functioning tape labels on everything and replacing anything with written text in the office and out on the mixing board with her cute marker plump handwriting as if it was a gift 2 to mankind, Theresa's blimp script multiplying itself like how language multiplies, as all the while angling Van Nuys Dave thinks it could maybe, perhaps, maybe, somehow, possibly, hopefully, maybe perhaps somehow go further with Theresa once she finally, finally ever breaks up with her stupid long time boyfriend who she moved all the way out here with—Sylmar Dave, operating in some snuffling, slightly smothering, castrated cautious hope, that Teresa could if prompted by say some random twenty minute accidental lull in the otherwise steady stream of constant attention stimulation Teresa is so used to getting, prompting maybe, maybe then, hopefully then, take to causing Theresa finally fuckingly, finally in deciding to maybe, perhaps to lead to . . . cheat with him—Calistoga Dave, hold your breath starting . . . NOW.
Rooney looked at her wristwatch uselessly, though Rooney stalwart in killman jinxed fashion, looks up and then pointedly activates in self actualization more succinctly than any old shoe of song now ever could articulate, Well, Girlfriend—the next time you're feeling sorry for yourself, which from the looks of your dirty blue jeans, will probably come too soon—might I suggest you should think about how terrible you yourself are being now, and maybe, and maybe, I don't know, you feeling sorry for yourself in the near future will be some liberty you will not so much be able to then so afford yourself.
I thought Song to Song sucked, Theresa biliously, naked in all the comic-con fight fandom punishing of her so schlocking car convention déclassé Anaheim attitude, something so Corvette about her botched. bigoted face,
Theresa had apparently done it yet again, she conveniently exits the room, winning the day in the lovely little move of her own private California—
Hey, I'm sorry about that, Tujunga Dave finally saying, in a way that was fifteen percent too relaxed, Dave laeden in his own very certain, but not so terribly surprising stagnant attic of self enabling anemia of all his own complacency, Van Nuys Dave saying in such manner, where it be apparent his friendly terms with Theresa (as much as friendly terms were really even remotely possible with her), would probably not be too much affected in the end by her unnecessary outburst towards us—against we, who are actual money paying clients in a recording industry that otherwise barely now exists.
Sorry about that?! Joaquin roaring like Leer.
Thinking Rooney may have fumed over to the green room—the green room, a ruinous shed that was otherwise decorated floor to ceiling in astroturf in the some of somehow disorienting Pee Wee's twee playhouse B-52s stationary store zaniness of a completely dead corner of LA—but not to be found nowhere, was Roon.
Walking through the green room, I crossed the outdoor alleyway going out to the mariachi Cuban cabana tavern drink desert with the now non-working dry bar containing no alcohol. At the door jam on the ground, four or five wild full adult plump roaches were scampering in an orgy hive of repeating crawling circles—it would not have been so wretched and disgusting if you could tell they were just playing, but by the frantic frenetic cycles of their own self circling, you could tell they were fried by heat and teeming even more so insane now after eating their own.
I found Roon in the gigolo trophy tavern, Roon rifling through drawers—
I stood about as useless as a teenager's sentimentality, for some while until I had the open air to say something.
Ramones shirt, I proffer quite lamely.
What, Rooney almost shouts, steaming, still touchy as hell.
Ramones t-shirt, Theresa—
Roon paid not one sod of attention to my very unnecessary haranguing to bring up subject, which with girls is impossible to do—introducing dead on arrival prepackaged subject, but still you must try—and Mara still rifling away through the clattering drawers uselessly.
You says she was wearing like that Ramones tee—but it's Enjoi, it's actually this totally wack Enjoi shirt actually, or actually.
I don't understand—I never said nothing, Rooney staring at me like I had poisoned her cat Muffy, Roon now completely devoid of any pleasantry.
No, I'm sure you did . . . You—
Belane, I never said that. Your hallucinating.
Roon stopped looking through the drawers, leaned against the useless warped cabinet in pained resignation, like she could not bear thinking, taking off her glasses with an air of perpetual dissatisfaction— which, of what I could now see Joaquin was all but too familiar with, and well had to live with.
With nothing to squeeze now from the anaclitic air, I thought best to just leave Roon by herself, but suddenly she gears switch sunnily,
Hey Jake, ya know I started using these reading glasses to be more enveloped into the text, but it messed up my eyes a whole helluva lot realll bad—I had to practically work my eyesies muscles out of the laziness jus to get them dum back . . .
Rooney took out a package of cigarettes from her oversized bomber, her oversized bomber that still had old stains on the sleeves that you could tell could have easily been washed off—Roon lit a cigarette with a box of matches she took out her lining pocket, took a very unnecessary french inhale, blew out dramatically that signaled some fraught resignation of solidarity. Rooney her leg out akimbo, leaning against the wall leaden, it was as if the dull color of the concrete brick was sucking any remaining vitality out of her.
In the dead auxiliary section of Dave's studio, unfoldable events chairs were lined piled up against the wall as if hungover from the last event.
Roon slaked her apprehension a bit, she no longer seemed too terribly concerned now with the studio parlourmaid anymore. Rooney drew out Marlboro grey smoke through her nose in some seemingly holistic way as Roonie continues, Mike Nguyen told me about someone, or he told me about someone, like his uncle, or it was his uncle, or something—he said though, that through, like through sheer perseverance his uncle lifted his eyes back to their original like strength . . . Muscles, you know eyes are muscles too, or did you know eyes were muscles. Well, they are, and you can or can like actually work them out—I'm serious.
Band side eyes like razor cakes, too super long, to which hardly a vale of tears could ever seemingly come through now—I immediately now had the very impression of the time in-between activity is also a part of all this, or is, and could indeed be ripe in potential to be quite burdensome—maybe even lethally so. Rooney was now doing the work of making this small moment somehow work, and that was refreshing in a way that I may have regarded as a drip too delicious. Roon really loosened up though, stubbed her stubb out on her boot, lit another parched cig, leading us into being mired in more tangle of what I could now see as some essential same-ing side convo.
Roon's bully boy face loosens up, letting itself be seen for once by me, as all faces expose themselves when just given enough time, but her's, non-threatening and disarming, Rooney scratching her ankle a purrs, Belaine, tell me about . . .
Tellya about what, I counter wearily.
Roon brushing cig ash off her sleeve innocently, I mean, I just says . . . Like fucking, fucking Beatles—whad did I say?
Like the Beatles what, how the hell do I know why . . .
I says, I says, I always just hated them, ya know, or it's just, just even their name, ya know . . .
Or what their name . . .
Herman's Hermits, like that sixties—that, that thing . . . You know tha tha, tha this, tha that, all that. . .
Well, I mean— I suppose, maybe . . .
Or know what Jake,
No, whatever . . .
You know like, The Frogs, The Trogs, The Centipedes, The Pixies . . .
Centipedes? Geez, Roon . . .
Rooney suddenly got up snooping, opened the hardly gleaming white fridge, eyed the only thing in there, grabbed some questionable sangria pitcher from the inside, placed it on the nonfunctioning bar, then eventually started gamely plucking out moldy slices of orange.
Like bands and all I'm jus sayin'—or way back when, again, that or that thing . . . Hey Jake—have you actually seen, or like, have you actually seen a centipede? They are revolting—you should believe me—you want to just—wipe it out, Roon now sucking on a rind in defiance of her self imposed sobriety for today. What I'm saying Belaine is, is, bugs . . .
Bugs . . .
Or at any rate, this entire or you know this whole time, you know what I thought this whole entire time, Rooney dreamily.
Thought about what . . .
Beatles, the Beatles, Silly . . .
Right,
This time, or like this whole entire time, I thought it was, or just like, imagined like, just beetles, this whole entire time . . .
Beetles?
Or just like the buuuugs . . . Rooney sucking on the mold of the rind in a casual earthy way, reminding me you really did have to keep an eye on her.
Allright . . .
No, but look—look, I just recently learnt, or you know what I learned Jake, I learned it's like Beat—Beatle like Beat, or like the Beats or just now . . .
Or just Beats . . .
Yeah, just Beats—that's, that's what I'm saying—I just was just like thinking, thinking like this 60's British Disney bugs this whole, like this whole entire time . . .
Rooney found a Jacobean mug and some random plastic cup, poured us both half empty cups of the anonymous alcohol sour sangria stash—I was weary drinking it, but it felt more of a risk not to, as I certainly didn't want to turn Roon off, or activate any of her disapproval. For some reason, Joa didn't come out for a while, and a very rare room of time was seemingly and for once available for us alone here now.
You know life is weird, Belaine. During my New York, or my New York days, really just a stint, whatever—I was, or I was there for winter, or just winter. Alex, who I knew from Exeter—I didn't graduate from there or anything—or I was there for a semester before, or I left—but I had stayed in touch, kept in touch, stayed in touch with Alex, anyways still, ya know. Or I mean, we really had gotten pretty close pretty instantly or right away honestly, ya know. I would not, or really, I don't know, honestly, what I would have done without Alex. I mean, we were attached at the hip practically, and she had a group of friends she well welcomed me into, because like, she had already been there three terms or semesters, whatever—I mean I, I never had close girlfriends—I always just had friends who were boys—not boyfriends, or just friends, ya know, and anyways, besides, with girls it was always just so weird. I could never get along with other girls—but Alex or Alex, I mean it just figures or it figures, I would have had to move all the way to like Oxford of all places to meet Alex. She even set me up with a friend in her group—Hayden, and Hayden was or he was perfectly pleasant, I mean he really was, he was great and all—I mean, I was just a wreck, though—or a total wreck—for one, I was just so terribly homesick, like right off the bat—and for two, I had a gap where I couldn't get my script in England, and I spent a considerable amount of time just tracking down a new physician—or like therapist in the city, which sucked away time I never really had in the first place, not to mention my courses or classes, which I was often late for and missed many days—anyways or anyways, throughout that all. Alex, but it was Alex who helped me maintain my very last brain wave of sanity, really. Alex was in New York now—but going to be working on this elaborate Pat Duffy catalogue raisonné in Cologne—she very easily could have been there indefinitely—because there were trunks and trunks or archival material and materials. Alex said a CR is like writing an encyclopedia by hand practically. But Alex, Alex had a place off Mort and Hester, right near Canal—which, don't ask me how she got it—her family had a lot of dough though, and I was basically trying to get my shit together at the time, and I've always wanted to move—live, New York—I mean, that, and that I've always wanted to like—I mean New York—I mean, that was always like the dream right? Anyways, I could stay at Alex's apartment—she could totally trust me to watch the place—and in the meantime, I could find a little job somewhere, have plenty of time to set myself up. She gave me, or she told her friend Lizbeth about me—who's father was, or I won't say who he was but he has paintings and sculptures or not sculptures but paintings at MoMA. The very first night I arrived—Lizbeth even contacted me, and I met her, first met up with her at Pondi Cherie, which I don't think is around anymore—but anyways, Lizbeth was striking, she really was. I mean immediately, like really striking—radiant, I must say, and it occured to me that like, of course Alex's friend would be absolutely not that kind of person you would typically get introduced to just anywhere—Lizbeth was certainly no Talladega mistress, let's just say—for one, she was an absolute like vision, for two, she was so steeped or rather by family, proximity, all the above, whatever—or you know, not to mention, with whatever with the brain, temperament, attitude, smarts, sense of humor, like all that, that goes with all that, and when I was used to getting all the attention—now Lizbeth sucked out all of mine, had all of mine now too, big time. One night we were all out late and Lizbeth said I may as well just crash at her place no big deal, like instead of the ordeal of getting back to Alex's alone, and like so late, but I slept in her bed with Lizbeth—I mean nothing really happened, but we slept in our underwear and did snuggle, annnd we may have had a drunken smooch—I had to be up the next day early for a job interview in midtown—but I felt good, or I was just feeling good for once—or responsible also too, or not responsible, just optimistically expectant or something, grateful to even have business in the city for once, that I myself had to attend to. I kissed Lizbeth, just a smooch, smooch on the lips when I left that morning. Lizbeth walked me out in her underwear, and I was feeling on top of the world or in high, stratospheric spirits, ya know—that is, until when I was walking out towards the door after we hugged, Lizbeth in her underwear, or I noticed, LIZBETH opened the door to her roommate's—Jessica's bedroom door, where she was, where Jessica was sleeping and proceeded with what looked like, Lizbeth going to sleep the rest of the morning in bed with Jessica in her panties—Lizbeth brazenly doing this. The apartment door closed and self locked behind me, a wave of terror hit me—I mean, this kind of thing is or was certainly no big deal—but I had, or I had this just sharp, paralyzing panic attack—which seemed incommensurate to the otherwise good and innocent and frankly, productive contact, Lizbeth, that I had otherwise made. Suddenly it occurred to me—I was on my way to an interview for an assistant position for this like airplane peanuts package of production studio in mid town, and I then remembered Lizbeth said something, Lizbeth something snarky to me the night before, but in my drunken expectant bliss, I just like let it kind of go—but now walking in the brittle side walk morning light, I started obsessing about it, just really obsessing about it and turning it around and around in my head—and my paranoia and hangover and despair caused me to just spiral and I don't think I ever made it to the interview—an interview I was like so otherwise, like modestly proud of in front of Lizbeth, and foolishly so—but now I could see, to her it seemed, like, pedestrian, déclasse, and certainly not of her ilk that she and her coterie were steeped in. One night later, I was with Lizbeth and two of her guy friends she kept at bay, when suddenly Piper showed up—Piper was just terrible and maybe now Lizbeth must have sensed something—or no, she did sense something, and then the dynamic quickly soured, or really soured—any questions about me concerning my, or the immediate details of my present, I evaded—giving me even less to say—when surely, I should have been cool, or funny, or regaling my personality to my new maybe friends, which the energy, or that energy I just did not have, or have the power to even in the slightest project now. So we ended up going to Breech on Duane and it was like super packed. I went to the bar and finally got a vods—I remember downing it so fast, I needed another one like immediately, but it took forever to order, and I remember walking around holding the empty glass with just trying to maintain some shabby gait with at least holding something—I mean I thought I was going to die, and I looked and looked around—surprised I had not seen even one of the people we were with, let alone Lizbeth, and then about forty minutes, I just realized they had just simply left me. This was in the winter too. Lizbeth left me! And worse, worse than any normal rebuff— I felt truly cast off from like the entire island of Manhattan. It's or it was, as if Manhattan just like put me in my own little goddamn place, well let me know of what order I was in here now—and I realized, I just realized, event hough I was friends with Alex—Alex, I mean she was also of a higher order too—she was just terribly kind and lovely to me really, but that was not necessarily an indicator, or an indicator of us being in the same set necessarily—I mean, I was a dropout, or just a wanderer, really, ya know—I had, or I just lacked bearing, or direction, let alone not, not or not, or what Lizbeth had been more, significantly or more acclimated in, Lizbeth just too easily set up and assimilated, landed, you know, steeped like English nepo tea. It didn't help that the heat went out in Alex's apartment not to far after, and she was real sore about it all, and even blamed me for not turning off the heat and being gone for an entire day, like, at a time. And so then it went completely South with Alex. It was at that point, or not at that point, maybe it did take a while—but then I moved, moved to LA to be with Kate, and you know, I just got my shit together, myself into a better place and then somehow I fell into an audition—Lizbeth, I mean Lizbeth now, or was, or is just this new thing that just confuses people, like what she does as quote unquote artist or whatever an artist is supposed to be or do in this confusing everybody-does-everything like, time—you know like some lousy article about her in Dazed or something stupid like that—some dumb article about Lizbeth, that could very well be like about the high modernist slop line paintings she putters and plies, that you know practically anyone well in the know could concoct—all buyoed by her beauty, and her privileged means too and all that avalanching superficial popularity. Or you know what it could be? It could be an article about beauty products damn Lizbeth uses, or like the possessions with which she lavishes her house on like that's just somehow some big fat accomplishment, just so story worthy for a magazine article or whatever . . . She also has this stupid gallery with like Hana Liden, or that third rate hipster Dash Snow.
My bloody mold orange mouth practically quivering, trying too hard to over jump into sympathy, over listening to Roon in a river of yattering yeah, yeah, yeahs, totaly, punctuating what she says. I reach around to say something to try to smack myself right on the page with her, Jacques Lacan or Lacan said of the phallus—if it is exposed it is just a penis. Lizbeth sounds like a major dick, though—god I hate New Yorkers.
What I had said didn't register with Rooney, Roon distracted, she teeters,
Ok look—if you begin to hunt for the melodies, the melodies begin to hunt for you? Don'tyathink Jake? Do you believe that, or do you believe that that can actually happen—maybe even, that's, maybe that's what that back there was, Belaine . . .
We were living in a tittering Felipe Motta twink grilled wangsta universe. Five days unshaven, noticing my finger grave nails long and dirty, and I immediately became self conscious, now giving Roon Dogg my divided attention. I felt sudden shards of anxiety rising, thinking about how my fingers are or are not impairing the fretting of the studio sessions. I now had an urge to go to Eckard's to buy a ninety nine cent nail clippers pair with the metal ball buckle string that would never once ever be used in the entire history of the existence of the universe—the key chain fastener, only produced to mark the cost and profit up an extra twelve cents. And it was the artlessness of Love Addicts Anonymous and the non-poetry ontology of its too very logical discourse and writings, that made it a so pityingly limited project that completely kind of misses the entire point and essence of Love all together. Love is dismaying because Love is dismaying, and if you think there's something you can do to bend it your way with some sound logic of application, you may be perhaps missing the point.
And anyone who feels the actual need on their own to work the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous cannot ever deny that they are emotional and intellectual midget.
Contingency: the idea that human relationships aren't logical systems; they're collusions of timing, readiness, chemistry and luck.
Love Addicts Anonymous doesn't work. Instagram relationship coach online seminars don't exactly seem to work—even if, or especially if it is led by a woman. No contact gaming of ex's surely doesn't work—as if she would somehow now be reinvigorated within some system of some new frame of lame you now gone and now she's in the over-stuffed world of all other cockfight dudes. Somehow being able to trigger your ex's dopamine, norepinephrine, serotonin and oxycotin levels in her brain doesn't work—and is also impossible to do you moron. Living your best life without her when she is gone doesn't work—it's like what Adorno said about the world being riddled in contradiction and infinite variation of circumstance, no invented rules can be directly applied—and on top of that, all these will work for other men, just not you. All that, because there's nothing you can do to make someone like you, ha ha ha. All that, because we actually get love without earning or deserving it, and some bumpkin who tells you they know a life hack to women, may very well be onto something, but only as it only applies directly to the conditions hovering around just them and only them (and may very well work with other stans just like them)—two people can do the exact same thing and get wildy different results. If someone gives advice and you take the advice and apply it in the wild and it somehow actually works—that's a very special exception and miracle and not at all reflective of the dominant pervasive condition. Be rude to a girl—it still won't work. Give a girl tall two orgasms in one night—it still won't work. Make her jealous (if that's even possible, which for you, it is not)—it still won't work. Most things in life do not work out, and for the thousands of possible suitors a woman meets in her life maybe it "works out" with just 20 of those. If you are able to spend a span of time with someone special, consider yourself very lucky, because love in life is precious and special and beyond valuable. Love is a miracle that cannot be earned.
All Roony's lyrics was basically all saying was, the meaning of life is you ain't never gonna get what you want, and it's under such in-contingency, that powers and feeds creation and all existence. Not a totally crazy supposition—that's basically in line with what the Buddhists believe. Ask a snake, ask a cow, ask a mosquito.
Roon was holding an unsmoked cig like it was a putt putt golf scorecard pencil—Roon, not aware that my mind neurotic place somewhere else now. She then remembered to light up, inhaled and then exhaled, and the smoke came out of her pursed mouth in a cool economical jet.
Rooney was so self centered though pretty much, she just talked about herself and had exactly a crumb of attention to lavish whenever I mentioned something little about myself, brought forth in the form of an ah, before swiftly resuming back to talking about herself some more. But boy she sure did love talking about her white family, regaled in the whiteness of her patrilineage lineage (German! Irish! and you're not going to believe this. . . Scandinavian!), regaled in subtle but specific way, that once you clocked it, it was like being in a Rooney Mara marvel fan fiction novel.
Rooney, at the end of the day, just another white girl obsessed with herself practically, Anyways, Jake, anyways—I've always been or just been a natural born fatalist, even, or when I was, was a little girl. Even as a little girl I felt like existence—existance in and of itself seemed or listen, it just seemed just so, so unlikely, and naturally, non-existence would seem like just more— likely, ya know. That's that, or that's just how I have always viewed like everything, or everything, actually? At the end of the day, it seems, or it always just seems to me that an address written cursive on a letter will never arrive because a postman reading cursive seems impossible to engineer. I always just write my envelopey addresses in strict stick letters . . .
The sangria hitting, and I wanted more and the pitcher was half empty. I just stood up uselessly, knowing there is no extra buzz.
I was trying to explain to Rooney that I coined the term snorkeling, for when you do a bump of coke and you rush immediately to the sink and shove water up your nose—I was trying to explain to her that I like made that up, but she wasn't never listening. Now it was like any little old thing I could say could annoy Roon.
Hoarfrost Roon, slumped in her bad posture, changes the subject again, Was that, or that Theresa person, was that, was she our first like, heckler?
Rooney was certainly never an enemy to have—a hidden artist of singular talent, even well beyond what her very viable acting demonstrated (acting is not art), her acting, which that in and of itself was extraordinary, and if not at all ever witnessed, could not have ever been believed, practically.
But this, whatever this was, Population Ex seemed to be where Rooney felt the most comfortable anyways, and it was like this let me be misunderstood world she so sought to parry in her lyrics. You either like got it or you don't, babes.
The songs really came out in some scribbling rustle run through though practically, you could try to trace up in the tabs by beam or snonk up the song—but then when seeing it fretted live, well . . . the song will still be ungraspable—like projecting a photo onto paper and trying to trace the faint border where the edges of the image bleed dimly indecipherable.
Joaquim at the helm—charioteer of the sessions, and I really didn't want to let him down now. Joaquim wasso cool though—I was thankful to be in creative partnership with, honored to be with him, really.
Joaquim whipping Rooney into bleating shape, Roon rhapsodically looming through a spectral sheet robe of misting sound, the entire breeze now belonging entirely to her . . .
Joaquin points to the red battleship recording light near the window, his other hand holding his headphones keeping them secure, he punches in, Rooney, tell me about water—Ok go.
Slave trade Rooney wheezing out, Not all water is created equal,
Okay cut. Rooney, tell me about the energy bill—Ok go.
Water and electricity always mix,
Okay cut. Rooney, tell me all that you know—Ok go.
Water never bleeds,
Okay cut. Tell me what you know—Ok, go.
Desire exceeds need now when Roon roons, Water never bleeds,
Okay cut. Tell me the only thing you know—Ok go.
Water only sheds,
Okay cut. Tell me, tell me, about the worst, the worst thing you have ever done—Ok go.
Water only buckles, you don't need water for drinks,
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Band
Population Ex
Title
Duck You On Like Gable Dormer EP
Cat. No.
MOLE 327
Label
Blue Medicine
Track Listing
Sharkie Machine
Sucker for a Pretty Face
Permanent Milk
Goin' Back to Art School
No Nite Stand
I'll Know It When I See It
Note: The above song titles are as listed on the sleeve.
Japanese version includes bonus track—All The Right Pussy (Goin' To All The Wrong People)
Country of Issue
USA/UK/France/Japan
Format
Vinyl CD Tape Streamer
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When I received a promotional copy, of R Mara and J Phoenix's EP, Duck You On Like Gable Dormer, for their new band, Population Ex, I must admit I immediately winced at the prospect of such assignment—as any dogged Dog Star Hollywood Vampires project by actors carries a certain given and well assumed bathotic weight, my editor giving me such assignment, also knowing this—added when she handed it off to me, It's actually pretty decent. And after giving it a couple of listens—I will say, actually it's good—it's really fucking good. On the surface, think Cass McCombs', I Cannot Lie, but Indier, like Nigh Light Norhill Trebuchet or early Imperial Teen, but then Indier than that, a windsome dagger plunging subterranean dark, a shark bite hell ride romp through Universal Studios—and about as polite as knife plunging in the murk of alley way in Portsmouth. Roon doesn't hide behind a third fret guitar capo with two or three miming, barely playing left hand shapes to justify her singing—Rooney doesn't play guitar at all, mostly she just sings in some scowling, haunting contralto, seems to pen a lot if not all their memorable lyrics—something naive about her morbid approach, but also in the parlance of Population Ex's press release—It's not so much as an EP written or composed, then as exorcism, more like summoned situation rising over like fog over panty moist dead grave and Duck You On Like Gable Dormer listens like the self dug shallow grave result of such kind of culmination and seemingly happenstance social dynamic. (The outtake incidental banter alone, between tracks is perfect, in a way that makes Wu Tang Clan's 36 Chambers between-song-banter seem contrived from out of comic book for nine year old.) Cold, harsh echoing drums at the center of the mix, circular guitars to pissy bass lines played by Jake Belaine (also listed contributing noise maker of Population Ex is Rooney's sister, Kate Mara). If there's anyway, you will turn around, when you turn around, when you turn around, I'll know when I see—absolutely perfect— I'm getting choked up writing this—who knew there was Roon all along?? Who knew it was Rooney Mara??? And who knew that this would come out of Los Angeles and of all times NOW! Weather you are in love with her or not, this most definitely promises generative future activity and inspired action possibly re-booting the small LA scene. This is good news, this is very good news.
Rooney: This isn't—this isn't gonna be like some normie Ezra Furman Danger Mouse like Beach House Beach Fossils Brian Jonestown Massacre normie shit.
Joaquin: No, no, no,
Rooney: Sharkie Machine, is or is incidental cinematic reference?—I saw or I saw Sharkie Machine somewhere or something like that and wrote it down, I think, or I saw something, maybe it was Shark or Shark, or just Machine, and I changed it on the spot when I wrote it down—anyways, it's the front loaded mid tempo track, really deliver right away. It's only incidental that it kinda references Bone Machine, but it's not explicit or purposeful, at all really, I think. Bone Machine is about Viperess, right? But the chorus is the title inverting on itself, to where the Viper not Kim Deal, is actually singing, assaulting straight like back at you that you have like a little member.
(Rooney singing) Your bone got a little machineee . . .
Joaquin: Sharkie Machine though makes, think—Jaws, Jaws, or the Jaws ride at Disney's World, a fun LA kinda romper room ride. But it's not that fun, or right Rooney . . .
Rooney: It's originally supposed to, or was supposed to be perilously frightening, or like your'e in the movie Jaws? Or supposed to be willfully frightening, though maybe just at first? A horror movie about swimming in the sea, though? Like, just stay out of the ocean, I always thought! Or coming to Los Angeles just to get frightened. But the song does have a like plushyness to it—like, or I was thinking about a souvenir of a plushy sharky at Sea World. And it's all really not that scary—it is actually boring and robotically mundane, like, right after you see it for the first time. Or I mean, you can only see it once?
Jake: I mean I really don't think it sounds too much like, thudding, Bone Machine. I mean that was, that was a miracle of a song, actually if you think about it—but it's like, like, the time and place we are at with Rn'R death right now, this dead phase—this or that song, or the song now ain't allowed the time or contemplation once given to a Bone Machine then, like at the time. And because songs don't have given emotional space, they cannot flourish like they used to, in a way we always expected to be given, or att least back then. The audience isn't conditioned, or not conditioned, just not as ready as the audience was back then, when coming down off being bombarded arpeggio'd metal age, or how about, or what about, how collective temperament is forged even? No one is buying band posters, no one is watching music tv, no one is sneaking out and going out to clubs, no one is gatekeeping in reviews, no one's buying tapestries. And actually it's bad now, or much worse, because there is no temperament forged—only divided attention, crack hit braying hard hitting hissing user generated ant-anti-art bracing, in debilitating pluralism tandem of self reducing progression of quote un-quote logical operations—and it's all anyone got emotional time for now, where attraction to novelty is the cardinal and self perpetuating value. Someone glamorous glue like Nick Ronson getting replaced by a master of ceremony hat stan that is more suited to manage a sporting supplies warehouse than produce sublimation of nuance of emotion—death of artist, death of poet. All so RAPACOLAPSE—like Modernism in the nineteen seventies, dominant but dead.
Rooney: Well ant art is supposed to be good, right? Like ant art is regarded by like critics and theorists as like, automatically good.
Jake: Not ant art—termite art, I mean termite art. But yeah, you're right.
Interviewer: Sharkie Machine reminds me, or reminds me of the opening track My Bloody Valentine's Soft as Snow (But Warm Inside), the opener from 1988's Isn't Anything.
Jake: That's awesome!
Rooney: That's a pretty great compliment! Thank you!
Jake: Yeah, I could see that—we took a sound, or what, we made a sound that sounds like a starship reving up before imperial take-off mode, and used that looping as the theme, or main theme of the track—is that what that's called?
Joaquin: Yeah, we were thinking or were thinking, think of the album in cinematic terms also, obviously . . .
Rooney: Obviously?
Jake: Well the star ship sample, also tethered or was tethered to musical signature of the track—so it has like that immediate kind of rooooving.
Joaquin: But I always says Rock n' Roll don't need no musical notation—just frets and hand signals. We try to keep it down in the studio constantly also too, so we have some place to go, so it jumps out stereo. We are going to try to keep it down, retrain ourselves on stage when we hit the road, so the songs when performed have somewhere else to go . . .
Rooney: Jumps like a building suicide—
Jake: Live like a suicide. This song though is like, is like, or makes me think subsuming inside some alien energy cathedral bank type thing in another solar system,
Joaquin: Again, cosmopolitan pulsing. Or future cosmopolitan—like a different version of William Basinski's Disintegration loops—but the pop or rock version, or some post post pop post punk post something version. It's really the—
Jake: City pulse, a vision of the idealized city pulse, at least—some self churning abstraction in the background, that you wish was reified—like in a utopia they are automatically playing Stereolab at Wells Fargo or something . . .
Rooney: Yeah, yeah, some spiritual secular alien economic pulse that doesn't exist on earth, or like some more, more sophisticated ideal retail collective alien-commune pulse that surely doesn't really exist at all—maybe it has somewhere, but it's probably never existed here. (laughs)
Joaquin: It's kind of like when's you first arrive to a city on a trip—and you find yourself or find yourself lucky in the immediate inside crux cherry area of day economic.
Roonie: The actual sunny real estate corner of day—yeah, the juice of the day, like Joaquin said.
Joaquin: Right, you feel like, like— you are in it, definitely—
Roonie: It's expediency, or it's well expedient—but it's so short and then it's over.
Interviewer: It seems important to me that there are moments in the songs where you can almost see through them.
Jake: Yeah, the gaps are important.
Joaquin: Songs can be many things also—a solace from heartache, a release valve from anger, an illusion to attach some feeling of closure in a world that offers very little closure . . .
Rooney: Also a song can also be a lottery ticket . . .
Jake: Yeah, like finding a thousand bucks on the ground . . .
Interviewer: You said earlier before the interview about materializing air, which is a peculiar way to think in terms of a song, or a way rarely addressed by musicians.
Joaquin: I want listeners to pass into it. I want them to go into the song. Something there, beyond the recording and the audio equipment—some third thing. Looking at a recording in those terms, where it becomes closer to like a portal—not a total portal of course, but a portal nonetheless. Space and time become challenged, music at its best does that anyways, we wanted to stretch those limits and like Rooney was saying songs can be many things, maybe this could be a new many thing . . .
Interviewer: Okay, Sucker For A Pretty Face,
Rooney: When he was a teenage boy, something got stuck in his throat . . .
Joaquin: Sucker for a pretty face is . . .
Rooney: It makes my think sloppy . . .
Joaquin: Yeah, just a sloppy joe kinda kisss—
Jake: Well, it does mean you are a sucker for a pretty face.
Joaquin: Yeah, but its shadow meaning, its real meaning, its true meaning, is is the pretty face is reserved for the sucker—the kook. The pretty face is for the sucker—sucker meaning kook.
Jake: Right, like that beautiful girls are a kook magnet, but also you do actually suck on a pretty face . . .
Joaquin: Yeah, or also maybe, more pointedly—a beautiful girl can't be out foxed—foxier than her romantic partner, there's that too . . .
Rooney: Bingo.
Jake: And it's only gotten worse.
Rooney: That being said—Sucker For A Pretty Face is a short, blatant rip off of The Queers, Get Over You, which is also an Undertones cover.
Jake: The lacking of self awareness women have in choosing their suitors and then having to listen to them pontificating on it in schooling you on what they think they actually want, and then you see all the rando rules who they end up with, time and time again, that only confirm precisely what you were thinking before they even tried to school you on it . . .
Interviewer: Permanent Milk,
Joaquin: Don't make fun of daddy's voice . . .
Rooney: Permanent Milk is let's see . . .
Jake: Permanent Milk was Rooney's song title.
Joaquin: Where does that title come from Rooney?
Rooney: Permanent Milk has a definite meaning—is a milk that you can put on a saucer outside in the sun and it never blanches or bleaches and bugs stay away from it and you can come back a year later and drink it and it tastes even better, like sugar cereal dregs.
Jake: But also, Permanent Milk is what everyone in Los Angeles wants.
Joaquin: Yes, not to get out of bed until eleven at night before headlining a sold out stadium.
Rooney: Never have to work another day.
Joaquin: The song has a lot of defects, but knows how to conceal them all. Permanent Milk.
Interviewer: Goin' Back to Art School,
Jake: Joaquin was or he plays or he knows these little wooglie fragments on the piano. They're really silly and hilarious. The impetus for the EP is or was us just recording Joaquin play these really silly little piano parts, kinda honky tonky, ya know—and again, real funny too. You get a feeling Joaquin was just like grounded a lot as a kid for getting in trouble—he was a bad kid, and he was always grounded and always bored and messed around on these piano. We only used a tiny sample—but recording these fragments was the impetus for Dormers.
Joaquin: I was grounded! But Going Back To Art School—it's like an artist that is getting no action. They are invited to nothing. They are in nothing. So out of a misguided doubling down or over-think—they decide to just cave in and go back to art school.
Rooney: Some people have a wonderful experience in art school.
Joaquin: Right, though—totally.
Rooney: They do, but that's in the past or was like in the past—the same old past, or tool box.
Joaquin: A tool's toolbox, you ain't never gonna learn anything in art school really—except art history. It's not like you are going to discover plutonium there.
Jake: At the end of the day, most artists just cling to that one thing they can do—or just double down on it.
Joaquin: You can't go back to art school!
Rooney: Right, and you can't go back to art school.
Jake: But really, the song is limitations or like limitations, and despite, or like our very best intentions and efforts and all, we are our own barrier holding ourselves back unwittingly—as well as like other people too who also work against all our own best interests. And then circumstance also, then here's circumstance also too ya know, circumstance also does not let you . . . and when it actually does work in your favor, you can't see it now because, because you are so jaded and you don't even take the opportunity. What hath God wrought, what a great cosmic misalignment!
Rooney: Dadaism sought to abolish art without realizing it, Surrealism sought to realize art without abolishing it and all that jazz too . . .
Joaquim: Dadaism and Surrealism where mostly nonsense projects, anyways though—Jurgen Habermas said something like, like, nothing remains from a desublimated meaning or a destructive form—an emancipatory effect does not necessarily follow. And Roonie, quit actin' like you went to art school! Well anyways, that being said, after this EP drops, we are gonna be sending everybody . . . back to art school.
Interviewer: No Nite Stand,
Jake: No Nite Stand is a one night stand minus one one night stand . . .
Rooney: Only a mattress on the floor—like, or as if that's a necessarily bad thing. Women dog on men online now for having a mattress on the floor all the time now. I don't understand the whole fuss . . .
Joaquin: Heavy Metal skinny leather in 1980, morphing into all of James Hatfield's midlife crisis Von Dutch bro-totrcycle isms by the mid-aughts . . .
Jake: Or I was thinking abstractly in terms of this like, what about when you are at a music festival out of town with a girl you are barely dating, and you are also with other people the entire time and you listen, just have to listen, or just have to listen to the things she says out loud in front of her friends, which seems now to so vehemently exist outside of any conception of you now and even against all your intrigue for them. They may say something cute, that you even might want to appreciate—but you can't tell if that cute is even in synch now with your interests, and they could actually now be against your direct interests and dignity, and you are a shill for trying to connect in good faith with whatever she says now. You keep doing this, because you are in a position where you are trapped and basically have no choice, and there's probably no room for you to be a dick, and you get slowly whittled down in front of the group, her friends, and you are now as interchangeable as a spark plug. Drained of life like a cold cup of coffee. Run into the sand. Then before you know it, she's drunk spitting out, advancing into exuding all this wild shit that's a now totally direct threat to all your immediate interests with her, but you just let it go without saying anything, or simply not wanting to start a fuss—she's scoping people out openly, talking about who she fucks or wants to fuck—just looses all sense of decorum the drunker she gets. The most lowly position to be in in a social setting, surely—No Nite Sand. A gun to your head they have, be too nice they pull it, defend yourself they pull it—they got a gun to your head, anyone besides you seems attractive now, and Baby, when you gonna finally pull the trigger.
Joaquin: Anyways, our chances in this world are negated by our very desire to be kind, that's how the world runs—but sometimes there's breaks and grace and kindness and exception. . .
Interviewer: I'll Know It When I See It,
Rooney: I'll Know It When I See It, is Jake's, Jake's song—it was actually the last song we recorded, and we didn't necessarily plan on recording it, like. Jake just chording in the studio on blue acoustic, just chewing the rag . . .
Jake: I'll Know It When I See It—yeah. It's the only song I can play in standard—I can't play standard, well, it's standard dropped a half step down at least, I still can't play standard though.
Rooney: It's like, what, real . . . elegiac.
Joaquin: All the songs brought us to this bride bare stripped bridge by her suitors down bad ballad, that we didn't never plan on, or never didn't plan on recording.
Jake: I'll know it when, I'll know it when, I'll know it when—that being said, it's a blatant rip off of Jesus and Mary Chain's, About You— closer on Darklands.
Jake: Yeah—also there's nothing you can do to get love . . .
Rooney: There's something bleed about the rain . . .
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