How does this band compare to your individual experiences playing with Sleater-Kinney or Heatmiser or Motorgoat or the Donner Party?
Weiss: Quasi’s a lot looser. There’s more room for mistakes. [laughs] Improvisation. And that’s really fun. It’s more open song structures, there’s parts of some songs we play differently every night, and it’s conceived that way, built with that in mind. It’s not always easy. It’s hard to wrap my brain around the fact that I really do have to improvise around an entire song sometimes. You definitely have to push yourself as a musician. That’s why more people don’t do it. It’s easier to just write your part and play it. But it’s definitely more rewarding to fully see what you’re made of.
Coomes: And the fact that we’re a two-piece band; drums and tonal instruments, we each have our own world we work in. By definition, that’s going to make it more open for both of us than it would be even in a three-piece band. You always have to make your part mix in with other people’s parts; every time you add another tonal instrument, you have to start, it restricts your options. In Quasi, it’s inevitable that we’re going to have a lot of open space to do our thing. And it’s a matter of trying to balance getting a song across or some level of composition and also just leaving space. We’ve been trying to leave more room for spontaneity lately.

I’ve always thought there were two Quasi experiences: the one you heard on record (the “pop” one), and then seeing you guys live, which was always different for me. Maybe it’s like seeing Pink Floyd when Syd was still in the band; the one that was played on the radio, and the spacey one you saw playing clubs in London.
Coomes: Well, that’s a nice comparison, that makes me happy. [laughs] The initial pressing will have a bonus CD that’s a live one we recorded in the studio. We played our live set without any overdubs.
Weiss: [laughs]
Coomes: OK, so sue me, I redid some of the vocals.
Weiss: There’s no obvious overdubs.
Coomes: I did replace some vocals that were not suitable. But the songs weren’t edited. It’s a live record. Much more live than ones recorded in front of an audience. I think there’s two schools of thought: Some people have come to us over the years and said, “I really like your live show, you should make a record more like that.” Which is sort of a backhanded compliment. And then others come to the shows and are disappointed because we play songs and they don’t sound the same way they do on the record. I imagine that maybe more people prefer the live show than the records. But I could be wrong. So I thought we should just do a live record basically, and people will have that now.
Weiss: People do like the trainwreck mentality of the live show.

I went to several shows way back in the Featuring "Birds" timeframe, and had friends tell me they had no idea just how good you guys were as musicians.
Weiss: Well, we’re show-offs. [laughs]

I did have one very personal hit from this record. I was listening to “Drunken Tears” and at first it didn’t hit me, but then it kind of snuck up on me that this song might be about Elliott [Smith]. It probably isn’t, but it sure struck me as a possibility.
[Silence, then laughter]
Weiss: Sometimes I even ask him, “Who was that one about?” He’ll always be, “No, not totally, it’s never about any one person.” Something cryptic, “not going to tell you the real answer” kind of answer. So if he’s not gonna tell me ...
Coomes: Over the years, I’ve had a lot of drunken conversations. And it’s always the other person who is drunk, because I don’t drink, really. So I’m always sitting there, completely cogent, while the other person’s totally drunk. So it’s just about that.

I read that the last record was difficult to complete in terms of recording. And Janet, you said that this one felt very different than that. Why is that?
Weiss: With the last record, we had purchased all of our studio gear directly preceding the recording of the record. And had no practice on it, and also have unattainable ideas about how the record’s going to sound. Like, ridiculous ideas, really. That weren’t important in the long run. I’d get upset about how the kick drum sounded and then later be like, “Who cares?” No one notices that, anyway. If it’s not gonna sound like Zeppelin IV, then why worry about it? And it’s never gonna sound like that. So a lot of it was me just giving up my dream of being able to make a record where my drums sound like John Bonham. I have to give it up; it’s not gonna happen. I just need to sound like me.
Coomes: I think it was a combination of us both learning a lot more about the process of what it takes to record and, like she said, letting go of preconceptions. We know more about what we’re doing and care less about unimportant details.
Weiss: When I thought about some of my favorite records, I remembered that those records have some really interesting sounds, things are dropping out, structure is not traditional, and those are the things I really love. And making the last Sleater-Kinney record, I learned a lot from John Goodmanson about how to optimize textural ideas and started thinking about ... in combination with my guilty pleasure, which is the last Wilco record. Got me thinking about different, alternative ways of structuring a song and using recording to be more artistic. The biggest factor is that we knew how to work in the studio a lot better. We’re a lot more comfortable now.

The studio as another instrument, then.
Weiss: Yeah. On the last one, it would have been, I don’t know, a soprano saxophone? [laughs]
Coomes: Something shrill and painful. [laughs]
Weiss: Like having Kenny G in the band! “Please get him out of here!”

One of the records I’ve been hearing when I listen to this one is Sly And The Family Stone’s mid-period, There’s A Riot Goin’ On or that funky, off-kilter Family Affair sort of thing. They were great because they were shaggy.
Coomes: There’s A Riot Goin’ On is definitely a favorite of mine.
Weiss: Plus, playing with the idea of pop music, but totally expanding on that or discarding that.
Coomes: They had that studio set up in Sly’s house. He worked on a lot of stuff on his own, or people came over and added things. And that’s very similar to the way we did ours. Just loose, and done over a period of time.
Weiss: [Looking over my shoulder] Funny—“Girls Gone Wild” came on the TV just now. (laughs) It is sort of like a family in a way, too. We’ve known each other forever and probably always will.
Coomes: We don’t have to haggle about little things about each other’s work. We know each other’s quirks. We can just cut right to the chase.

How close did this come to your “ideal” record?
Weiss: It didn’t turn out how I thought it was going to at all. It was very refreshing.
Coomes: After the last record, which didn’t turn out at all like I wanted it to ...
Weiss: Here’s another rule coming on. [laughs]
Coomes: To not expect it to be anything. Feel it out. I tried, as much as possible, to get out of the way and let it happen. And I ended up dumping a lot of songs ... that approach gave Janet a lot more responsibility. I wanted to get this boulder into position at the top of the hill and not try to guide it at all. To just let it roll. Instead of trying to install remote-control mechanisms on it and correct its course.

It’s probably my favorite record of yours. It’s more who you guys seem to be, at least at this moment in time. This is more about reconciling the different sides of the band.
Weiss: Mine, too. It’s a better representation of us, but they’re all good, because they exist. But it’s a bit more who we are and what we believe in. The things that we value in music are more evident there.
Coomes: How many bands’ sixth album is your favorite one to hear? Most bands are played out by two or three. It’s good to hear that.
Weiss: The new Lungfish record. Their 10th record. It’s definitely my favorite one.
Coomes: There are always exceptions, of course. This might be one.

Sort of like the Oasis model. They saved up any good ideas they had for years, and then used ‘em all on the first record.
Weiss: They ripped off all the good bands on the first record, the other bands weren’t quite as good after that. [laughs] There’s a certain valuable chemistry from a band that stays together for a long time. It’s always really exciting to see a new band; it’s different, no one knows about them, there’s only 10 people there. And you’re discovering it for the first time. But there’s also, especially in a live setting, a band that’s been together for 10 years, you can’t develop that in one year. That kind of chemistry just can’t exist at the beginning. There are years and years of hashing things out and exploring things and fighting or whatever. All the emotions come together and create something that can be really important.

Like Sonic Youth—after their gear got ripped off, I wondered if they’d ever sound the same as they did. And yet when you see them now, all the “magic” of how they sound, that whole embryonic thing, is still there.
Weiss: Their live show is so incredible now. It’s as exciting as it’s ever been. Maybe even more so.
Coomes: The last time I saw them was definitely the best show I’d ever seen from them. That’s encouraging.
Weiss: You put stock in the chemistry ... these people you really trust, you can do things you couldn’t do with a stranger. That’s why you stay together.

I always wished that Heatmiser would have stayed together longer. That last record was so good; the promise, the hope was all there.
Weiss: You just want the band to break up on a bad record. [laughs]
Coomes: It was a miracle that even that record made it out into the world. Just be happy that it got that far. [laughs]