The Lilys are one of the more confounding bands going, with a penchant for songwriting majesty matched only by mythic inconsistency. Precollection (Manifesto), the Lilys’ first proper LP since 1999’s The 3-Way, presents a little of both. The songs here don’t icepick into the brain the way the offerings on, say, 1996’s Better Can’t Make Your Life Better do, and it’s not entirely clear whether it’s by design. Precollection was recorded in fits and starts over a couple of years while only-permanent-Lily Kurt Heasley was tending to his burgeoning family. Heasley forgoes the vocal high notes and the multi-barbed hooks, and the result is a batch of 10 songs you really need to spend some time with to appreciate, a concept that might be somewhat foreign to this fanbase. (Even the washed-out walls of sound on Heasley’s first LP, In The Presence Of Nothing, were immediately jaw-dropping.) Songs like the Morrissey-cribbing “Catherine (let a positive stream...)” and the pastoral “Will My Lord Be Gardening,” like much of the album, feel underproduced in comparison to earlier material but sound, well, more mature. It took more than a few listens to really appreciate the hide-and-seek playfulness of “Mystery School Assembly,” though the joy in “Melusina” has yet to make itself known. The hook-happy “Squares” harks back to pre-millennial Lilys, but mostly you get a few flashes of brilliance by a band that seems to be shaking off the rust, clearing out the cobwebs.

MAGNET sat down with Heasley in his Philadelphia home to chat about the new record, but ended up talking about everything from Sufi poet Rumi to unified field theory to H.R. Pufnstuf.

What’s the former-Lily count?
Sixty-three.

Have you ever thought of having a retreat?
There’s actually been talk of a six-degrees retreat, talking about getting all the members, their current projects—most of it’s not music-related—and companies involved. Even of putting out an invitation to [Sire Records president] Seymour Stein. [The Lilys] didn’t leave [Sire] on bad terms, we left at a bad corporate transition. I was talking to some 24-year-olds who’d just seen 24 Hour Party People, and someone asked me, “Did you see Joy Division?” and I was like, “When I was nine? In Manchester? No.” “But you saw New Order.” And I was like, “Yeah, but that was when I was 14.” I saw New Order three times and the Cocteau Twins twice. You’re alone with 1,000 people in their own heads. Then you got to see the birth of people coming together on-the-fact-that. But Lilys the band, once again, people coming together, actually counting, for as long as you can do it, do it, and be together on it. When there was a “How much money can I make on tour?” element of the band is when I stopped even really attempting to communicate. It was always just constant damage control. And that’s when I was like, “OK, fuck that, I have to do this differently.” If I’m going to be working on the level of big business, I need to sign every check. That’s just the way it feels better.

Who’s currently in the band?
The same people as always.

And they are?
I don’t know. We’re going to play ... with, I think, Mickie Walker on bass, Gerhardt Koerner on keyboards, Steven Keller on drums, me on singing and an instrument. I’m doing my best to [have us] become players, not writers so much, live. Which I’m attempting to put aside all the crap and remember the real highlights of instrument-switching at Sebadoh shows. Everyone’s kind of capable of that.

I remember an interview you did with a former colleague of mine where you explained that The Jungle Book was a big inspiration on your songwriting. Are there any other books you’re reading these days—children’s books or otherwise—that are inspiring you?
The Jungle Book [is] not really a kids book, but it’s things that kids could be into, like the work papers from, well, there’s a kids video on string theory called Not Not. It’s for kids who are going to understand relativity and unified field theory and non-local field activity. Like little kids that are on computers, little kids who comprehend where the energy, on an upper-dimensional level, for the suns comes from ... This whole “the sun’s a ball of fire” days are gone. Rapid exchange of information and the way information is delivered first time.

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