Iceland to Indio: Björk's Long Musical Odyssey
Björk's third Coachella appearance inspired us to look back on URB's extensive coverage — 2001, 2003, and 2007 — and revisit her captivating artistic legacy
Our September 2001 Björk Cover Story
A Different Sort of Bird
Under the prying eye of Hollywood and the superficial glare of the mainstream pop world, Björk has quietly hatched songs with some of the most creative talents in electronic music. But, while everyone thinks they know what she's about, few see Björk’s true nature as a devoted music nerd and electro-acoustic composer who spends countless hours talking about snare sounds and editing noises on her laptop.
By Tamara Palmer
Photography by Joseph Cultice
Bjork is so unequivocally underground; she knew the discography of some of electronic music's most innovative producers before you even dropped the needle on one of their records. She's so incredibly above ground that immigrant cab drivers, dentists, construction workers, and Joan Rivers all have an opinion on her looks and style. Her musical art, which has sold well over 10 million units worldwide between her solo albums, springs out of intersections and contrasts between her public and private hemispheres. She travels along an electro-acoustic axis fueled by an intense passion held by only the most dedicated audiophiles. And if you're only looking and not listening, you could easily miss it all.
"Bjork is obsessed with music," confirms Drew Daniel, one half of Matmos, the Bay Area duo who are frequent Bjork collaborators, "and when she loves a piece of music, she becomes a pretty fiery advocate for it. She once rang me up from Iceland to play me a Hans Reichel daxophone piece [i.e., German avant-garde guitarist playing an experimental wooden in- strumen_t] over the phone. We were hanging out with her in LA in her hotel room, and she started to DJ for us on her little stereo, playing us Cylob, Tomita, Opiate, Ensemble, Arovane, and Mortiis one after the other, very excitedly. So however glamorous she might be, she's also a big music geek."
The electronic sound palette has held a magnetism for Björk for well over 20 years. As a young teenager, she often listened to the serene ambiance of Tangerine Dream and Brian Eno in her communal household in Iceland (where she was already a famous vocalist by age 13). She then progressed to the more complex, industrialized sounds of German bands OAF and Einstlirzende Neubauten. The latter she discovered as an 18-year-old scruff visiting Berlin on tour with her punk band KUKL (predecessors to her latterly famous band, The Sugarcubes, who introduced the world to the concept of credible modern music in Iceland in the course of their three-album career). After breaking from The Sugarcubes in 1990, one of her first projects was creating the song "Ooops" for Manchester, England dance unit 808 State's second album, Ex:El, in 1991, which began her long working relationship with band member Graham Massey. Since her solo career began to blossom in the early '90s, she has consistently relied on electronic music arrangements (provided early on by producers like Massey, Howie Band former LFO member Mark Bell) to complement her most amazing acoustic instrument: her voice.
Bjork succinctly explains her preference for digital sounds and how they work in her organic schematic. "I'm interested in blending electronic music with our everyday life to prove that's actually how we're living," she says. "I guess my attempt is to take just the life we lead daily and make magic out of that. But, to be honest, those are the sounds [of life]; it's what we hear all the time... I like extremes; I guess very raw acoustic things and then very pure electronic beats. To me, electricity comes from nature. Like acupuncture - something several thousand years old triggers the electricity inside us within our nerve system.”
“My biggest challenge is to create a song on my own, and that's kind of where I'm going to be headed," Bjork told me in a 1995 interview, just after the release of Post. "I think the next album will be when I've learned all the things I can do on my own." She's released two albums since then, Homogenic and Selmasongs, the soundtrack to her startling, heart-wrenching, first-and-last acting role in last year's Dancer in the Dark. Yet six years later, as we pop vitamins, sip herbally enriched drinks, and discuss her fourth solo album Vespertine at an all-night diner near her Manhattan loft/work space, she seems resolutely closer to her goal.
“It was a strange album, this one, because there are almost no tunes on the album that I did completely with someone," she says. "Some songs are like nine people making beats on them. I never planned it that way, but that"s sort of how it went. I think, in my ideal world, I'm more of an organic person. Like, I work with one person, and we do everything together; we complete each other in every way. But I think it’s also important to be truthful about where you are at... Me and Mark Bell had been working together for three years, and he got offered to do Depeche Mode (on their new album Exiter). So he went off to do that in a completely amicable way. And so I guess I was more stubborn on this album, too. I knew from day one what I wanted.”
Vespertine refers to vespers, an open-ended word that generally relates to an element that blooms at night, whether a plant, animal or an introspective prayer. The original working title for the album was Domestika, and both names suggest a comforting sort of privacy so private, in fact, that it is difficult to conceive of the idea of commercial radio ever daring to blare any of these pieces.
All of the songs have a soothing quality achieved with the deft merging of instruments like harp and music box and the gritty digital filters of laptop software. This provides the soft padding on which Björk’s lyrical lullabies can safely land. If an instrumental-only version of this album were available, you'd be forgiven for mistaking it for a release on envelope-pushing electronic labels like Warp or Rephlex.
Björk wrote all of the words on Vespertine, with two notable exceptions: “Sun in My Mouth” (a poem/song written by e.e. cummings in 1925) and “Harm of Will” (penned by screenwriter Harmony Karine, best known for the movie Kids). Between her lyrics and the spontaneous vocal intonations of breath and growl that appear between lines, it sometimes feels like the aural equivalent of walking in on Björk naked. It's an awkward moment: You're seeing something you might've wanted to, but you know you're not supposed to have that much access. On “Cocoon,” when she sweetly allows the listener in on some clear intimacy — “from the mouth of a girl like me/to a boy” — in a tone, we haven't quite heard before, there's at least the illusion that Björk is revealing something of her private persona.
She's always been known for left-of-center, evocative lyrics that take a simple twist on daily operations. “I wake up and the day feels broken/I tilt my head and try to get an angle,” she sings on “It's Not Up to You.” But speaking to her leaves the impression that her true emotions are better expressed through machines’ sounds. The warm, full synthesizer melodies that sweep up a song and carry it along might communicate her ideas more directly than the words they surround.
Björk straddles the vast hazy continuum of organic versus automated sound. At press time, she hoped to book mainly opera houses for her fall live tour to sing in a naturally amplified environment without microphones (but, of course, with the assistance of laptops and other digital gear). This is all for purely audiophile reasons, she insists. “Not because I’m posh.”
Amid the organized chaos, with people dropping in and out. Of the mix, a few names appear consistently throughout Vespertine in rotating roles of programming, arranging, and engineering. These include a quartet of veteran Björk collaborators — Jake Davies, Marius de Vries, Valgeir Sigurdsson, and Guy Sigsworth — and cutting-edge electronicists Matmos and Thomas Knak, Vince Mendoza (who arranged Selmasongs) and harpist Zeena Parkins.
“It seemed that the way [Vespertine] worked was very truthful to how my life was anyway," she says. “I was working on my laptop with a Pro Tools engineer who would help me set up my system wherever I was because I was traveling quite a lot.”
During the three years she worked on Vespertine (initially as a hobby amid the strain of filming Dancer in the Dark), Bjork took advantage of time spent in transit, mainly on trains and airplanes. With her laptop and classical music editing software, she would tirelessly sift through sounds, creating music box and harp arrangements and laying down preliminary song structures to take back into the home studio. “And then someone would pop by for an evening, and we'd eat or get drunk or whatever, and they'd add a little thing on, and then they'd leave,” she explains.
“So, if you read the credits, it seems problematic but wasn’t. It was just me, working in my house mostly daily, with an engineer on and off and sometimes on my own, with people popping by with suggestions. I hope when I say this, I'm not underestimating how much work a lot of people put into it, but overall that was kind of more how this album was made [more] than my other albums.”
As she concludes, a middle-aged, grinning yuppie walks up to her. “I’m sorry to interrupt,” he stammers, thrusting a crumpled postcard onto the table. “My girlfriend loves your music and...” She smiles politely, scrawls her tag on the card, and begins again.
“I had problems doing the credits on the album,” she reiterates. “It was kinda tricky because I was getting my favorite artists of today all together on one song, and it was a bit crazy. I had to write what they did, and it was kinda complicated... There was a period when someone like Joni Mitchell would get the cream of musicians together in the same song. One would play drums, the next would play percussion, another bass, another guitar, and another keyboard. So it’d be very obvious — you'd just write on the album ‘keyboards, bass [by a specific musician].’ But now, what are you gonna do?” She makes strange noises with her mouth to illustrate the futility of crediting sounds without ready semantic descriptions to each contributor.
For example, pal Matthew Herbert, an accomplished producer currently celebrating the reception of his latest album, Bodily Functions, contributed a rhythmic movement of about 32 beats in the middle eighth of the first single, “Hidden Place.” Herbert manages with a few scant beats to open up a world of possibilities of future work for these two — if they could sync up their schedules to spend quality time together in the studio.
“She's completely involved in the process,” says Matmos’ Daniel. “She's very trusting with her collaborators and will try to suggest the emotion of a track while respecting their freedom to interpret how to turn that emotion into sound. But there was always a point at which each sound and pattern would come under very close scrutiny, and she would let you know what was working, what wasn't, what needed to be stronger or more delicate, or shifted slightly.”
One of Matmos’ great strengths, as witnessed on their recent LP, A Chance to Cut is a Chance to Cure, is their ability to extract and dissect minute sound ideas and spit them out into new songs with wit and humor. In Björk, they have found a partner who can keep up with their level of detail. “On a board with over 150 tracks going, she would always have an ear for what was necessary and what she could do without,” notes Daniel. “Sometimes five different mixes at a given song would be made with only minute differences, maybe just a slightly different kick drum sound. But to her, there was always a clear sense of what she was going for and how close or far away a given mix was from that goal.”
Another producer Björk worked with for the first time was the ultra-prolific Bogdan Raczynski, who has released several obnoxiously witty albums on Aphex Twin’s Rephlex label that push the boundaries of experimentation even for those who trumpet the philosophy. “We did a tune together, and I was gonna put it on the album, but then it was so different,” she says of Raczynski. “We might have it separate. We might do more stuff. We're not sure what we will do, but it seems to be a different thing... He's incredible; I think he's a really special person. He's good proof that there's passion in computers.” Both plan to post free MP3 downloads at some of the fruits of their collaborations on their Web sites, bjork.com and bogdanraczynski.com.
Ultimately, Raczynski dishes up the tastiest metaphor for Björk's confident and creative work ethic. “[Engineer] Jake Davies, Björk, and I were cutting up oranges and 200 BPM beats in New York City,” he recalls. "And she would always silently and carefully make sure that things fit together like a chef who knew what the final taste was but didn't know what the ingredients were.”
Björk is a perfectionist in her musical kitchen, to be sure, but that doesn't mean she's precious about her art. Quite the reverse, as it turns out. Her attitude toward digital downloading, in particular, is refreshing, given her stature and attention to detail:
URB: You've said that Vespertine was partly influenced by the idea of Napster, being able to download songs before their release, and how acoustic sounds would fare after they were downloaded and processed on laptops. Lo and behold, Vespertine was available for download online long before it hit the streets. Do you mind?
BJÖRK: I’m not too upset about it. It was bound to happen. You’ve got the record company who don't want it to happen, and then you've got the people who want it to happen. And then you've got me. I guess I'm quite flattered by the enthusiasm. I'm quite curious about what's gonna happen in the next few years. I think it'll change. I mean, it already has. But I like all that stuff, obviously, being a punk. And I made a conscious decision that I would be part of the system and try to change it from the inside... If you don't take part in anything and are kind of pure and isolated in your corner, nothing will change for you. You need to get in there and get involved if you care. So that's what I'm doing.
So obviously, a lot of people don't necessarily agree with how I feel and vice versa, but that's okay. Something like this always reminds me of going to Prague 10 years ago. It was still communist, and someone handed me a novel by Milan Kundera, which was illegal. Somebody had typed it on thin paper, and so many people had read it that you could see through the pages. It was like 1990, and people knew that they could be put in jail if they read it, yet everybody still read it. I think it's very often that music is thought of as being a luxury item. I like it when a situation in a country goes that way that it becomes a necessity.
People are willing to make an effort, and I quite like that... It seems natural — like the little creatures, they wanna crawl on all fours, sneak, and download. They are curious enough to take it for what it is.
Some artists take issue with the fact that what often ends up online are out-takes or not the final version of a song.
If you look at the whole percentage of Björk tracks available online, 80 percent of them I didn't do. I've been hearing hilarious songs, [even one] with German lyrics! So I think if you took the overall picture, I think people who download stuff are prepared that ifs 50/50 gonna be what it says it is... It’s the sort of sneaky element I like; it’s pretty secretive. What we did was when we heard the first track, which I think was sung in German and was funny, we saw this conversation going on [online]: “This isn't the new Matmos/Björk track. I don't know what this is. This is an odd duck.” So we've started doing really crap versions of our tunes, putting them up, calling them “odd ducks!”
I think there's a biological reason why guys provide beats and girls provide soul.
Speaking of odd ducks, the fact of the marketplace is that Björk is a minority as a female involved in creating and arranging electronic music. As a tomboy who was not only good at math in school but on the chess team as well, it’s clear she never let stereotypes of gender limit her field of interest. She seems perplexed when asked about the imbalance of the sexes in electronic music production.
I’ve found it’s very abstract sometimes what's called production,” she says after a considered silence. “A lot of people seem to think with electronic music that people who bring the beats are producers, but that's not true. You can compare it to the ’70s. Do you know if you wrote a song in the ’70s and got a drummer to come in and play drums? Even though he'd do exactly what he wanted — you wouldn't tell him what to do — he would not be the song's producer. He wouldn't. And now, if somebody makes a beat, he's a producer. But then again, I know a lot of beatmakers that are producers. I'm not taking [anything] away from them for one minute. I think doing beats — maybe I should shut my mouth because this is a really cliche thing to say — but doing beats, it’s quite a male thing. It’s quite a, you know, ‘Gimme a beat!’” she giggles. “I’m not surprised if that's related to gender; that doesn’t surprise me. The fact that women supply feelings or a heart — I'm not saying guys don't have a heart — but I think there's a biological reason why guys provide beats and girls provide soul.”
Edited for clarity
Our August 2003 Björk Cover Story
I Sing the Body Electric
After a decade of stunning solo audio-visual work, the artist reflects on an unstoppable career
By Tamara Palmer
Photography by Warren Du Preez and Nick Thornton Jones
The bright sun is beginning to think about packing it in on this lovely summer evening in Venice, Italy. Or so we hear from Björk, who phones in the report from her mobile phone as she walks across a bridge towards her hotel, happily greeting people shouting her name as she passes.
It’s a picturesque image none of us have any trouble conjuring up. However, our specific portrait of the artist will vary infinitely according to which default image of this visual chameleon is set in us internally. Perhaps she’s resplendent in a gauzy white cocoon of a dress with multiple knots in her hair, as we know her from her early days establishing her career independent from The Sugarcubes, the band she and her friends started as rebellious teenagers in Iceland laughing. Or maybe your particularly twisted mind prefers to see her as one of the androgynous robots that Chris Cunningham immortalized in his video for her song “All is Full of Love.” That our impressions will run such a large gamut is a testament to the mutable nature of the visual component of Björk’s multi-disciplined art. Still, one fact we might be able to all agree upon is the unwavering force of her voice.
Ten years after her proper solo launch with the 1993 album Debut, Björk’s British label One Little Indian celebrates her milestone with
a massive selection of releases. The Live Box Set collects four discs of live performances (selected by Björk herself) of her four core solo albums — Debut, Post, Homogenic, and Vespertine- and a DVD of live songs. And then there are no less than seven additional DVDs.
This lot includes a live performance of the Vespertine tour at London’s Royal Opera House, a documentary of the tour itself called Minuscule, the revealing documentary Inside Björk and a series of performances from the BBC television program Later with Jools Holland. There are also DVD issues of collections previously available on video: Vessel (performances and silliness from the Debut tour) and the music video collection Greatest Hits: Volumen 1993- 2003 (and the new companion, Volumen Plus, which contains extra videos).
Björk is also on a live tour in North America for nine unique shows in August. Venues range from the elegant environs of the Hollywood Bowl in California to the considerably grittier backdrop of New York’s Coney Island.
All of this Björk activity has two instant consequences: Her considerable posse of ardent fans have a ridiculous amount of quality material to be excited about, and those programmed to be cynical of record label machinations and the egos of pop stars will naturally question if it’s all necessary. But only one woman on the planet could definitively answer this — and other riddles in the stunningly beautiful enigma known as Björk.
I find it very tedious to listen to old stuff of mine
URB: Why are you releasing so much material now, all at once?
BJÖRK: I guess I find it very tedious to listen to old stuff of mine. I’d much rather move ahead and do new stuff. But people had been telling me off because there were all of these horrible bootlegs out there, and what a shame it was that the good stuff wasn’t available. So I chose from live concerts — a few hundred hours of material. I’m funny like that. I kind of have to do it myself, you know? Basically, I got pregnant and postponed last summer’s tour until this summer. Then I just used the nesting energy of being pregnant to listen to all this stuff and clean my attic, if you want, going through boxes and throwing out rubbish. I ended up with four live albums: Greatest Hits and The Family Tree. It’s not the most exciting part of what I do, but it was necessary.
You say you find this process tedious, but did you find any unexpected joy in compiling these projects?
I find it very uncomfortable to listen to myself. So I kept putting it off. Overall, it was tedious while doing it, but I learned a lot from the whole thing after it was done. As much fun as it is just to go, go, go and never look back, it was good that I made myself do this. It sort of gives me a clean start now.
Do you feel like there’s a new door opening?
Yeah, there’s no luggage. It just definitely feels like new. It’s a good feeling.
There is a natural question that everyone has at this point: What can you tell us about what comes next? Do you have a plan?
When I did Homogenic, around ’95-’96, I knew I would first do an album with nature and me in my mountain boots walking and eruptions and patriarchic violins. Then I wanted to do an opposite version of me, which is me inside my house, alone in the middle of the night, reading a book or listening to my favorite tune or something sort of introspective.
So that was Vespertine, and that came out in 2001. So I guess I had five or six years of always knowing what was gonna come next. So I’m enjoying my work now, sort of not knowing. I’m just writing a lot of stuff, and I’m enjoying the freedom of that because it can just be any way I want it.
So you would say it’s the first time in a while you don’t have a plan?
Yeah, it’s kind of nice to get an idea and do it that day, and then in a week, get another idea and do that one. It’s more spontaneous, working with the moment. I like both — I don’t prefer one to the other. I think that it’s important that when you feel like you want to have a long-term idea and you want to work in the most pragmatic way — piece by piece by piece — you should. And when you feel like you need to be spontaneous, you should. I think it’s important to act according to how you feel.
If you want to do things well, you must do just one thing at a time and ignore the rest. So if I want to do a Vespertine kind of album, which is full of micro-details and tiny stuff, it’s going to be time-consuming, and it will be a lot of work, and you just have to ignore everything else while you’re doing that. I guess it’s a question of prioritizing what’s most important for you at each moment.
It seems that it would be difficult to prioritize when your creativity is active. How do you focus when those types of creative distractions come up?
There’s no method, you just take it as it comes, and you have to deal with it differently each time. I don’t know what you’re like, but I’m like this: If
I figure out a method of how to do something, I cannot do it again that way. [laughs] So it’s sort of like improvised, you know? Since I was a kid, people with really great ideas have surrounded me. They always found it sad when people didn’t finish things. So I guess I learned a lot from them in trying to take things to the end, even though sometimes you’d rather move on. I guess I’m quite stubborn like that. I’ve never walked out of a movie cinema, for example. If I walk in and in the first five minutes, I know it’s horrible, I still have to see it through to the end.
The Vespertine tour played venues that boost the room's natural acoustics, such as symphony halls and opera houses. Once you have that kind of quality of sound, does it make you not want to perform in situations where it’s not like that?
No, I always like extremes. I like a sweaty club with all the bass and bottom, exaggerated distortion, and everybody rolling over each other sweaty and having an amazing time. And then I like to have a good shower, put a peacock dress on, and sit outside and hear someone play the harp. I think it’s fun — to go from one style to another and do it forever. I think human nature
is far more complex than that. No one likes the same thing forever.
I like a sweaty club with all the bass and bottom, exaggerated distortion, and everybody rolling over each other sweaty and having an amazing time. And then I like to have a good shower, put a peacock dress on, and sit outside and hear someone play the harp
The Vespertine tour was more in a way about honing my style as a singer. I was always in rock bands playing clubs where everyone would smoke, and my voice would get hoarse in five minutes. There are many elements in a room, and I always loved singing acoustically without any microphone to hear the room's echo. It was great to do the Vespertine tour because I wanted to do it for almost 20 years. But you kind of get it out of your system and move on.
People are lazy, they see a situation that works really well — say, a sweaty room with good bass and great music and everything’s incredible
— and they say, “Okay, we’ve worked out the formula.” And then you go back to that place, and it’s overrun with hideous music. So I think it’s important to stay on your toes and keep discovering what music is. Because it isn’t one thing — it isn’t a harp, and it isn’t a virgin singing somewhere. Or it isn’t a rock band. It’s not about the circumstances or the setup. It’s about the heart of the music. And it’s important that people don’t forget that.
When did you begin to use your body to engage its full capacity to sing and use body language and physical expression in performance?
There’s a side of me that’s very academic, I guess from music school, that’s constantly concerned with arrangements and all that stuff. But there’s also a side of me that tries not to think about it all because of my voice and probably my body too, I want it to do its own thing, something that’s more spontaneous and surprising.
So you’re not actively engaging your body?
No, otherwise, I’d die of boredom. So it’s kind of nice when I do a show, especially now with this tour. I’ve got all the more up, sort of physical tunes up front, which is the opposite of Vespertine. It’s kind of fun to go on stage, and you don’t know how you’re going to react to yourself. You can still surprise yourself. I think that’s quite an important element — so many shows are planned, so it’s nice to have that unknown factor. I never know; it’s like the weather, and I quite enjoy that.
But I have to say I’m a very physical person and I really enjoy that part of it. I go into the studio and record, arrange, and use all these techniques to be spontaneous in my voice and body. It’s almost as if you do all this hard work to prepare and set up a gun, and it’s all about exploding.
Edited for clarity
Our May 2007 Björk Feature Story
Violently Happy
The eccentric living legend continues to create and inspire
By Giselle Zado Wasfie
Photography by Jennifer Haskins
Does this lady even need an introduction? Certainly, the Icelandic Wonder Woman is sweeter than you think, and maybe it has something to do with the fact that she considers herself a “rural person.” She’s also a fan of Bat for Lashes and is set to release her 10th solo album, Volta, on May 7. Incidentally, she’s one of the greatest artists of our time. How’s that, for starters?
URB: How does your creative process work?
BJÖRK: It’s been different things for different albums. I try to be sort of quiet, truthful to where I’m at, at any given time, because I’ve sort of always felt from the beginning that, emotionally, humans go up and down and to the left and the right, all over the place. And I’ve always felt the demand on a musician is just to be in one place, like an aggressive musician is aggressive all the time, and somebody who’s really poetic and calm—if he does an album like that, he has to do albums like that for a lifetime. So that was one of the things I set out at the start, not to follow that oppression but rather be run by emotion. So, at the beginning of every album, it sort of depends on where I’m at and where I’m coming from, and with this album, because probably I’ve done a couple of albums that were quite introverted, I was sort of in the mood to do something extroverted and kind of fun. So I started off sort of programming beats, and they were quite up… I guess, emotionally, on this album. Yeah, I was just really, really up for doing something sort of like a celebration.
Do your albums mark a moment in your life?
Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think every person obviously has different ears when you feel a different way, and I think what’s amazing with music is that music can actually go there where many other things can’t. That’s sort of what music is best at because sometimes it’s impossible to describe something in words or in any way except music. Obviously, with the Sugarcubes, I was just one of six, and that was more our group spirit, kind of what we did when we met, and we would maybe leave other stuff at home. Whereas, when I started doing my own albums, it was kind of more room for all the different moods of me: Some albums are quite introverted, sort of what I would do when I’m at home alone, and other albums may be more what I would do after a few drinks in a bar.
I guess this album it’s got both sides. I mean, there are definitely tracks where it’s sort of, you know, dancing on the table, but there are also tracks that are more reflective and kind of,
I guess, more serious.
Well, it’s true to life.
Yeah, right. You’ve got to live with both, right?
That’s what music is best at — because sometimes it’s impossible to describe something in words or in any way except music.
You split time between New York and Iceland. What’s a normal day like for you in those places?
Um, I don’t know, I mean, I’m not really into routines, but I can imagine there are certain things I always do when I’m in Iceland. Obviously, I would hook up with my friends, and I love swimming, so that’s a big thing in Iceland because of the hot springs. There are swimming pools in every neighborhood, and they’re all outdoors, so even though it’s snowing and stuff, that’s sort of the place where people meet. They kind of hang out in steam baths and catch up on the latest gossip, so I’ll probably do a bit of that.
My house in Manhattan is actually not in Manhattan; it’s half an hour up north— so it’s sort of in the forest. Because of that, I’m actually quite a rural person. But I also come a couple of times a week into town and go to concerts, restaurants, or whatever. I kind of like the fact that it’s the opposite, and I do like urban stuff.
What are some shows you’ve seen lately?
I saw Antony [from Antony and the Johnsons] sing two days ago. It was a birthday party, though; it wasn’t exactly a concert. I saw Bat For Lashes in England; she was amazing.
What’s it like playing Coachella?
I have always liked extremes, like either a 500-seated venue that is really intimate or the outdoors. I have always played outdoors, even though I started doing that a long time ago, and even though many people—my friends in bands—thought it was a bit of a sell-out to play a huge festival; I never felt that way. I mean, the good thing about festivals is that [they’re] outdoors, and I love nature, obviously. There is something that happens when you listen to music outside.
I sometimes listen to classical concerts outside, and nature programs are one of my favorite things. In London, you can go to a park and sit, and there is a huge screen showing nature programs, a symphony orchestra playing live music under it, and everybody gathers with picnic baskets. The thing is, in Europe, there is such a tradition for this, and when you are playing at European festivals, you are playing, like, by the ocean in 2,000-year-old amphitheaters and in perfect locations. You can tell when you are playing there that they have been playing music there for thousands of years. So everybody arrives with picnic baskets and bottles of wine, and it’s not even a posh thing—it’s just what everybody does.
How does it compare to the States?
I don’t feel this so much in the States, like here is sort of more a rave-hedonist kind of drug fest. But I think it’s changing, especially with Coachella and other events, it’s becoming an actual thing. And sometimes people get humbled by a beautiful sunset…
When you are playing outside, do you get the sense that you are connected to something bigger?
You are just kind of there for the music, not the worship.