Young Jesus has been a VSF favourite for over a decade now, a project which has shifted in style from album to album as though always searching for a better way in which to communicate its ideas. From the indie rock of early records (Home) and narrative-driven concept albums (Grow/Decompose) through to a more experimental, genre-bending style introduced on their self-titled record back in 2017, their first on Saddle Creek. “As ever, the questions [John] Rossiter and co. raise are too big to expect any sort of clear answer,” we wrote in our review of the latter:
but Young Jesus offer a model of coping, a way to remain hopeful and human within their jaws. Both the lyrics and instrumentation preach a kind of relinquishment, a cessation of over-analysis and self-reflexive thinking in favour of something more natural, even if the space feels empty or alien. Push forward instinctively, they seem to be saying. Push forward with doubt.
Writing about follow-up The Whole Thing Is Just There, we described how such a project might be never-ending. “Young Jesus have put their hope in a spontaneous, endlessly recursive form of questioning,” we wrote, “where every hard fought answer only exists to be questioned further. The endeavour might well take a life time.” Only after 2020’s “mathy, jazzy epic Welcome to Conceptual Beach” and the pared back quasi-solo pop album Shepherd Head which followed two years later, this lifelong quest began to wobble. Or rather, it took a path away from music. The pressures of touring had seen the original Young Jesus band slowly disintegrate, and the mosaic pop of Shepherd Head demanded hours spent alone in front of a computer. Exhausted and disillusioned by the process, Rossiter pined for something less abstract. A way to express his creativity rooted in the real world. So he turned to gardening, studying permaculture and the slow process of nurturing it demands.
Only then came a chance encounter with Shahzad Ismaily, originating in a shared interest in the work of Milford Graves, and a slow process of coaxing. Rossiter would work on music then tend Ismaily’s New York garden between sessions. At home in LA, he did the reverse, planting trees and laying paths with Alex Babbitt and Alex Lappin before gathering around the piano to play and sing. Slowly the compulsion to make music returned, though now informed by the lessons learnt whilst working on the natural world. The resulting album The Fool feels like another milestone for Young Jesus. A continuation of the searching style which has so long marked the project, but one armed with a new array of tools and techniques to perhaps arrive closer to a satisfying end.
We took the opportunity to ask Rossiter a few questions about the album, so read on below.
Thanks for speaking to us John! It’s great to see Young Jesus back, especially as we read you decided to step away from music for a period. How does it feel to be putting an album into the world again after all?
Hey y’all—great to chat again. Especially since VSF has been supporting this band since I wrote about David and Eloise many years ago.
I’m happy it’s out. This was a particularly heavy one to carry and I can feel, each day, a little bit of the weight lifting. Can feel it start to float away a little. Feels a little like I cleared some of the garbage away and music is flowing more naturally in my life. Fewer blocks, or I might be aware of them a bit more, watching out.
Reading about the album’s origins, there are two figures who feel important in its conception. Producer and collaborator Shahzad Ismaily, and drummer/artist/genius Milford Graves, a shared interest in whom brought you and Ismaily together. Could you speak a little about the influence of these two people on The Fool?
Well I wanted to meet Milford Graves from the moment I heard about him. I’ve never thought of music as a purely aesthetic or passive form of entertainment. Maybe because the first music I heard was in church. It’s always full of meaning to me. Full of energy. Full of potential. So I was searching for people who take its power seriously, not as a form of control, but as a way to heal and grow. So people like Milford Graves, Anthony Braxton, Sun Ra, Terry Riley. Milford used music as an avenue into healing and friendship and community.
Shahzad played with and was mentored by Milford. After Milford passed Shahzad emailed me to talk about Milford. We became fast friends. When we play we are instantly connected, improvising very emotional, very physical music. We were touching our hearts at the end of our first time playing together, playing a beat. This was all unintentional, we were just holding the beat with what we had—our bodies. And if you know Milford, he studied people’s heartbeats and their connection with rhythm. Magical moment and we’ve been friends ever since.
Ismaily is just one of a pretty large cast of friends and collaborators who feature on the record. What does this collaboration bring?
Shahzad is a fast worker and has a lot of ideas. He stirs shit up. For someone like me who can be very methodical and controlling, it was a good energy. There was great balance with me, Shahzad, Phil Weinrobe, Lag Babbitt, and Albon in the studio. Everyone is very intense! Not a “chill” zone, but a good zone. Deeply creative and challenging and open.
The press release describes the record as a collection of “songs about shame and grief, love and redemption,” and I also saw a social media post where you warn people that the lyrics might be upsetting. Yet there’s also a self-deprecating line running through the album, something present in the very title. Could you speak a little further on this struggle between unguarded emotion and self-awareness? Has the balance changed from previous Young Jesus albums?
Oof yeah that is a beautiful question. Finding the balance between unguarded emotion and self-awareness might sum up my life in music. I think music has tremendous potential to hold unguarded emotion but it also has within it the potential to be completely ego driven. What I mean is, you might want to let go but there’s always some fear, some vanity, some anxiety that can hold you back. For me, making great music comes from creating the conditions where you can be unguarded, wild, unprocessed. Like travelling into the underworld and bringing back some information to share with people. It is risky and it doesn’t often work, but I think it is possible and I work on it every day I play music. Letting go of vanity. Becoming a fool.
As a follow-on, the press release also mentions a joke/comment from someone asking if you have ever been to therapy. Do you ever feel a healing or therapeutic effect in writing and recording songs? Can we ask that much from art?
I sat down for about two weeks each day and wrote at the top of the blank page something I’m ashamed of. Then I wrote a song about that. That’s how the album started. It was freeing and scary and exciting. I think the process of making this album has opened up some space in me, allowed me to see music’s power a bit more clearly. Allowed me to see the ways in which I can live alongside it, rather than be destroyed by it every few years. In making such a “serious” and dark album, I think it’s allowed me to play much more with music now. I don’t think you can expect art to heal you, but you can be involved in an art-making process that will change you. The process will reveal things but I’m not sure if it makes life better or worse. Same with therapy. It’s just one way to live.
Long-time followers of the Young Jesus project will notice the return of some familiar faces. Characters who first cropped up in your work over a decade ago. Did you ever expect to return to the likes of David and Eloise? Have they continued on in your mind in the interim?
I definitely did not expect their return. In fact for awhile I was actively running away. But I’m glad they came back. They show up when I need some help. They help me investigate, let go a little, explore the depths, leave my Self.
Finally, when you’re not making music you are working on gardens, and I’m interested in what parallels you see between the two endeavours. Did anything you learnt when studying permaculture come to inform the way you think about your music?
So many. It can take a long while from designing a garden to installing the garden to seeing it grow. And if you want plants that are going to be really strong and last awhile, you wanna grow them from when they’re tiny or from seed even. But when you do that the garden is gonna look like shit for a little while. But eventually, you’ll have this beautiful, self- sustaining place because you’ve been patient. Of course, you need to maintain it, help everything stay balanced and not overtake one another, harvest what needs to be harvested, share the surplus, ask for help, help others. The same is true of ideas in songwriting.
We talk about natural succession in permaculture. How weeds pop up first, grow really fast and die really fast. Then bushes are in the middle, then trees grow very slowly and live a very long time (by our standards!). The same is true of people and of ideas. Some you get very excited about but they leave almost immediately, and some develop over a lifetime and sustain you. Some people will be super enthusiastic and helpful and then completely disappear. Some might not seem so helpful, they might even be quite stubborn and slow to change, but they’ll stick with you. identifying those aspects of yourself and of your collaborators is extremely helpful. Don’t take it personally, just tend to it as it happens and observe.
The Fool is out now via Saddle Creek and you can get it from the Young Jesus Bandcamp page.
Photos by Caitlin Dennis