The Thousands

Tom Krell is American musician How To Dress Well. He makes experimental pop music, that could also be described as an ethereal, narcotic form of R & B. His production is intelligent, his songs are intense: sometimes Krell’s voice reaches joyful, falsetto heights, other times its washed out, ambiguous melodies. You feel nostalgic listening, but for what you’re not sure.  I saw him live earlier this year and I’m not exactly the God-fearing type, but I found myself telling people that experiencing How To Dress Well live is kind of like…well…being touched by an angel. He’s trading in winter vacation at his parents’ house to come and sing for us in Australia for the first time. We talked to Krell about crying in public, being brave and what experiences you just can’t touch.

So you’re originally from Denver, but you’ve lived in Brooklyn, and now you’re based in Chicago. Do you like living in Chicago more than New York?
It’s funny, people are way less fancy here (in Chicago), which means the parties are way more wild here than in New York – it’s a pretty good city.

I experienced Chicago recently, and enjoyed it a lot more than New York. So many great venues, great art and music and public spaces, nice people.
Yeah, so you know the deal – it’s a great city. In summer, it’s probably the best place to be in the US – people have been put through such a hellish winter that they just go nuts. Summer is sick in Chicago. This summer I have been on tour in Europe, so unfortunately the only time I actually got to spend in Chicago was around the Pitchfork Festival. I was here then for about ten days – I actually moved apartments at that time – then went back for more shows in Europe from the end of July to the beginning of August. Then I was in London for four weeks making my new record.

Is it hard being away from home?
I didn’t actually realise what it would be like on tour. When you’re on tour you have, at most, twenty minutes a day by yourself. You’re always with other people. It’s pretty mental.

You’re also studying literature and philosophy at college – how does your study fit into the touring?
I don’t tour during the academic term, I do the bulk of it during vacations – Iike I have a winter break a few weeks this December, so instead of spending that time, like, with my family or at my childhood home, I’m going to spend it in Australia instead. With you guys!
I’ll be done with my degree pretty soon, I’m pretty excited to finish.

Are you going to go on and publish things? Or work in research?
I think I’d like to be a professor in some capacity.

Do you enjoy the music and the academic work in equal measures?
They’re both really important to me, but they’re both very, very different. I would say they’re completely opposed exercises of the spirit – for me, I approach music with a real opennes, especially live, I’ll just try and be… like, one of the problems I have with the way I talk about my music if I think about it philosophically I think it’s dumb, but I think it’s important. I want to have an immediate relationship with my music – but my philosophical side says ‘that’s naive, you can’t do that, you have to be more reflective’.

Well I guess they’re different processes. They have different outcomes – one is reading and analysing, the other is more of a productive, ‘doing’ process.
Exactly. Especially when you’re working on academic stuff, it’s very analytical and focused. For me, music is sort of a therapy to that kind of…way of being. Experiences almost all result in an affective result that is not available to analysis – people tend to disagree but I think there’s a pretty massive sector of our lives that you just can’t really touch.

You’ve said before that How to Dress Well’s music is not about advancing your own personality, but delivering a feeling. Your music is really emotional, and some of your songs you’ve dedicated to people close to you, based on your emotional connection with them. Is it hard to perform those songs sometimes?
It is spiritually rending to perform sometimes – but it’s worth it because when people respond. If I’m honest with myself not afraid to perform the way I want to, having people respond in kind makes it worth it. You can tell someone you’re going through something and they can say they’re sorry or relate it to an experience they’re having, but it’s a different thing when you can show someone that you’re feeling a certain way and they respond by showing they understand or care or also feel that way. Seeing people cry during my performances – like in Berlin in June – I really felt like I had made it.

Are you always really ‘in the moment’ when you’re performing? Or when you’re on stage, are you able to disconnect, to become a character playing a performance?
First of all, I have a tendency to get really intoxicated before a performance. Not so much just from booze but the whole experience – I really like to soak  it up. It’s important for me, when i’m in the throes of making music – recording or performing – I think about absolutely nothing else. There’s two experiences when this happens – well, maybe actually three – no, two – in my life when I’m going through this, when I’m thinking about nothing else. And that’s music and playing basketball. And well.. the third one I was going to say is, well, sometimes when I’m having sex.

You just do it. The Just Once EP is comprised of four orchestral versions of your tracks. It is dedicated to Ryan Douglas Hitchon, your best friend that passed away last year. Part proceeds of the sales of Just Once go to Mind Freedom, who help people with mental health issues. Is this something that’s really close to your heart?
Yeah, for what it’s worth my entire life has been shaped by relationships with mental illness involved. I think a lot more people than we think, are exposed to, and their lives are inflected by, mental illness – either in their own mind and spirit or the spirits of others.

It’s a very secretive disease sometimes.
Yeah, one of the things thats cool about Mind Freedom, is that they do a lot of work concerning awareness of mental illness.

So at Pitchfork, you played the Just Once EP live, accompanied by a string section – is this something you might explore more in future – in the past you’ve usually performed by yourself.
I’m going to put out a new record in 2012 and I’m going to tour it – it’s a much bigger sounding record, it’s much different than Love Remains. Right now I’m still touring Love Remains. For me, the songs off Love Remains are much more about intimacy and exposing yourself, and making a live experience that’s about making emotion and making a possible public experience of mourning. It also would have been weird to play Love Remains at Pitchfork, to get out in the middle of a hot day in Chicago and try to do that.  I like to play really late at night, in very dark places when I’m playing Love Remains stuff. It’s a lot more about creating an affective ambience where people can conncect with the emotion of the music live – it’s a lot of singing and really me just standing there singing my heart out.

Something really special happens when you’re watching someone perform, and you go from observing to just shutting your eyes and absorbing yourself into it, being a part of it. I saw Wildbirds & Peacedrums play in Perth earlier this year, and there was this really beautiful, raw moment when the singer stepped out from behind the mic and sang, unaccompanied, to a giant outdoor auditorium. Everyone was transfixed.
Sometimes you can get to a place where everyone is really attentive and focused. It’s amazing, people get so quiet in order to hear your voice, and when you finish the song, its such a great release.

It’s scary to get to that place where you’re effectively saying – ‘this is all I have, just my voice.’
Exactly – ‘this is all I can give you’. I really get off on the fear I experience upon exposing myself. The new album should be really interesting to perform. In one way, it’s like way more pop/accessible, but also the voice is really upfront, there are all these songs where the focus is almost exclusively my voice.

You’ve got such a great voice, it’s obvious you love singing. When did you first realise you could sing? Like, better than other people. That people would WANT to hear you sing, because it would bring them joy.
My mum always told me I could sing and sing well, but I’d never sang in front of people. When I was playing music in bands until I was 22, I never really sang well or felt I sang well. Especially when i was in hardcore bands – I was really trying not to sing well! When I moved to germany  – maybe because I was so alien, so alone there -  I started not thinking about other people’s desires when I was making my music. I always wanted to be more confident – to really try and sing beautifully you run a lot of risks – it could be incredibly mortifying.  I somehow found my voice during those years. With the next record, there are some bits on it where I’m so incredibly proud of the vocal arrangements. Especially the very first song – I think will be unbelievable in performance.

Often creatives are very self effacing, they don’t give themselves enough credit. It must be nice to go ‘hey, this is OK. I’ve produced something memorable here’.
Yeah, actually my friend Dan was talking about this recently. He performs as Oneohtrix Point Never, he’s really good. He was in Chicago the other week, and we talked about how weird it is to have been making experimental music for so long. It’s such a scene where you can perceive things as so uncool. You’re on the ground, twisting amps, trying really hard to be as perfect as you can.

I would love to be able to have a career as a musician, not just write a few songs and play in some bad bars. It’s a funny thing – you have to risk a lot to want to be successful as an artist, and not just be this like, self-effacing, starving artist type. There’s a lot of authenticity packed into the concept of the ‘starving artist’, but there’s also a lot of fear and cowardice. I mean, money would be a dream come true, but it’s more like – not being at differences with the music.

Like, when I listen to the orchestral versions of Suicide Dream from the Just Once EP side by side with the versions of Suicide Dream on Love Remains, it’s interesting to see the ways I was still afraid to be really beautiful in Love Remains. I do love listening to Love Remains for those reasons – because it’s complex, hesitant – I can hear myself wanting to come out more, and then retreating. But I think this next record is going to be really, really beautiful.