Pre-interview investigation regarding whether or not the shoe on the roof of the Holland Project has a foot inside of it, and if the foot is attached to a body. The results of the investigation were inconclusive.
Let’s start off with the Antarctigo Vespucci origin story… You two didn’t really know each other when you first started this [project] as well as you do now. So what made you decide to start working together, and also continue working together?
Jeff Rosenstock: I cornered Chris [Farren, vocals] at a party. You [Chris] were just in New York, writing with… What were you doing?
Chris Farren: So my old band [Fake Problems], we were trying to make another record and we were getting pressure from a manager that we had. It was a daunting task to write a new record. And the manager set up some… “co-writes,” they call them in New York, with some different people. And they all went terribly. And then I came over to Jeff’s house with our friend Dave Garwacke [If you Make It] and surprised him.
J: What? No, I saw you at that party.
C: That was later that night.
J: Oh, right. Yeah, I didn’t know you were in town.
C: I surprised Jeff, even though we were like…
J: We were friends!
C: Yeah, we were friends.
J: We were friends, we’d toured together and we had talked to each other on the Internet.
C: Yeah. So he came to the door, Dave was standing in front of me, and then I popped out and I told Jeff why I was in town. And he said, “We should write a song together.” It hadn’t even occurred to me that I should write songs with people I knew.
J: And I’d never done anything like that before.
C: Yeah, so we hung out all night that night and then the next day we-
J: We worked on a song that YOU promptly recorded again with Fake Problems and you said that we couldn’t put out the Antarctigo Vespucci version.
*gasp* Oh, wooow.
C: That’s right.
J: That’s right. And then after it was like, let’s do it again!
Aw!
J: It turned out good, it was really fun. It was really fast. We just kind of worked quickly together and it was fun and, I don’t know, I think we were talking on Twitter or some shit. We were just like, “Hey, wouldn’t it be fun to do this?”
C: No, we were talking in e-mails and like…
J: IRL?
C: And texts, and stuff.
Interlude: Christine has accidentally been given Jeff’s Thai food order, rather than her own. By the time she realized the mix-up, she had already picked the cilantro out of what was actually Jeff’s dish. She apologizes for throwing out the cilantro. Jeff does not care about the cilantro. Chris and I are laughing in the background.
J: Did we answer that at all?
I think so! The way I see it is very rom com-y, and kismet-y. Like Chris is like, “I’m gonna go on all these dates,” like speed dating. That’s the way I see co-writing, maybe that’s wrong.
J: And I was like, “Dates? Why go on dates? Why don’t we just hang out with each other?”
C: “Why don’t we just get married?”
J: And then we got married.
Exactly! That’s the way it should be, you know.
J: I think we can both agree that it worked out way better and differently than we thought. I think both of us were just in ruts. Chris had all that stuff he was dealing with. And my band [Bomb the Music Industry!] had just stopped, and I think we were both just like, “Let’s just do something that feels really low-pressure and fun.”
C: Yeah, we were both in places where the future of our musical careers was a big question mark.
J: I was definitely like, “I’m not doing anything.”
Okay, so this one is pretty cliche, but what makes the latest record [Love in the Time of E-mail, or LITTOE for short] different from the others?
J: Different songs.
Thank you.
*laughter*
C: We did all new songs.
J: We did all new songs on this record.
C: They’re ALL new.
I feel like, just from what I’ve seen from other people, this is the one that made them be like, “I get it now.”
J: That rocks!
C: I think we just keep getting better at working with each other and hopefully getting better at making music, alone and with each other. Becoming better at… our jobs.
J: I love watching you struggle to answer the questions like, “Your new record’s good. What do you have to say about that?” And you’re like “UHHH.”
C: And I think, with Polyvinyl, that was the first time we had a big, real label push our record for us.
Yeah, it was really cool seeing all of that promotion that they did.
J: It’s cool. I think a lot of the time, you don’t know who would like your record, necessarily, and they definitely got more people to hear it. We were both really excited about it. I feel weird, because I really, really, really like all of our records as much as I like LITTOE, but it’s been cool on this tour to see people know this one. Because that’s not always necessarily the case. I mean, we didn’t really tour off of the last one. We didn’t really tour off of Leavin’ La Vida Loca. Shit with me got kind of crazy. And shit with you [Chris] got crazy, doing solo stuff. Shit with both of us got crazy. And we were just like, “Oh, fuck.” We didn’t have time to tour.
C: This is the first record we’ve put out and had what resembles an album cycle, where a band goes on tour because their record just came out.
In another interview I saw, you two mentioned that the kinds of love that are talked about on [LITTOE] are a lot of these really intense friendships, or intense platonic relationships. And also the development of friend crushes, and you can definitely see that with a lot of the songs. You don’t need to get too personal — you don’t need to name names or drag anybody — but can you guys elaborate on how to navigate these? Because I think with technology and stuff, that adds to the anxiety of friendship. You have to navigate being somebody’s friend in real life, and their social media presences too.
J: Yeah, and people’s social media presences are not who they are in real life. And that’s such a tricky, slippery thing because it’s how you think people are. You just see [their social media presence] all the time and you think people are this way, but they just truly are not. And then when you meet people, it’s a whole different person. I mean, Chris wrote all the lyrics, so he could elaborate more specifically.
C: I think navigating friendships is just about communication, just like any romantic relationship, you know? I think that is an overlooked thing in friendship-relationships. I think everybody knows it, but it’s drilled into your head that “Oh, your romantic partner, you have to be open and communicate with.” But I feel like with friends, people don’t talk about that as much. And I think that [being open and communicative with friends] is just as important. A lot of communication, and I think, ultimately, what the record is about, is balancing how much you want to share with somebody that you’re getting to know. Like, knowing when it’s appropriate to tell them that you are afraid of something.
J: And all of that stuff is wild because if you bring it back to social media, it’s like, you just come out the gate like, “I’m afraid of everything all the time!” and in real life…
Yeah, in real life that’s not how it is at all.
J: That’s fuckin’ hard to talk about, how you really feel.
C: Yeah, a lot of the record is just navigating boundaries and trying to just be so cautious with new relationships and being like, “What’s appropriate to do?” and “What’s appropriate to reveal about yourself?”
I get that. You’re always like, “Can I tell you that you’re my friend?” or like, “Can I tell you I cried last night?” and all of these things.
C: Yeah, exactly.
J: When you’re an adult, and you’re trying to make a plan with a new friend, that’s not drinking, it’s like… what do you do? “Wanna come over and watch a movie? It’s not weird.” *laughs*
That’s something that I think about a lot, because I’m in the age group where you have to start being a ~real adult~ and people are like, “Oh, millennials!” But you see it with Baby Boomers too, like these men in like their 60s who have no friends. So how do you keep those kinds of friendships, as a ~real adult~ with a job and a schedule and a spouse and kids and all of that?
*laughs* Okay, I’ll have to start a podcast, then.
J: We’re lucky to be amongst a group of cool friends who we like a lot, who all continue to make music. We all just kind of tour with each other and support each other so we get to keep hanging out with each other. This band — the band members that are not me and Chris [Laura Stevenson, John DeDomenici, and Kevin Higuchi] — are all people that are just like, it would be fun to tour with… Yeah, start Antarctigo Vespucci and make your friends hang out with you. So, you have to start Antarctigo Vespucci. And it’s fine! We’re good with it.
C: We won’t sue you.
J: We don’t have that many records.
I’ll think of a diminutive. Like… Antarctigo Vespuccini.
J: Yeah! Aw!
C: Australiago Vespucci.
You’re right. There are a lot of continents left. I think I’ll be fine. You kind of already mentioned this, Chris, but there’s this… I don’t want to call it overemphasis, but I think there is an overemphasis on romantic relationships and almost like an overvaluing of them, and a societal tendency to put romance above everything else. Like, just seeing what people said about LITTOE, including myself, it was like, “Ahh I just got dumped! And this album is about me! And my girlfriend doesn’t love me anymore!” but that’s not what this record is about.
C: I mean, it’s not what it’s about for me.
J: *jokingly* Chris had his wife divorce him so that he could make this record. They’re back together now.
Oh, thank god.
J: They’re doing great.
But where do you think that comes from? Why do we do that?
C: Those are the most intense feelings that you have, I think. Especially at a certain point in your life. When you’re a single person having a romantic relationship, those are the most intense emotions everybody on Earth has.
J: Becauseit’s all out there.
Ooh, yup.
C: I think that’s why there are so many songs about it. It just got to a point for me where I’ve been married for awhile and have been with my wife for… longer than we’ve been married. Can you believe it?
J: That’s really interesting.
So unique!
C: Isn’t it? We knew each other before we got married.
J: Yeah, we just met and got married. Me and Cassie [Chris’s wife]. *laughs*
C: I definitely have songs about my wife still, but I don’t… It’s not like a fiery place where I can grab stuff from because we have a really solid thing. And I’m sure eventually we’ll have a hard time, and I’ll write a great record about it.
*laughter*
C: But it just became more interesting to me to start writing songs about other things. And definitely, because I like pop music, I often frame a lot of those things as if you could interpret it as a romantic thing.
That answers it really well… These questions are not related to the new record… Have you two heard of the “Jeff is Chris’s inner monologue” theory, and if so, how do you feel about it?
J: What?
C: No!
J: No. Fuck.
C: What is it?
I feel like a tinfoil hat now. I’m like, “Let me bring you into my world!”
J: We’re ready!
Because, Chris, you’re the main vocalist, and there’s a lot of background vocals by Jeff, some people are like, “Chris’s voice is what Chris is saying to the world. And Jeff is what Chris is saying to YOU, to this special audience.” Like in “Guest List Spots,” the way that transition happens.
C: Wow.
Maybe I just hang out with too many people who have too much time…
C: Hey, I shouldn’t even answer. To keep the speculation going.
You’re right. We’ll let that one simmer.
J: This is a cool theory.
C: And I welcome more theories to it. I love that there are theories out there.
J: If you want us to talk about it without answering it, what do we even have? … That’s cool. Cool theory.
C: Inner monologue… Sometimes we write the lyrics together.
J: That’s true. There we go. *laughs*
That’s the answer! We’ll let the audience decide what they think.
J: “Guys, you write lyrics together?” Although I don’t think I wrote any of the lyrics that I sing.
C: … You’re right.
J: Oh, I think I wrote [all my lyrics on] “All These Nights.” I did write that part.
C: Yes you did..
Got one! One piece of evidence!
J: Isn’t that exactly what you didn’t wanna do, Chris? Answer the theory?
C: … No.
These questions are just extras, since we do have time… I do want to plug the other bands that are on tour with you, so, what’s your favorite AJJ song and your favorite Pllush song?
J: Pllush has a song that goes *vocalizes* (It’s “Big Train” — an absolute banger, by the way)
C: Yeah, that one.
Are they gonna play that song tonight?
C: Yeah, they play it last usually. That’s a really great song.
Oh, I’m ready.
C: And I personally like Knife Man [by AJJ]. It’s great live.
J: It’s called “Big Bird.”
C: What am I…
J: What, like you’re going to know titles?
C: What am I gonna do? Read the back of their CD? Also, “Coffin Dancer”? I love that song. Ben [Gallaty, bass] has such a cool… I know not on the record, but when they play it live, Ben sings the part.
J: Ben’s voice is so awesome. It’s cool when Ben sings.
C: It’s just a cool, subdued kind of song.
It’s very spooky. I really like it. Very coven-y, I think.
J: I really like the song “Guilt: The Song” and I really like “Linda Ronstadt.” Those are both great songs. AJJ are great. They’ve got an endless stream of very very good songs. They’re a great band.
This question isn’t musically related, but I have to ask… Do you know your astrological signs?
J: Virgo.
C: Taurus.
Ooh, two earth signs. *I’m met with two blank looks* Do you know your Chinese ones, though?
J: Like, “Year of the”?
Yeah.
J: I think I’m Year of the Dog.
We’ll have to find out.
C: 1986.
I can’t do math… Let’s find out. *Googling*
C: Year of the Rooster. That’s my guess.
Ooh. 1986 is the Year of the Fire Tiger.
C: Fire tiger? Dark phoenix.
J: Check ‘82 just to make sure I’m not dumb.
C: Fire tiger!
I can tell you the element, too. Let’s see…
C: Fire tiger!
1982 is the Year of the Dog… Year of the… Water Dog!
J: Water dog, baby!
C: Water dog! Whoa!
Water dog and fire tiger! I think that’s a very good duo. That’s why this band works.
C: Yes. Everybody knows it.
J: That dogs and tigers are best friends and fire and water are together always. They don’t hurt each other.
Thank you so much to Chris and Jeff for the interview, putting out an amazing record, and finally touring the West Coast as Antarctigo Vespucci!
-Julien Boulton
Photographer by Andy DeSantis, courtesy of Polyvinyl
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
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