And so quickly too.
That’s the biggest tragedy, yes. Starting a war is terrible, yes. All these people dying is terrible ― but to take what was an opportunity to create a consensus and a framework for cooperation with the whole world, and squander it, just “Fuck ’em.”

Interesting you say that, since there’s pretty much a whole wing of science fiction that deals with the “mad mastermind orchestrating a tragedy to unite the world” gambit.
[laughter]

You mentioned earlier how Shellac as a band has this arsenal of tricks, things that you can do. When you’re working on stuff, how much of these elements are played out intentionally?
An awful lot of it is . . . unfocused. Some stuff develops of its own accord. There’s one thing that happened super accidentally that I’m really fond of. There’s a song we do called “Ghosts,” and there’s sort of an introduction, and the introduction has a break, a moment where we hold the chord for a while, and then go back to the introduction. Out of nowhere, at one show, we just sort of all simultaneously went into slow motion during that suspended chord, and I have no idea why that started ― but it’s now something that we do every time. Like “Oh yeah, we have a slow motion part of the song.” When did that happen? We never talked about it or anything.

So there was no rehearsal, with “Oh hey guys, I’ve got this weird idea for a choreography move?”
Oh no, not at all. It was just like dahdahdahdahdah booooooooooooonnnnngggg, like “Oh, that sounds good, let it go for a while.” And as a result, we realized that we’re all moving in slow motion, and it turned into this thing where we have several extra-musical parts, that aren’t necessarily part of the tune or whatever, but they’re definitely part of the song.

There’s that, there’s a song where we fuck up the beginning a bunch [Greyhound’s “Be Prepared”], and the fucking up the beginning now is a part of the song where we fuck up the beginning, and it’s almost like a game to see who can come up with the best way to fuck up the beginning.

Well, you guys have been a band for 15 years now, so you can work on that level. And since you’re not exactly prolific ―
Yeah, no, not at all.

― And you guys don’t really rehearse a lot, tour a lot, or see each other in a musical context that much, compared to most “real” bands.
Right. It’s unusual for us to get together more than, say, not counting when we get together to rehearse and play a show or tour, for normal rehearsal weekends, 4 times a year, something like that.

When you started the band, was that the plan?
There was no plan, but it has worked out that way. Our lives are kind of demanding, and as our lives get more complex and demanding, the band stuff gets kind of pushed to the margins.

But you still do it.
Oh yeah, it’s still really important to us!  I know that I think about the band ― some part of every single day I spend thinking about stuff I want to do with the band, turning over in the back of my head pretty much all day every day, there’s something to do with the band.

And it’s the same with the other guys?
Probably. And a lot of what we do, aspects of an individual show, an awful lot of that is kind of that we’ve all been thinking about things that we wanted to do in the background next time we’re able to play, and now we have a chance to do it, so let’s do it.

I mentioned before how you can have a little notion that will grab your attention and you’re stuck in a loop and you won’t be able to get out of it. Lately, there’s a thing about monkeys that we just can’t get rid of. Especially the social organization of groups of monkeys. I don’t know why. I’m kind of hung up on it right now. Especially when you see where there’s one tree that’s got a bunch of monkeys in it, and another tree that’s got another bunch of monkeys in it, and they’re like four yards apart ― bitter, sworn enemies ― until a victim monkey shows up, and then they band together, chase that monkey up a tree, tear it apart, eat it, and then they go back to being bitter enemies again. But of course, the females of the bitter enemy tribes still have little liaisons with their neighbor enemy monkey tribes.

So it’s like a monkey version of Temptation Island.
Right.

So do you think that this is the way things will continue for Shellac? Not the monkeys tearing each other apart but the sporadic rehearsing/touring thing?
Seems like it, yeah. It seems like we’ve kind of established a pattern for the band. Definitely. It doesn’t seem like there’s going to be a break in the action for any of us in our normal lives, so...