Nat & Alex Wolff Q&A with Lyndsey Parker | Live at Licorice Pizza Records

I'm Lindsay Parker for LPTV at Licorice Pizza Records. It's an exciting day. There's already, I think, a couple hundred people lined up outside the store to see these guys, Nat and Alex Wolf, play songs from your album, not coincidentally called Nat and Alex Wolf. Congratulations on this record. It's so good.

Thank you. We made a vinyl of ours before and it was

This is our first time ever having a vinyl. It's really excit as kids, we only listen to vinyl, so it's really exciting. I'm surprised because I know that you are very into 70s stuff and 90s stuff. I would think everything you've ever done has been on vinyl.

Well, I feel like vinyl has just made a comeback in the last, you know, at least in, you know, with with with um our friends and stuff, you know, I feel like vinyl's made a comeback. So, I remember when we were younger, it was just CDs, right? We had Black Sheep was a CD and and then it was, you know, everybody saying, "Why would you do CD or vinyl?" And we're like, "We want to have the music, you And it does give you kind of a magical feeling to have a physical copy of the music.

You know, that's why the store is called Licorice Pizza cuz that's what a record

that's what the record looks like though. It looks like

licorice pizza made out of licorice.

So there you go.

Genius. Is that why they called it LP or no? The other way around. It was

that might have just been a coincidence.

Coincidence. Yes.

Love that.

But my initials are also LP, which is also a coincidence.

Also a total coincidence. But when I was a kid records that Yeah. There you go. But yeah, so we're excited to have you here. We're excited that your self-titled album is on vinyl here. And I want to talk There's lots of things I want to talk with you about, but we'll talk mostly about the record because I know this one was made kind of in a different circumstances than previous ones, particularly the one before. There weren't before it you were like literally locked down together. It was quarantine times. And then this one, I understand you had spent some time apart. Not like you were estranged or had some kind of feud or whatever, but you were like living different places.

You as obviously brothers and you've been in a band practically as long as you've been brothers.

It must have I don't know if it was unprecedented for you to be apart for a while and how that affected coming together.

That long forever. That was the longest we've been apart. I mean I was like traveling around

Europe for like a year um filming and we was in Norway. I was in Greece. I was in now I was in Canada. I was in Montreal and uh then I was in Argentina. I was in London. Like I was really all over the place. And and I think that uh there's something about writing songs while you're away and then bringing them back to Nat, you know, it's like the most uh

amazing rewarding feeling because you've been you felt so far away and you felt like you sort of been writing to to yell out and get back home and then when you bring it, it feels almost like it's was very very private and you really worked on it kind of privately and then we kind of mashed it up together. But we also did some songs completely together on this album. Like we did a song tough um where you know Nat sings the first verse and I sing the precourse, we sing the chorus together. Um so I'm really proud of that. I felt like this was the most collaborative album uh that we made on every level.

Yeah. And there's something um interesting about Alex being far away and and me being far away and sending each other songs almost as a way to check in with each other, you know.

Did you miss each other? Did it feel weird to be apart?

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, definitely missed each other and also, you know, just worry about each other. And so, you know, a song like I remember a song like Alex sending me back a plan. I remember thinking like, oh, this is, you know, obviously this is a I really love this song. I can't wait to record it. but also like you know I got to check in on him cuz this is obviously [clears throat] you know it's it's sometimes easier to communicate through the music than it is in any other way and uh I felt the same way of like playing horse for Alex for the first time I would kind of gone off into my own corner and um used riding horse as a way to to cope and then I remember playing it for him for the first time my hands were shaking and he's like we got to record that tomorrow.

Oh wow. I um those are two songs I specifically wanted to ask about. Oh wow.

Am I correct that Backup Plan was kind of the song that sort of kicked things off? And is that the one you wrote in?

Definitely for me. Yeah. Hotel Room. Yeah. In Athens. Yeah. For me that's that's the inciting incident. That's the It's time to make a new record cuz I think we've been writing songs, but there was something about that song that felt um different and dangerous and and

strange and just like uh I don't know. it demanded to to at least uh follow something through with it and and see how it would come out in the studio. And I was very nervous to record it because it felt like I didn't know what direction really we wanted to go in because it was very raw. And I think we felt I I think that we felt the same way about Horse where it was so raw that we it was like I was like, "Okay, well, where what do we what do we do with this song?" You know, it's like it's it's so raw. It's not like it's just like, "Okay, put a fun beat behind it." It just didn't it didn't feel like uh one of those which is a fun place to start like I don't know what the [ __ ] we're going to do with this.

What were your respective mindsets when backup plan and horse like what what were you going through? You were far away from home in a hotel room. I'm not sure where you wrote horse but what were you going through that you were writing you know two of the most vulnerable songs of your career. Um, for me, I think with horse it came out of a lot of

uh I was I read a book and then I was in

therapy and dealing with some traumatic

moments from my adolescence and late childhood and then being like, oh, how does, you know, and kind of trying to deal with the question of how did these little incidents in my childhood, how are they affecting me in my romantic relation? relationships and in my friendships

and um it was just something that I was thinking about a lot. So the song was just like a byproduct of that, but it wasn't really something that I was sharing with anybody. So then showing the song, I thought like, well, I'm this is too scary to even show Alex. But then at a certain point of showing people now, it ends up being the one that I'm the most excited to play and feels like the most healing. Um and and uh and it's been the one that I've gotten the most kind of vulnerable take from people who have heard it, you know.

sharing stories with me and things. Yeah.

Yeah. And I Yeah, I feel the same way. I feel like it was um

it was written in a uh it was written in

a state of like there was nothing else that I could do in that moment except for to to write about it. And and uh we were talking yesterday with with someone about how, you know, sometimes you want to be more of a of a journalist of your feelings and kind of be a little more a little bit removed and kind of okay, this is what was going on here. And that was not the case with that song at all. It was very much like um I got lucky and that I've been I was I was playing Leonard Cohen and so I was kind of really entrenched in the in the work and the and the and the work that he was inspired by and Herman Hessa and all those people. So, I felt like, okay, I have a lot of information that I've inhaled. Hopefully, when this explosion comes out, there will be pieces of that stuff, but it'll be too raw to be like intellectually copying someone or whatever. So, so I think that's how we sort of approached it was it's a raw song. Let's let's keep it raw. Use the you know, whatever the scratch vocal and um you know, the vocal doesn't sound perfect, but it sounds like uh true. I think

when you say playing Leonard Cohen for people who you know just to make it clear you mean portraying you portraying

portraying played him.

I played him.

He got played.

He got Leonard got played.

So you I um the two things I wanted to I wanted to ask acting wise was I wanted to ask about that and I'll get to you about the pavement pavements documentary which is honestly kind of weird because you kind of got your start doing mockumentaries.

Totally. It was very comfortable doing those, you know, to the camera interviews. Yeah.

So you So I know Leonard Cohen, I mean, I'm I'm just assuming that he was a big influence. I hear it in this record. How did you get the part of playing Leonard Cohen? How daunting was that to play one of the greatest artists of all time in my opinion?

My opinion, too.

Yeah, definitely. Probably for me the the favorite songwriters. So,

Paul and John,

it's like he's it's him and Paul and John are on the Mount Rushmore of of best songwriters, but definitely lyrically he's the he's the king for me. Um, and I still feel that he's uh underrated. Even though he's, you know, huge and important, I still feel that he's not uh you know, whatever. You can't talk about him enough. But uh I think in approaching it I just thought well I'm not going to make there's going to be a huge chunk of people who really don't like it no matter what I do you know um because you're betraying somebody. It's almost a betrayal that someone else is not actually learning.

So, I just felt like I'm just going to accept that and I'm going to do my um what what he meant to me and do it as what I took from him and also not try and uh telegraph like what he became as a old older man who wrote Hallelujah and wrote you know Tower of Song and those later amazing classics. I was really focused on what he was like as a as a young man. So that's kind of how I approached it.

What was the name of that film if people want to see it? It was a TV show called So Long, Marian. Yeah. Based on the on the song

filmed by So

I don't even know how to describe the Pavements movie. It's not a documentary.

It's a mockument. You're actually It's supposed to be a documentary, but you're playing Spiral Staircase, a member of Pavements. So, Pavements, sorry. The

No, the movie is called Pavements. The movie is called Pavements. The 90s band Pavements,

which is already kind of a winking joke because everyone accidentally calls the band Pavements Pavement. Yeah. But um yeah, we didn't really even know what we were doing when we did it, but they said, you know, it's going to be half biopic, half uh you as actors pretending to be like, you know, an actor that's really can't get out of character, you know, and like like Austin Butler playing Elvis or something.

And uh and then it's a bit of actual documentary. And then and then there's also a musical that they put on Broadway for 3 days and they filmed a behind the scenes the musical.

Wait, they did that in real life?

They did. Yeah, they put it up. I mean, it's laugh out loud funny. It's laugh out loud funny. It's laugh out loud funny. I saw it in a theater and I thought it was a normal weirdly really moving. And I actually got to sit next to Malchmus at the who's the lead singer pavement and songwriter at um like a fake premiere that we did to make it look like a premiere. and they were going to shoot it and then put it in the movie. And he was shaking and crying and stuff because, you know, it's his life and it's like his legacy. And then it made me think of this thing where like people that have that brat bratty kind of persona usually are the most sensitive. It's like a way to block it out. And I've always felt really moved by the pavement songs and I didn't know why. And then I was like, "Oh, that's why." He's a really deep feeling person.

and he just, you know, subverts it in in kind of goofiness and wackiness.

Yeah. They were sort of almost like the epitome of that Gen Xer like '9s cliche slacker thing of like, yeah, I don't care, whatever.

I don't give a [ __ ] Yeah.

But like

my favorite story about like Kurt Cobain is him saying in every interview that he didn't care about being famous. And then in his um his diary when they released it, it was like, I want to be the most famous rocker in the entire world. He he wrote it a thousand times. Like that is the best kind of

Yeah.

In the 90s there was there was literally a soda called it's okay or okay soda which the theme of it was like this soda's okay and it [laughter] was like a grunge guy you know drinking it a flannel being like it's not gray but it's fine. So

your favorite of the grunge '9s grunge bands you think?

Well, you know it's interesting that you asked me that because I was actually going to ask about a couple there's a band Okay, I'm gonna stretch here. There's certain things here that I heard on this record that I thought were kind of obvious or obvious to me. Elliot Smith, you guys got to be fancy, right?

There's certain songs that were like Super Figure 8 to me.

Hell yeah. That's not Candy Speak.

Huh?

Super 90s. Like Candy Speak was definitely

Yeah. And I heard some like kind of Seat Change era back.

Oh, we love that. That's our favorite back. Not Midnight Vultures back. Nigel God back. Not Yeah. Not like a Not the sarcastic uh you know sardonic back. Not Midnight Vultures, but

yeah, which I also

Baby or a Lost Cause B. That's one of my favorites.

Golden Age.

But here's one that's a little bit Are you familiar with a band called Subo?

Who say?

Subo.

No, but I'm excited already.

One of the greatest breakup albums in my opinion is I think it came out in '94. It's called Bake Sale. Lou Barlo from Sabo also was in Dinosaur Jr.

Oh, I love Dinosaur Jun along that cuz some of like the kind of like darker stuff completely reminded me of that record.

Do you have one of the records here? We're gonna try to look for in the bins.

Okay. Because that would be really cool if we could

I was wondering. I knew that was like kind of awesome in the mid 90s.

I feel like that record I mean they were around for a while but I feel like Bake Sale which was my favorite came out in '94 or 93 and then they had another year I was born.

So yeah. Okay. So that was my answer to question that was also a question to you. So yeah there's like obviously a lot of 70s stuff. People talk about Leonard Cohen, they talk about Fluid Mac, but there's like a lot of this kind of not '90s slacker, but like the kind of '9s like lowfi slow pour type stuff

you kind of grow up on. Okay.

Yeah. Um I mean I I think my my [clears throat] parents really introduced us to a lot of the late,

you know, 60s and 70s music. And then at like

12 or 13, I think we rebelled through

we dove really hard into all the 90s. uh you know like Grunge, My Bloody Valentine and yeah, Dream Pop, all that stuff. And I I mean, yeah, Slow Dive, all those kind of bands uh have meant so much to us, especially like production wise and lyrically. Um you know, we love Blur and um who else?

That's She said our clothes look like Oasis.

Really?

Yeah.

But unlike the Oasis Brothers, you get along.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, we had a couple we've had a couple fights on the album.

No, we have you really

always You can't I feel like an album is just you can hear the compromise if it's not you don't battle it out a little bit. I feel like when you really love an album between two people, you can tell they both had a point of view. That one day, Alex got the talkback mic in the studio and he and I was playing a piano part and he was giving me notes on the piano part and as soon as I heard Alex's like the voice of God in my ears in the headphones, I thought this is not going to work for me. Yeah.

Are there songs that were particularly like points of contention or argument?

I can't say that there was one song on the album that while we were in the studio, we weren't getting along making it. Like I felt like that was the magic. It's more about like after and mixing and what it is. And I feel like if there was any song that we weren't both totally 100% sold on. It's just not on the [ __ ] album. That's just how what that was our role.

Like we had to do we didn't compromise. What were the songs that we were going to cut? What were the songs going to be on? And it's hard cuz we made you know there's a lot of songs that didn't make it. And um but this you know it wasn't even cuz you know these songs were better than other songs. It was more like, okay, this is the most cohesive album and the album that has lots of like a ups and downs and different colors and isn't just, you know, that's one thing that I'm bothered by with a lot of um modern music is kind of like

an album that's just has a uniform sound, you know, and uh all my favorite albums take lots of journeys and you know, we wanted to make sure there was like no,

yeah, that we have our own the you know, it has our imprint on it, but that it kind of takes on lots of different shapes, you know.

So, you you mentioned that you saw a rebel against your parents. Obviously, your father uh is

amazing jazz music. He was our senior.

Yeah, he was.

He was the like band leader for like legendary like late night television. I imagine I know I think that show ended right around the time that you were being born, so you weren't on the set or anything, but I imagine some interesting people came. You got intro introduced to some interesting musicians as a kid.

I've read that like Warren Zeon Warren Warren Zeon was huge influence. Yeah. And Warren Ze was a huge influence. Warren Zeon was my dad's best friend and he died um when I was probably like eight, but he actually g he for my fifth birthday he gave me a a little leather jacket and he said, "You're going to be a rock star or something."

He was right.

Hell yeah.

He was right about a lot of things. What did you think of his uh Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction that finally happened?

So awesome. So great. So moving

crazy. But his um last album that he did right before he died.

Yeah. Where he brought in like Bruce Springsteen and he brought in all these people and he did um you know uh wait, what is that song called? The

uh Keep Me In Your Heart.

Keep Me In Your Heart. Oh my god, that's the most beautiful song ever. And then

and Life will kill Kill You and

And my dad used to always say uh you know, he still always says when he's you know, sick or feeling bad or something, he said, "Oh, my shit's [ __ ] up and then Warren wrote a song based on my dad saying that with my [ __ ] life

one of my fave songs.

You guys I mean I think the killers did a great job but there was only one song in that tribute. Some of the other artists got more than one song should have been part of it.

That would have been great.

I know. He's just

he was such an amazing lyricist. It's crazy.

Yeah, he's on the Mount Rushmore of lyricists for sure.

So the Mount Rushmore is him, Leonard Cohen, John and Paul. Are you laugh?

Yeah, I guess John and Paul can they be one? Okay. So now

we're talking lyrics, you know,

Leonard.

Bob Dylan.

Dylan Neil Neil Neil.

I don't know. There's no rule.

That's tough. It can be

Yeah, it can be a five. A top five.

That's a pretty It's a pretty

It's a pretty solid top five. Um, so yes, you came from obviously a showbiz family and like I said, you were brothers. You weren't brothers for very long before you became band. [laughter]

Yeah. And it was interesting because I mentioned Pavements being the mockumentary and if people look back on that show on the Naked Brothers band show,

it was pretty smart for a children's show. It was pretty meta. Uh like I don't even know how such a like how much like the younger viewers were understanding how like sophisticated it was.

We didn't even understand.

We didn't I didn't think I knew that it was really making fun of us until much later. I was like, "Oh,

it's kind of a satire making fun of I don't think it's making fun of I think it's it is kind of it's like taking somebody that's young and then seeing them in an older light." But I I did feel when uh we were we did an episode where we went to the VMAs, you know, we were supposed to win the VMA and like we hadn't even been on TV yet and the music hadn't even come out yet and Cassim, who was in the show, I remember going we started to leave the VMAs and a car like you know we filmed outside of them and stuff. I remember we get into a car to go home and he goes, "But what about our award?" And then I was like, "Dude, this is just a show." That's when it kind of hit. We were like, "Oh yeah, this is just a show." But then we met Fergie and she said, "I'm a big fan, but that we weren't." And she was just being really nice and polite. So Fergie's polite. And

I mean, there were certain shows, I guess, that sort of begat that tradition. The Monkeys started it. They were they were a TV band before they were a real band. And then Pinocchio.

Yeah. And then they did Me and Magdalena and they did that whole album that was after they weren't even on the show which is kind of interesting.

They should be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. They've never been nominated. It pisses me off. They've never been nominated. Rock and roll.

Last train to Clarksville and all.

Never even been nominated. But yes, I suppose like you've probably dealt with this yourself. It's probably less of an issue for you because you are no longer called a naked brothers band. You got a clean slate. But we got

if you started as a TV band or fake band or whatever, no matter how sophisticated you were or how much talent there was, it's kind of hard to show no we actually really do this in real life, right? How have you

uh how have you navigated that? Is it was that one of the reasons? I know there were probably some legal reasons why you couldn't call yourselves the Naked Brother band, Naked Brothers Band, but perhaps it was a blessing in disguise that you said that there were some legal reasons. I don't remember that. I think maybe I think I think it was a legal problem. Nickelodeons had the rights to the name still with the monkey by the way. We wanted to break we wanted to break out and just be Alex Wolf because it wasn't the Naked Brother. It wasn't that group, you know.

It was it was us. and we wanted to just kind of the two of us go on the road and and find musicians that could be a band with us, you know, not like

and it's been interesting like ever since we've been making music as N Alex, uh it's never been an issue for people to wrap their mind around it who are like musicians. um like we've always been really really lucky with with uh musicians and people uh you know producers and things like that who understand where the music's coming from. But I remember with press and with

journalists and things like that it was like having to steer the ship. It's like okay this is not you know trying they trying to kind of pigeon hole us into a certain thing that we weren't and then

no no no at all. I remember someone recently someone recently uh a driver said, "Oh, I just uh saw that you released music with your brother." I said, "Yeah." And he was like, "When did you stop being in the Naked Brothers band?" I said, "I said, uh, I was about 11."

He was like,

"Oh, okay. Great."

It was like 20 years ago when the show started, right? So

19 yesterday as of yesterday or something. Two days ago. Pretty amazing.

Yeah. Um, you did mention I'm sorry. Did you want to

No, I was just, you know, 20. That's a long time. That's a lot.

It's kind of crazy. I have read though that you had to write so many songs for the show on like an episode perep episode basis. It sounds like it might have been kind of like a cool almost like a boot camp for songwriting to do that, you know.

It was a boot camp for songwriting and then it's how we learned the studio. Like we ended up, you know, started off uh where we would like sing and play our songs and then we had musicians come in and sort of like play with him. And by the end of the show, Alex and I were doing everything, you know, in the studio. And like Ale, I remember

a drummer initially. I was just like a drummer. And then kind of we started just to become more of a duo as it as the

by the end of the show, we were kind of already um writing all the songs, recording them just as basically a duo.

Yeah.

It's crazy. So when I think you said something earlier, I think it was when we were talking about the song Horse that you were talking about stuff in your adolescence, your childhood. Are you talking about the child stardom thing? Because I don't recall unlike some other child stars or TV stars or Disney stars or Nickelodeon stars who shall remain nameless. You hear them about having a rough time of it. Sometimes they come out on the other side. Okay. Sometimes sadly they don't, but they have either a super rebellious phase or just a phase where you can tell they're really struggling mentally or getting in trouble with the law. I don't require or I'm sorry, I don't remember um hearing about you having any trickiness with that era of your lives.

I think we were really lucky that we had each other, you know. I think uh I have we watched a lot of people um that were kids in on shows or in bands or whatever just completely self-destruct. And I think we um having each other was like it became us against the world. So it didn't feel uh you know there were times where it was like it was really overwhelming like having a lot of people know who you are and and kind of getting bullied at school but then having like crowds of people outside of the school screaming when you come outside because they're so like you know so it was just a really strange time and then it kind of going away and then touring and doing like going from playing like the Bronx Zoo for 10 people to then playing like Yeah, plaza and playing all the, you know, all

sounds kind of lit though.

Nope. Oh my god. The monkeys that the monkeys were in were we were right by the monkeys and we were right by

We were right by we were right by the real monkeys. They were throwing feal matter at our guitars.

And then we were we learned all these songs cuz this choir was going to come and then only two people from the choir showed up.

Didn't know any of the songs that they told us to learn.

It's like an episode of a TV show almost like a horror movie. You should have filmed it. And I remember turning to Alex and be like, I don't think it could get worse than that show. And it and honestly, and it never did. No, we kind of ripped. Also, do you remember kind of like today when you fell with the guitar, the strap came off your guitar and our crashed on?

I had to use a um No, it had to use Ethan's like we took rope from the God just worst memory ever. Just we took rope from the like the curtain that was that and they like did and I just tied it as a strap and everything. It was It was I mean

you guys are good at the DIY.

Yeah.

Yeah. I have

Yeah. That's like a spinal tap

flashbacks,

right? Totally. Like

worse than the puppet show. [laughter]

Spinal tap and puppet show. It's now an Alice Wolf and Monkeys.

Yeah.

Not the monkey.

I just feel bad for the like eight or nine fans who did come to that show and were like, "What the hell?"

I don't think you should feel bad for them cuz now they could be like, "Remember that.

Remember we were at that Bronx before only show worse than that. It was raining." so hard that they put up like a half a ten just over the stage, but everybody who came was just getting rained on [laughter] really hard

and it was LIKE

NOPE. Clearly not. They loved it. Oh my god.

I mean, I guess it'd be hard to maybe when they threw maybe monkeys throwing feces.

It's like Greeks throwing plates,

you know? It's like a sign of affection. It's their version of a cause. It's there that will not luckily that does not happen anymore. You don't play any more zoos but you know

well we can always zoom tour

you never know you zoo

tour actually are kind of bad but let's keep going. Yeah, we don't want we don't want to,

but that's kind of a recurring theme through this album. I know a whole whole life is not issues. No, like unpacking childhood stuff and having some distance from it now to whether it's I don't know if it's childhood stuff totally just related

to the fact that you were famous at a young age or if it's other stuff, but like

I think horse is probably more stuff, but I think yeah, a whole other life definitely is in that area. Yeah, I think that it's like I think that we were famous and then not famous and famous and not famous and you know that can come and go, but there's it's more about uh the after

effect. You know, it's not really I feel like when it's happening, all that stuff was great. It was just really complicated after and your feelings of trying to fit in and your relationship with you know family members and feeling like you know Nats told the story of like you know we were in school and we would be getting bullied and then we walk outside and there'd be fans there and there would be you know creepy older people and you know we just like it was just a lot of strange [ __ ] for young people to endure in a lot of amazing stuff and a lot of shitty stuff and um and I just feel It it's just especially when you're a child star and then you move on. I mean, if you can call it a child star because there's some people like Miley Cyrus or whatever that it was just so insane. But being famous, I think that you want to almost pretend that like you get embarrassed by it. You like don't want to even look at it. And then I think when you get a little bit older, not only do you are you okay to look at it, it kind of you can kind of feel it again and and and understand what it was that you were going through.

And on a couple songs on this album, I tried to write from the same place that I wrote when I was a kid, which was very anti-intellectual. Like, you know, at a certain point, you know, we we studied like classical piano and stuff, and you start learning chord progressions and just like learning the piano in a way where you know it too well. And so I tried to kind of do a lot of closing my eyes and just feeling the shapes of the piano and the sounds of the piano and not really, you know, not even writing down the chords, not knowing even exactly what I was playing and letting the songs come to me. And that's how I did it as a kid. And somehow it does unlock a certain, you know, there's a certain self-consciousness that goes, you know, and and you have the ability to be free because you're not ne maybe trying to be good, you know, so you can end up being free and then you end up stumbling upon stuff that's, you know, sometimes it ends up being so uh embarrassingly bad when you listen back, but then sometimes you discover something really unique that you wouldn't be able to find otherwise.

Yeah,

it's an odd question, but you think it was a blessing in disguise in some ways that instead of you becoming famous and then staying up there that there were lulls in it or stops and then restarts because I've read this theory that the age at which someone becomes [laughter] famous is when they freeze

when their maturity level stops.

People say my maturity level is about eight.

I'm not talking about you. [laughter]

They've been saying that about an eight to me. Certainly higher than eight. Something froze there. But I've heard that theory, which kind of makes sense because if you got famous at 13, that's when you stopped having a normal life.

That's when, you know, you stopped having to have chores or go to school or or whatever, that's when life completely changed. And sometimes people have an arrested development.

Totally.

I'm not witnessing that with you. You're definitely much more mature than eight. But do you think the fact that you didn't have this meteor rise and then your whole life forever was not whole other life was,

you know, that you you had periods of normaly again? is that I feel like maybe that was a good thing.

Totally. Because I think it's really uh especially as as musicians and as actors and as artists um I think having those

times where things weren't happening or hot, they actually when I look back are the times where I made the most growth as an artist by far, you know. And I do think um the the quiet it also kind of

made us realize that we just need to keep our heads down and keep making the work. And you know sometimes it's really really uh the the le the intention level is really intense and sometimes it's not. And it's knowing that that doesn't reflect on how good something is or how or if we're worthy or not. It just is the way it is. You know,

I have so many songs I could ask you about, but we're probably

Come on, ask us. Let's

Okay. Well, we're going to light you around it because I can see that, you know, at some point you're going to have to go perform these for all the fans lined up. We've talked about a couple ones I definitely want to ask. My favorite song on the album is Candy You Speak.

A Thank you.

We've all been lovebombed. [laughter] It's

all happened. It's happened to us, famous or not. And uh for you know, forever for about a week is kind of like the best line ever cuz that's kind of what like it is. I don't know if it was based on a real life experience or amalgam experiences. Well, tell me about it.

Yeah, it was an amalgamation of a few. But it's definitely that feeling of uh

you know, it's not just being loved by it's it's it's buying into the fantasy because it's nice for that moment. You know, you know, somewhere in the back of your head this is just this isn't real. You know, if it feels too good to be true, it's usually too good to be true.

But it feels good. So, you're like, I'm just going to go with it and worry about that later.

Yeah. It's like doing a drug or drinking too much or something and you're like, "This feels so good. It's going to last forever." And you're like, "The hangover's coming, man.

It's coming." Yeah,

it's relatable content for sure.

[laughter] And and then the other one I wanted to ask about was was tough, which opens the record because that's a particularly emotional one. I have read that there's an All Too Well style 50-minute version of it.

So the 15 that's that's No, that's Can't Hurt You Anymore. There's like a 30. No, don't worry. that song. Uh,

you should have 15-minute versions of

I would love that where we just shred.

Okay, let's talk about both those songs.

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Tough was was inspired by I had listened to um Alex G's new album, Headlights, and I had really loved it. And then I I had gone down a really a deep rabbit hole with Share. Um, and I love Share a lot. And if I could turn back time and believe were two tracks in particular that I loved. And

best presenter of this year's Grammys.

Definitely best. Luther grandross forever.

Luther grand

whatever she said. Luther

Grandross.

Kendrick is I liked it when she was said and the winner is and then she looked at the screen and they were like, "You got to open the envelope." And I was like, "Oh, she looks so young, but she's obviously 82 or something."

In her defense, she completely told everyone she was bad at presenting and they let her do it anyway. But

love it. I love the monologue. when she was modeling, I kept looking back at the screen to the u prompter to think like there's no way. And there was not a word of it was on the prompter.

She's flying free.

So [clears throat] share. Yeah.

So Sher is, you know, like the greatest chorus writer ever. So I just wanted to kind of capture that feeling that I had when I listened to Headlights and and then capture the feeling that I have when I listen to a share a chorus. and I went in the yard and I and I wrote that chorus and then kind of wrote a pre chorus but not really didn't really know what it was and then Nat and I went to the studio for the very first time having like sections of the song not written like writing it on the day and um it was the most thrilling thing

all the things we've been talking about in this interview like about growing up in that sort of face that you have to put on you know in order to have that weird childhood that we had and that kind of I think came through in those lyrics of you know [snorts] empty compliments that's what I do best the days just do

the the last question cuz I'm seeing people looking

yeah come on

no we're doing

come on we're doing an amazing interview our favorite interview ever

this is really fun actually

I would I really wish we could talk longer but we covered a lot of ground so the last thing I want to ask about is obviously soft kissing hour has a very special guest on it Billy Eyish's dog He's He's I was gonna make that joke.

I'm sorry. I took it away. Well, she has more than one dog, right? She's very into animals and animal rights.

But Shark is and Shark is

Shark's the one on the record.

Yeah. Shark is in a lot of tracks on the record. Like, you know, because it's there tracks on that song. That's what I meant. On that record. On that song. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. On that song.

He was like a recurring guest.

No. No. That

like it should be Nat and Alex Wolf and

and Shark. [laughter]

Shark is a cool name for a fan.

It is a good name.

That'd be a cool band name. Is there a band called Shark? Yeah. Is there

Feels very 90s band called Shark.

It's like, "Hello guys, welcome to LA. We're Shark." Um, no. Shark is in a lot of the tracks. It's just his snoring is kind of uh comforting. It's just way in the back. But I remember the mixer being like, "Should I take out all this noise?" I was like, "Nope." And he said, "That's what happened with Carrie and LOL, the Sufian album, that he had spent two weeks taking out all the air conditioning noise." And Sufian said, "What happened to the air conditioning?" I do like that you kept a lot of I guess what people would call mistakes on the track record that you kept it organic and and DIY and kind of went back to your roots and uh I would love to chat with you more but

you are the best. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much.

Thank you. But there's like 200 or more people out there who want to hear from you. So I don't want to disappoint them. But congratulations. I know it's only February but this record's in my top 10 for the year so far.

Oh my god. Thank you so much.

Really good record.

There's a lot of year to go. [ __ ]

That's okay. We made it.

Can we be in last year? Yeah,

we'll figure it We'll we'll we'll figure it out with the like the the weird Grammys window.

You have about three year

and we'll go out there and maybe look for some SEO records.

Quickly, what are some of your other favorites of the of the year? Do you do you have any yet record is very very common.

Heard it.

Um the new uh Silver Sun pickups album that actually just came out today.

They're so amazing. So amazing. We were listening to some of them.

Kind of thing. I I'm so nerdy that I actually keep a word document of

favorite every year.

So, you're on the document. I'll consult it later.

Okay, I'll check it out. In the meantime, we're going to go look for some SEO records and watch these guys play. Yeah, we got to get going. But thank you so much. This has been great.

Thank you.

Thank you so much. [ __ ] Woohoo. [screaming]