By Andrew Stanko
With credits that include helming the ska-punk band The Arrogant Sons of Bitches (ASOB), and the punk solo-project-turned-collective-turned-band Bomb the Music Industry! (BtMI!), as well as being one half of Antarctigo Vespucci with Chris Farren of Fake Problems, Jeff Rosenstock is a veritable veteran of the DIY scene. His name is not entirely a household one. Operating out of New York City, Rosenstock has spun his tales tackling the banal, with quotidian concerns opening up to point to deeper, intrinsically human issues for over 15 years. After a first record under his name in 2012 called I Look Like Shit that contained some songs that were initially written for other projects, he’s currently enjoying his solo debut-and-a-half with his latest release, We Cool?.
We Cool? continues the musical trajectory that late Bomb the Music Industry! found themselves on after smoothing out some of the more erratic and jittery (but wildly fun) affectations in favor of a more cohesive feeling. Their signature energy never left their sound, though, and Rosenstock is still more than happy to wield it with little warning as a reflection of or counterbalance for his lyrics and theme, or sometimes just to blow a song wide open. We Cool? is a more dynamic record and shows him chipping away to better unearth the seed of the various anxieties that have reared their heads on album after album. It is at times bombastic and triumphant, casually humbling, and straight-up fucking sad. Above all else, it’s relatable; the incongruence that exists between your general status and where you think you should be at instead has been mined before, but with Rosentock’s personal tint, it’s not hard to take the record’s emotional intricacies to heart.
We caught up with him before his show on Saturday at the Royale with Andrew Jackson Jihad, Chumped, and The Smith Street Band and chatted about getting older, the new Father John Misty record, and playing five shows in one day in his native city.
Allston Pudding: How does it feel to reintroduce yourself with a more realized album in We Cool?
Jeff Rosenstock: It’s a little crazy because my name is on everything, you know? It was hard to call it a solo project. At the end of the day, I ended up doing it like that because, I guess I’m just tired of, well, not tired of… I know that if I called this “The Fucking Whatevers” that like, five or ten years from now we might be like, “Oh, The Fucking Whatevers” are breaking up, and I just think it’s cool to end things on a high note, and I think that when this first started I just wanted to set myself up to not be able to do that. It was a hard thing to do, but I was just like “Fuck it,” I’m just gonna call it this, so that it can’t stop if something bad happens, you know? It’s still my name. I wish it had a name, though. I feel like Mike [Huguenor], and John [DeDomenici], and Kevin [Higuchi] brought so much to this record. John especially, from doing stuff with me for forever. That said, it feels crazy! My name’s on a bunch of shit. Like I walk into a record store and it just says: “Jeff Rosenstock”. [Laughing] Like it’s my fucking name! All of this stuff happened so naturally with everybody. Like, me and John have obviously been playing together forever, and me and Mike Huguenor, like I think the world of Mike Huguenor’s guitar playing. I honestly think he’s one of the best guitar players playing in rock bands right now. We were working on The Bruce Lee Band together with Kevin, and it was like, “We might as well make a band, let’s see what it sounds like. Mike, you wanna play with me?” and he was like “Yeah, man!”. I’d been wanting to do it for a while and Kevin was down for whatever, and then we recorded it with Jack [Shirley], and it was cool that we were able to even get in touch with him. After we recorded it, SideOneDummy got in touch, and it became a whole thing. You know, when we recorded it, it wasn’t part of any plan. It was like “Let’s just make a record,” and now it’s all exciting, it’s all crazy… It’s cool. It’s definitely bizarre to be so personally attached to it that it’s literally my name, but I knew that going in, and I wanted to make something that was going to make me feel weird, so [laughs] mission accomplished!
AP: That’s awesome, and probably a little intimidating that some of that personal content that really comes out in the songs is now really attached to your name.
JR: Oh yeah, for sure, and I’m still kind of getting used to the reviews that are now just like, “Jeff Rosenstock is a piece of shit!” and it’s just like, “Aw, I’m not that much of a piece of shit, I just get bummed out sometimes.”
“Aw, I’m not that much of a piece of shit, I just get bummed out sometimes.”
AP: And that just happens to be how you make music.
JR: Yeah, exactly. And it’s like, one side. Everybody has different sides to their personality, and that’s just the side that comes out. Just because it’s literally my name, I feel like if I go on a job interview, it would be like, “Huh, I read on this website that you are an alcoholic, you don’t take anything seriously, and you’re just like, completely fucking up. How do you think that will affect you working here on the team?” “Well, I guess I can’t!”
AP: Hopefully you can avoid the job interview in its entirety. In terms of different sides, I did notice that We Cool? does have a bit of a darker one. Obviously there are still the lyrics dealing with the trappings of getting older, but I noticed that the specter of death kind of makes an appearance in a couple of songs. Was this a more cathartic record to put together than what you’ve done in the past?
JR: Yeah, I think so. I think that all this stuff about kind of getting older, I know that always seems to keep popping up in music that I write, but I think that’s just because, you know, that’s something that’s constant. I’m always trying to write in the moment and the only thing that’s consistent over every record that I’ve made, from ASOB up until now is that I’ve been getting older. Like so are you, right now as we’re having this conversation, and so everybody listens to it. The fact that it keeps popping up is because that stuff’s happening, it’s always happening. And a lot of the death stuff on this record, well I don’t know! I had it popping up a little bit on I Look Like Shit, and I was a little nervous about that stuff popping up on there because, it’s just weird in a lot of ways, you know? You don’t want to bum people out just singing about dying all the time, that’s weird. There are songs on this record about a buddy of mine who, well, none of my friends have died of natural causes. And then there’s the thought of is it disrespectful to talk about her? And then I Look Like Shit happened and people seemed to be not only okay but people responded okay. The reaction to it was a positive one in that it helped people get through some shit, and that just kind of coupled with when I was working on this record I was in a pretty dark place and a lot of my writing just tends to deal with dealing with my own demons, and all that shit. And I think as I’m writing more, I’m starting to dig a little bit deeper, and [laughs] the deeper it gets, the darker it gets. I mean it’s not like what I’m feeling on the surface here is the same with [BtMI! album] Album Minus Band or something when I was like 22 or 23 and I hadn’t figured out how to deal with a lot of shit, just like anxiety and stuff like that, and I also had all these songs and I was in a band. I’m glad I could work on those songs. So there’s a lot more surface feelings, and I think that death is popping up more in the music because I’m getting more to the root of stuff that was just like terrifying, you know? So that is maybe why? I’m not softening anything on this record, that’s for sure.
AP: Yeah, it definitely comes across. I know that I definitely engage with those lyrics that deal with the implications of getting older differently at 24 than I did at, say, 17 when I was more focused on watching the narrative unfold at arms length. Do you write your lyrics to feel more universal in that aging process despite the specific spin of your own work or is that sort of an added bonus?
JR: I don’t know! I think it’s good that it’s universal, and that’s nice of you to say that. Yeah, I like it to do that… That’s rad, that’s cool, that’s the hope, but I feel like if you’re in a band like U2, I don’t know if you’ve ever listened to that podcast U Talkin’ U2 To Me, but in one of the brief moments where they actually talk about U2, they talked about when they went from playing clubs to playing arenas and stuff like that, and their lyrics have this universality of saying “We” instead of “I” just trying to make it for everybody, and I don’t do that. Like I don’t ever go back afterward and say “Well alright, how can I make these feelings universal?”. But I guess going into it, and more so now than at the beginning of Bomb the Music Industry!, that stuff is like incredibly specific, I think just as a matter of my own issues I’m trying to see more what the overarching problem is that I’m singing about, you know? Writing is incredibly therapeutic for me, and if I didn’t do that, I would be in a mental hospital, probably. And so I think that it is getting older and being able to kind of [laughs] unfortunately see how huge the problems are that are crushing, you know, your everyday movements when you’re just sitting in bed and like, “I don’t want to get out of fucking bed today, the world is a nightmare, I can’t do this,” and realizing, or just trying to kind of, at least for me, find out well what the fuck is it that makes me feel like I just can’t get out of bed today? That’s as opposed to, I don’t know… There’s a song on the record called “Novelty Sweater” and it’s a little bit about that and I’m not like literally talking about sitting and playing Candy Crush until my credits run out and then watching The Walking Dead and being like, “I don’t even like this show,” and then watching and hating it, and when it’s done being like “Alright, I have five Candy Crush credits now,” and doing that for weeks on end. I think that with earlier Bomb! stuff, I might have talked more specifically about that, and I think I’m realizing what the things that are trapping my life and that it’s not necessarily Candy Crush, but it’s the feeling of not being able to detach yourself or not become distracted anymore, stuff like that. So when I’m thinking about that shit now, I guess I’m trying to become a better person just in general all the time and I’m trying to get more deep into what the fuck is fucking with me, and that’s maybe coming up in the writing. And then, again, all this shit just sort of happens.
“I guess I’m trying to become a better person just in general all the time and I’m trying to get more deep into what the fuck is fucking with me…”
AP: That really does make sense, and it sounds like you’re broadening the scope on content a little bit by still being a bit specific but pointing to broader issues, which is what helps give it that universality. That level of listener interaction has always been present but it feels a little bit more visceral this time around.
JR: Thanks, man! And like I said, that’s always a goal. I never try for it but the bands that I really find myself listening to over and over and over, like The Weakerthans constantly, early Mountain Goats stuff, that new Father John Misty record’s insane… All stuff like that, it’s all super specific but it’s not specific. Early Against Me! is like that, too, and they’re talking about a thing but they’re also talking about the scope of the thing, too.
AP: You recently did a Reddit AMA. How was that experience and vehicle for connecting with your listeners?
JR: It was pretty overwhelming, to be honest. I wanted to answer all of them and I worked at it for like three days and I realized I’d only answered like half of them. And I sat here like, “Well, I’m not going to be able to do this”. But, you know, it’s cool talking to people. I talk to people on Twitter a lot just because I’m not great at talking to people and having a limit of 140 characters kind of makes it easier and people won’t think you’re being short, or that you’re being a dick or anything. But it was nice to talk to people without that sort of limitation but also have it not mixed in with my emails from my mom, saying, like, “What are you doing for the catering for your wedding?”. It was nice to have a place where it wasn’t that painful to talk, or for that to happen after a show when somebody asks me a question that I don’t know the fucking answer to at all, and I also just basically ran the equivalent of like five miles in place while screaming my head off and I kind of feel like somebody’s kinda pressing my brain, and I just want to talk to this person so much but have no idea how to even make words come out of my mouth. So it’s nice not to be in that situation and be able to actually answer questions. And also because I was doing a bunch of press for this record which is a new thing for me. It was nice to talk to to people, to listen to them. That was cool. I feel like that’s a cool, straightforward way to do it. And nothing against any press or anything like that. I write for things, too, and I interview bands, too, and so I get it, but it’s just cool to get really specific to what some kids want to know, and I’m happy to talk to them.
AP: That’s definitely a strength of that platform, although I can see how it could be overwhelming.
JR: [Laughs] And nothing’s overwhelming if you just do it really half-assed!
AP: You just played five shows in the five boroughs of New York while only taking public transportation between each one. How was that and how much does it mean to you to stay connected with the city that you’ve really been associated with?
JR: There’s a movie called Style Wars, have you ever seen it?
AP: I have!
I saw Style Wars when I was probably 20 or 21 years old. I can’t think of too many other movies that changed my life as much as that movie has. And I especially love the concept of bombing [with graffiti] being a positive thing and creating instead of destroying something. That still sticks with me and kind of gives me chills. I just think that’s so rad. So they talk about doing the trains and going all-city, and I just thought that was so fucking cool. You write a thing; it costs you whatever the cost of spray paint costs, and you make art and everybody in the city can see it, and it’s just always there. And I always wanted to do something like that. I’ve always wanted to do something like that where it’s five shows in all five boroughs in one day. And everybody who came to the shows were awesome. All the shows turned out great. We didn’t have high expectations for the shows. We kind of figured 20 or 30 people would show up to all the shows. We’re not fucking Joan Jett with Nirvana playing Nirvana songs, we’re me and my buddies, you know? But all the shows were packed! Staten Island at 10am was packed, and it was great. It was such a great experience and it meant so much to me. It’s very hard to be able to put it into words and I can’t believe I’m lucky enough to be able to do that. It was just a positive day. At practice the night before, it was like, “Any time we’re feeling negative, let’s just shake ourselves out of it” or if we see each other being negative just be like, “Hey, you’re doing it, stop!” and that only happened once. The worst things that happened were like, “Ooh, okay, I’m tired… Alright, let’s go”. It was awesome.
AP: Well hey, man, thanks for chatting, and speaking of artists you mentioned, I’ve been spinning your record just as much as Father John Misty’s.
JR: That new Father John Misty record is something else, man. That took me by surprise.
AP: Yeah! I liked his first album but I didn’t listen to it too, too much. But I have a couple of roommates that got me hyped for the new album, and when it dropped, shit. What a devastating listen.
JR: Yeah, it rules. My fiancé was showing me one of the songs and I was like “Eh, this is good,” and he played New York for Valentine’s Day and the record came out around then so I bought her the record for Valentine’s Day, and when we were listening to it, I was just like, “Hooooooly fuck, this is my favorite band, screw you, this is my favorite band!” And then we fought each other to the death.
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Jeff Rosenstock, Andrew Jackson Jihad, Chumped, The Smith Street Band
Royale
Doors at 5
Tickets: $16 Adv, $18 Day of Show
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