Carla Azar
Around 7 p.m. tomorrow night, L.A. futurists Autolux take to Jack White’s Third Man Records for a little live recording session and cookout. Not a bad way to cap what is expected to be one of those balmy spring days that tempts one to drink streams of tequila and roll around in grass after too many months under winter’s icy reign.
Pussy’s Dead, Autolux’s third LP, arrives April 1 on Danger Mouse’s new Columbia imprint. The album follows (another) six-year wait since the band's 2010 full-length Transit Transit, and I’ve scarcely listened to anything else (save for Kanye's “Ultralight Beam”) since February — because the onset of Spring means nothing without Yeezus bestowing gospel tunes inspired by St. Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus.
Co-produced by the Beyonce guru Boots, Pussy’s Dead finds Autolux deeply indulging their left-field tendencies, enough so that the trio may finally push critics to come up with better descriptors for their work than “neo-shogaze.” Which, ugh: There are myriad reasons why music criticism lost its foothold in recent years, and our increasing drive to treat art as seriously as a trip to Dave & Buster’s is one of them.
Fortunately Autolux drummer and former Jack White collaborator Carla Azar has better things to do than lose sleep over, as Ye eloquently deems us, “no pussy-gettin’ bloggers.” Between albums the Huntsville native appeared in the film Frank alongside Michael Fassbender and Maggie Gyllenhaal, helped make Blunderbuss with Mr. White, exhibited Buddha-like patience for awkward TV journalists and continued being more stylish than the rest of us.
Azar recently caught up with the Scene about her band’s weird, beautiful new album, dark forces in American politics, the loss of George Martin and David Bowie and more.
So Pussy's Dead: Hell of a name for an album. What inspired it?
Well [laughs]. Greg [Edwards] was in a used bookstore and found a Dickens book called The Mystery of Edwin Drood. He was flipping through the pages, and he kept seeing “Pussy” being used a pet name for a female character named Rosa Bud. There were all these bizarre phrases that he was drawn to, like, "I would give up all the women in the world for Pussy." I guess it was a very common pet name at the time. Greg then read "Pussy's dead" in a sentence about her dead grandfather and felt it was incredible out of context.
He brought the idea in a couple years ago, and Eugene and I said, "Oh we can't have that. We're not in a hardcore band." For me it conjured some sort of weird nu-metal thing with naked women on the cover. I loved the idea of it, but I didn't think it would fit. But one day it clicked and I knew Pussy’s Dead had to be the name for so many reasons. Also my cat died ... [laughs]
Oh no.
... And Greg's cat died the year before. I sent him a text and said this has to be the album title. Anyway, the more difficult feat was coming up with an album cover for a title like that. We wanted something that hit people. People either love it or hate it. I've gotten both. My musician friends love it.
Yeah, I was a little mystified when I saw the announcement and cover, but my second thought was that you three don't strike me as artists who bait listeners for shock value. I kept thinking there has to be something else going on here.
I'm really close friends with the Australian artist Anthony Lister. He's really funny and his art is really funny, but there's a lot of meaning behind everything he does. Some of it's shocking, then when you peel off the surface there's a lot of deep meaning and positivity behind it. We all wanted him to do our album cover, and we wanted it very simple and innocent and childlike. We didn't want anything over the top. He loved the idea, and when he sent the cover image, it just seemed perfect. I couldn't stop laughing.
I also like that the person on the cover isn't too depressed or sad that he's dead, and there's something positive about rainbows jetting out of a dead person's eyes. There’s also the gold tooth. As with the album title, it had an emotional feeling to me and everyone in the band, and we liked that people could derive their own meanings from both things.
Pussy's Dead cover art
This is Autolux's first record in six years, which is just barely less time than the wait between your debut and Transit Transit. Outside other commitments — your acting and work with Jack White, Greg’s work with Failure, etc. — what about Autolux's process lends itself to these long stretches between albums?
The first time we were stuck on a major label. We were signed to T Bone Burnett's label, but it dissolved. It was sad. They parted ways and we got stuck with A&R people who didn't really understand our music, and that was a nightmare. They wouldn't give us money to record, but they wouldn't drop us. That went on for almost two years. I can be blamed almost 100% for the wait between Transit and Pussy’s Dead due to making a record and touring with Jack. I also appeared in the movie Frank. At the time I felt like I needed time away from only doing Autolux.
But is there anything about how the band's songs come together that's particularly …
Yes, there's that. But, halfway through making Pussy’s Dead, we found a producer, Boots, who wound up being the person we’ve been looking for since we started. He understands our music, he loves our music, he’s been a fan since the incarnation of Autolux, and he can very quickly put things into perspective and wrap things up. We've never had that. Our ideas come quickly, but historically it’s taken awhile to land on a desired sound in the studio. We basically made Transit ourselves, but anything beyond this record will move faster because we don't really want to work with anyone else.
Were you familiar with Boots before you got linked up for Pussy's Dead?
Greg showed us Beyonce when we were starting the record, and we all thought the production and many of the songs were incredible and surprising for her. We were obsessed with it without knowing Boots. I never look at credits on records like that because there's usually 40 people working, and you just never know who's done what. Later we discovered he worked with Run the Jewels as well. And then he found us out of nowhere, and we realized it was the same person: Serendipity at its finest.
There's noticeably less guitar on this album. Did Boots have anything to do with that?
No, it’s simply the way the songs were written this time around. Early on, Grand Theft Auto asked for a couple of demos, so “Soft Scene” and “Hampster Suite” were shared and ultimately rejected. I'm glad because they ended up being a couple of our favorite songs on the album.
There's no rhyme or reason or plan when we’re writing. The album just became more electronic-feeling when it really started developing, though there are real drums on pretty much everything. There's never a straight-up drum machine pattern — if it sounds like a drum machine, rest assured I played it and we tweaked the sounds to make them sound like drum machines [laughs].
In 2016, do you think about where Autolux fits into the wider music landscape, given that rock or rock-inflected music is perhaps more irrelevant now than it’s ever been?
Do not even think about it. We just make music that we like and put it out there. It’d be great to have a career that's way above where we are now, but we're not the types who try to guess what will hit. Tastes are all over the place these days. There’s no longevity or critical consensus at Pitchfork or elsewhere. It’s a kind of joke to me.
It struck me that Pitchfork’s Transit Transit review misunderstood or glossed over what you three were trying to do.
[Laughs] Oh yeah. I don't think the writer’s taste could be any further from what we do. It doesn't faze us. Good music will find its place. If our record's great, people will buy it or they'll come see us.
I've often felt there's a touch of George Martin and The Beatles in Autolux's work. Tell me about their influence on you three.
What Martin did with them falls directly in line with how we approach recording and developing sounds — taking a song, flipping it on its head, trying to make it more interesting production-wise. I'm influenced by Ringo Starr for many reasons. I don't rip off his beats or anything, but I admire the sensibilities of his hook fills and the way he writes beats to serve the song.
I've also read that Bowie was an influence. What does it mean for you that he's gone?
That was really heavy for me. I found out around midnight L.A. time, and I couldn't believe it. I felt like my heart stopped. I think he's the only artist whose passing made me feel that way. I didn't really text or call anyone. I didn't even respond to people this time. It was ... the end of an era for me, for everybody. It just is. He's one of those people you think, 'He's going to live forever, he's going to outlive all of us.' And I mean, he is, he will outlive all of us. But his sensibilities aesthetically, musically — everything about his approach to putting something together was so unique. So yes, I was very sad.
You've known Jack White for some time now. What's something most Nashvillians don't know about him?
[Laughs] I would have to know every person in Nashville to tell you that.
Of course. Let’s try again: Is there any difference between his stage persona and who you hang out with backstage?
That dynamic exists for everyone on some level. I've known Jack for so long. I know him personally off and onstage, and I can tell you that it's all him. He's very grounded. He's one of the most grounded, down to Earth people I know, especially being who he is. I can say that. He's not afraid to change a lightbulb, you know? That's what I love about him. He's very real.
I need to let you go, but I want to ask you about America: I think we're all a little scared right now.
Yes, very scared.
How then should we hold onto hope in the face of all the dark forces running through our national politics?
[Laughs] Wow, that's heavy. Yes, we're in a very strange time right now. The fact that he's gotten this far is very frightening. Yesterday I saw where the guy suddenly came on stage at a rally, and when the camera panned over a guy in the crowd was wearing a T-shirt that says “The KKK support Trump.”
A real live shit show.
People like that support him publicly. They're strutting around. I don't think he's going to win, but I guess I’ll have to move if he does. I don't know. I think this is a real test for people to get out and vote. A fraction of the people who should vote actually do. College kids need to get out and vote.
Nashville has many, many college kids. This is a good message for them.
Well good.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
