✖ - What do your parents think about the music you listen to?

I think when I was a kid maybe my mum thought it was some kind of phase I was going through. She was probably a bit surprised when it became, essentially, the centre of my life. But almost immediately after that she started buying me CDs and guitar equipment as a way of securing loyalty in the ongoing post-breakup affection war with my dad.

My dad’s quite funny about it, really. He genuinely thinks that everyone should listen to the music of ‘their time’, so even though he loves a lot of the bands I love, he thinks I shouldn’t be into them because it’s backwards or regressive or something. God knows what he thinks about my punk leanings, but in terms of rock and roll he’s quite keen for me to get offa his lawn.

☤ - Do you most pay attention to the melody or the lyrics?

I guess that depends on the artist. On the surface, I guess it would appear that I pay most attention to the lyrics, but really I have a hard time separating the two. In the stuff I like listening to, they’re pretty much inextricably linked. The melody can highlight the cool bits of the lyrics and the lyrics make the melody worthwhile. I don’t know if that explains it, but anyone who likes Craig Finn, Tom Waits, Nick Cave and the like will know what I mean. I wrote a poem once about how I don’t like singers. Basically, I like vocalists, in all that that entails.

✈ - Is there any kind of music that you can’t stand?

I wouldn’t want to rule out a genre a priori, but it’s definitely true that there are genres I have never enjoyed and will likely never enjoy.

Most forms of dance music. I guess I understand if people approach music as something to dance to, but I never have. It’s such a deeply personal thing to me that I just can’t see what dancing adds. And in the case of dance genres, the fact that you’re presupposing that dancing will happen puts pressure on you to subtract certain things from it for the sake of some peripheral activity the audience might indulge in. You wouldn’t design a sculpture with a cup-holder to make it easy to drink while you enjoy it, so why impoverish your music for the sake of making drugged-up morons rub together?

In general I just don’t like the idea that an artist would say less than they want to say in order to illicit an audience response. Isn’t that the kind of cynical attitude that’s exactly what’s wrong with mainstream music, the pop philosophy, consumer art and mass culture in general? Or maybe I should just get the fuck over it.

And I know you’re gonna hate me for this, Nick, but the majority of emo and screamo. The voices just irritate me. There’s this nasal whine that seems so prevalent in those genres, and I don’t get why. It adds nothing, it just distracts from what can sometimes be quite interesting lyrical ideas. The only ‘emo’ bands I like are the ones like Jawbreaker, the ones who don’t allow that sensitive-guy schtick to lead them into petulant whining.

That was fun. More, if you can take it.