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Hi Thurlowood, welcome to VENTS! How have you been?
Hi, thank you! I’m well all things considered. I’m on lockdown with my wife and son in New York during these strange times.
Can you talk to us more about your latest single “Survivalist”?
“Survivalist” is a doomsday prep synthy indie pop song that introduces the overall theme of my new full length record that is all about the history of the end of the world. The song is about obsessively figuring out how you can survive the apocalypse.
The threat of nuclear war in particular has always occupied a unique place of terror in my heart, and it’s a subject my mind keeps returning to in my life, whether it was reading through Graham Allison’s Nuclear Terrorism back in 2004 or Garrett Graff’s Raven Rock in 2017 (a book that greatly influenced a different song on the album, “C.O.G.”). Yes, I’ve played around with Alex Wellerstein’s NUKEMAP as well, which is referenced in the song “Survivalist.” I re-watched the old 1983 TV doomsday cultural phenomenon The Day After and the UK counterpart Threads, and in the following years as we started to hear more about Trump’s own nonchalant regard for nukes, the abandonment of nuclear treaties, and a new arms race, I guess it all kind of coalesced and took a stronger hold for me.
Did any event in particular inspire you to write this song?
I’d written several of the other songs before this one so by then I was well into the apocalyptic theme. The idea was that each song would tell a different story, all related to some aspect of our history with nuclear weapons. I suppose survival preparation was on my mind because of the false Hawaiian missile alert in 2018—an event that inspired a separate track on the album. Around that time there was so much saber rattling between Trump and Kim Jong Un that an attack from North Korea actually seemed plausible, and FEMA was releasing freshly updated “stay safe” guidelines while the media was publishing plenty of stories on how to come out of an attack alive.
Any plans to release a video for the track?
I don’t have plans for a “Survivalist” video at the moment, but there is a video coming for a the next single, “Shells.” It’s a look back at the 1951 educational film Duck and Cover by the United States Office of Civil Defense. It was an instructional movie shown in classrooms, teaching kids how to save themselves. We weaved in the original footage throughout the video.
The single comes off your new album Discontinue Normal Program – what’s the story behind the title?
The title of the record comes from old FCC instructional language to broadcasters, which would prompt them to air a message in a real emergency. I don’t know if you remember this but in the 1980s it was common that you’d be sitting watching a cartoon in the afternoon and it would be interrupted by a test of the Emergency Broadcast System, which consisted of your screen turning into color bars and a soul-chilling single tone that lasted about a minute. We recreated those color bars for the album cover and tried to make it look like you were seeing them on an old warbly static-filled TV picture.
How was the recording and writing process?
There was not originally any intention of making an album. I was playing around with keyboards at home and also jamming with some friends in my basement, but I thought there were cool ideas developing and decided to demo some of them. And I started writing some words, so I wasn’t just mumbling melodies on the demos, and this was the stuff that came out. I started getting into a real creative space and it started to feel like it was adding up to something. All of this was happening in our guest room using truly lo-tech equipment. I made my first attempts ever at programming drums (which survived on “Survivalist”). After that, I thought it was time to enlist the producer that my main band Bridges and Powerlines worked with over the years, Kieran Kelly, to shape this thing into a real record. We spent another five months on and off in the studio after that. The end result is a weird blend of lo-fi homemade and hi-fi studio-made music.
How has The Cult and Radiohead influenced your writing?
We joked in the studio that the crappy sounding drums and cymbals on “Shells” sounded like Kid A. But I have no choice but to be influenced by Radiohead because I probably listen to them more than any other band. I couldn’t escape the influence if I tried. “Survivalist” though I feel has more of an MGMT vibe or Tame Impala, if you can imagine those artists without the studio magic as so much of the song is unpolished and home recorded. I love the garage sound of Guided by Voices and Car Seat Headrest just as much as the perfectionism of Radiohead.
What aspect of history did you get to explore on this record?
Lyrically, so much of the record comprises true accounts from the past about the precarious line we walk, about how we cope with it, about near run-ins with annihilation—for instance, there’s a song about Richard Nixon and how no one trusted him with the nuclear codes at the end of his presidency because he was so depressed after Watergate. There’s another one, “Clouds,” that’s my homage to Stanislav Petrovsky, who possibly saved the world in 1983.
Where else did you find the inspiration for the songs and lyrics?
An important piece is that in the past few years I became a father for the first time, and in thinking of my son’s future, I found the existential threat weighing more heavily on my mind. And so at the core of the record is a warning about leaving that threat unchecked, and passing it to our children to deal with.
Any plans to hit the road?
I just booked my first show to promote the record. However it may not pan out due to the coronavirus shutting down venues, and normal life overall. I’m talking to some other venues about booking shows over the summer.
What else is happening next in Thurlowood’s world?
My band Bridges and Powerlines released its first record in 2006—we’ve been around forever, but I oddly feel like in some ways I’m starting from scratch right now. No one knows who Thurlowood is. So I guess what’s happening next is getting this music in front of people however I can. It’s an issue that should be on people’s minds as much as climate change. I don’t care if I never make a penny off it. The subject is so important to me that it hurts my heart no one would ever hear it.
STREAM: “Survivalist” –
MXDWN / SoundCloud / Spotify
