Drab City on Their Debut Album Good Songs for Bad People
Drab City has been on our minds and playlists for most of 2020, and with good reason – the singles from their upcoming album Good Songs for Bad People (out June 12 via Bella Union) are some of our favorite tracks of the year so far. Uniformly stellar, the tracks would be impressive enough if they were all the band had done this year. Remarkably, however, the entire album maintains the same level of quality as its trio of lead-off singles: “Devil Doll”, “Troubled Girl”, and “Working for the Men.”
Though the upcoming album is the Berlin-based duo’s full-length debut, Asia and Chris may be familiar to some through their work under separate monikers Islamiq Grrrls and oOoOO, respectively. Curious about how the two projects merged into Drab City, background to Good Songs for Bad People, and what the rest of this and next year might look like for the project, we were eager to touch base with Asia and Chris for a detailed conversation* about all the above, and are excited to share it with you here.
*Please note that this interview is unusual here at WMF in that Drab City has added intermittent written passages to supplement the initial verbal interview (hence colloquial and symbol-based spellings, etc.)
Bobby Weirdo: Before officially being called Drab City, you both worked together, combining your two projects. Chris was working under the oOoOO moniker, Asia was performing as Islamiq Grrrls, and you would combine the two for shows, right?
Asia: When I met Chris, I was depressed, sitting in the corner at parties of people I didn’t really like. Meeting him meant having found somebody who holds the same posture towards life, feels things the way I do, and has the trust to live outside of the common sense. So I started trusting myself again. I pretty quickly started bugging him about showing me how to use Logic. He sat me down, pointed at the audio track and said: “All you need to know is press ‘R’ for recording”, that’s all. He went out, 14 hours later he came home and I was still sitting where he had left me. For a while, he didn’t ask me to hear what I was doing which was very good and important. I kept working on music night and day, so one day he pushed me to let him have a listen. I had to leave the room I was so uncomfortable and when I came back he pointed at the head phones with this spark in his eyes and said: “Did you just make this?” I first thought he was just being nice but he insisted I had to keep doing it, so I did. I produced “You Don’t Love Me” and “Yr Love” within three weeks. Chris was so excited about the songs he told me to hand him the files and he came back with something that sounded like real songs. Over time I learned how you make things sound like a real song and before you know we were writing songs together and put out a record.
BW: And by that time, you had individually released music separately as Islamiq Grrrls and oOoOO, right?
A: Yes, Chris had already released three albums which were very popular, and there was a little time gap in which I was slapping songs onto Soundcloud, which later were re-recorded and mixed for Faminine Mystique.
BW: So was [the album] Faminine Mystique Drab City yet, or do you both consider that collaboration something separate?
A: It’s different, Faminine Mystique was the time of exploration. That record was somewhat of the getting-to-know-each-other phase, and just understanding what the common sound was that we were so into. Something I always have been mistaking for “having it or not” (= I can’t make music because I don’t have “it”). I think musicians don’t talk enough about real life. They like to stay quiet about specific things, as if we needed to keep the illusion. So I’m going to break it down for the ones who happen to read this:
When you start making music, it’s not all immediately ready for takeaway and you don’t immediately find your sound. Keep working and maybe wait a year before you put something out and bother everyone with it. Everybody you send an email to gets hundreds of those a day. Nobody wants to hear your “attempt” at making music – we all have that family member that sends us terrible gifs and videos all day. Don’t be that person. Listen carefully and practice. Commit to it, don’t be a half-ass. Build your life, don’t waste your energy on hierarchies who won’t remember your name once you’re gone. Nothing just comes to you, anything you envy in others you’ve got to work for to make it happen. They did too, but they only show you the result, like it just fell into their lap. Also narrow down your goals to something realistic…
I didn’t know these things because nobody tells you shit like this when you’re poor. Just like thinking you’re just born with confidence or you’re not. If you’re really obsessed with the idea of making music but you don’t really believe you can do it, work on it. Truth is, you can only believe you’re good if you convince yourself by practicing it and showing commitment. COMMITMENT IS THE NEW PUNK. Making music is not something you do because your parents didn’t love you enough. Not everybody should be making art. I used to think the opposite, that art is for everyone but I take it back. Fran Lebowitz says a lot of good things in those lines in her public speeches.
If you’re scared of making music because you’re afraid it won’t be as good as what you hear well, everybody sounded bad when they started. Even more, all these people you admire did not come up with what you’re hearing, nothing is truly original, the world is very old. What people do is meticulously breaking apart details of their favorite music and putting it back together in their own way. You probably just don’t know the music that inspired them yet. Get out of your bed and put your horrible phone away. That’s a start.
Asia, 2020. Photo: Drab City
BW: Everyone always wants to talk about influences informing a band, but that can sometimes get tedious – especially for the band itself. In connection to Drab City, nods to trip hop and bands like Portishead and Massive Attack have been mentioned more than once. Is it accurate to say that’s a particular sound Drab City is going for?
A: There is no accurate term really. Music writers will make these bold statements [on our behalf] that we’ve never said [ourselves]. We never claimed being a band of any kind. Yesterday we watched a documentary on Sonny Rollins where he quit playing at jazz clubs, moved away from everyone, and played the saxophone to an empty field of crippled daisies behind a train track for two entire years…roaming through the forest just blasting the most wicked melodies to the trees.
The TV program Jazz Casual is on repeat at home. I started drinking Afri Cola because I saw Thelonious Monk drinking it while touring Europe in a documentary — he had a full suitcase with it. Every day at some point I’m humming “why are they sick, and ridiculous? Two, four, six eight – they brainwash and teach you hate”. I have to hear that song every day. It almost became a ritual. We go for long walks at 5:00 am in the park, [with] not a living soul around. We have a tree that is ours, and a couple of rocks that I spray painted gold. That’s what we think of our music.
C: I have no problem if people hear something in our music that [they think] has a certain sound – whether that’s trip hop or whatever – it’s fine if it’s a way [for them] to make sense of the music. But I’ve noticed that people who are musicians – unless they’re in a really pure genre like techno or something – don’t really think of their music in terms of what genre it fits. They just have lots of different influences, and it all comes out in their music. Then other people say, “Oh, you sound like trip hop,” or “you sound like synth pop,” or whatever. Musicians are usually surprised [when they hear that] and say, “yeah, I guess I do.” But it’s rarely an intention of most musicians [to emulate a genre]. Especially today, because so many people have so many different influences that come from all over, it feels limiting to emulate a particular sound and make a project that fits within those boundaries.
Whatever the audience listens to is what they’re going to associate things with. I had a friend who was listening to some of our songs, and he said it reminded him of Wu-Tang. That makes sense, because [our music] isn’t rap, but a lot of our drum breaks and samples are from the same era of drums breaks and samples that Wu-Tang uses. But maybe that person doesn’t listen to Portishead or trip hop, and is more of a rap fan, so that’s what they heard in the music.
BW: What was your connection to Bella Union – Simon Raymonde? How did that deal come together?
A: We sent Simon our music, and we had about eighty percent of our record done at that point. He was immediately in love with it and said he wanted to put it out. It was a really nice experience to have somebody fully back us up, trust us, and affirm that we were on to something. He’s produced records that we love, and we like a lot of similar stuff. We really got along personally too, and our friendship started from that point on.
Chris, 2020. Photo: Drab City
BW: I don’t think there’s an answer for this, but I’m curious what your plan for Drab City is during this era of the Covid-19 pandemic. I’m sure plans have changed, but the album is coming out June 12. Touring and local shows aren’t on the table, but you have been doing things like making your own videos. What do you think you’ll be doing for at least the rest of this year?
C: For the rest of the year, we just plan on making videos, and if we’re not going to be touring, we’ll just start working on another record. That record will be out around the time we can set up an actual tour. Next summer – or around that time – would be nice, but who knows? We were all set with our booking agent for a tour that was going to start in June or July, but obviously that’s not going to happen. We were going to play festival here in Berlin, but that’s canceled now too.
A: We really enjoy watching live shows, and they’re so important to us. When we watch other people play, nothing goes unnoticed. Like the way a person inhibits a stage with only a sampler on a stool and a microphone (the answer is: they usually fail). You know it’s going bad when you can hear somebody cough in the back. It is insane when you look at concerts up til the early 2000s, how people used to trip to music. Somehow we have figured out a way for people to get lost with us during shows, and it takes a lot of practice. We just turned down a live show for ARTE because they only gave us two weeks notice and we don’t do things “OK” just for the sake of it.
Most of the venues we played on our last tour were newly renovated, clean and hip, with brand new light equipment. In other words, we don’t like that. At least we’re not forced into doing that right away, because we have really great, mapped out ideas, but it will take time until we can realize them. You know, things like creating a world for your live shows is seventy percent of the fun of it, but nobody even reads your rider so you’re lucky if you get a table on stage.
C: The way we compose songs [is to] put them together piece by piece. I wouldn’t say our music is electronic music, but we piece it together that way through samples and layering things on the computer. We don’t practice in a live setting very much [unless] we’re preparing for a tour. We finished the oOoOO and Islamiq Grrrls record, for example, by putting it together piece by piece.
After that was done, we didn’t have any idea how to play it live, because we hadn’t thought about that at all, and didn’t make it in a live setting. A lot of bands go to practice, and write their songs that way. Because they’ve been playing their songs for months and months, they’re ready to go tour. But we’d have to scramble to finish up the record and then go out on a tour, because we don’t create [our music] in that live setting.
A: I’ve had my favorite Ween record on repeat for the last year, and I was just talking with Chris a couple days ago about how I wish we could create more of a relaxed, hanging-out feeling on our record. Because our record at times feels well thought-out and precise.
C: It’s not very spontaneous.
A: Exactly. And what I love with a band like Ween is that you feel like you’re there in a room with friends, laughing at their jokes and having a good time. Our music is so directed at people who identify with what we have to say, and I hope they feel like they’re not alone, in a way. They live and struggle, and I want to get even closer to those people through the music. Recording is introverted, so I’d like to loosen up our intense way of making music, and get more into live recordings and practicing. Hopefully that will develop with time.
BW: You talk about people identifying with what you’re putting out there. Am I correct in surmising that social class is a theme in what Drab City does? It seems like there’s a socio-economic conversation going on via your social media posts, for instance. Or is that off-base?
A: For the last fifteen years, the working class has been completely erased from the music industry. All we get these days are these soft skinned, bourgeois, one dimensional, easily offended losers who wear clothes they see on fashion runways. They sing about benign topics and have “modern dancers” move in their music videos. Or they are purely nostalgic, a one-to-one copy of 70s-90s music. They talk about nothing but themselves, [and] some even convince themselves they’re some kind of “enlightened guru,” like Aurora. What the fuck is that shit; get the hell outta here. Or Russel Brand (Russel Brand used to be cool though, he just seems to have had it). They emulate the records their parents gave them because their parents are far cooler than them.
Lias Saoudi (of Fat White Family) once put it right in an interview – he said something like, “musicians are the worst people of our times. They’re absolutely disgusting; I want nothing to do with them.” (sorry for the vague quote, I can’t find the source anymore). But we are left with our feelings, wondering what people like us do when they don’t have the courage to leave. Because this is the majority of the people in the world – people who don’t have money and grew up poor, but they have a bleeding heart and the cruelest and funniest stories to tell.
Many people are offended by our music videos and we do absolutely nothing offensive by our standards, far from that. This is the point we got to, anybody who doesn’t look like they grew up petting horses and was home schooled won’t make the cut.
C: I agree with all she’s just said, but I would add to that I wouldn’t say we are trying to champion some working class vision of music, because it’s broader than that. We’re just a couple of weirdos. I don’t identify any kind of working class either, because where I grew up, being an artist or musician wasn’t really an acceptable thing. People were into fixing their cars and watching the football game, and that’s exactly the kind of working class culture I wanted to get as far away from as possible. I didn’t fit in there and didn’t have anything to do with it.
I left, and started to hang out with artists, but realized I didn’t fit in there either, because those people haven’t had any of the experiences that I’ve had. They come from somewhere so different. This idea that I was going to leave my small-mentality, working-class place behind, and be around like-minded people didn’t happen either.
So I wouldn’t want to reduce what we have to say to some kind of identity politics for the working class. It’s more just speaking from the feeling of being weird, freaky outsiders who don’t fit anywhere we go.
BW: Chris, you sing on a few songs on the album. If one of you works alone on a song with vocal ideas, do you bring it the other to start collaborating, or how does that work? Does the process change with each song?
C: It changes with each song. If I write the lyrics, I generally sing it, unless I write it in a register that doesn’t sound good with my voice. Then I’ll pass it along [to Asia] and see if she wants to sing it. Every song is different when we decide who is going to sing. I don’t particularly like singing, and I think her voice fits the music better, so I enjoy that she sings more songs.
A: I never wrote a song that I didn’t intend to sing. [Sometimes] he writes a produced song, and has me [add] anything else that I want. I have an easier time writing my own songs because I naturally gravitate to chords that fit me. There are songs that just come right out of me, one take. I’ll give them to him, and then he’ll add his ideas. And there are songs that he’ll do, and then leave space for me to do whatever I want. Or sometimes he shows me songs at a very early stage, which I’ll take and add a bunch of other things to. Every song requires a different way of approaching.
But we both produce, we both record, and we both sing. We’re pretty equal on that level, except I’m in the learning stage of playing bass and piano, whereas he’s been playing guitar since he was a kid. He plays drums, guitar, and the violin, and is learning the piano. I haven’t had the chance to do any of that, because I grew up in a country where music is not supported by schools.
My parents are both immigrants from Bosnia, so we were on the lower end of social integration. My parents would have parties and listen to Bosnian music, sing, and dance. Both my parents are musical people, and music was really important in our household, but it was never American or international music. Music was never something taken seriously. It was just leisure – something they would do when there was a birthday, a Muslim holiday, or a gathering.
But I was really serious and obsessive about it. The obsession followed me my entire life. Music was always the first thing that mattered to me, and it was constantly evolving in my head. But I didn’t really have a way to learn it. It was expensive to get classes or a private teacher, and my parents weren’t able to help me with that. I wanted piano lessons and singing lessons, but I didn’t even dare to ask for that. I didn’t think I should bother my father getting up at 4:30 to work at the factory with my precious needs.
I come from an industrial town, and none of my friends were interested [in music] either. It’s all retired seniors in that town; there’s no youth culture outside of classrooms. The coolest kid in my class was the daughter of funfair owners. They owned the fried fish stand on the summer funfair.
So it all developed in my head. I had to bring it to myself, and that was only possible when I reached a certain age and maturity. And technology has also matured and become accessible to everyone.
BW: Is the name Drab City a reference to these things we’re talking about?
A: We were just looking for a band name, and I thought the strongest thing that connected us was our past. We grew up in a similar way in terms of class, parents, and immigrants. We each left our town to find like-minded people, and felt alienated. We were both haunted by growing up where we did, trying to get out there, but then also missing where we came from. So Drab City is the part [of us] that we can’t get away from, and is always there. It has its own beauty, and its own tragedy. It’s brought us a lot of pain but has given us great stories to tell.
When I told [Chris] the name, he was like, “Oh yeah!” and we never discussed it more than that. And that’s kind of like everything [between us]. We just agree on things, put them out there, and don’t think about it. When we have an interview and people ask us about these things, we really have to simplify things by putting a meaning onto it, if that makes sense. We talk about things on a different level in private, way too much for interviews. When it comes to making music, we don’t sit at home and intellectualize every little bit that comes out of us because it’s also awkward for ourselves you know. We’re letting out a whole bunch of shit we can’t dwell in, in real life.
BW:You’ve been releasing about one video a month leading up to the release of the album. Will you continue to do that?
A: The record label and us agreed it would be good to put out a single once every month. Our record comes out June 12, so we’ll make a video in May, in June, and then we’ll probably just keep doing it.
But here’s the thing: our new album is coming out in a month and nobody will hear it because “due to the pandemic” our reliable staff writers at music blogs have to prioritize celebrity oriented stories for click bait (all blogs were started by somebody who loved music but they have all stepped back now, poured a bunch of placed advertisements into their sites until people stopped reading them so that now all they essentially are concerned with is how to trick people into clicking on their posts. The higher the click rate is, the better they can advertise to corporates the efficiency of a possible product placement on their site). The only reason you find yourself reading “How Billie Eilish made Gucci loafers cool” is because they’re trying to sell you sneakers. They have absolutely no interest in music anymore, and people like us have to find themselves in the midst of that. It’s degrading.
The Internet is no longer a free space for anybody to be heard. Instagram, Facebook, Youtube. None of it will reach people unless you pay lots of money for it. You may think you must suck but you don’t. Music is literally dying. People have tricked into not committing to anything anymore, relationships, art, their own lives. Because like this, you will constantly need new products to update your new lifestyle. Commitment is the new punk. All parents of my generation are divorced and the “pursuit of real happiness” was sold to their kids, meaning us. Now, nobody has real skills anymore, just many half baked skills because of lack of commitment.: “Hi I’m a model/photographer/art director/musician”. Fuck those people. How come all our parents and grandparents didn’t even speak the native language, let alone finished high school in their third world country but somehow were able to buy a house in America working in a factory? Not that miserable after all?
So we’re still struggling to keep up with formalities we’re being asked to do. Make a mixtape? Make a playlist? For who? People who we want to reach will never hear our music. They are out there scrubbing the insides of dirty pots, blasting Ariana Grande, smoking in the 7-Eleven parking lot. Instead some whiny shmuck out there dwelling in his identity crisis says we look like drug dealers because he never tied his own shoes. We’re getting in a whole lot of trouble with the good people because we refuse to give ourselves to these clowns, nobody tells me anything about my music. Who are they to talk about my life?
BW: It looks like you skinned your knees in the “Troubled Girl” video. Had you actually hurt them, or was that an aesthetic decision?
A: We did two or three takes until we got that one. Looking at the first takes, I liked the way my knees looked, so I purposely threw myself on the floor and it just got worse and worse.
BW: So – like everyone else – you don’t have any touring on the immediate horizon, but there are new videos and live streams coming up. What else do you see happening with Drab City in 2020 and 2021?
A: Everything is so unsure right now, so it’s hard to tell, but we’ll keep everybody informed. We’ll certainly be doing more videos, visuals, and artwork.
C: And we have lots of ideas for new songs, too, which we’re going to start working on. As soon as this record comes out, we’re going to start working on the next one.
