Jayan Bertrand is the singer and guitarist for the Miami-based band Seafoam Walls; Ruban Nielson is the New Zealand-born, Portland, OR-based frontman of Unknown Mortal Orchestra. Earlier this month, the former tourmates got on Zoom to catch up about David Lynch, political songwriting, the latest Seafoam Walls record — last year’s Standing Too Close To The Elephant In The Room — and more.
— Annie Fell, Editor-in-chief, Talkhouse Music
Jayan Bertrand: How are you doing, man?
Ruban Nielson: Alright. It’s good to talk to you. How’ve you been?
Jayan: I’ve been working a lot, and not on music, unfortunately.
Ruban: That can be good though, to take a break. Remind yourself that it’s fun. How’s it been since the record came out?
Jayan: It’s been good.
Ruban: Between the first and second record, is it fair to say that I heard some more politics come into it? Maybe not direct politics, like Dead Kennedys kind of political songs, but coming to realizations about what makes our society tick — I can hear a lot of that in this record that I didn’t hear as much in the first record.
Jayan: You know, it’s weird — the timing between these two records in terms of when these songs were written is not that far apart. I’m 33 now, and I wrote some of these songs in my 20s.
There was a period where I was like, “Maybe if I just be positive, things will turn around.” And then at some point I was like, “OK, I have to find a way to say this without the aggression of, like, the Dead Kennedys or Rage Against the Machine.”
Ruban: Yeah. Isn’t it strange, though, that for a long time now, there’s been a lot to say in that mode? Especially when Trump got in the first time, people would say, “There’s gonna be some great punk music that’s going to come out of this era.” But I kind of feel as if it’s not the expression of this generation to create music that directly tackles this stuff. It’s not what the kids are gravitating towards. And it is hard to write political songs. Whenever I’ve noticed that something slightly political gets into my music, I find it a little bit cringe. And I’ve been finding that the way that you write your songs and address these things feels natural, which is a gift. It’s a good thing to be able to do.
With [David] Lynch recently dying, I’ve been thinking about that. Because for a long time, I thought he was this artist that was expressing some dark truth about America — some kind of combination of the light and dark of this culture specifically. [He has these] kind of mythical ideas about America that are really more true than a lot of political commentary. You would learn a lot more about the country by watching his movies, in some ways. But as a person, [Lynch] is sort of this apolitical dude. He would not really say that much about politics. But it’s not our job to necessarily always directly address anger at our system; we’re supposed to record something that’s deeper than that, something that will survive beyond these troubles. We’re kind of powerless to change anything, but we record record the way we feel. And sometimes I feel like we’re recording the way we feel for other people too. It’s not just our feelings. We’re just little dudes recording the way we feel, and then that somehow relates to other people, is useful to other people. [Laughs.]
Jayan: It’s why I write the way that I do. I try to keep my lyrics very general. I’m not bringing a lot of personal stories to my music just so that my unique experiences don’t isolate anyone listening. And that’s kind of the theme of this album, that there is a common denominator to all of our struggles, and it’s going to take some cross-sourcing information between all of our different demographics and communities to find that common denominator. And even what you were saying with recording — it’s what art has always been. Whether you want to get political or not, you’re living in that turmoil, and you’re going to give your account of how that turmoil is affecting you. You might be up or you might be in the slums, but there’s still an accounted detail for for that.
Ruban: Yeah. When musicians talk about politics, we often sound pretty dumb. Not a lot of artists are good at the commentary, or any kind of academic analysis of what’s going on. Which I think is the way it should be. I don’t think that we stand on the sidelines commenting on politics in that way. We just are political beasts. Like, you can look at us anthropologically; we are in the mix, we’re in the age that we live in, and that comes out in the genres that we play, it comes out in the types of language we use. So we aren’t on the sidelines able to see the big picture, we’re just describing what it’s like being lost inside it. And I think the most political thing we are is just citizens, like a normal dude just walking around. But being able to hear somebody’s thoughts in the form of music, it can be quite epic and it makes you think, “Oh, this is something really sophisticated going on here.” But really, it’s just being able to hear somebody’s feelings. Which is pretty extraordinary, but everybody has feelings. It’s just that not everybody gets to externalize them through art or music or whatever.
Jayan: Yeah. I mean, that’s what was so interesting about bedroom pop and that whole era, where it completely removed the necessity of having to go to some major recording studio or get a deal to make it to a studio. It made sharing music so much more accessible.
Ruban: Yeah. It’s funny that, in a way, it doesn’t matter what genre you make, that process of being able to record these quite ambitious albums in your house is kind of the most modern thing ever. My references and the things that I try to emulate are from the ‘70s, a lot of music that was made before I was born. And yet the way that I got to build my career is ultra-modern because I never really recorded in a professional studio until much later. And it’s kind of the same thing, where it doesn’t matter what you think you’re doing — you’re a product of your time. Making records at home is a massive democratizing factor, and it’s being able to make records in this time.
Sometimes I think, I like ‘70s, but would I have had the opportunity to make a record in the ‘70s? I don’t know if I would have been able to navigate that socially or politically. A lot of it probably had to do with luck — who you knew, and getting in with the record companies so that you can get your budget together. I suppose it’s the same in the film world now, where anybody can make a movie if they really want to. You have a laptop and an iPhone, you can make a movie if you’ve got a story to story to tell. But they have the same problem that we have, where the stuff proliferates, but it makes you wonder, Does any of it matter as much? I guess the whole idea of having a budget and having this company invest in you, and then having less albums made in general, meant that each album was somewhat more epic as a kind of event. But I like the era that we live in for that reason. I like being able to just get on with making an album without having to get too many people on board. Because I’m not particularly good at that stuff, the social side of trying to convince people, “You should get behind what I’m doing.” Sometimes that’s what being in a band is about, about rallying the troops. It’s good to be able to do that, but it’s also good to be able to get on with it in secret. You know what I mean?
Jayan: Yeah. That definitely helped having Dion [Kerr] in our corner for both of those records [Standing… and 2021’s XVI]. He engineered both of them at his at his garage.
Ruban: Yeah, that’s right. I’ve seen footage of you guys playing together in the house.
Jayan: Yeah, the infamous garage. He’s a huge proponent of doing things in-house.
Ruban: Can you explain to people what the band’s makeup is?
Jayan: I play guitar and write the lyrics, I sing. Dion plays guitar, does some on-stage and studio engineering as well. Josh [Ewers] plays bass and does backup vocals, and Josue [Vargas] plays the sample drums.
Ruban: One of the most remarkable things about the band, I think, is that you hear the record and you think, Oh, it’s a cool rock band. But then to see you live — there’s something about the sample drums and the way that the four of you line up in a straight line, it makes you sound really different. But not in an electronic kind of way. The dynamic is still the dynamic of a rock band. But I think that’s really unique. When we had you guys on tour, I think the crowds really responded to having not seen or not heard that before. It’s sort of impossible to convey what you guys are like as a live band, because you’re a really tight live band, and you play like a band. The drums are still raw — they still feel human.
Jayan: Yeah. That spawned from Dion and I just being in the studio thinking, “OK, we’ve come up with all the drums that we could between the two of us on a drum kit, and it still feels like it’s missing something.” So we thought to add that to just beef it up a bit. And that’s how we’ve been doing it ever since.
Ruban: Necessity is the mother of invention, kind of scenario.
Jayan: Yeah. And the first jam session that Josue and I had, he was playing the drums on a keyboard — like, he didn’t even have the MPC yet. And I was like, “This is fucking crazy.” I was already impressed with the sound of that. So I was like, “OK, let’s fucking do this.”
Ruban: That’s really cool. I think it really works with you guys. It just suits your musicality. And I mean, apart from anything else, because I’m a big road dog touring person, the logistics of not having to get a drum kit is kind of genius. [Laughs.]
Jayan: Every sound guy is like, “Hell yeah.”
Ruban: The times that we live in, there’s a kind of Squid Game survival thing going on with musicians where, more than ever, part of it is like: can you keep the band on the road? Can you actually survive as a band, as a business? And people don’t really talk enough about those logistical things. I think one of the problems with the band is that, logistically, it’s a lot more difficult than a DJ, you know?
Jayan: Yeah.
Ruban: I mean, I’ve never toured as a DJ, but I’m sure a DJ can tour in a hatchback. Whereas a band, if you’ve got four or five guys, and then you got drum kits and amps, you need trailers and vans, and all this stuff costs money. And everybody’s trying to take time off work. The Squid Game aspect of it becomes pretty intense. But I came up at a time when the survival aspect was part of what people prided themselves on. So as things get harder, I know it’s not a perfect situation — it’s a terrible thing that artists can’t make enough money to sustain themselves a lot of the time — but if you can make it work, then I think it should be a huge source of pride. The system starts to count against you. The way things are set up is hard. But you can kind of make it work through what artists are supposed to have, which is creative thinking, problem solving abilities.
Jayan: Yeah. I mean, nowadays, it’s a lot of hats to wear at once. With all the accessibility came kind of a trade-off like, “OK, if everyone can enter the market, you’re now responsible for everything else a label might have been doing.”
Ruban: Yeah. I was going to ask you about your parents — your musical family — because we haven’t talked about that before.
Jayan: Oh, yeah. I still feel really bad for losing their demo. I had a cassette tape of their songs, and it was one of my favorite things to listen to.
Ruban: I had a cassette tape like that, with my mom singing. My mom was in a Hawaiian group with her brothers. They toured Japan when I was a baby, and they had a cassette tape of their set, and it was really nice. I used to listen to it when I was a kid, and I was really bummed out that we just don’t have it anymore. Because it was just one cassette, and if you lose that cassette, it’s gone forever.
Jayan: Yeah, that shit tears me up.
Ruban: What style of music did they play? What was the band like?
Jayan: They played a style called rasin. It’s like a blend of ‘80s hard rock, I guess, and traditional African and Haitian drumming.
Ruban: That sounds amazing. [Laughs.]
Jayan: Yeah. And most of the music was pretty politically charged. They were always talking about the conditions of the political system back in Haiti and how it was affecting their people, and they were always preaching for freedom and revolution. So that’s kind of why my music also contains that messaging as well. I mean, I feel like in almost every Haitian household, they’re always playing the news from Haiti. And it’s been in turmoil for a while, so there’s always a struggle to change things.
Ruban: Do you ever think about how that makes its way into Seafoam Walls? Obviously we’ve been talking about lyrically, but I was thinking more musically, just in terms of the way it sounds, the way you play guitar.
Jayan: Definitely. Actually, my first guitar teacher was the guitarist from my parents’ band. He was a huge George Benson fan, so I picked up on some of his jazz chops. But I guess the thing that I picked up most from my parents’ band was the messaging and the rhythms. I really, really love the rhythms. It’s one of my favorite things to explore, especially trying to take it from a 4/4 meter and try to warp it into something odd. Just give it a cool swing.
Ruban: That’s cool. That’s one of the things I like about Seafoam Walls, there’s this complicated musical stuff, angular chord changes and angular rhythmic things that happen, but it doesn’t feel proggy and nerdy. It still feels accessible. Which I think is really important to me in music — no matter how experimental or sophisticated the music is, I would prefer it come under the umbrella of pop music somehow. I think all the best music, no matter how sophisticated it is, has that element of accessibility, or just ideas that are so strong that they don’t sound noodly. I think that no matter how crazy your music gets, if the ideas are strong enough, it’ll feel catchy. And I think your music has that. No matter how crazy it gets, it has a natural kind of catchiness. It sticks in your head.
Well, my family’s probably going to have dinner soon, so I suppose I should go.
Jayan: It was great talking to you, man.
Ruban: I’ll see you out there. We should do some more shows. It’ll be fun.
Jayan: Hell yeah.
(Photo Credit: left, Christopher Nazon)