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what's up man nothing it's good to see you oh nothing come on man you've just made one of the greatest records I've heard in a very long time and that's just my humble opinion so thank you for that yeah I mean that's just standard
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procedure for um we're going to get to the timeline and I'm going going to do my best to to get some stories about this record and really where it's come from which I know is quite painful for musicians especially you know when
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you've put your heart and soul into a record like you have but I feel we have to try and go there because as records go it's incredible but first of all I'm still trying to piece the whole timeline together because people spoke after pure comedy the title track was released and the video came out that this was going to be some big reflection on 2016 but the word I get is that you wrote it long before any of that happen yeah that song
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was yeah I wrote that in like 2015 wow or so but when the election happened the day after I was it occurred to me that there were some lines in that in the album that were all of a sudden really literal that had that had over literally overnight become pretty literal pure subconscious coincidence perhaps or I mean well I think you know Hillary Clinton had been elected then you know maybe the narrative would be like man he just
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hates Hillary Clinton um I mean putting the inauguration footage in there was kind of irresistible um but you knew when you did that people would instantly go this is about the election yeah I was running the risk of limiting the scope of the song but it just it was an instinct and it it it had to happen and I think I think it's you know I mean it was exciting to exciting is not the right word but I think I just saw an opportunity
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to give people some a different cont it is catharsis or Comfort or or you know it's not often that a song intersects with current events like especially one that was of by accident I mean the song came you know we were planning on putting the song out uh that day all along you know and then it didn't even dawn on me that was like wow this is like uh the Monday after the inauguration um so I just chose not to fight it you know I mean yeah it it
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uh it's it's okay if it's viewed as a political song for a year or however long but the themes in the song are I think have everything to do with the Human Condition yeah I was going to say it's a very it's about being human this record and the um the sadness and the realization that that that we're not in control of that experience and that much of what we go through is a distraction being led by m of distraction yeah well but choosing
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you know because there is a lot of a lot of the album is about have that that we have more control than we let ourselves have and that we we kind of choose to get blown around by forces out of our control um but I think I don't think um I don't think we have to live that way and I think that that's kind of the what's happening at the center of the album I think that a lot of people will write music from a very personal and
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very immediate perspective you know I feel really right now or I feel in love or I feel this or I feel that me me me me me and what's immediately apparent about this record is that you really have approached it and I don't want to
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I'm really struggling to find the words to talk about the record without sounding like you're a professor of some prescription but you you know what I mean it's put our lab codes on but is but is like a deep observational
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document about Mankind in the modern age but in many respects you had to go you had to de inside the subject matter to get there you're not riding over this on the surface there isn't like you know we eat too much junk food and we're on the internet too much like you go in hard on this and I wonder what kind of person you were while you were writing this record at least what who you think you were cuz that's it it feels like it
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consumed you is what I'm saying yeah it it did and I I mean I actually the the state of mind that I was in when I was writing this stuff is uh I mean I stopped drinking stopped smoking I wonder that cuz and like I went I went
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real uh monastic most people would go the other way to get this out in fact history suggests that the people who have written the most sharp tonged observations about Society have been the mosted up at that time right you know
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like there on some drugs and I'm talking hundreds of years up to the present day and you decided to take it all in with a real clear sobriety a real clear Focus yeah I just I felt like I needed Clarity you know and that's not to say that there isn't Clarity in other ways of living but it was for me I just knew that I wanted to make something fundamentally different than anything I had made before and so my life was going to have to reflect like a
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a fundamental change too you know because I mean a lot of the songs on the first two records were like 4 in the morning drunk in bed with like pizza hanging out of my mouth and uh it was just like very one to won like this experi I had this experience and this song came out of it this record this is the way that I felt my whole life you know so in that way I've been refine I guess refining these ideas for a long time but
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um collecting these observations in some respect and yeah I I guess just a certain worldview you know a certain I've always felt I think the way that I grew up really plays heavily into this record from um on one hand you know
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there's like Ecclesiastes or something like which is my favorite book of the Bible um you know and and in that way a positive way and then in the other just the alienation and confusion um that I experienced as a child growing
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up in this really Pentecostal environment every adult I knew was was deeply suspect to me you know and they were telling me just insane things that didn't you know I mean I grew up speaking in tongues and slaying in the spirit and but also being told that none of this is real you know and that so having to make these kind of like really non-intuitive uh decisions about you know like you know what I mean like when everything
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you're told is kind of inverted in this way that just you know that that nothing that you can touch or see or feel is is real you know this is all just some sick joke you know and then we go to heaven and sing forever which sounded horrible to me so I was like the idea of just singing all the time no I don't want to do that but uh I think I brought a lot of that that perspective the way I felt growing up into this record what's fascinating is
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that you grew up in this environment as as a kid which made you question all of this and was seemed alien to you but at the same time you're deep in it so you you and you mentioned your favorite passage in the Bible book in the Bible
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so you see something romantic and something glorious in that um which kind of explains the empathy that flows through the record that it's it's not entirely judgmental on on like you're crazy kind of way right the point of you
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know or a song like pure comedy this is all that everyone should know you and I'm not a worldw I'm just saying that like it's it's okay not to know that you don't know anything you know to me there's this Chinese finger trap of the the deeper we get into these like political answers for everything or or trying to somehow mitigate the the pain and confusion of of being a human it just gets us twisted up in these really
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unsatisfactory answers you know I mean the the I mean when I started writing this album I was just really I just felt really aware of the kind of the failure of political solutions for for The Human Experience you know and when I wrote
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like these goons that elected to rule them you know that that is that goes beyond the political like we choose we elect who who rules us in a in a million different ways day in and day out we give people power over us in a in
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infinite number of ways before you even get to politics I think that we absolve ourselves of a certain responsibility via politics you know personal responsibility um it's kind of a it's kind of a standin for the the much harder decisions about the way we want to live and and who we want to have control and I mean it's there is something about Trump that I think represents I mean I'm I have to say this carefully or choose my words carefully
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but one of my favorite things fako ever now now you can we can lay down take a nap but F fako said it's better to have a king because you can see the king coming at least you know yeah like and then you can defend yourself and you can and and Def unlock your Defiance like an authentic form of defiance you know and relating to the power structure that way he thought was more natural to the human disposition or The Human
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Experience or whatever fast forward to now where the power structure is largely sending these messages of like be yourself have fun find something you're passionate about be an individual be a rebel you know be a like and and those messages when those when the power structure is telling you to Rebel it kind of it makes it so that it's very difficult to have an authentic form of rebellion and it is in no way a good thing that
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we're unless you take a really macro view um but in in the day to day now I people are just they are experiencing psychic trauma a lot of people that I know are are like in a way that they probably haven't in their life or they're scared it's like there's like an evil King you know but but it's definitely clarifying I mean I think it makes everyone it it brings everything into focus in a way that um I think a more establishment form of
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politics allows us to get away with never really having to examine you know I I have to really kind of rewind over songs and take everything in because it feels like every word every word matters and you can't say they about every up and there's times when Mady overcomes you know perspective or context and just that sounds good so put that in there but this really does feel like every single word on every song really had to
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make sense and the narrative and I know that you probably wouldn't I don't know how you feel about this but to me this definitely a sort of evolutionary narrative going on you know from the beginning of the baby right through to
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the end when it's like there you know there's nothing to fear nothing to fear yeah you know and the whole experience feels you bow of a dying man coming in early and yet we're not done yet yeah and maybe maybe actually there's a
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moment on the deathbed where I'm going to give you three or four songs and reflect on things a little bit before we say goodbye that's how I get out of it anyway you know the idea of the record I I I guess is to going from narcissism to consciousness mhm and I think narcissism is uh like with these themes of like our absurdity and the kind of futility of you know I mean like asking these questions like is progress even possible
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or do we just saiz ourselves when we try to ADV you know like do we just make ourselves more absurd you know um by trying to progress which is the risk you know it's the price of admission for progress but the narcissism of like uh you know dis you know a certain despair you know and I and that is one re that is one way to react to our like wretched absurdity or whatever and then through to the end of the record is it it really the idea is
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like well if we are if we are absurd and if we are in some way doomed to just kind of in uh enact the same comedy over and over again then there's something liberating about that like I really think that real Freedom comes from that perspective on on Who We Are You Know song number one pure comedy we know dat dot welcome to the world you're a baby this is it sorry good luck U and then we get to is it is it total entertainment forever or with the
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incredible opening line of I'm betting I mean I have so funny that's going to be that's going to be a whole to-do well because you've rhy Taylor Swift with oculus riff yeah well who else rhymes with oculus rift you know
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that was a case of you're you're writing something and you're just like I'm on the cliff and I'm going to jump off yeah so the lyric is betting Taylor Swift every night inside the Oculus Rift after Mr and the misses finished dinner in the
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dishes and I don't want that for anyone you know what I mean that's the point it's like I don't want that to happen to Taylor Swift when the internet came out it was like this is this is the truest form of democracy that human beings have ever invented this is going to be the Utopia and you fast forward and it's pornography yeah where do you think this o this virtual reality is going mhm yeah they and they this happens every time
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where they're like this is going to revolutionize surgeries we're going to be able to you know whatever it's like nope no porn porn it's going to be porn um and uh yeah I mean human beings are going to have toing man up at at at some point I just say like you know because I don't know it's like dehumanized it's like literally dehumanizing and um the point yeah that that song is is uh I guess what it something I was thinking
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about was how we now interface with everything as if it's entertainment you know and even the Trump thing is like a great example um of we entertained ourselves into him being our President you know and cultures have been entertaining themselves in up ways since time began and we have to consider that we are entertaining ourselves in a equally in AEP way and turning everything into entertainment and I and I do think that I mean the song kind of
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is playing with the idea of like well maybe if we just F fully enter a world of like like total entertainment that maybe that will solve all of society's ills you know like if we're all just isolated in in if we're just if we're entertained then we're then we're passive you know so maybe if we just need to hit a critical mass of entertainment where everyone is just so passive and and immersed and locked in their in their mind but nothing will
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happen that including the bad thing it's like that line like from a cave to a city to a permanent party yeah that may be the history and at the end that we're found sitting there as like a bag of bones basically with a smile on our face and whoever finds us went wow that must have been a really good time this must have been a wonderful place what a place that was which leads not neatly into the is a um the third song is things that
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would have been helpful before the Revolution came yeah yeah that ultimately the line I like in there is Ultimate is is when you say is when you allude to the fact that we can protest we want but at the end of the day the
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temperatures are probably going to drop and and before you know it if with the environment is as bad as it's purported to be then there's no time for making these like little tweaks you know if we wanted to save the planet we would have
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to return to like some kind of Primal scene you know where we just and the the vanity of humans who think that like we equate the end of our civilization with the end of the world and the song it's like the world's not going anywhere you know we may be but it's just we don't live on the world we live in a we live in these structures these like ideologies and whatever else that's the world that we live in we live in our
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culture we live in our our way of life that's the world that we inhabit we don't we we have no relationship no meaningful relationship to this you know we we decided at some point that we didn't want to get eaten by bears anymore
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so we isolated ourselves from nature but I just love that idea of like we have this huge Revolution and we save the plant you know like we we we turn back time and save the planet and uh and everybody hates it like I don't want to
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live this way this sucks exactly I'd rather like things it would have been helpful to know before the re you know one of my favorite songs in the record is um The Ballad of a dying man it's just a beautiful beautiful song and um yeah so many of these songs especially in the first half of the record started really as like ideas for like short stories or something you know and and the idea of someone checking their news feed like before they die
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yeah oh man yeah exactly and the line that what you know at some point very soon this will all feel like a very very distant memory in no time at all in no time at all yeah this will be the past age plays quite a big part in the record actually it's almost like you there's a character throughout the record that is um the reflective part of the record is is is an old person in some or somebody who's at that point in their lives where
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they've actually got the ability to be able to really observe because there's nowhere else to go yeah whereas it's it's tough to observe Midway through your own life because everyone will always counter that by saying we'll do something about it right there's value in not in not doing anything I think more people should do nothing I think everybody stopped you know in the Eastern world like in eastern religion
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and philosophy and stuff like Detachment is actually a virtue you know we equate detach we have this like bgea kind of G you know liberal guilt about making a difference and whatever and and and but Detachment is you know I mean other cultures have a completely different perspective on that like where it's actually a like a spiritual trait there one of my favorite songs record is called birdie is that the next one yeah I love that yeah just
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the idea of like you should go talking to a bird just you sort of got it sused out you know you can get out so you should like how sophisticated is freedom really supposed to be is freedom as sophisticated as we think it is or is freedom just being free and it's like when you know like when a major when major labels or Stu I was meeting with with major labels and and um a lot of it was like like man we can like there's like this thing
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about going to the next level and like the kind of money and like whatever and like and and a lot of it gets pitched in like this will you'll you'll be able to have more freedom you know and that extends to all corners of the cult we all think of like money or success or whatever as like well if I get there then I can buy a boat and be free and you know whatever and it's like no you'll just have more money you won't be
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any any more free being free makes you free and that is a that comes from Human agency no one can give you anything that's going to make you free do you feel that way a lot of the time do you do you feel free a lot of the time do
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you can you say that to yourself I'm practicing MH I don't think I'm anywhere near you know free but but you know I Aspire I'm I'm checking out all the options yeah so man talking to you right now having listened to your record and I
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just you know I really appreciate the and perspective about it cuz I'm deep in it and and you know I think it's really amazing how you put this all on record because it's a brave it is brave too A lot of people I'm sure you're aware or maybe you're not but some people may listen to this and think I'm going to take this the other way you know what I mean I don't want to be told any of this and I don't want and you you know you
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went as far as to do that on stage without even probably meaning to last year when you were just like what are we doing oh yeah let's cut to that um was that in the middle of the writing of this album oh yeah you think you deep the world the world of this ALB and I was see happening on TV and I was just I mean it was like being in like a some kind of weird feedback loop yeah I mean just watching this thing go down and and
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uh I guess what Disturbed me I was like you know I was at a bar and watching him get the nomination I'm looking around at my peers and people my age people of my persuasion or whatever like generally the same kind of beliefs and whatever and everybody's just kind of like making jokes and and being you know pretty pretty passive and that's when I was like we're we're yeah we're really yeah because this is uh not something that you react to like
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let's say out in the streets like you know knocking over mailboxes or whatever but but it was take it seriously there was it it became very clear that there was almost this Manifest Destiny that like since we're the ones with the right
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ideas the world is bound to reflect our our Val because we're right we're right about the world we're right about the way is go whatever and um I mean a lot of people took issue like why are you lecturing like a liberal an audience of
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people who are probably like liberals about this because we're complicit like that's the thing that I that I was trying to communicate and I think communicating with this album and a lot of what I've said around the album and whatever is like the things are the way they are because this is how we want them you know on some level like you can't be any other way otherwise it's just going to be you're just going to be waiting for the
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other side to like come around to your worldview you know and um I just was ask and I was asking myself like in what ways am I complicit how did I how did I make this happen in what ways an ie complicit you know and I think some of the I think that got lost you know because people don't necessarily ask themselves that question they're looking you entertain them so they think that it's part of the show yeah I just got up there and I was like
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is more entertainment really what any of us need right now you know and I I know it's like over the top but I just I couldn't bring myself to I don't know it's like I was backstage and everybody's like oh my God can you can
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you believe this you know like what are we this is insane and I and I'm like yeah it's insane they're like hold on one second I ran down the road p and tell some Arch jokes about TR Donald Trump you know and I I just couldn't do
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it you know because I could have done that really well and it would have made me sick you know and I mean it's just it's just crazy man I mean one thing I said was like look we've got this like hilarious Tyrant and do we really think that he's going to be defeated by like hilarious revolutionaries and and it's all just going to be entertaining the whole time you know and then fast forward to last week Michael Moore just like we need an army
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of comedians to rise up and I'm just like God like this is ah I don't know we're we're imbuing satire with power that it just does not have I mean satire is pretty powerful it's not that powerful no what's the song up to birdie I can't remember oh leaving La it's uh I mean that's a story it's a 15minute song I wanted it to be it took about 15 minutes to get like from my house to the freeway and it's kind of like a a real
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time like like jump in here see what it's all about yeah I tried for a minute and then I had to come back to it it's incredible though I mean it really is an amazing piece of music and the fact that it's coherent all the way through and it actually and and you get to the end of it and it's like wow it's yeah I love that song there's something that that can be accomplished in like 15 minutes of music that can't be accomplished in
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three minutes you know and I really wanted to like uh yeah again make something that you could get lost in what's after that paper bag bigger paper bag I mean it's just about narcissism you know the record so it starts really
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topically and I was writing all these topical tunes and I realized at one point like this if this is just Josh Tillman standing on Mountain wagging his finger at everyone yeah it's going to be horrible leaving La paper bag smoochi
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they're all if you're going to talk about humans then there has to be a human in the record so the first image is like Earth from space and you have this detached perspective on you know humans as a as a thing and then as the record progresses you just start getting like closer and closer and closer to Earth to where by the end of the record you're looking up the Stars you know and you have no longer have any perspective
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on what an abstract place it is uh what's up to smoochi two wildly different perspectives that's another heavy one everybody the thing is like everybody wants the right thing you know that's where we kind of converge is like everyone is everyone is looking for the right thing you know like very few people are just out andout Psychopathic nihilists you know who want to see the world burn so actually let's talk about the memo in particular and
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where were you when you wrote that and what what does that one mean to you I wrote that in in New Orleans too but uh I just liked the idea of this like this corporate memo going around it's like if you want to control people this is this
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all you have to do it's easy here's how you Do It um I I mean a lot of this record is you know since I was abstaining from everything I also had an opportunity to examine my whatever my pensent is for like numbing numbing the
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experience of being human in 20 years also is is to me like the song that kind of really ties the whole thing together because um you know especially it starts off in in a very kind of structured way that that that makes sense throughout the record and then it goes in one one one of the most beautiful Arrangements on the record yeah it's an unbelievable piece of music and then it it kind of picks back up and really sort of lays it
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all out MH which is that you know yeah this could all come to a very violent end in 20 years but you know what the way you look right now it does that doesn't matter that's the best I can do okay yeah after all this wordiness and
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all this like taking taking things apart and putting them back together and like these questions just raise more questions you know and I'm just always struck at how nonpr found the moments are when I have a sense of belonging or
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or peace or per you know purpose or or whatever it is like I think I was like halfway through writing that song and I didn't know how to end it CU I take a big swing at the top of that song you know um and our second drinks come out sitting chatting about nothing and all of a sudden you're you get it and those those moments are are few and far between but I think they rarely resemble how we'd like them to look they're not
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these like you know glorious epiphanies let me tell you man very few people finish an album like you do I have to say traditionally you always you I mean let's be honest man love it I know you do and you do it very deliberately in a beautiful way like I always I'm always looking forward to how our record's going to end because I'm like he's going to leave me with something and you didn't disappoint on this one either and
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in fact I mean I love that when you sort of say at the end you know there's nothing to fear but the line before where you talk about and I'm looking at you and this is where you're are I mean that's the killer line I look at you as
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our second drinks arrive the piano player playing this must be the place which is so cool to reference that talking yeah was just like the piano I was was at the Chateau again feel like all my stories begin with at the chatau or like
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in a tree naked um so was UN acid but yeah it was like just one of those like an inexplicably just perfect little moment you know this recordist has been has really like rocked me in a big big way and and I think it's just like an
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amazing body of work means so much really it is I mean I don't know how you're going to possibly play this live um oh you just wait yeah I bet I wanted give I'm going to New York to audition dancers in a couple days I wondered
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about that no I did I wondered whether there was a theatrical play here because that's how it feels there's a it is a whole other conversation but yeah it's there's something categorically unprecedented so I'm going to just going down I'm just going to put a pin in the mat right now to end my little prediction uh that in 10 years time pure comedy will be one of the most successful Broadway Productions ever I would love that