For a man once hellbent on oiling the wheels of the press machine with half-truths and bold-faced lies (he’s told more than one reporter that he’s both the antichrist and a delusional ex-convict who hacked off his ring finger after a failed marriage), Bobby Conn is acting surprisingly normal these days. Musically, however, Conn’s third record with the Glass Gypsies (The Homeland, on Thrill Jockey) is as schizophrenic and shamelessly derivative as ever, dabbling in octave-scaling hair metal, blaxploitative porno funk and Hendrixian guitar shredding. But don’t let the choirboy falsetto and jovial melodies lead you astray: There’s an underlying message here. “Bury your dead; do as you’re told/This is the gift of liberty/We have no fear of your disgust/You hate us ‘cause you’re jealous of success,” Conn sings on album opener “We Come In Peace.” Gun nuts, Bible beaters, silicone breasts, a “selected” president and the foot-long submarine sandwich take turns before Conn’s firing squad: a sample-heavy pastiche of cocking rifles, stabbing keyboards and laugh tracks. “We’re Taking Over The World”—a sharp reading on the globalization of American culture—alternates between sub-zero industrial stomp and a power ballad of Meat Loaf proportions. “Concentration-camp beauty queens” starve and puke their way to prettiness on “Home Sweet Home,” as those with more money skip straight to the scalpel: “They didn’t leave a trace of the human race/There’s just an empty space in your face’s place.” Truth hurts, huh?

MAGNET found Conn on a Sunday morning at his home in Chicago. He was busy “beating and feeding” his two-year-old son, Augustus.

I hear you and the Gypsies brought the kid on the road in Europe. What are you—the Partridge Family?
Traveling with a tot cuts down on some of the obligatory decadence you’d expect from a rock ‘n’ roll band. I want to push [the band] into more of a hippie collective. I’d like to make the requirement that everyone in the band have children and if they don’t want to have their own, they should adopt one for the period of the tour. Having kids around keeps the perspective correct. I love those pictures of certain groups in the ‘70s—communes, where everyone has names like Firewalker. Everyone’s a little dirty and the kids are just beautiful and they all grow up to hate their parents. It would be a disaster for me if Auggie decided he wanted to be a musician as well. I’m relying on him to take care of me in his old age.

This is the most political record you’ve written yet.
Look, I’ll be totally straight with you—which means I’m probably lying because it’s my new role for this round of publicity—I’ve always done lots of social commentary that I believe in pretty strongly but I am very uncomfortable with the role of the artist as a meaningful social critic. I grew up with the Dead Kennedys and Black Flag—when that first wave of American punk rock was very political and socially conscious—and you can’t sing love songs and be a punk rocker. You couldn’t back then, anyway. Bruce Cockburn is the kind of outspoken, righteous liberal I find unappealing aesthetically even though I probably agree with most of what he says. How do you bridge that gap? For me, I do it by trying to think of the most extreme, paranoid reaction and I go with that. I’m more comfortable being just past reality so I can’t be pegged as preachy or self-righteous.

But then you can’t be held accountable.
Exactly. That’s the case of my whole generation. It’s a confused group of people with an ambivalent way of dealing with protest. With this record, I’m incredibly angry how this country has been taken over, but I’m also embarrassed to grab onto a flag and march down the street. I don’t have any right to do that. [The Homeland] is the most literal-minded I’ve been. It’s the most direct I’ve been, but I’m not sure if artistically that’s an improvement. That’s for history to decide. History will judge my work.

Does having a son now make you more politically active because you realize what sort of a country he’ll be growing up in?
That’s a big part of it. So much of rock ‘n’ roll is dealing with issues that are ultimately only of interest to adolescents: relationships measured in weeks, drug use or misuse, questions over your sexuality and issues of your stylistic identity. Those four subjects are of burning importance to 15-year-olds. But as you grow older, it becomes increasingly ridiculous to get fired up over them. I was stuck in adolescence up until the point I had a kid. [2001’s The Golden Age] is really about this depressing realization that I managed to extend the teenage years into my mid-30s—that’s happened to a lot of people. American society is structured to deal with superficial identity questions to keep people from making trouble. If your main issue is how you dress and can you wear nose piercings to work, then you’re probably not going to protest war.

Is there still a place for rock ‘n’ roll in an escapist way?
Escapism is about flowers and daisies and puppy dogs and sunshine. Ultimately, that is the music I wish I could write but I’m too much of a sourpuss to do that without being incredibly snarky and sarcastic. I’m much more pleased taking the hypocritical platitudes of our esteemed leaders and being snarky and sarcastic about what they’re saying then to take stuff that is innocent and positive and beat it to the ground. I’m a goddamn cynic. Like the Polyphonic Spree—what a nice band. Very positive, God bless them, but I can’t enjoy it.

Do you think people will take you more seriously now?
I doubt it. I don’t even know if I want them to. It’s great when Curtis Mayfield does it, but when Mick Jagger writes about being a street-fighting man, it just kind of makes you sick. Or the Beatles singing about revolution. They’re entertainers—it’s a pose, it’s bullshit. I’m more of a vaudevillian than I am a political commentator. I don’t think people should turn to music for their serious information. People should read the newspaper. But on the other hand, I’m reading the newspaper and I got to write about something. Ideally, I hope [The Homeland] is funny enough that people can still laugh at me and not take me seriously.

Why do you lie to the press so much?
I always thought it was part of the creative process. Creativity is lying. My own story doesn’t seem very interesting to me. I did an interview where all they wanted to know was what my day job was. Who gives a shit? I want to read about someone getting in a cage match with a tiger last weekend. “I was raised in the jungles of the Congo and built my first electric guitar out of seaweed”—that’s the kind of thing I want to know about a celebrity. Whether it’s true or not is kind of irrelevant. The whole presumption of celebrities—it’s like this person everyone knows but you don’t really know them at all. They all should lie because what right do all these strangers have to know facts about your life?

What’s the best lie you’ve ever told about yourself?
The self-amputated ring finger was probably the best. For a long time, I would just tape that finger down so it would look like I had a stump, but then I realized it was too much trouble. I don’t want to have to remember to do that all the time. Once I did that enough, people would meet and say, ‘Hey! You really have all your fingers.’ ‘Yeah, what do you think I chopped it off? You think I’m crazy?’ I don’t lie that much because then people are like, ‘You’re not really the antichrist, are you?’ ‘Yeah. You got me there, buddy.’ Then I realize, ‘Who’s dumber? Him for thinking that or me for saying that?’ I came up with that because it was the stupidest thing I could think to tell people. Then the whole Marilyn Manson thing happened. I was kind of like, ‘Oh shit.’ It was kind of embarrassing but kind of cool because he’s, like, seven feet tall and really frightening-looking and I’m this little schrubby guy. It was entertaining to be like, ‘I’m the really evil one.’ I’m probably one of the least threatening people you’ll ever meet. I’m utterly harmless. Of course, it’s a good disguise for being the antichrist.

So it’s all a gimmick?
You don’t want to be who you are onstage everyday. What’s the point in that? Just stay home. My dream is for the audience to feel as liberated from their everyday crap as I do onstage. It would be a fluid exchange of lunacy. I’ve seen it happen—Genesis P-Orridge in his prime. GG Allin was like that in a really negative way—throwing poop on people. I don’t want to throw poop on people. That’s not entertainment. That’s just gross. Can you hum a GG Allin song? There has to be a level of musicality to it, otherwise it’s not interesting. I’m not interested in seeing spectacle for spectacle’s sake.

What kind of stuff do you hope your son reads about you when he’s 20?
I hope he thinks Papa was having a good time. I don’t know if I want him to read much more into it than that. He loves the new record, but of course, he doesn’t really understand what I’m talking about. He puts on headphones now and dances around to it. That he gets a visceral enjoyment out of it now is legacy enough for me.