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. Despite his prodigious and influential output, 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 digging deeper to better unearth the seeds of the various anxieties rearing their heads on album after album. It is at times bombastic and triumphant, casually humbling, and straight-up sad. Above all else, it’s relatable; the incongruence between your status quo and what you think your status quo should look like 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.”
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 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 now than I did at, say, 17 when I was more focused on watching the narrative unfold at arm’s 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. 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.
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.