God’s Country

Product Information

Do you see those qualities in your music, and are you really working to try to get that starkness of presentation in there?

NR: As this is the end-of-year roundup for Norman, have there been any records/artists/general musical things which have particularly stood out to you this year? And if so, can you see any of them filtering into future Chat Pile work? NR: There are a lot of bands, artists, fan communities etc. in Northern England who would overlap with Chat Pile. You said that “lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of THC” were used for this album. Approximately how much THC would you say? Are you more of a sativa or indica band? Raygun Busch: Absolutely! My brain is only truly working when I’m talking about movies, music, books etc. There is a song on the record I am immensely proud of, that is sort of extremely personal in a lot of ways despite essentially being Friday the 13th fanfiction. The Grimace song alternately draws from the films Mysterious Skin and In a Glass Cage (not to mention real-life experience)—There’s also some songs on the record that draw from real life events from our region of the country, true, but they are merely impressions, not meant to be a history lesson by any means. Sort of the In Cold Blood approach. LM: Yeah, I love stuff like that. That’s something that’s appealing to all of us, and I feel like it works. When we started writing instrumentals and got Ray in on vocals, it worked together. Having the theatrical angle with it - or maybe even literary, because there are a lot of characters and stuff in the songs - works, it’s cool.

RB: My dad was a minister, for instance. Not baptist though - we were DoC [Disciples of Christ], which is way more chill, but still. LM: Yeah, absolutely MDC. That stuff is very appealing to me, and so it makes sense for that kind of vibe to be in our music too. I think all of us listen to a little bit of stuff like that. Even Nirvana, they’re like that too. There’s so much of that kind of shit going on in Kurt Cobain’s lyrics, and they’re one of the biggest bands ever. That was definitely big early for me, hearing music that was in some way sarcastic, you know?

NR: Given that you chose to frame the record by calling it ‘God’s Country’, what do you think it does to the psyche of people or a community to be invoking God on their existence like that?LM: It all depends on the way you think about it. So many bands - and so many bands I like, too - can just take the hard other way with their imagery, doing lots of Satan shit and devil shit in the music. I like the aesthetic, so it’s appealing to me. Raygun Busch: It was borne from necessity but it’s really the only way to do things, right? We’ve each been recording our own music since at least our teen years. There’s really no reason for anyone to ever pay someone to do shit that a computer has made pig simple for the masses. The internet and computer programs have completely equalized the medium–You can make a record or a movie or whatever you want (easy as writing that book always has been lol) if you really want to. Tangerine was shot on iPhones and Tangerine is one of the best movies of the century so far. Deathconsciousness by Have a Nice Life was recorded using Garageband for chrissakes! S: I think that type of music just attracts a specific type of nerd [all laugh]. Angry nerds who have no choice but to laugh about certain things. LM: I’ve always dug music which is like that lyrically, like The Mountain Goats and Daniel Johnston. I enjoy lyrics which are more like people talking rather than insane, dense prose. The more naturalistic-type stuff in general has always been very appealing to me. So I like when we get some of that in the lyrics, because that’s the type of stuff that I listen to. That’s ideal for me. Stin: Our writing process is a little weird (or perhaps not?) in that usually one of us brings a few loose riff ideas to the table, and the three non-vocalists jam on it endlessly until it feels the way we want it to feel. So the length of “Grimace…” wasn’t premeditated; it just kind of ended up being long as we kept feeling it out. We knew Raygun would be able to really take the long, doomy section at the end and make it his own.