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Siggy, welcome to VENTS! Can you tell us about your latest album, 25th Century?
Hey all you groovy VENTS readers! Siggy is honored to introduce our piping hot new CD, 25th Century, to you. It’s a genre-bending melange of proto punk influences ranging from Television to The Stooges to Johnny Fucking Cash. Doses of anger (Splitter), cynicism (Sorry, Jr. High Dance), and despair (Drunken Prayer) lay the foundation of the album, making the contrast for the flashes on love (Maryanne, Orbit), diversity (Crayola), and compassion (25th Century) all the more compelling. Siggy may be a bit road weary and pissed off from years of dredging the psyches of modern day Americans but we haven’t lost hope–entirely. And we still sound cool as hell.
Do you have a favourite single on the album?
Yes, indeed. The opening track, Synesthesia, has the driving Iggy vox sound that Buckwalter delivers like few others can along with the soul-grabbing guitars that only Ryan Howes can lay down. In a sense Synesthesia captures what this band sees of the true hope for humanity. Synesthesia is a mind-blowing state where senses get conjoined in the brain as in “She felt her dreams in the color green.” Science has no clue how the brain does this but some fascinating ideas are developing, many related to the free-energy principle. The insatiable curiosity of our brains just may be powerful enough to keep us from anihilating ourselves.
What is the Siggy creative process like?
It comes in all shapes and sizes but I think the bulk of our songs start with Ryan, or sometimes Paul or Deborah starting a jam. Galen bleats around hoping to find a phrase that sounds cool and relates to something of relevance. If the jam is memorable enough that someone brings it back at a followup rehearsal Ryan will structure it into a song while Galen often continues to bleat until the lyrics makes sense, which has been when it’s time to record on occasion.
We’re living in the era of comebacks, but you’ve remained a tight outfit for 25 years; has it always been easy?
Easy as heroin. We are all pretty much introverts who work cognitively and emotionally intense jobs during the week. Siggy puts the ID in frIDay night. It includes dinner, drinks, discussion and music. New songs come as they will but we still haven’t played one of our songs perfectly yet socthey all deserve another try.
Have your influences stayed the same over the years?
Yeah, there’s actually a study out, of dubious quality, that says you listen to what you did when your were 14 and you stop listening to new music at 30. Not sure I buy it. We keep trying new stuff, we even took a crack at Country (Drunken Prayer) on this CD. So even if the influences are the same I think the fact we are all high on the Openness to Experience personality dimension suggests we’ll keep trying new shit that catches out fancy.
We love that you put rock n roll hand in hand with psychology, especially with the ever-prevalent Dunning Kruger effect knocking around. Was this a part of your ethos since your debut?
I love that you brought the Dunning Kruger effect up. It is a painfully obvious bias these days. But the cool thing is that because it is so widely evident and easily understandable I’ve found that people in general are more likely to recognize the biases that are hardwired into our brain. A couple of months ago I saw Elon Musk posted a list of cognitive biases on Twitter. One wonders if he considered out hyperbolic discounting before offering $44 Billion for Twitter.
Sorry, I digress but yes, psychology has been embedded in Siggy since day 1. Our first CD was titled Harlow’s Girl with a single on it called Wire Mother. Not big on subtlety then but I still think that CD deserves a spin.
What is next for Siggy?
We’ll keep pushing back the boundaries of science and doing Friday nights. We’re not going to wait so long before our next CD. We’ll see how people respond to 25th Century. It’d be nice if it gets enough play that we can play some bigger shows. If Iggy decides to do a tour I know the perfect opening act for him…
