12.

The New Christs Distemper

Oh yeah! The New Christs… In 1989, I lived in a house with [Earth’s] Dylan Carlson. There were three of us living in this really bare house in the wintertime. The front room was like the waiting room in a morgue. We didn’t have a TV; we just had a stereo. Somebody had that record – I’m pretty sure it came from the early days of Sub Pop because they distributed other records as well – and we would just sit around and listen to that record. I knew The New Christs singer Rob Younger from Radio Birdman but his singing on this record and subsequent records by The New Christs is so much better than what he did before. It was so different.

It’s a bit like Simon Bonney; Younger’s phrasing is so great and also, this record is catchy in a really weird way and his singing is so out there and unique. He works around the music and he’s really aggressive. Lyrically, I wouldn’t say embittered but he’s really angry and somehow all three of us in this house could relate to that at the time. And I still can from time to time.