Following the release of their new album Disposable Everything, our journalist Lachlan caught up with Sean and Ben of the unstoppable the folk-punk force that is AJJ. Their conversation covers disposable battery-operated candles, what makes the new album refreshingly different from the past decade's projects, Kevin McDonald, and how to sabotage benches through a quick Amazon purchase.
In 2016, AJJ disposed of their more famous name Andrew Jackson Jihad. And in a
few decades time the band will be disposed of in itself and become a scathing, folk-punk-driven memory of music’s past. But in the meantime, the band’s founding members Sean Bonnette and Ben Gallaty want to ensure they bring down the corrupted parts of the world with them and share their thoughts on whether everything is disposable.
According to Sean, the answer comes, roughly, in that “not everything is disposable, but
most things are: a lot of good things are, but a lot more bad things are too. There are a lot of things we should throw in the trash.” With this, for Ben, “it’s a shame at how many things are disposable in our society. I love fixing things and revising things, almost to a fault probably. So in my world I try to avoid of disposing of everything but, you know, certain things can’t be helped.”
The strength that the new album Disposable Everything possesses in reflecting this
current all-disposable state of affairs is that it “doesn’t pretend to offer any solutions” to counter it. Sean thinks, “it tends to give more questions than put forward any answers or any sort of ‘get up off your seats’ empty platitude. It’s very uncertain. And the uncertainty of the album reflects how we are reaching a pretty important point in human history where a lot of decisions are going to have to be made pretty soon. You know, about what to dispose of really.”
Individual tracks go on to address this is a variety of ways. For example, “there’s not
really a reason that we have so many battery-operated candles that you can control with a remote control. Yet at the same time, they bring me so much joy and happiness. How can these things that I’m completely philosophically opposed to, when received at weddings or a Christmas present, make me love them? That’s the question. What parts of capitalism are we going to keep and what do we absolutely need to get rid of. That’s the struggle that the album attempts to glance at.”
The album’s exploration of our submissiveness to what we care about, outside of object-
based dependencies, inter-personal relationships are impacted on by the disposable everything to an extent too. For Sean, “the inter-personal relationships and the love songs of the album are the saving grace from all the despair. It’s within other people and within love that we can find a reason to not just fully give into cynicism, to despair, to ‘fuck you, I got mine,’ to ‘me first.’ It’s love, or even underneath lust and the need for just physical touch that kind of pulls us out and will help us to move on to whatever the next chapter is.”
Whether the project is supposed to conjure a particular lesson or response in the
listener is difficult because “morals and lessons are really difficult. I don’t want to be dishonest and try give anyone a roadmap that will lead them in the wrong direction. That kind of goes back to the strength of Disposable Everything in that it just has questions. Our last album Good Luck Everybody was a completely different record and it kind of told you exactly what to feel and tried its very best to tell you how to get out of the rut, but it didn’t necessarily succeed. One could go back to the age-old wisdom of Bill and Ted, which is ‘to be excellent to each other.’ But I don’t know if that’s cutting it anymore. Maybe the answer is eco-terrorism at this point. We should be eating and sleeping and funding eco-terrorists.”
Broadening the scope of the interview to the nearly twenty years that the band has
been together, we discussed the common threads and approaches identifiably pursued through the new album, and what was embraced differently and disposed of.
Sean: “I think there’s always been a through-line of playfulness to our band. Even down
to the recordings and the recording techniques we use. That, and with every new album we try to approach it from a new and different angle. With the idea that we will hopefully always change and no record sounds like the previous one.”
Ben: “Yeah, I guess that is the common thread, that we’re always trying to do
something different than we’ve done before. The main idea and approach is to not do the same thing over and over again. I think that also, based on the challenge, amounts to working out what the answers are for the issues identified on the new album. I think there was more offering of solutions and answers in our earlier material versus now. Whereas now we are exploring difficult subjects and that’s the benefit: getting in there and trying to understand it.”
Sean: “When we were younger, I mean I can only speak for myself, I was certainly
much more of a know-it-all. The older I get the more I learn I don’t know shit. Don’t know fucking shit.”
Ben: “My teacher in High School had told me at one point, I had probably just said some
dumb shit that a teenager would say in the class. He said: “the older you get, the less you know,” which, at that point in time, made me think ‘what the hell are you talking about? That’s a really dumb thing to say; it doesn’t make sense.’ But more and more, as I get older, I completely get that.”
Pursuing the different approaches taken for each AJJ album, “one thing that was
definitely different about Disposable Everything is that some of the songs were not meant for consumption. They weren’t meant to be listened to by anyone but myself and people who visit my house. But my friend David Jerkovich – our friend – was visiting and I love to play him songs. He ended up pulling up a couple songs that he wanted to purpose and record and turn into AJJ songs. The two I’m thinking of the most are “Moon Valley High” and “Candles of Love.” The latter is very much not an AJJ song. Well, now it is. Yeah, they were just little songs that I wrote to myself. I do that all the time; always have a little song in my head. There was a new level of vulnerability reached when he was able to convince me that they were worthwhile for the band.”
Ben: “Also having David involved as producer of the record was a whole new thing.
The technical side of making the record was different. We’ve done a couple quick records with John Campton where we go and do the whole record in nine or ten days. We start recording, we finish recording; it’s mixed, it’s all done. That’s one way to make an album. But on this one we spent much more time developing songs in the first place. Working with David on how to approach the songs, a good chunk of time in a really nice studio, and spending months discussing and adding to songs and mixing them. So there was a really great process where everybody had the opportunity to get their ideas in the mix and we all got to listen. For me, it felt great. It didn’t feel rushed, it grew at a natural pace.”
In constructing each new album, how each member of AJJ’s expectations of each other
when conceiving of and creating new projects have changed over time.
Ben: “One thing I’ve noticed is that when Sean turns up with the songs, you know the
idea is there, fully formed generally, we then have to discuss what how we want to make it sound: do we want a big sound or an acoustic sound? What kind of mood do we want to create with the textures? But this album was different. “Baby Panda” in particular. That was a song that, six years ago, we started working on the song, then it almost became a thing, but was instead put on the back burner for a little bit before it came around again. Whereas before, it would be like ‘here’s the song’ then immediately go to the studio and say that’s the final version. It’ll change a little bit as we perform it live but that original idea is still intact. With this album it didn’t seem that things were fully there from the outset and there was more time for simmering to allow songs to sound as they do on the album. It really benefited the songs to have the extra time and consideration.”
Sean: “Yeah, “Baby Panda” was back burner for a long time, but Ben was persistent
and believed in that song much more than me, that’s for sure. I’m really glad because he had a vision where I did not.”
Ben: "But equally I admit I listened to the demo that we worked on after finished the
record, like it just popped up on my Apple Music and I was like ‘yeah that really wasn’t ready.’ It’s good we allowed it to become what it is now. The lyrics changed. The feel changed. It is absolutely, undeniably better now.”
Sean: “I think it was when I VersaSpeeded it. I sped it up much more and was like ‘oh
yeah.’”
As the band has grown a voice over its existence, to explore the social frustration that
is so essential to the band, it has been able to criticise the world to a greater extent. But whether the band has actually seen improvement since starting off, or whether things are really just as bad but in slightly different ways is a crux point for Sean and Ben.
Sean: “We’re going to have different answers.”
Ben: “For me it does seem that things are worse. But it’s mainly that information about
how bad things are is more readily available. The fact we know how bad things are is an improvement maybe, because if you don’t know things are bad, they’re still bad, you just don’t feel that way because you’re unaware. So the awareness is an improvement but also absolutely makes it feel as if things are worse. Not to say that there hasn't been really huge steps forward, progress made for certain social issues but it’s kind of two steps forward, one step back ordeal.”
Sean: “That’s a lot closer to my answer than I thought it was going to be. I mean we’ve
found out that microplastics exist and that the plastics industry has lied to us. It’s not recyclable and it’s inside our bodies now, so we’re all riddled with plastic. So, that’s bad. But now they’re creating bacteria that eat microplastics which is maybe good. Until that shit spirals out of control and we have these giant plastic-eating worms that are out of control and will think that we’re plastic and will eat us.”
Ben: “You have a beautiful mind, Sean.”
Sean: “Americans are becoming a little bit more class conscious, which I think is good.
But they’re becoming class conscious because of the fucking caste system that we have and the enormous inequalities that are growing. The gap between rich and poor. I don’t know if it’s bigger or smaller than say fifteen years ago. But the fact people are becoming more and more aware of it: you have to be willing to do more about it, which is good, I think. So yeah, nothing but ambivalence over here.”
Depending on how optimistic either member is feeling, how things will change, or have
to change, is unpredictable. But there are ways that artists and fans alike can act to benefit the world around them.
Sean: “Eco-terrorism! Yeah, start sabotaging the Death Machine. Throw some sand
and wrenches in those gears. Slow it down as best you can and kill them with paperwork. I’m trying so hard not to be cynical.”
Ben: “Make a lot of small individual choices about ways that could potentially add up
to something substantial. I don’t know, it’s a dark thing to complain about: as a consumer, I am one, I engage in capitalism daily. Trying to make choices to not be wasteful, which is hard because there are a million different choices out there. Do you fix the thing or do you throw it in the fucking trash and get a new one? Try to get through the day and check in with yourself and make choices that make you feel as good as you can. But then – here we go with the cynicism – you try to get the nice thing that might be made out of recycled materials then follow it back to the person who owns that company and find out they’re an awful evil-doer.”
Sean: “One thing people can do, around here there are public benches that people
can technically sit on but can’t lie on. One thing someone can do to make themselves feel better if they’re feeling so inclined to help out their fellow man at maybe five people at a time comes in the fact those things are removeable. Those little metal bits in the benches. And there’s this kind of star bolt that is tamped proof and has those little holes in it but you can buy them off of Amazon or anywhere really and they’re pretty easy to remove. So, sometimes when I’m really down, I’ll get my star bolt thing and I’ll take some of those things off of these benches and that makes me feel great for about a day. And it does help out anyone who now comes to sit on that bench if they want to take a nap or if they want to do some skate tricks on it, they can do that now. Then the time spent putting those things back wastes time that they would spend fucking up another bench. Yeah, at this point I’m all-in on sabotage. I think sabotage is a very effective thing. So that’s what I do to make myself feel better. [Indicating to Ben] Oh, and fixing things too.”
When the day comes that AJJ is disposed of as a band and chucked to history’s mound
of finished bands, Sean and Ben will remember the band, and be remembered, for quite different reasons.
Sean: “Well, we did at one point get Kevin McDonald from the comedy group the Kids in
the Hall to introduce our favourite band Xiu Xiu and bring Jamie up on the stage. So Xiu Xiu and Kevin McDonald were on the stage at the same time for a minute. That’s something I’m very proud of. It was on my bucket list and I didn’t realise it was. Yeah, that’s my legacy, personally, what about you, Ben?”
Ben: “I don’t know, my brain just keep going to merch items. Silly-ass merch items that
we’ve made. The water bottle. I liked the glow in the dark Nalgene water bottle, it’s a great thing that we made. Made lunch boxes recently too. It’s all disposable shit! This is so funny with what the new record is rising against.”
I don’t think I could’ve anticipated AJJ having any other degree of self-image or
providing a less AJJ-like answer to what will fight against them being pulled into the void of the disposable everything.
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