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julialouisdreyfest · 2 years

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Hey, ily! Interview

Q: First off, for the people, in your own words, who are you, what do you play, where are you from, and what is the name of your band?

A: I'm Caleb Haynes, I play guitar and do something sort of similar to a worse version of singing. Hittin' the skins and making dad jokes in our band is Conner Haman! Who happens to be married to our incredible synth player and cat-lover, Skyy Haman! Next up is my mortal enemy, Trevin Baker, who also shreds guitar in our band. Lastly, the elusive Stephen Redmond, not much is known about him, just that every now and then he shows up to band practice with his Bass.

Q: Congrats on Psychokinetic Love Songs! It rocks! People should buy it! Where’d you guys record it? How’d you link up with the Lonely Ghost folks?

A: Thank you so much! We're pretty proud of it. We recorded drums with our good friend Phil Yanzick at Voodoo Studios in Butte, MT! We recorded everything else ourselves and then had him mix the whole dang thing! He did a stellar job! Everyone give him work NOW! We met Lonely Ghost where we meet everyone else, Twitter.com! They said they liked our music and we said "Thanks!", and the rest is history.

Q: You guys toured with Thank You, I’m Sorry in April? That must have been a wild time! Two questions- how did you guys hook up with them? And second- what is the most disgusting thing you ate on that tour?

A: That tour was pretty off the chain! If I could, I would do it all over again! Thank You, I'm Sorry and us met over, again, Twitter.com. Their singer, Lleen, said they liked our music and we said, "Thanks! We like your music too!". The tour idea kind of started as a joke but before too long became a reality. Honestly, we ate basically only the usual. Stephen did eat a gas station chili dog that had him spew on the road, that was pretty gnarly.

Q: I know the exercise of putting bands in genre boxes is dumb and a waste of time, and you guys are especially difficult to put into a genre box (which is undeniably a objectively good thing) so I’m gonna just throw out a few made-up genres, and let me know how much you think they apply to you-

Zindie Nu-Twee A: Yeah, I feel like this one is pretty fair, though our guitar tones aren't as pretty as all the classic Twee bands, hopefully someday though!

Post Rawr Revival A: Yeah, This one all the way.

Zindie Rock A: Lots of people describe us as "[insert band name here] but for zoomers", so this one is pretty accurate too.

Grunge A: Y'know when we turn 35 and give up on this whole synth emo thing the first thing we will probably do is become a grunge band. But like, the In Utero type of grunge, y'know?

Emo(ticon) Pop A: Oh 100%, I love this one.

XxSkramzxX A: I think we kind of lost our Skramz influence a bit, which is sad, I wanna get back there soon though. (Like Zoomer Indie…. See what i did there?? Ehh? Ehh??)

Q: There’s a bit of cross-pollination/member sharing between a few bands in the greater Hey, Ily sphere, specifically Gray Joy and Rookie Card- How would you explain the differences in the visions and sounds of each of those bands, and the songwriting process differences for each of those bands?

A: It's kind of funny, I think all of these bands are different flavors of emo. Most of the time in these bands, the front-person will come to band practice with a few riffs (in Gray Joy's case, several full length albums.) and the rest of the band will use them to create music that you can actually hear with your ears! I think I can safely say that Hey, ily! is becoming the most collaborative of the three, which can get pretty gnarly when five people are trying to figure out where a song should go at the same time, but I think it's working out!

Q: You guys got a “certifiable banger”, in the song DigitalLung.EXE… it sorta blew up on Spotify about a year ago, if I’m not mistaken… at what point did you say “holy shit this song is blowing up!” and what was that like? Do you have any insights as to why it blew up so much, other than being a certifiable banger?

A: The feeling of a song "blowing up", is pretty crazy. Lots of excitement, but also lots of "What if we never top this?" type thoughts. Still though, the feeling of more than just close friends listening to our music is an incredible high. Anyone reading this who hasn't yet, start a band, buy a microphone, write, record, and release music. I don't really know why it blew up, I think it could have something to do with the lyrics. I'm like, crazy addicted to the internet. It sucks a lot, but I think it's something that a lot of people these days can relate to, and I don't think it gets talked about nearly enough. I still find that to be my most personal song Hey ily! has put out. I think it was the first time I was ever able to take a step back and say. "Wow, all I do is sit on my phone everyday, this is a real issue and I need to get back to living life again."

Q: You guys played this most recent Treefort festival in Boise! How was that! I heard uncle Ty went with you to keep an eye on your shenanigans- I hope you didn’t give him too hard a time? He needs his sleep!!!

A: Treefort was an incredible experience in every way imaginable. We made so many friends, saw so many bands, ate tons of great food (Shoutout Pie Hole). We hope we get to come back next year! I think every band deserves to have Ty Hermie to go road trippin' with them. We seriously would not want to have had that experience with any other guy. Shoutout Ty!

Q: A few years ago I saw Crying open for Los Campesinos! and looking back, that show was basically your band, split in two, and then multiplied by three or four- is this fair? Are you guys fans of either of those bands? Am I dating myself here? Are Los Campesinos! an old person band? Am I old???

A: Wow, I'm seriously jealous you got to see that. It's funny you ask, those are two of my favorite bands in the whole world! Not to brag, but Los Camp! is totally our mutual on twitter. Gareth even put one of our songs on his rotation playlist on spotify! Okay, maybe that last part might've been a brag, a little one though. Also, yeah you're old, killer music taste though!

Q: Trevin- what kind of minivan do you have again? And how do you like it? Does it have a name?

A: It is a chrysler town and country. I do not like it very much. It’s given me a lot of guff and often feels like it’s about to fall apart. It has no name.

Q: Over/Under - yes, we all hate pitchfork, and yes, this is like… “their thing” but dammit! It’s too much fun not to play! I will give you a word/thing/idea, and you just have to say if you think it is underrated or overrated, and feel free to expound on your reasoning as much as you’d like, or not at all!

A: Oh, this is gonna be fun!

The Sims A: Overrated - Don't get me wrong, I love making a family of ugly-ass Sims and messing with their lives irreparably, but jeez, everyone and their moms (especially their moms) own those games!

Shipton's Big R A: Underrated - Trevin is a bit of a handyman, fixing up and building guitars all the time. So for T-dawg, the R in Shipton's Big R stands for "Really helpful"!

Taco Bell A: Underrated - Okay I know literally everyone eats at Taco Bell, but even if all anyone could eat ever was T-bell, it would still be underrated.

Green Day A: Depends - Listen, Anything before Insomniac? Lofi pop punk gold. Anything after? Slowly declines in quality and exceeds in overrated-ness. Except for American Idiot, still a classic.

Aqua Teen Hunger Force A: Underrated - I really hate looking at this show, but the humor is just so beyond stupid that, like, how can you NOT adore it?

HBO's Euphoria A: Overrated - If I could be serious for a sec, I like how progressive it is in terms of casting and all that jazz, but people will absolutely not shut the hell up about it! I gave it a try, it really is just, alright.

Football (Soccer) A: Underrated - Probably the best sport, and somehow always surpassed by Football (Football). Lame!

American Football (the sport) A: Overrated - Lame!

American Football (the band) A: Underrated - Probably one of my favorite bands, and the one that got me introduced into emo! They do not give enough credit, especially their records after their debut! I know Never Meant is like, the big emo meme but they are so much more than that song!

Americans who refer to soccer as "Football" A: Overrated - Do they think they are better than me?

The Yellowstone County Fair A: Overrated - I don't know, it just seems, kinda sad to me. Like, it's right across the street from where a much bigger and cooler fair is held. Although maybe that means I should like it more?

Rimrock Mall A: Underrated - This probably gonna lose me all my cred, but honestly, if I'm hanging out with a friend and we have nothing better to do, spending like 35 minutes at the mall is pretty alright! You can look at expensive things you will never be able to afford, nor need to, eat a greasy soft pretzel, and get weird looks from strangers! Absolutely Epic!

Black Midi A: Underrated - These past few weeks I have been listening to nothing but Black Midi. Probably one of the most creative bands I have ever heard. Also they put out music like crazy and any band that puts out music fast makes me say ":D"!

You can catch Hey, ily!'s set this Dreyfest at the NOVA Center on Saturday, August 6th at 9pm.

SEE YOU IN THE PIT!

Interview by Austin Finn.

#heyily #digitallung.exe #psychokineticlovesongs #internetbreath #julialouisdreyfest #JLDVIII #dreyfest #billingsmontana #Spotify

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theworstbob · 7 years

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the thing journal, 5.28 - 6.3

capsule reviews of the pop culture things i took in last week. in this post: from a room, chi-raq, the intervention, all the beauty in this whole life, bone tomahawk, spades and roses, souvenir, spin, brooklyn nine-nine, blue velvet

1) From a Room, Vol. I, by Chris Stapleton: My thing with Chris Stapleton is, I have enjoyed his two albums, I have thought they were both Very Good, I think they're both fine examples of what country should sound like and understand their importance in keeping country music vital. I'd fall just short of calling either of them classics. Which is a weird space to be evaluating an album, where your main critique of an album is that it isn't an all-time classic, that you agree the songs are good and that a lot are great (and there's some great fuckin' songs, "Either Way" is just, yerrrgh, that's a toughie), but sometimes, it feels like there's some ingredient missing from the mix. I think it just feels too perfect. This man has a perfectly tortured voice, capable of translating any sort of pain and misery he feels, and he's using it to craft perfect country songs about country things like drinking and being in jail. It feels like he's content to do great things within the confines of the genre when he could be reinventing it, which, hey, fair enough, Chris Stapleton making really good country songs is a thing in this world I'm not complaining about, and if he never unlocks the potential I believe he has and only ever makes songs like "Death Row," I'd be cool with that choice.

2) Chi-Raq, dir. Spike Lee: Because I am ignorant of any piece of media that was made before 2003, I did not know what the Greek drama this was based off was about, so when I realized it was a film about women withholding sex made by the dude who made She Hate Me (this is an unfair comment because I haven't seen the film, but I'm pretty sure that's an unpleasant movie), I kinda prepped myself for an uncomfortable experience. And then the film ended up being fucking fantastic. The fact that the "no peace, no pussy" protest elicits a reaction of "Well, we have dicks. They love our dicks! Surely, if we just remind them of the fact of our dicks we'll put an end to this nonsense" is not just what would obviously happen should a similar protest occur in reality, it calls attention to the fact that so many problems facing the world are being caused by dudes who can't see past the apparent power of their dicks. (I will bring to the grave the belief that, if all the Republican presidential candidates held a joint press conference to tell Donald Trump he had a large penis, Donald Trump would have suspended his campaign and receded into the background.) But more importantly, this film has things to say about this country. It hits on everything, and it hits it hard. It calls out gang violence for bringing strife to black communities, then calls out the people who would use that strife to undermine causes like Black Lives Matter. It's a film stylized all the way to hell that remains grounded in reality because, what with the lists of names the film brings up (multiple lists, and nary a name repeated on any of these lists), it's impossible to fully escape reality. It's an astonishing film from a master director on a subject he's had to explore too often. (Also, Samuel L. Jackson having the time of his life as a Greek chorus.)

3) The Intervention, dir. Clea DuVall: I can never remember which character from Parks & Rec elicited this Perd Hapley line that has stayed with me forever, but all the same, some character asks Perd Hapley "Do you know what I mean?" and Perd responds, "I don't! But it had the tone and cadence of a joke." I have used that line to describe so many things where I respect the attempt at humor but don't ever laugh. This film is an example of what I'd use that line to describe. There's a lot of funny people in the cast, and there were plenty of comedic set-ups, but nothing like an actual joke. I think the film wanted to be a serious meditation on the relationships between these people (who were related in some convoluted way or another), so it tried to distance itself from the comedy, but it never took anything serious enough for the emotional moments to land with any impact. I wouldn't attribute this to the cast -- Melanie Lynskey is fantastic, and I completely forgot but Cobie Smulders can do goddamn work y'all -- more to the point that, hey, there's a low ceiling and low floow for movies about upper-middle-class white folks who only share quiet and emotionally difficult moments with other upper-middle-class white folks, and this film lands somewhere in the middle. I saw this the same day I saw Chi-Raq. Y'all tryna get away with pointin' a camera at some randos, and that's not gonna cut it.

4) All the Beauty in This Whole Life, by Brother Ali: On my personal Top 20 list for the year, I have this ahead of DAMN. It's 10% contrarianism, 20% homerism, 65% this is an amazing record by an amazing man, 5% no one at any point shouts KUNG FU KENNY. It's easy to make an angry political record. I think Rise Against is releasing an album this year, and it's already getting an A- and barely missing the Top 20, because times are shitty and it's easy to be angry. It's hard to look at the world as it is today and find things to defend, reasons to keep going. The most profound political statement to be made is that the world is fundamentally good and needs to be protected from those bringing it ruin, and Brother Ali makes that statement with authority. We'll have plenty of time and reasons to get angry in the coming days/months/years/decades. This is a record advising you to take a second to reflect on what's good in the world, the reasons hate came to be, what we can do to bring out the beauty, to explore what peace we can find before we start a war. It's powerful, amazing work.

5) Bone Tomahawk, dir. S. Craig Zahler: Not gonna lie: took a catnap in the middle of this one, very short, not even sure I was asleep, but definitely let the ol' eyeballs have a rest for a couple seconds. Didn't feel like I missed much plot-wise when I woke up, though. Probably missed a lot of beautiful shots of the Western hills (ok, THIS film is how you break in an HD display, I feel, nuts to Interstellar), but hoo boy, this film moved slowly! On the whole, the film was pretty great, I loved the way it built that town's community in just the one emergency meeting scene ("Look at the mayor when you're addressing him." "Yeah! Look at me!"), but there's a lot of time spent with gruff Westerners speaking softly about the great and terrible things they've done, and impeccably composed as those shots were, I can only be so interested in the things Matthew Fox has to say. (Also, hey there, central romance between a dude and a woman 22 years younger than him.) The film builds to the conclusion well, it picked up the pace a few scenes after my nap most regrettable, and I typically can enjoy a glacially-paced film now and then without sleeping, but if you have a worse attention span than me, this ain't rhe film for you.

6) Spades and Roses, by Caroline Spence: i do not remember how i came to add this particular indie singer-songwriter's ablum to my queue, but here we are, and this was fine! This was fine. I liked it. I rode on a bus and listened to this album, and I thought the young woman sang soft and sweet though potentially dark songs over gentle acoustic guitars. I cannot say I regret listening to this album, though I find myself unable to say much beyond that, because it was fine.

7) Souvenir, by Banner Pilot: I listened to this pop/punk album from an act I understand to be local after Spades and Roses, and one thing I should learn to do is try to pair albums better so that I'm not dealing with a change in mood this intense, so that there's a logical flow to the albums, some thematic link, not just "I added some shit to the library and I guess I'm listening to these today." Figuring thiis sort of stuff out is kinda hard, y'know? Like, I don't want to feel like I'm adding stuff to the library just to get it out of the way three weeks later, and maybe that colors my experience with albums like this or Spades and Roses, where they're fine but not necessarily something I feel I need to listen to twice, but if I come away from an album thinking I don't need to listen to it twice to get the full story, I'm not sure I'm being completely fair to the album. ...This review isn't so much a review of the album itself as much as it's a review of how I listen to music. C-. Needs a lot of improvement.

8) spin, by Tiger's Jaw: OK so I can tell ya right now I fucked up listening to this one. I was distracted, I had connection issues, I went grocery shopping and spent the majoirty of the grocery shopping twist asking myself what groceries I needed instead of what this album was doing for me, I did the thing where I treated music like background noise and not the thing I should be paying attention to. I thought the album was OK, but I could tell that it came to me on the wrong day, that maybe I should have put on something I'd heard before, and saved this one for a time when I could give this what it deserves. Bad week for me and my listening habits. Like, I do the thing with movies where I put the film on full screen and only check my phone to check the time, I need to find the thing for music that gets me to pay attention to music for more than one song at a time.

9) Brooklyn Nine-Nine s4, cr. Michael Schur & Dan Goor: I'm beginning to think this show would be the rare half-hour sitcom to benefit from a 13-episode order. This does action-comedy so well, but you can't really sustain the intensity of the action-comedy aspects of the show over 22 episodes, but then they have to fill the rest of the episodes with hangout-sitcommy bits that are very hit-and-miss for me. Once the show has a plot, it sings, but when it's doing its mystery-of-the-week thing what with A, B, and C plots so the entire cast has things to do, it can feel unfocused. I mean, hey, I watched every episode, I think the show is hilarious (I will sing Andre Braugher's praises until they can hear me from the moon), but I had to learn to deal with its inconsistency. Maybe not a Hall of Famer, but so many All-Stars never make the Hall of Fame, y'know?

10) Blue Velvet, dir. David Lynch: I saw this on Saturday night, and I'm still trying to process it. I'm actually not sure right now that I've seen a David Lynch movie before, which might explain why I feel so off-sync with this film; I've seen season one of Twin Peaks, but I'm otherwise unfamiliar with what he does, beyond a David Foster Wallace essay about the director. Perhaps I've become too desensitized to violence to understand what's shocking about the violence in Blue Velvet, or too many films derivative of Lynch to see what's uniquely Lynchian about Blue Velvet. I do see the central point and believe it's fascinating -- the only think keeping Jeffrey Beaumont from actually being Frank Booth is a sense of decorum, that Jeffrey needs to be Jeffrey to live in civilized society, but the only thing Frank does that Jeffrey only does reluctantly is Violence, and now I'm realizing this is Hannibal, that's where I saw this movie, was Hannibal, OK, OK, cool cool cool, but also, that theme of the darkness within, of people like Frank being everywhere, it resonates, because now we live in a world where we can remove ourselves from a sense of decorum and be Frank. To see Frank Booth in 2017 is to see the manifestation of a Twitter egg. So in the course of this review, we discovered that we are on this film's wavelength, and that the distance we had to bridge was created by seeing Lynchian works and living in the end times.

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