An Interview with Dad Rocks

Back in August I went to the online shop of record label Big Scary Monsters, with the intention of buying the Tall Ships EP, and somehow ended up spending £45. This record buying binge introduced me to a few good artists, but none as great as Danish death-indie band Mimas, whose record “Lifejackets” was on constant repeat for the next month. If that album wasn’t released in 2010 it would definitely been on my albums of the year list. I was tempted anyway; it may not have been released in 2011 but it’s definitely one of the albums that soundtracked my year. As it was, it turned out Mimas had competition from within their own ranks.

You see, it was through Mimas that I came across Dad Rocks, the solo project of band frontman Snævar Albertsson, and if anything his record “Mount Modern”(which actually was released this year) was even more impressive, a concept album about fatherhood and modernity, beautifully orchestrated and filled with humour, warmth and insight. It’s a truly astounding record and I wanted to find out more about it from the man himself, and luckily Snævar was kind enough to agree to an interview which would take us through the album, track by track. You can read the results below.

Mount Modern: The name Mount Modern seems to sum up the album’s themes pretty well, how did you decide upon it?

I read a lot of culture studies as I’m studying culture and aesthetics, so modernity and late modernity is something I’ve been working with quite a bit. That, combined with my own personal experiences, has led me to write lyrics that reflect on the problems and potential problems that stem from the times we live in. An example could be finding your own identity in a world that’s constantly changing. So to describe the challenges that are a central theme in the lyrics, a pretty cliché metaphor like a mountain made sense to me.

Weapons: This is a really interesting song lyrically, with kids using ringtones as weapons, “vampire-time”, “junk-sleep”, but the line that stood out to me is “I need a key to your tolerance room”.

The song is partly about my former (or maybe even current) addiction to my phone and the need to have it turned on all the time, and also about addictions in general. My girlfriend read a lot of Twilight, and I witnessed that as an addiction of some sort that I couldn’t relate to or understand. So the phrase ‘I need a key to your tolerance room, where you keep all your books I assume’, is about my lack of understanding the need to read those books. A tolerance room is a room for drug-addicts to do their drugs. But the phrase is also directed to myself and my own addictions. I don’t know if that makes sense, probably not.

Funemployment: I’d say this is the most optimistic song you’ve written, and it’s quite a contrast with The Worries, where you had songs like Dr Phil’s Retirement or Beneath The Glad Sunbeam with these pretty disturbing lyrics.

I guess some of those Mimas songs can be considered dark, but they’re not as serious as ‘Funemployment’. The Mimas songs you mention were all written when I was about 19, and they are fiction. When I think back I wonder what kind of a message I wanted to get out, and I don’t really think there was a clear message or anything that I had in mind, other than telling a sad story about some kids dying. I also think that I wanted people to find their own personal message in those tunes. The lyrics for ‘Funemployment’ are more personal to me, and I guess I was inspired by the growing malaise that was emerging within friends that were out of jobs, and couldn’t see how their own future was going to look like. To me that’s much more dark than the fictional stuff I used to write about, and I had the need to write something optimistic concerning this issue as it’s such vast problem, with low employment rates in every country. And in some cases unemployment even leads to suicide.

Downaging: The mention of happy meal toys followed immediately by a line about breasts here is brilliant at encapsulating this struggle between adulthood and childhood. This article says Downaging is “recoving the child you were”; many young people (me included) are scared of the idea of being “adult” - if you’ve not downaging anymore would you say you have reached “adulthood”?

This song is too personal to me to talk about too much. When I play live I tend to tell people that it’s about sexuality, but that’s only a part of the truth. Yes, I’m gonna leave you hanging there.

Major Labels: The lyrics to this song and the video for Weapons seem to suggest you’re pretty tolerant on issues such as copyright and illegal downloading. How do you feel about the internet’s impact on music in general?

The internet is a battlefield. People are being sued for thousands of dollars just for putting a video on youtube of your kid dancing along to a song written by Prince. Even if it’s only a very short piece of the song in a very bad quality. Yes, that’s a true story. Many people think that you have to choose which side your on; are you with the copyright-extremists like Disney, RIAA, IFPI and Universal, or are you with the pirates. I’m not with any of them. I’ve licensed the record on a Creative Commons license, which let’s you keep some rights (all commercial rights for instance), but I allow sharing, remixing and sampling of my songs. People need to realize that if they’re starting out playing in bands and trying to build a following, you actually need piracy to reach out to a fan-base. There’s no way around it. You can either sit in corner and be mad, or you can hope that those people that are downloading your tunes illegally will fall in love with the music and spread the word to all their friends.

Battle Hymn Of The Fox Father: I had my iPod on shuffle the other day and this song was followed by a track from the new Stephen Malkmus record, and I thought that lyrically there’s some common ground there, in the way you construct rhymes and the use of odd phrases and humour. Which artists would you say most influenced the recording of the record?

I actually started listening to Mirror Traffic recently, and I like it. I think it’s good, but I actually havn’t started listening to the lyrics that much yet. I don’t know why but it’s often the last thing I start paying attention to. I do like Malkmus and some of his solo stuff, but am probably more fond of Silver Jews. Silver Jews are definitely an influence lyrically. Kevin Drew would be another one. Lambchop have some really great lyrics too. I love some of the earlier lyrics that Bob Dylan wrote too, but that doesn’t really translate very well into my stuff.

Lifestock: This is another song which shows some dissatisfaction with modernity, wishing for a simpler time and being able to “raise produce”. The first few times I heard this song I thought you were singing “I need to reproduce”, and I was just wondering; was this an intentional double meaning?

Hah! I like that. No, it was not intentional. I like when you kind of write your own lyrics into other songs. But it’s always weird to find out that you were wrong in the first place. This song is about the technical domination of nature, and how that’s a vital element in the creation of the fundamentals of our culture. Because of the progression of civilisation on the expense of the territory of nature, there’s a longing towards a more ‘humane’ relationship between oneself and nature. That’s why you’re buying organic food. Call it nostalgia. Call it a bad conscience . There’s a naive hope for a better place to be, especially in the midst of a culture industry that seems to be trying to take advantage of us every chance it gets. But the question is if we’re not too alienated from our own origins already to return to anything else but mass society?

Farmscapers: This song doesn’t really sound anything like the rest of Mount Modern, and while it definitely fits in the context of the album you could also see it fitting onto a Mimas record. What made you decide to release these songs separately from Mimas? Did the band ever try to record any of these songs?

None of the Dad Rocks! songs have been tried out in Mimas. We always write songs spontaneously in the rehearsel-room, and no one really brings along anything pre-written, and never a whole song. Farmscrapers does sound a bit like some of the Mimas stuff, but that also has a lot to do with me inviting Lasse (the drummer of Mimas) to record the drums, and he has a very unique style if you ask me. So with two Mimas members, I guess this tune had to be pretty close to the Mimas vibe.

Take Care: This seems like a pretty politicized song, and there’s a few lines on the album which suggest certain political viewpoints. Is politics something you aim to write about or do you try and keep it out of your lyrics?

I try not to think about the word political. It’s too trivial. The word doesn’t really make that much sense to me, as everything is political. The clothes you’re wearing, the news you’re watching, the food you’re eating, how long you stay in the shower, what kind of furniture you buy and where you buy them. If you want to write about anything that has any meaning to someone that isn’t you and your boy/girlfriend, you’re bound to become ‘political’. Take Care definitely raises some questions about how some of the western world views ‘superfluous’ migrants and refugees. The matter has been on my mind a lot for several years, especially because of a very right-winged support party to the former Danish government, which I happen to disagree with. There we go. Politics.

Pro-Disney: Another song that seems to address the conflict between kid an adult, the kid who watches Disney films with no concern for the politics or ethics behind it, and the adult taking a more cynical, anti-corporate view. Do you worry about your kids watching Disney films?

Personally I love some of the Disney films. Really love them. They’ve made a lot of bad films in recent years, but I’m a big fan of Walter Disney’s work and the company also produced some terrific films after his death. I don’t worry about my kids watching those films. But you mention the ethics behind the corporation, and those ethics lead to some worries. Not only because of the ehtics, but because of the enormity of the corporation. Disney Inc. has a lot of power. Every time Mickey Mouse has been close to falling into public domain, there’s been a copyright extension act, which means that everything that is protected by copyright will be protected for a much longer term, and will therefore leave us with a very deficient public domain (The Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act was also known as the Mickey Mouse Protection Act). Now this makes little sense when you think about how Disney Inc’s succes is dependent on material from the public domain, but the company won’t deliver any of their films back into public domain. No-one is allowed to remix, sample or distribute any of the images in any form without asking Disney Inc. first, or paying for the usage (which is weird when you consider that Mickey Mouse (formerly known as Steamboat Willie) was basically a remixed version of Steamboat Bill Jr.). Now, isn’t that weird when you think about that Disney has been a part of our culture for such a long time? Sorry for the rant.

Pants: “And then you’re covered with shit, and you don’t think that you are fit, to be raising a kid that get’s to suck on all the tits” has to be one of the most devastatingly perfect ends to an album I’ve heard, and I can’t think of much to add to that so I’ll end on a cheesy question: Do your kids think their Dad Rocks?

Thank you! And to answer your question: I hope so!

Get “Mount Modern” here