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an interview with Brent Oberlin following the release of Short Wave on a Cold Day
Over The Thought Industry’s 13-year career, the extremely progressive rock band from Kalamazoo, Mich., has been banned from Wisconsin State Parks, robbed and vandalized, found Jesus, and had the famed deity blow out their van door with mounds of empty fast-food containers and beer cans as they pushed their shit-brown colored Econoline over the 100,00-mile mark. Three years in the making, Short Wave on a Cold Day marks The Thought Industry’s sixth album for Metal Blade Records. Band founder/singer/guitarist Brent Oberlin spoke to Recoil about TI’s recent activity.
Recoil: How is the new album, Short Wave on a Cold Day, different from past Thought Industry albums?
Brent Oberlin: I don’t think any of our albums have ever sounded identical. It was intentional to try not to repeat ourselves. I believe that somebody should shoot me in the back of the head if I ever write a record that sounds like the last one. This one is very slick; somebody described it as a science fiction adventure. I like to think of us as [sounding similar to] a latter-day Wire; we’re like Killing Joke vs. Elvis Costello. It’s very lush, it’s difficult to pinpoint the difference between the guitars and the strings. It’s an orchestrated event meant to be the sum of its parts.
R: How many new members are involved in the new album?
O: Well, essentially everybody except for myself [is new]. Mike [Roche]’s been involved in a production capacity since the Outer Space Is Just a Martini Away record. He’s been playing bass in the band for quite awhile but there was a gap between Black Umbrella and the new album, so, given the opportunity, he went back to playing guitar again. [Drummer] Cam Taylor was in The Mad Butchers and [keyboardist/guitarist] Jeff Borkowski was in the band Supercopter, [bassist] Mark Baldwin was playing in Zanardi. So I guess you could say I pilfered a lot of those bands for musicians; they were friends of mine to begin with.
R: What are the advantages and disadvantages of recording your albums at guitarist Mike Roche’s Broadside Productions studio?
O: Well, the advantage is that we have an infinite amount of time to finish a record - that is the disadvantage also, because you kind of look back at [the recordings] over and over again and you’re never quite satisfied with them. Especially this one, it started to become ludicrous how long we were taking - constantly rewriting songs. There are more tapes of half-versions of songs that I probably couldn’t even remember now. There’s definitely something special about having your entire budget locked up into two weeks of recording at somebody else’s place. A structure of some sort would have been good, I think everybody would agree. We needed somebody to yell at us, to say, "It’s time to pick the songs. It’s time to have all the drums done." We were constantly coming back to things; I redid the vocals three or four times. But I prefer it [to recording at an independent studio].
R: The new thoughtindustry.com says that it is meant to be an extension of web4insects.com. Could you explain that?
O: Web4insects is a fan site. I’ve never actually met the guy who did it - this guy Dewey who lives in the South somewhere. It’s been up for all of these years, and what we didn’t want to do is just redo his website or take it away because it is an honor to have somebody do that on their own and maintain it for all of these years. So we decided to keep the discussion board on web4insects and just make links from our website, but for quick updates [www.thoughtindustry.com] is better; you’ll be able to keep up on tour updates and such, and hopefully more quirky information will come from www.thoughtindustry.com.
R: Who do you think is Thought Industry’s audience?
O: Hmm. Well, it’s not teenaged boys, that’s for sure. You know, I really don’t know. That question’s been asked so many times.
R: I’ll ask the marketing team at Metal Blade.
O: Yeah, Metal Blade will give you a real straight answer. I haven’t heard anybody at the label explain it, or tell me if they even like the record. But we sell enough records so that they make money on us every time; they don’t have to understand it because they know they’re making a profit.
R: Do you believe in God and Satan?
O: I like to say that I’m in league with Satan; it’s not really worship, it’s kind of a partnership. (laughs) In all legitimacy, though, no. I’m a raging atheist.
R: How many times have you read Naked Lunch?
O: In its absolute completion, only once, but when it comes to looking up little pieces of it, I don’t know, on and off for a few years. That kind of cut-up fiction is something I’ve always enjoyed.
R: What other kinds of books do you read? By your lyrics, I’d guess modern poetry like Mark Leyner.
O: As of late I just read a bunch of nonfiction. I’m enthralled by biographies. I read about World War II generals, and Vietnam battles and sort. I reread Watership Down the other day.
R: What are Thought Industry’s upcoming tour plans?
O: We leave on the fourteenth. We’re going to be doing 22 shows in a row, but it’ll all be east of the Mississippi. It’s a nightmare once you get West of the Mississippi - the drives are just painful. We’ll celebrate Thanksgiving like usual: five lonely assholes at a Boston Market up in Maine.
R: What are the lyrical issues addressed on the new album?
O: It jumps around everywhere. It spans so much time. I wrote a lot of it while we were in Europe, training around. [There’s] nothing better to do on a train, stare out the window and write songs. That’s where a lot of it comes from. [The lyrics] are not supposed to be obvious; they’re interpretive.
R: Do you write music and lyrics independently of each other?
O: It depends, it goes different ways. Normally I do write music first and I’ll write lyrics to it, which makes for interesting times when you’re trying to hum a song in your head and write words to it. And then sometimes I just write freehand prose and then make them fit later. Shove it in and hammer it, yank out the unimportant words like conjunctions. That’s where you get the cut-up lyrics to begin with. But really, how much meaning can you put into a song with a couple of verses and a chorus? That’s why I try to put quotes and set-ups in the printed lyrics. You just can’t be Mark Twain in a two-minute song; it’s not possible.
