{"title":"boygenius","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"phoebe-bridgers-stranger-in-the-alps","title":"Phoebe Bridgers - Stranger in the Alps","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePhoebe Bridgers\u003c\/strong\u003e wrote her first song at age 11, spent her adolescence at open mic nights, and busked through her teenage years at farmers markets in her native Los Angeles. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFrom the weeping strings and Twin Peaks twangs of opening track “Smoke Signals,” to the simple heartbreak of \"Funeral\" and melancholic crescendo of \"Scott Street,\" her debut full-length \u003ci\u003eStranger in the Alps\u003c\/i\u003e is a swooningly beautiful record with a gothic heart.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Dead Oceans","offers":[{"title":"Vinyl (Black)","offer_id":50775571235123,"sku":"NPV-DOC142LP","price":27.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0881\/7655\/8387\/files\/e8e5f71237c3b05761cda9e029a5b3d2_bff65cea4d110ef89eb96acffd8d8876f64fe74b_product_photo.jpg?v=1739894027"},{"product_id":"lucy-dacus-historian","title":"Lucy Dacus - Historian","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eLucy Dacus\u003c\/strong\u003e is done thinking small. 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Is it Manic Panic?\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePhoebe: No.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIt’s got a sort of grunge vibe. Did you know that in dream analysis the color yellow is symbolic of intellect, energy, agility, happiness, harmony, and wisdom?\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePhoebe: Of course.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSo, first thing’s first: \u003cstrong\u003eBetter Oblivion Community Center\u003c\/strong\u003e. I heard you guys were visiting Forest Lawn Cemetery - which we’ll talk about again in a minute - and you took a selfie to post on Instagram, up by where they have that statue of David there, it’s bigger than the actual statue of David in Florence, I think, and you guys noticed in the location tagging that there were a lot of geolocation options in other languages...I guess...Armenian? Mandarin? Korean?\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eConor: Burmese.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eYeah! Burmese. Right?And then you tagged your location but later on you typed those characters into Google Translate and it turned out not to be tagged from “Forest Lawn”. It actually translated as “Better Oblivion Community Center”. Is that right?\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eConor: (laughs) No.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eReally?! Cuz I heard that and I thought that was so cool! Where did the name come from then?\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePhoebe: Do people care where the name came from?\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eConor: Nah.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAlright. We can leave that in, I guess we answered it... So let’s get to when you two met. It was a show at the Bootleg in LA, and Conor you were playing a secret show and Phoebe, your friend at the venue got you to open for them. This was July 2016, so before \u003cem\u003eStranger In The Alps\u003c\/em\u003e was out, and Conor, you were there early enough to watch her set. And afterwards you asked her to send you her record. You must’ve really been impressed with her set.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eConor: Yeah. It was a weird thrown together show. A lot of people played short sets, like Gillian Welch and Jim James. Kyle, who put on the show, said Phoebe was his favorite songwriter in LA, so I was excited to check it out. I was immediately struck by her voice. There are not a lot of people whose voice stops you in your tracks like that.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eI bet you get people trying to send you their music all the time. Everywhere you go, right?\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eConor: Kinda.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBut you actually asked for hers.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eConor: I did.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAnd then you invited her to open for you on tour.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eConor: Yeah.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThat was the Salutations tour?\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eConor: Ruminations.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eRight yeah, Ruminations. And you guys would do “Lua” together on the road?\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePhoebe: Sometimes.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSo then you guys would guest at each others shows, right? And Conor, you were spending a lot of time in Los Angeles around this time. Cuz you’ve been in Omaha mostly the past few years but you have a spot in LA, on the West Side.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eConor: East side.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eRight, and so you guys would show up and guest at shows. And you’re on Phoebe’s song “Would You Rather”. So really early on you started collaborating on music, right? That was kind of an immediate spark, this instinct to perform and sing together. And your voices, they really compliment one another. There’s something really special about when you duet. Particularly when you sing in unison, it really works. Phoebe, you have a really sweet, crystal clear voice and Conor, yours is more world weary and raspy, so there’s something really striking about them together.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eConor: I guess that’s one way to look at it. I wouldn’t necessarily say Phoebe’s voice is crystal clear. At least not in a Mickey Mouse way. I think it’s textured in a very unique and interesting way. In that she can sing anything and there is a certain gravity to it that other voices don’t bring.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePhoebe: I do agree that Conor’s voice is pretty raspy.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eRight, yeah. That’s true, “gravity” is a perfect word for it. And you know, I say ‘in unison’, it’s from the Latin. It means, literally, ‘one sound’ but when you guys sing together it’s really not, it’s incredibly rich because you get both these different emotions from the exact same lyrics. The sort of clear eyed optimistic sound of Phoebe’s vocal and then the more seasoned sound of Conor’s.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eConor: Sure.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe first song you wrote together is the first song on the album, “I Didn’t Know What I Was In For” and at that time you weren’t really thinking it would be a whole album but you knew you wanted it to be its own thing, not a Phoebe Bridgers \u0026amp; Conor Oberst album of acoustic songs? Phoebe: Yeah, we didn’t know if it would be a single or an EP or what, but we knew we wanted to try writing together and for it to have its own identity with a band name.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhen you’re out touring, you’re on the bus and you’re playing songs to pass the time, right? There’s a photo of you in the album artwork, Phoebe you have a guitar on your lap and you’re both surrounded by this incredible mess of the tour bus. A lot of milk cartons, snack wrappers and piles of dirty clothes and just general mess. Is channeling the chaos of a bus tour into the structure of a song something you usually do?\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePhoebe: I’m actually holding an acoustic bass in that photo.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eConor: We wrote in LA, mostly.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAh, okay. But you wrote them together. It’s not like Conor would have a song and send it to you, or you would have a song and he would just add bits to it. These songs you guys sat down and wrote together. In the same room?\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePhoebe: Yeah.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eYou guys obviously compliment each other vocally, we talked about that, but you also feel an affinity with one another in that you admire each other’s songwriting. And you both generally write alone, right? It’s not your usual thing to write a song with someone else.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePhoebe: I write with my friends a lot.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eConor: I don’t have any friends.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eDid you guys ever sit down and talk about themes or how you wanted the album to sound? Did you discuss what kind of songs they’d be or did you just sit down and start writing to see what would happen?\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePhoebe: We knew we wanted to play with a band, so we kept that in mind while we were writing stuff.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eDid you see that Nick Cave documentary? Where he’s in the studio writing with Warren Ellis and he says if they’re not having terrible ideas that they have to walk back they know they’re not getting anywhere? They call it the “Walk Of Shame”, when you have to walk back an idea that didn’t work. Have you done the “Walk Of Shame”?\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePhoebe \u0026amp; Conor (in unison): Yeah.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eOne of my favorites is “Forest Lawn”. People outside of Los Angeles might not know that it’s the largest cemetery in LA. And it’s very beautiful, I should add. There’s something so sweet about the song but it’s essentially about losing someone and wanting to get them back. “Dig you out”, you say. It’s not really about exhuming someone. Or maybe it is? Maybe it’s the sweetest song about exhuming a corpse ever written?\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePhoebe: It’s not not about exhuming someone.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMusic critics have spilled a lot of ink over your guys work. I’m not even gonna try. But can you describe each other’s song writing in three words?\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePhoebe: Cis white male.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eConor: (laughs)\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eI think if I heard you two had made an album I might’ve expected something a bit different. Because it sounds so much like a band, it might not be exactly what people would guess it’s gonna sound like. It’s got a great synergy. And you put together an awesome group of musicians for it. You guys have got Nick Zinner from \u003cstrong\u003eYeah Yeah Yeahs\u003c\/strong\u003e - he plays guitar on “Dylan Thomas” and “Dominoes”. And you’ve got Carla Azar from \u003cstrong\u003eAutolux\u003c\/strong\u003e, she’s also \u003cstrong\u003eJack White\u003c\/strong\u003e’s drummer, she’s on about half the record. Conor, you’ve played with her before, haven’t you? 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There’s a lot of death and ghosts on the album, and mentions of illness and feeling unwell and being anxious - and those are things you’ve both written about a lot - which is partly why this collaboration works so well. Dylan Thomas, we all know, is the esteemed Welsh poet who died in 1953 at the age of 39. He’s mentioned for ‘dying on the barroom floor’ and you know, he was definitely a big drinker. He was drinking at the White Horse in the West Village every night he was in New York before he died. And he fell into a coma at the Chelsea Hotel and died soon after at Saint Vincent’s on 8th Avenue. Did you know that he actually died of emphysema, pneumonia and bronchitis? And that in November 1953, the month he died, over 200 people died in New York City from air pollution? 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