TLOBF Interview // tUnE-yArDs

I recently saw Merrill Garbus described as ‘all-American’. This seems odd. Garbus, who records and plays as tUnE-yArDs, is certainly American; her gentle East Coast lilt is testament to that. But she exists in a space some way removed from the blue-collar anthemics that the phrase might normally bring to mind.

While Garbus’ music certainly draws on elements of traditional American folk, its reference points are so broad, so geographically disparate, that it has become simultaneously American and African, European and Middle Eastern. It is rooted in place, and yet somehow placeless.

Her debut full-length, BiRd BrAiNs, was a collection of Dictaphone confessionals; outsider music of the highest order. Having toured the record for two years, signed to 4AD, and outshone Dirty Projectors in front of their own crowds, there is now a sense that Garbus is about to become a genuine phenomenon. People talk in hushed tones about her extraordinary second record, the first single from which was premiered in characteristically hyperbolic fashion by Zane Lowe a few weeks ago, and which will see a release in April.

That album, w h o k i l l, is a decidedly different affair to its predecessor. The tone is more emphatic, more exuberant – more reflective, in fact, of the extraordinary, loop-laden live shows. Gone, for the most part, is the tape hiss and the hush of a bedroom recording project. Instead, w h o k i l l is brash, colourful, and beautifully produced.

Garbus looks somewhat incongruous in bleak Tufnell Park. A resident of perpetual sun-trap California, she shivers her way into the pub in which we meet. While we talk, a lone scarfed man eyes her suspiciously from the table behind us; confused, presumably, by her warpaint-smeared face.

Welcome to England. When did you arrive?

Thank you. Yesterday, about 11pm. We were really jet-lagged, but I think we are just about on the verge of recovery.

You arrived at Gatwick at 11pm and came straight to Tufnell Park? I can’t help but feel like we’re not giving you the best that London has to offer.

Ha, I don’t know. It’s nice to see some actual residential areas sometimes.

Well I actually live down the road, and I’ve been walking around with your record in my headphones for the last few days. I suppose one of the most striking aspects is the production, which is really stunning. Did you set out to create a record that was higher-fidelity than BiRd BrAiNs?

I think that I set out to make an album that didn’t sound like it was more high fidelity. I was really scared of that. But initially we went and tracked the album in a studio, so I knew it would be more high fidelity than the last. Along the way I kept trying to keep it lo-fi, but the songs just kept feeling like they were being squashed, or being buried. And I was trying to learn how to work with the new kit, the new software.

So you’re very much a self-taught producer?

For sure. I don’t regret learning those things at all. But when it came time to say, “OK, these are the mixes of the album”, and I’d done it myself…y’know, I’d talked about it with myself a lot, and with Nate who co-wrote some of the songs, and Eli who recorded it, and we all decided that the songs weren’t bursting out – and that’s what I wanted them to do.

So at that point we decided that Eli would mix it and I would be there at the mixing console in more of a production role.

I guess a lot of people feel a real attachment to that lo-fi aesthetic, even if it isn’t necessarily the right choice.

Absolutely, and I still feel an attachment. But I also feel that you shouldn’t need a lot of money to make music. I guess partly because of my parents being folk musicians, it was almost like music wasn’t meant to be recorded, it was more meant to be played. So that’s my sort of understanding of music in general. And that’s still my belief, and I’m sure that I will continue to make lo-fi albums in the future. But I was in a situation where I wanted these songs to be technicolour.

It’s an interesting idea, whether or not there is actually a necessity to record. In your case, do you see the album as part of your art, or is it secondary to the live show?

That’s a good question. The first album really felt like that. Like, “This is what’s going to come out of me, and it has to come out of me. This is the artform.” I guess I feel like is an artform in and of itself, separate from the live show. The live show is its own artform, and then there’s this sort of patchwork sampling. Just keeping my voice as a really raw instrument. It doesn’t have makeup on it, it’s a real voice.

People keep asking me to do live albums. I guess maybe at some point. But now that’s not what I’m interested in doing.

Obviously the voice as instrument is a major part of tUnE-yArDs, but it seems to me that it’s also very much about the sounds of the words themselves, the pronunciation. Is that conscious?

For sure. Well, I guess it is conscious, but it’s maybe more instinctual. I feel very lucky that I’ve grown to a place where I don’t have very many inhibitions. I feel like if something comes out, I can just say, “Yes that’s right”, not “Oh no, I don’t know what people will think of that.” I’m pretty far from that sort of thinking.

Someone was talking about ‘Es-so’, and they were asking if that is a real word. But it’s just the word that came out, and I allowed it to come out and not become anything else. It is what it is. And I think a lot of the nonsense words, all of those just feel like they should be that way. And for now I’m happy letting them be what they want to be.

Talking about ‘Es-so’, it seems that lyrically, the album often comes back to issues that primarily affect women. How much of it is autobiographical? How much of tUnE-yArDs is Merrill, and how much do you consider yourself to have a social or political stance in your lyrics? I don’t mean that to sound fatuous, like “Oh, how is it to be a woman in music…”

I hope that it’s universal on a certain level. I don’t want to alienate anyone, especially not men. But at the same time, I’m a woman and I’m a woman in the world. So that’s the lens through which I view things, and it will always be that way.

So in other words, I feel political and I feel socially involved. That’s where my thoughts are most of the time. But I don’t want to be preachy, and I don’t want to be telling people anything other than, “This is my point of view, this is what I’m offering.” I just hope it’s never only “music for women”, or only “music for feminist women.” I want it to be a world where many people can live and thrive.

You’ve obviously spent time in Africa, and I know you did some field recordings there. And there’s an interesting political element to that too, in terms of our history of theft from Africa, and how that relates the sort of music tourism that goes on.

Music tourism, totally. I’ve feared that while doing a lot of things in my life. I’ve feared that sort of appropriation without any acknowledgement, or payback. I don’t think that’s solved for me. I think the closest I can come in my career is maybe collaborations with African musicians, or exposure of African musicians who might otherwise not be exposed.

I just think…isn’t it strange how divorced we are from the world? How music can be so divorced from reality? I just find that really problematic. So people say, and I said too, “Oh, I love African music,” and they don’t say, “What’s my part in exploiting African music, or people, or culture? How is my life relevant to the lives of people around the world?” Because it certainly is relevant, even if we don’t want to look at it.

It’s definitely problematic when people don’t see music as a part of their social environment.

I know, and particularly when people are saying, “Oh the music industry is failing.” I mean, there are people making money doing it. I’m making a living doing it, which seems miraculous.

It’s not something you expected?

Not at all. But the fact that there’s money there…regardless of the fact that people are pirating music, there are people buying music and listening to music on a massive scale. The fact that I’m doing eight interviews today or something, the fact that there are that many people interested in only my music, suggests that there’s still a huge market.

Do you think that’s partly because you’re bringing something that obviously isn’t just the standard four-guys-and-guitars?

I don’t know. I don’t have that perspective. They probably have eight interviews a day too. But it’s been interesting to see who is interested. It’s the typical four dudes, drum kit, two guitars and bass, but it’s also people who I wouldn’t think would connect. Even people who were older than me, and I was never sure if it would be relatable to another generation of people. I’m constantly amazed by who it grabs.

Do you think the interest from that older generation is perhaps because it’s so linked to traditional American folk music?

Yeah, and I guess a bit of doo-wop or 50s pop.

There’s a great Van Dyke Parks feel to ‘Gangsta’.

Yeah, I think my ears are just really wide. So people can hear a lot of different things. Hip-hop fans will hear a hip-hop-y song and feel connected to that, and people who don’t like hip-hop won’t feel alienated by that.

Speaking of hip-hop, California seems to have loomed pretty large over this record. What’s it like to live there as a musician?

It’s very different from New England, which is where I grew up and spent most of my life. It is way more laid back, which is a stereotype but it is really true. And I’ve found that leaves me with a lot of room.

Where I was in my life, I was just work, work, work, work. I toured for what felt like years and years, and had not been home for more than a month in years. And that was starting to take its toll. So California offered this beautiful, sunny bedrock to really rest my bones and rejuvenate. I just felt healthier living there.

I live in Oakland, which I guess is known more for its crime rate than for the other wonderful things that are there, like its multicultural communities, and a sort of unconscious mixing of cultures, because we’re all just there.

There’s also a lot of activism, a lot of really strong community support. Communities really stick together. And also because it’s cheaper to live there than in San Francisco and Berkeley, it has a thriving art scene. There are warehouses, DIY spaces, a lot of really interesting things going on.

It’s interesting that there are those two distinct facets of California, because the record really seems to favour the major keys, even in songs like ‘Riotriot’ or ‘Doorstep’ – songs that are lyrically pretty dark.

Ha, totally. It’s funny, I never thought of that being a Californian thing. It’s a sunny album I guess, even despite the darker undertones.

You’re the third person to say that, that lyrically it’s really dark, but there are bright, hopeful musical elements. I think that describes Oakland pretty well.

Just going back to Africa and the field recordings, I read an interview where you were talking about the Swahilification of words, the idea of African people taking English words and making them their own. I was wondering how much you thought of what you do, and maybe bands like Dirty Projectors or Vampire Weekend or whoever it might be, as being the opposite – like the Anglicisation of ‘world music’, for want of a better phrase.

Good question. I think it’s inherently a different relationship because of the power structure. English being incorporated into Swahili is strange. Like, what do we do with taxi? There wasn’t a ‘taxi’ in Swahili. So after hundreds of years of colonisation, there are taxis now. And taxi becomes T-A-K-S-I.

I’m trying not to be a Westernisation of African music. I don’t think I would describe what I’m doing as that. But those songs and those musical forms are in my ears, and that comes out. So it may be that, even though I don’t want to frame it that way, that is very much what I’m doing. Someone from the United States employing African musical themes in what I do.

I think…well, you can see that I’m trying to work out how this thought should come out of my head, because it’s so problematic. I don’t want to do that thing of justifying it, like, “Oh, we all thieve from each other.” Which we do. And African musicians thieve from Western musicians too. We call it thievery, but I suppose it’s just sharing at its most ideal. But borrowing from cultures and people who are economically at such a disadvantage to us becomes a different situation.

It’s that exact issue that I wish the music industry would raise. Like, what a wonderful thing that we know Ladysmith Black Mambazo through Paul Simon, what a beautiful thing that we’ve been exposed to that music. And in that case what a beautiful thing that it came out of apartheid being exposed to the world, and that it could have been a part of ending apartheid. But at the same time the music industry can whitewash a lot of things.

Jane was talking about how many African musicians live in Europe, and how they’re often unable to thrive in their own countries. I know so little about Africa, and every country, every culture has its own social complications, its own qualities.

Just like in Europe, or the States.

Exactly.

How do you feel about ‘world music’ as a term? It seems to fall in and out of favour.

I hope that it goes away. Soon. Again, the positive side of it is that we’re paying attention to music that is not our own. I think that’s wonderful. But just seems so patronising.

It’s a shame, because if the idea is to understand music from places that aren’t necessarily familiar, why use a term that seems to underline this ‘us and them’ attitude?

Exactly. But that’s how we always do it. It’s a power thing. If we can talk about us versus them, it helps to keep us on top. To think, “You’re all one big blob of other people to us”, instead of, “We are just one humble race amongst races, one humble culture amongst cultures.” Western culture has never thought of itself that way.

So now you’re two albums in. Your first record sounds much more confessional; it has the sound of something that was made within a familiar environment. And then you are thrown into a situation in which you are playing to thousands of people, with Dirty Projectors or whoever. How much of an impact does that have on what you are writing? Do you feel less comfortable about performing material like that in front of big crowds?

Yes and no. Even though there was this level of confession in the first album, no audience is getting every part of me. As a performer, there is this mask that I put on. And that is my right as a performer, to protect myself. But I think ‘Powa’, or even ‘Bizness’ – these are personal songs, but at the same time they are metaphors. It’s not all me, even if I’m saying “I”. I hope I’m relating my personal experience to a human experience. And in that ways I will alter things, I will become a fictionalised version of myself.

And do you think that’s been exacerbated by the fact that you now have a wider audience?

Yeah. Particularly when people think that they know me. There has been so much read into the music that people think they know me but that’s not true. They don’t know me in the way that they think they do.

I think, luckily, most people say something like, ‘Your music really touched me. I got this out of it. I saw myself in your music.’ And that’s what I want, for people to find themselves. Even if it’s just one line where they can think, ‘Yes, I totally relate to that.’

Luckily, it has been mostly that. I think even the most confessional songs were always meant to be a bit broader, to incorporate other people’s experiences. I wanted the poetry of the words, and the sounds of the words, to allow other people to see themselves.

On a completely different topic, what is your typographical preference for your name? No-one seems to be able to agree.

I sort of like it that they can’t agree. I don’t have a preference. I ask people to use alternating capitals, and I hardly use it myself. So that’s totally hypocritical. It’s a pain in the ass to write it that way, and that’s what I wanted from other people. I wanted to slow them down a bit. And maybe as a woman, I wanted to say, “No, this is the right way. You have to pay attention to me this way. This is my demand as an artist, for you to pay attention to the way my name is spelled.”

And in truth, people spell it with a capital ‘T’ and a capital ‘Y’ and I don’t get offended at all. But I also think that it fits with the music, with the patchwork quality, and as you say, with the idea of moving words to make them what I want them to be.

But I think it’s really funny, it was such a small thing to begin with. But people get mad, they get angry.

Do you think there will be a time, maybe in the near future, when female artists in particular don’t have to use devices like that in order to get attention?

I hope so. I do. I just hope that musicians in general continue to shape the world around them. That might be a very lofty thing to say I have done with the capitalisation of tUnE-yArDs. But I like the idea of people saying, “No, this is the way I want it.”

I do think there will be more producers shaping the sound of music, and that’s a perspective that’s not seen or heard very often. But let it not be gimmicks. Let it be a grasping of one’s reality, and a shaping of it.

tUnE-yArDs – Bizness

tUnE-yArDs second album, w ho k i l l, is released on 18 April via 4AD.