Guest List: The Long Blondesby Screech Louder
Welcome to the latest edition of Pitchfork's Guest List. Each week, we ask one of our favorite artists to fill us in on what they've been up to lately: which tracks they can't stop spinning, what books they can't put down, and what new bands they've caught on tour. This week, Long Blondes' drummer Screech Louder, who has been spending time aboard George Clinton's mothership, explains why it's okay to judge a book by its cover, and predicts that Battles will have been his favorite concert of the year.
>> Favorite Records of the Past Year
Panda Bear: "Bros"
It's really, really great. The whole Person Pitch album is really fantastic.
Good Shoes: Think Before You Speak
I really like the Good Shoes album. There are a lot of bands in Britain at the moment that are just four guys with guitars, but I find [Good Shoes] very awkward, and I find it quite endearing that they seem genuinely angular and awkward and a bit out of place.
Lindstrøm: It's a Feedelity Affair
I really like the last Lindstrøm album. "I Feel Space" is really good; it sounds like "I Feel Love". But it's really sort of spacey and disco-y. A really, really amazing record. I think we're doing some festivals with him so I'll get to see him, which I am looking forward to.
>> Favorite Older Records at the Moment
I've been listening to a lot of Van der Graaf Generator, this British prog band.
Peter Hammill: Nadir's Big Chance
Also Peter Hammill, their singer, a lot of his solo records. He released this really amazing solo record in the mid 1970s called Nadir's Big Chance, which is kind of a glam record, It reminds me a lot of Here Come the Warm Jets by Brian Eno. It's kind of a forgotten classic from that era, and I think it's as good as anything like Bowie or anything from around that time. It's really, really amazing. Anyway, it's a great record.
I kind of got into the Pop Group. Well, I've liked the Pop Group for a while, but I've started listening to it again. They were really into things like funk.
I've been listening to Funkadelic and Parliament quite a lot as well. Which has been quite the eye opener. It's an era of music that I never really explored before. It's always quite exciting to suddenly get into a style of music. And it opens a whole world of new music to you. So that's been quite cool.
>> Favorite New Band
The 1990s
We've done a lot of touring with the 1990s, which is John from the Yummy Fur's new band and they're really great, they're really fun. We did a couple UK tours with them and we watched them every night. We did a month's tour with them, and I watched them every night of the tour and they were always really fun to watch. That was really cool. Their record's one of those where it's a bit like the Ramones: It's kind of like stupid rock 'n' roll music but really, really well done and it sounds really great. It's kind of like a party record. It's really, really good.
Then there's a band from Sheffield called Navvy who kind of sound like they're from Akron, they sound like Devo or Pere Ubu or something.
>> Favorite Song Ever
Carly Simon: "You're So Vain"
I always really liked "You're So Vain" by Carly Simon. If I ever DJ anywhere it's always the last song I play. I do it every time, so that's become a bit of a favorite. I really like "Mr. Bojangles" by Nina Simone as well. It's always makes me really sad, it's got a really melancholy feel to it, but it's really nice so I really like that song.
>> Best Recent Concert
Casiotone for the Painfully Alone
I did go and see Casiotone for the Painfully Alone about six months ago and that was really great. I just broke up with someone as well, and it was like a bit of an exorcism going to see them. That was a really good show; I really enjoyed that. It was at the Social in Nottingham. That was cool...I'm going to see Battles tomorrow, which I'm very excited about as well. You could've rung me tomorrow and I would've said them.
>> Last Great Film I Saw
The Lives of Others
[This] is about the secret police in East Germany, and it's amazing. It's really well put together and well acted. You really feel for the characters. There's this guy who-- and I don't want to give too much of the plot away-- the arc of character of the guy who plays the KGB agent is fantastic. He also has what I think is the best last line in any film I've seen for a very long time. The last line is absolutely perfect. But I can't tell you what it is.
>> Last Great Book I Read
Stephen Chboksy: The Perks of Being a Wallflower
I just finished reading The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky, which I really enjoyed. The way the book's written, it's a teenager writing letters to someone about growing up. I always find that adults writing about teenagers can be sort of patronizing. Like if you read Dennis Cooper books, for example, which I always enjoy reading, sometimes I still find them a bit cliché. I think it's one of the few books that I've read written by an adult about being a teenager that is very, very convincing. I could really relate to the experience that this guy was having, the things that happened to me when I was growing up. I just really enjoyed it. It was a well-written book. It looks nice as well; the cover's really good. I always just judge books by their cover.
>> Favorite Piece of Musical Equipment
My hi-hat is my favorite bit of my drum kit. I like lots of disco music. I love just the hissing sound of the hi-hat. Like if you listen to "Atomic" by Blondie, the hi-hat sound on that record is amazing. Stuff like "Kiss Me Again" where the hi-hat is just, all the way through, hissing away. My hi-hat is my favorite bit of my drum kit.
>> Favorite Record Shop
Tempest Records, Birmingham, England
There's a record shop in Birmingham, in England, which is where I grew up, called Tempest, which I still regularly go to now when I go home. I grew up in a suburb of Birmingham, which is in the middle of England, about 40 minutes outside, and on a Saturday I would get to bus in on my own and go to this record shop. They had quite a lot of imports from America. It was the stuff I really liked, and I would go and get records. It was the first independent record shop I went to. And I regularly go back there now. If there's stuff that I want I'll wait until I'm going home to buy from there, just because it's a real good record store. I bought the Soft Circle record there, which I really liked. I thought that was cool. I bought a couple of records by Einstürzende Neubaten which I haven't really gotten around to listening to yet but I aim to listen to at some point.
>> Best Purchase of This Year
It's kind of obvious, but I have to say, I bought an iBook and an iPod, which is a bit of an obvious thing to say but being on tour and having a quite a lot of music being a music fan and having one when we're away from home so much and being able to have, if not all, a large majority of my record collection with me is great. That's probably the best thing. And you can watch DVDs on it so I do like having all that stuff, obvious as it sounds, it's useful.
>> Best Thing I Did This Year
I think touring in general has been. Especially since we've been over to Europe and just seeing the world really. The two tours of Europe that we've done so far have been great both times. It's really exciting just to see or go to places we've never known. This tour we went to a place called Groningen in Holland, which is just a small town in Holland. We went and did a show there and the venue was really amazing; it was a really great place. It's the sort of place that if you went to Holland, you'd go to Amsterdam and maybe Rotterdam and you wouldn't really think to go there, if you're going on holiday. Because we were touring, we got to go there. Just little things like that where you get to see all these places. We went to Scandinavia and we went to Stockholm, which is like my absolute favorite city I've ever been to. It's absolutely amazing and I love it there. I've been there twice in the past year. Seeing the world and traveling is fantastic.
>> Favorite Venue
Razzmatazz, Barcelona
I think compared to England, in general, venues in Europe are much nicer. There's a scene that we've played at, the Razzmatazz in Barcelona is really, really nice. It's this insane old warehouse, and it's five huge rooms they have gigs on. And then in the evening it's a club, and each room is a different style of music. There's a techno room and an indie room... At the end of the night they all get together in the big main room and play one song from each room for hours. It's open until 8 in the morning and it's just crazy. Every time we go there, we always have an amazing time. So I really, really love playing there. It's great.
>> Favorite TV Show
"Peep Show"
There's a show in England called "Peep Show." I don't know whether you have it in America. It's about these two guys that live together. Most of the show is in monologues where they're going about their lives. It's kind of like the Odd Couple. They're both, in their own way, social misfits but at different ends of the spectrum. They sort of live together out of convenience, really. It's just really, really funny. It's a bit like "Curb Your Enthusiasm" where the humor comes from the awkwardness of the situations they get themselves into. It's just really funny. It's the sort of the thing you can watch a lot of, and we watch it in long runs on the tour bus. It's pretty funny.
>> Favorite Radio Station
6Music
I don't listen to that much radio. In my flat we've just got digital radio; digital radio is much better than normal radio in the UK. 6Music, which is one of the digital radio stations, is generally pretty good. If the radio's on, that's what we're listening to. Like the other day I got up at 10 in the morning and put the radio on and Huggy Bear was on. That's quite unusual, I think, for British radio, listening to "Herjazz" while I was making myself a cup of tea in the morning. So that's what I listen to if I do listen to the radio. But I don't tend to listen to the radio that much.
>> My Ringtone
It's just "ring-ring." I sort of still feel a little bit embarrassed at having a cellphone. I try and use it as little as possible, especially in public. It's simple and as quiet as possible.
