O—Are you looking to change the sound of it at all?
PB—That’s the area that I want to be the most experimental in. I feel like stealing from as many places as possible is what makes my favorite music. Or failing really hard at an idea. Like Better Oblivion was supposed to be a band that sounded like the Replacements, and we just did not do that. But we tried! And that’s why it was cool. So I really like failing at ideas, and hearing stuff that I like and trying to recreate it and not succeeding. We’ve recorded a couple of songs and already it’s different than the first record. I feel like I’m more of a producer now, I produced another artist’s album in between. So I feel like I’m having more ideas, I have more of a rapport with those guys, the guys that produce my album, and I know what to use them for.
O—Are you playing anything new, instrument-wise?
PB— Yes, although I will say that’s one of their strengths, Tony and Ethan. I tend to write in the same tuning over and over, which is kind of nice, because it frees me up. I write in open C, and I play a baritone [guitar] a lot. I’ll write to the most cowboy chords ever, and then try to completely change it. That’s one of my favorite parts about working with those guys—Ethan’s this insane piano player, and will just reharmonize everything, and suddenly it’s just unrecognizable.
O—This chapter of your life since releasing Stranger in the Alps to now—how much has that experience made it into the songwriting for the new album?
PB—Too much. It’s a lot about dissociating and having everything you ever wanted happen to you. It’s just a weird thing to complain about, so I feel like I don’t. I internalize it, and then I write about what I internalize. So yeah, it’s a lot about that.
O—I feel like follow-up albums to popular records often lament the inability to recreate, or express some sort of creative existentialism in reaction to the artist’s success. I think it’s on the third Strokes album where Julian Casablancas just says “I‘ve got nothing to say,” repeatedly. It’s like—Is that a lyric? Can you say that?
PB—Those are my favorite lyrics—“Can you say that?” Every time I’m asking myself that, I feel like that’s my favorite lyric in a song. The only times I really get jealous, when I’m like “Fuck!” is when I hear a song and I’m like, “I didn’t know that was allowed! I didn’t know you could just say ‘I just wanted to be one of the Strokes,’” which is on that Arctic Monkeys record.
O—Are you the kind of writer who jots down ideas or snippets of lyrics at random, whenever they come to you? PB—Totally. I’ll be leaving for a one-off show or something, and have a note that literally says, like, “Toothbrush, Dr. Bronners soap, vibrator,” and then something super melodramatic like, “I lie every time I open my mouth.” If someone opened the Notes app in my phone they’d think I was gonna kill someone.
O—So we had Mitski in the magazine, and asked her about the best part of fame, and she said—well, first she said she wasn’t famous...
PB—Yeah there’s no other word for it. I’ve been encountering that recently, like, any time anyone says that to me I’m like “Fuck you, no.” I do always joke that you’re never more famous than you are like three blocks from the venue. Three blocks from the venue of course you get food, or you like go to the coffeeshop and it’s like [gasps]. If that was your actual world, that would be so wild. It would be insane.
O—Yeah, a lot of famous people talk about how much that sucks. Anyway, Mitski did say the best part about being a popular artist was the access.
PB—I agree with that 1000%. The whole thing with boygenius was us coming from completely different worlds, and being able to come together and have the same life experience at the same age. And, you know, having Mitski’s number and being able to talk with her about how isolating it can be. Mitski reached out to my friend Haley [Dahl], who’s in a band called Sloppy Jane, and was just like, “Yo, let me know if I can help, or connect you with anybody.” That’s the coolest shit ever. It seems like there’s a sense of community in a way that I had never felt, even in a mostly white boy LA music scene. Now that the world has opened up, it’s actually not as dark, and “only these people get to the top.” There are cool people everywhere who are supportive, you know?
O—Yeah. Ok, well now let’s talk about the shitty parts. You’ve been vocal about fans getting a little overzealous in their interactions with you. How do you deal with people like that who don’t understand boundaries?
PB—Well you can say “fuck you” to an asshole. But you can’t say “fuck you” to someone that just doesn’t know that they’re supposed to have a boundary. Julien and Lucy are really good at that shit, and have helped me with my boundaries. Helped me realize that you’re allowed to have fuckin’ boundaries, and that just because someone likes your music doesn’t mean that you owe them anything. I say this to people who get down about that exact thing, or younger people I know who are in music who talk about their weird fans. I’m always like, “For every weird fan, there’s like ten people who just came to the show, liked it, and went home. And they also buy all your merch, and buy all your records, and are superfans. But they don’t give a shit about waiting by the bus for you to come out of the venue.” That’s not a good representation. And also, half the time I meet people by the bus and I’m like, “You’re awesome. You’re just weird and want to tattoo my signature on your body. Which is insane, but you’re nice.”
O—Going back to your songwriting, it’s definitely praised for its sincerity, which feels like a vulnerable characteristic, but then you’ve got this lyricism or wit that is very self-assured. Is that a conscious balance for you?
PB—The self-assuredness of it, there’s a lot of latency, to me. I feel very self-conscious and riddled with doubt until like a year later, after people hear something. And I still have to work on apologizing for myself, cause the honest truth is that sometimes I don’t know what is good or what is bad, or what I will like later. It’s not just this magical experience where you’re like, “This is fucking awesome.”
O—You must have the feeling once in a while.
PB—Totally, but pretty late. And it’s awesome when it’s something I didn’t even notice I said.
O—How into the music theory, chord progressions, time signatures, and all that are you? Some people are total mathematicians with their music.
PB—I am definitely not. But sometimes I’ll accidentally stumble on something that music people are like, “Oh my fucking god.” The novice nature of the way I approach instruments where I’m like plurrh plurrh, it helps me not overthink stuff. Matt from the National went on a huge rant, I was like, “Have you ever been curious to play guitar?” and he was like “No! I don’t want to ruin it. It’s so romantic that people do it, I don’t want to know anything about it.” And I definitely don’t feel like that, I would love to be good at guitar. I love that Julien doesn’t need shit from anybody, she‘s just like playing drums on her own fucking demos. I wish I was like that, but I’m not. There’s this Mitski song on that last record where she skips every bar that she’s not singing on. So the time signature’s just, whenever she’s singing, and it’s the coolest thing ever. I have done shit like that before on accident, where I don’t realize I’m playing something in like, 5/8, and then we have to come up with some crazy drumbeat. Or like, picking up a banjo, and playing it wrong, where it’s in some fucked up tuning that nobody would ever put it in, and then just making it up.
O—What about gear, do you perv out on gear?
PB: I do. I have to stumble on it, like I’m not up all night looking. When I was in Eau Claire, at April Base, Bon Iver’s studio, I sat down at a piano that had like five pedals on it, and I literally just texted my manager and was like, “I’m too embarrassed to ask what these are, where are they from?!” Tony at Sound City now has all this amazing gear that he’s collected forever. I play a baritone guitar, it’s like between a guitar and a bass. It plays exactly like a guitar, but it’s the most metal-sounding thing ever. And I play it all the fucking time.
O—Do you record with it? Is that what we’re hearing on the album?
PB— Yes. Like on “Chelsea”—I played the baritone at Tony’s the day that we recorded “Chelsea,” drove to the closest music store that had one—it had been sitting there for like five years, when you shake it it rattles—I’ve had to upkeep it so much, but I’ve played other baritones and there’s nothing that sounds like it. It’s a Danelectro, it sounds like warm, and warbly. So I do get insane about gear that I feel strongly about.
O—Can we talk about Twitter? You’ve been on it since before you were well-known, but it seems like you’ve taken to it in a way that’s fun. It occupies sort of a different register than your songwriting, for example. It’s irreverent, maybe cynical or pessimistic, but usually with a sense of humor about it. Do you see it as an outlet where it’s public, and personal, but it doesn’t have to be the sort of character you are as a songwriter?
