How’s the tour going? You’ve just started, I take it.
Yeah, we left last Sunday, so almost a week now, and it’s been really, really nice, actually. Last night we played in an art gallery in Middelburg. I’ve played a lot of small towns in the Netherlands that I’d never been to before. The night before was pretty much out in the middle of nowhere, in Holland, in a place called Bakkeveen. Just this one house, kind of out in the middle of a field, where they do one concert a month. And the same last night, they do one concert a month in this gallery, and the night before that was in this amazing old church in Gent, in Belgium. The turnouts have been great and we’ve been selling a lot of CDs, and people seem really happy. So it’s been really, really nice.
As for How They Are, your latest release… would I be right in saying that it was a record that seemed to happen to you, rather than one you searched out or planned?
That’s a really nice way to put it. I didn’t really think of it like that, but now that it’s released, and it’s finished, it kind of feels like that’s how it happened. I had this time off and that stuff just came out of it. It just all fell into place.
As a piece of work it feels very solitary, which I suppose is a product of the context in which it was written? [Peter had to cancel touring and album release plans after he was consigned to the “quiet life” by knee surgery in the beginning of 2010]
Absolutely. I was spending a lot more time alone than I had been in the previous years. In the studio it’s just me – there’s no overdubs or anything, it’s just what I’m capable of doing in a room by myself at once. I was really aiming for the solitary sound… a very stripped down, basic, honest sound.
I’m almost inclined to conclude from How They Are that, fundamentally, you’re an introvert – which would fit in with the tone of your earlier releases. But given that you are involved so often in collaboration, suggesting a highly social side, I was wondering whether that was really the case?
Well, someone was interviewing me the other day and he said at the interview, “you know, your music seems so sad but you seem like such a happy person” – that’s sort of a way to put it I guess. But I’m a really social person, I have to speak with people all day, every day, most of the time, but this was a time when I did spend quite a bit of time to myself.
In Human Eyeballs on Toast, you seem to be writing from the perspective of a battery chicken.
Exactly. I’m very glad you realised that because I read a review of the record a few days ago, where somebody thought I was talking about myself, and saying if I had a bigger brain, I’d surely find a way to take my own life, and I just thought that’s a shame, I really hope people aren’t thinking that.
Is it simply an exercise in writing from an unusual perspective, then, or something more than that?
I can tell you exactly why that song came about. I was reading a book at the time called Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer. Have you heard of Everything Is Illuminated? He wrote that book, and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close was his second one. The second one especially, I read that book and I just thought, this is one of the most incredible novels I’ve ever read. Then his third book that comes out is a non-fiction account of the animal agriculture industry and I just thought that was such a bold move from him to write that after having two really successful novels. And still, you go to the bookstore and they have his novels on display, but that one’s in the corner somewhere, y’know. I’ve kind of been a back and forth vegetarian my whole life, and always kind of searched for a real reason to make up my mind one way or another, and that book gave me some very clear answers. It’s a really startling, shocking book. So the song just came out, right in that time.
You always seem to have a lot of projects on the go. Is there anything particular in the works at the moment?
Well, there are some things in the works. There are some recording projects that I’ve already finished, that are coming out before the end of the year. One is a split 7” with my friend Johan [Gustavsson, aka Tsukimono] who’s playing first tonight. I think he’s mostly doing some pretty avant garde, electronic stuff, but on the record he’s singing and playing guitar. I wrote a song about him, and he wrote a song about me, and we also covered each other’s songs, so there are four songs total on the 7”.
So it sounds more like your work than his?
There’s me singing two songs and him singing two songs, so it’s kind of a big little mix up, because I’m singing a song that he wrote, but he wrote it about me. It was a really fun project. It was supposed to be ready for this tour, but it got delayed, so, I think we’re gonna get it in the next week or so, somewhere along the tour. And when I get back in November I’m gonna be recording a little collaboration album with my friend Nils Frahm. We’re going to Japan together next year, so we’re gonna make maybe an eight song album.
Is this the record you’d been working on before your knee surgery?
No, that’s another record which is already finished, but this one is going to be 50/50, both of our names: Peter Broderick and Nils Frahm. A collaboration album.
That record you have finished, to be released in 2011. You have said it’s a “monster album”, and “huge sounding”…
Maybe that was kind of a mistake! I think on my scale it’s a monster album, because I’ve spent more time on it than any other record that I’ve worked on and it has, like… you know, Home is guitar and voice, there’s others that are strings and piano, and this one kind of has everything.
Not the same restraint, perhaps?
No, there were no rules like, let’s only use these instruments, or anything. But there’s still some softer songs, there are some songs that get pretty loud with drums, and it’s a bit more all over the place.
What else can you tell us about the record?
It’s nine songs, most are based on the guitar. There’s one song where I’m singing in German. Each song is very different from each other, that’s the way I feel about it. Another song is a cover of a song my father wrote when he was eighteen years old, where he went into a studio when he was eighteen and he recorded this song. My mother found it on a tape and gave it to me thirty years later, and he had totally forgotten about it, so I did this thing as a surprise for him, covering his song. There’s a couple that I have played live – one that I play pretty regularly. There’s one that’s almost like a hip-hop song, a pretty hip-hoppy beat. I’m not really rapping but I’m more like speaking…
You gave away some random tracks online recently, including These Walls of Mine, in which you rap.
…yeah, very much a rap song. I’m surprised you know about that one! But, one thing I can say (about the new record) is that Nils Frahm produced it, and this doesn’t give you an idea of what it sounds like, but we focused not only on the music but the sound – each individual sound – so for me it’s a really sonically pleasing album. After a while I can’t tell if the music is any good or not, but I love the way that it sounds, probably because it’s the first time I had someone else step in and take over. Nils has a really special ear for sound, and he knows a lot more about sound than I do, so it really helped just to have him involved.
Where do you expect this record to take you in the long term?
I think I need to put a band together to play the songs, that’s one thing. There’s lots of layers. Home had lots of layers, and I play versions of it live, it’s not the same, but I can still get by with it by myself. But this one, it doesn’t make any sense to release it and then go tour by myself. I think I have to put a band together for it.
You’ve worked with some incredible artists. If you could collaborate with any musician – forgive me the clichéd question – who would it be?
I do have dreams of collaborating with other people, but nowadays I have more dreams about collaborating with different kinds of artists. I know I’m kind of getting around your question but there’s a couple of visual artists who I would really love to collaborate with. There’s a girl based in Berlin named Elín Hansdóttir, she’s an Icelandic girl, and I’ve kind of been chasing her down, trying to get her to collaborate on something for a while, but I don’t think it’s going to happen in the immediate future. But as far as musicians go… a lot of them are already dead I think. Like, Arthur Russell is somebody I would have just loved to sit in a room with and play some music, but, erm, I don’t think that’ll happen, so…
I’ve always thought you and Sam Amidon [aka Samamidon] would work well together. I know you have said you really like All Is Well, which is one of my favourite albums, too.
I was just talking about that to someone earlier, actually. I ordered that record online and I got it and I listened to it a few times – and then I ordered five more copies because I just thought I want to share this with people, I want to give it to people – and I’ve never done that with another record. I just heard it and I thought, “everybody has to hear this, it’s just incredible.”
You said you’re not listening to much new music, but is there anything, old or new, that you’re excited about at the moment?
Actually, just now I am listening to music, because in the car there’s just a CD player. One record that I am in love with is this band The Books, the latest one, it just blows my mind, I love it. Also with Efterklang we just did this tour in the States, and our support was a band from Brooklyn called Buke and Gass. It’s quite different from anything else that I listening to. It’s a bit more rocky, almost like math rock sometimes, and there’s a girl singing with this crazy powerful voice and I fell in love with them after seeing them for a month, playing live. I’m listening to that record all the time. There’s a Dutch composer I’m listening to named Simeon ten Holt, the CD I have is this one piece that’s seventy-five minutes long, and it moves melodically, but rhythmically it’s really repetitive. It hypnotises you.
Tea or coffee?
I actually go back and forth, but most of the time it’s coffee. Tea is more when I’m sick, when coffee doesn’t seem like the right idea.
Thank you so much Peter, you’ve been an absolute pleasure to talk to.
Well, likewise, those were nice questions!
Shaun Russell
How They Are by Peter Broderick was released on 6th September by Bella Union.
