WEIRD WAR
An Amalgam of Rock
by Steven Hanna
http://www.chordmagazine.com/issue/junejuly_05/feature_04.shtm

"I'm sorry," says an out-of-breath Ian Svenonius by phone from D.C. "I was out for a minute, and I was late so I ran home, but we can get into real interview mode now." Um, I'm a little confused. Haven't we been talking for the last ten minutes? Wasn't I, uh, interviewing you already?

"No, no. I mean on my part. Interviews are interesting, because they're such a great opportunity. People are giving you a platform, and I think you should use it. A lot of interviews, they're so familiar and really boring, but interviews are a facet of the group, as much as the record, and the performance, and the clothes. People should talk about something besides in-jokes and things like that. The interview form is the Platonic dialogue, or Socratic dialogue. It's an awesome form. You ask the perfect questions, and I answer. So let's get started."

Apparently I caught Svenonius on his cell as he was coming home from the store. We'd been having a perfectly nice conversation about his band Weird War and their stellar new album Illuminated by the Light, and I confess I'd been surprised that our talk was so light on the notoriously arcane politico-philosophy that's peppered Svenonius interviews since his early-'90s days in Nation of Ulysses. I figured I'd just caught him early in the day, before he disappeared into the marijuana haze that, to judge from trippy albums like last year's If You Can't Beat 'Em, Bite 'Em, surrounds Svenonius much of the time.

But though we've just had some very down-to-earth discussions of the new record's recording Ð it was laid down at Key Club, the up-and-coming Michigan studio that also gave us the newest Kills album Ð and its Sly-and-Robbie-ish production Ð "We were listening to a lot of Compass Point recordings," Svenonius told me, "like Grace Jones and stuff like that, and we kind of liked that cleaner sound" Ð it turns out that, to Svenonius, this has been mere small talk as he jogged along. Now he's settling into a chair, ready to dig into more serious topics, and all I have to do is ask a few, y'know, perfect questions.

Somewhat intimidated, I lob a softball about the current trends among rock hipsters, noting that Weird War's jittery brand of '70s-flavored indie-funk is hardly in step with the angular synth-and-guitar mishmash that gets you on Conan O'Brien nowadays. My mind is spinning, trying to come up with a closer-to-perfect follow-up, when I realize that further questioning will be unnecessary. Svenonius, once you get him started, needs little prodding to keep going.

"I've been involved in music all these years," he notes, "and the present, the present tense, is really interesting. For the first time, rock and roll bands don't have the pretense that they're going to save the world, and I think that's really a demoralizing development, when an art form becomes so interested in its own form and the formalistic aspects of its historical antecedents."

I start to stammer out something about how Svenonius, not just in Weird War but also in his great mid-'90s soul-ish outfit the Make-up, has always made music that fits nicely within discernible funk-and-punk influences. But I don't even finish my sentence. I'm no longer steering the ship.

"Well, people have always referred to the past, and you can't help it. You're an amalgam of references, that's what people are. But the emphasis on curating, almost, this historical form, this solipsistic navel-gazing, is almost like the harbinger of doom. I mean, spineless musicianship is great, but I feel like music is really metaphysical, almost like magic in a sense. But the people who use it, it's almost like workers in a bomb factory who think that they're making toothbrushes. They're not recognizing the implications of the pursuit that they're engaged in."

My efforts to grab the reins seem increasingly futile, but I score a minor point when I suggest that the hiccupy come-ons of the funky new "Girls Like That," for instance, are hardly political calls-to-arms.

"I don't actually like rock and roll lyrics that are political," Svenonius counters, "because lyrics are almost irrelevant in rock and roll. What lyrics are is just an incantation, a kind of spell. A political band isn't a band with political lyrics. A political band is a group that's creating a narrative that guides the culture towards, well, towards destroying the ruling class, in whatever way."

Seems awfully heavy, I point out, in what turns out to be the last words I'll be getting in edgewise.

"All I'm saying," Svenonius insists, "is that people should understand the use of the thing that they're involved in. I mean, we're definitely interested in having a good time, enjoying ourselves, but rock and roll is incredibly abstract. Why do people enjoy seeing a rock group? It's because we're born into the rock and roll art form. It's our inherited expression, and it's up to us to subvert this form. I think people need to understand, to think about that, instead of thinking, ÔHow can I sound exactly like the Turtles?'"