Selma Blair loves her. So does HARP Magazine. Come on, you're missing the boat here! A Fine Frenzy is the stage name of musician Alison Sudol, whose music, centered around piano and vocals, is haunting and her album One Cell In The Sea is widely considered one of the standouts of 2007. She herself is effortlessly charming and exudes a fresh, unaffected friendliness as we talk on the phone. Although she herself is based in L.A., we spend a good chunk of time discussing New York City, especially Brooklyn, and at least as much time talking about literature. Don't worry, we discuss music too! No matter the topic, Alison Sudol has a lot to say.Hi, is this Alison Sudol?
Yes, hi! Nice to meet you.
Nice to meet you too. Are you in L.A. right now?
I am. I've been there for the last couple days; it's been my last couple days here.
How's the weather over there? It's been freezing here in New York.
Oh, it's gorgeous. I mean, it's been gorgeous. Right now it's kind of gray, but for the past week and a half it's been just like paradise: just slightly cool, blue skies, a little breeze… lovely.
I'm jealous!
Yeah, I know! I was just in New York, but New York has its own thing; there's snow and that wonderful cold that it comes from.
Do you visit New York a lot?
Yeah. I mean, last year I went there maybe twenty times or something like that. It felt like I was there as much of the time as in L.A.
Do you enjoy coming or do you prefer L.A.?
Oh, yeah. New York is one of my favorite places in the world; it's just… not like anywhere else. It's really incredible. When you land you feel like you're in New York.
Do you travel a lot to other places and other countries as well?
Yeah. Well, we've just started, actually. I haven't really traveled anywhere else. We've been to Mexico once on a vacation and England once before but other than that we've really stayed in the states. This time we went to Canada for the first time, which was really great, and then we started going to Europe and I've been to Germany and England and France and Holland and Switzerland. And we're going back again in a few months, and that's really wild. It's really weird when you're sitting somewhere like a café in France and then realizing that it's not a vacation. But it's pretty amazing.
It sounds incredible. Are you and your music received differently abroad than in the U.S.?
No. I thought it would be, just because of how people speak different languages and have different backgrounds, but I think people are people and they go through the same experiences all around the world. Maybe they have slightly different flavors or different circumstances, but the feelings are the same so people respond to music the same way. I think they're just a little bit more excited when we're there just because we're American and it's a long way to come, so people are really grateful that we visited, which is really nice.
Do you draw inspiration from your contemporaries?
Well, I listen to music constantly because when I don't I feel like I dry up a little bit. Bright Eyes, Death Cab, Sigur Ross, Cold Play, Sufjan Stevens; Camera Obscura's really incredible. I definitely draw a lot of inspiration from those people because they're making great music and they're continuously making great music, which is pretty admirable, and also their lyrics, their melodies, their arrangements, they're all pretty much always spot-on.
Right. Speaking of lyrics, how do you develop your songs and your music?
I don't know—I think it's a process that's hard to describe, writing and developing lyrics, because so much of it is this mental process that—I basically sit at the piano and think! And then I just work it out of my head, going through my life and trying to find the words or the images or the pictures that express the way that I feel or what I've observed, and then narrowing it down until it fits and it feels right.
Do you draw a lot of inspiration from literature, from cinema, from other people?
Yeah. Definitely. I mean, there's such a big world out there. It's the same thing as with the music: you can keep yourself in a bubble and not be inspired by anyone else or you can dive into all those amazing minds and ideas and stories and lives and things. Wes Anderson, I think, is an incredible director because he's so visual—he's got this style, you know? It's like stepping into a completely different world. I love Woody Allen films, because they're just funny and witty and pretty accurate about people, too, in some ways. And books are great because when you read a book, even if the character is fictional, you're getting the deepest thoughts and fears and hopes and dreams of a person, even if it is a fictional person, that you wouldn't get anywhere else, really. You get to see in someone's head. Jane Austen is an incredible writer for that. I just finished The Fountainhead, which is fantastic, by Ayn Rand; she's also written a book called Atlas Shrugged which is really great. Who else? Dickens, Shakespeare, the woman that wrote Bridget Jones' Diary? I don't know! [laughs] Harry Potter? It doesn't really matter, I just like to read.
I love how you mentioned Dickens and Shakespeare and then "the woman who wrote Bridget Jones' Diary" right after that!
[laughs] Well, you know, I don't want to start being a literature snob either. There's a lot of great classical writers, but I try to switch it off so I don't get too stuck in my head or read too many classics in a row. Harry Potter's a good one to mix in there.
Of course! You seem like the sort who would be very influenced by the past, though, so it makes sense that you would list a lot of classic writers.
Yeah, they're great. It's also cool to feel like you're tied into something that people have read, so something like Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is a cultural thing and my grandfather read that. Older books give you some sort of thread to hang onto from generation to generation and I think that's really neat. Wow, I sound so nerdy!
[laughs]
I do like regular dorky people things too—you know how it is, nose in a book—but I just think we've forgotten how important it is to read.
Be as nerdy as you want! I'm a literature nerd, so I can relate to everything that you're saying at the moment!
[laughs] Oh, that's good, that's good! I mean, this is all sort of… not newly-acquired but a few years ago, nearly four years ago. I went through a patch after—when did I graduate high school? Seven years ago!—after I graduated high school where I sort of didn't read for three years. I just kind of did stuff and other activities, and I was a really huge reader growing up, so that little period was sort of a departure from normal from me and so when I went back to reading it was like, "Oh my god, what have I been missing?" It's just so easy to stop.
Right. Especially since these days our society's so driven by TV and the internet, it's hard to make time for quieter pursuits.
Yeah. It really is. Like, you get to your bookstore and it's walls upon walls upon walls of choices and it's kind of easier to just go back home and channel surf, you know? [laughs] It's so sad. It's something that shouldn't be.
Oh, yeah. And the whole culture is dying out. Independent bookstores are dying out because there's Barnes & Noble and Amazon, and it's really very depressing.
No, I know! I mean, I was trying to get an old children's book, because I was doing some children's book illustrations to help me because I'm writing a book for kind of young adults, but I wanted to have illustrations in mind so that when I was writing the book I could have it in mind how it would be illustrated and that would kind of put me in the right mood as well. And it was so hard to find a single one! I was like, "Are you serious?" Whatever happened to rummaging through the dusty bookshelves and finding—I mean, they exist, but they're not as common.
Oh yeah, I know. In this neighborhood in Brooklyn called Park Slope, which is the sort of neighborhood where you'd expect used bookstores all over the place, a whole bunch of them have just closed recently.
Aw, I love Park Slope! Yeah, well, Brooklyn's also shooting through the roof real estate-wise because all of a sudden everyone realized that it's really cool out there. I can imagine it's hard for a small bookstore to keep up with the rent soaring. But yeah, I mean, Brooklyn's supposed to be a place where all those bookstores are! That's why you go to Brooklyn!
Exactly! Used bookstores and coffee, that's why you go to Brooklyn! Especially Park Slope.
Yeah. And lately I'm finding that there's a ton of books in antique stores, which is really not a bad place to go to get them, but it's interesting.
Yeah, it's not the same atmosphere.
No, it's not the same atmosphere. I bought a bunch of stuff—I'm not sure if I'm going hang onto it because it's quite heavy but I bought a big stack of old books from the forties and fifties, like old textbooks and stuff to sit on top of my piano just to kind of give it some atmosphere, and I was amazed how many books there were in there but it was an old antique… toy shop? There was a lot of—it was really neat, I bought a big picture of Winnie-the-Pooh as well, and this really weird one of an eagle that's really kind of creepy…
Is this place in L.A. or in New York?
It's in L.A.
Oh, how unfortunate! I was going to take down its name!
[laughs] Yeah! It's really cool. If you ever come out to L.A., there's a little strip of antique stores in Burbank on Magnolia Boulevard and they're all in like a two-block area. I went antiquing the other day and I bought a big birdcage as well—it's really pretty. But yeah, L.A. has that kind of culture as well. You wouldn't expect it, but you just have to look harder for it. But I know what you mean. In New York, it feels like there are certain neighborhoods where these places just shouldn't be closing.
Right. I was walking with my friend in Manhattan one day and she took me to this bookshop called the Mysterious Bookshop which sells only mysteries—it's one large room and it's got wall-to-wall bookshelves and rolling ladders like in Beauty and the Beast… it's fantastic.
Really? I will have to check that out! There's so many neighborhoods—I discovered the East Village last time I was in New York, and I was like, "What is this!?" I mean, I'd been there once before to a place called Edith Machinist—it's a vintage shop but mainly a vintage shoe and purse shop—and they've got the most incredible collection of vintage boots I've ever seen, laid out by size. I bought my favorite pair of blue boots there, which I've worn and re-soled and need to re-sole again because they're so dead, and so I went to buy another pair there the other day. But anyway, that's on the Lower East Side. It's a really neat neighborhood over there.
Oh, yeah. I'm terrible with neighborhoods, though—I usually just figure things out by subway stop. But being not good with neighborhoods is really bad for a New Yorker…
Well, I thought Chelsea was in a totally different spot, so—it's between Essex and Ludlow. Around there.
Yeah. Well, I used to think Chelsea was in Brooklyn, so…
[bursts into laughter] Yeah, I used to think it was… closer. You really aren't good with neighborhoods, are you!?
Well, to be fair, It's been years and years since I thought Chelsea was in Brooklyn—not since I was eight. Nevertheless!
Yeah. Well, Brooklyn is totally beyond me. I know a couple of neighborhoods, and like—I had to do a photo shoot in Brooklyn one time, and I was like, "Where in the world are we!? I have no idea where we are. We could be in New Jersey! I dunno where we are!"
The thing about Brooklyn, though, is that people tend to stay in one or two neighborhoods, which means they develop into interesting communities. Brooklynites don't tend to go to a ton of different Brooklyn neighborhoods, I don't think.
That's funny. I didn't know that at all—but that makes sense, because there's much more of an old-school kind of feel about Brooklyn.
You mentioned earlier that you're writing a book. Could you talk a little about that?
Yeah. I mean, I'm writing a book purely for the joy of writing a book, really. There's no one saying, "Oh, why don't you write a book?", you know what I mean? It's just something that I like to do, something that relaxes my mind, and—I don't know, it's just always been easy for me to write stories, so it's lovely to get to write something for children. It's probably for, like, eight-to-thirteen- or fourteen-year-olds, but it's got the kind of story where an adult would enjoy it too. But it's a different process because there are no boundaries—or you really have to keep your own boundaries. When you're writing a song you have the melody and you really have to stick within the confines of that melody otherwise you're just going to go all over the place and it's going to be a mess. But it's not anything like that with writing a book. It's just pages. So that's kind of interesting, because the challenge of writing a song and that thrill, that friction of making everything fit and drawing things completely out of thin air—it's really three things, the melody, the piano, and the lyrics—that's what drives me in life. But when I just have to write a story and I can go anywhere I want and do anything I want and it doesn't matter, it's like a mental vacation for me! I'm having fun.
What's the story about?
It's… kind of complicated to explain, because it's this fantasy story, but it's basically sort of based on "The Minnow and the Trout" loosely, this song where animals speak, but there's a place where this happens and basically something's happening right now to threaten that place and they need to stop it, and there's this legend of these three ships that go to this island and… it's very hard to describe! I don't know. It's just—these two little children have to go save this island, basically. It's nice. It's a nice story.
Did you just recently start writing, or have you been writing for a long time?
I haven't really written anything besides blogs for my MySpace since I was 11 or 12 years old, so it's really nice to feel like—I felt the same way when I was 11, when I was writing stories. I'd sit down and hours would go by and then I would look up, and it was like, "Oh my god! Wow, where have I been?" Just being so into it, and so immersed, and so excited about the characters and you feel like you know them… it's been a while, though. I think I'm going to do it a lot, because no one ever has to read it; it's not about that, it's just about doing it.
Right, absolutely. Do you write poetry? Or do you read it?
I read a bit of it. I love Pablo Neruda, and I love Elizabeth Barrett Browning. I like Shakespeare's love sonnets, and things. But I'm not… I'm a poet selector, where I'll gravitate toward certain poets, but I don't just pick up poetry books and read them because I kind of like a plot to what I'm reading, but some poems are really life changing. I'm the worst poet ever! My actual poetry, except for when I'm writing lyrics, is so bad! It's kind of embarrassing, so I don't even try any more!
Pardon me, ladies, it's the operator—we're on a tight schedule and we need to move on to the next interview. Thank you.
[laughs] Well, I guess we have to go.
I could talk about books and writing all day long!
Oh, me too, but unfortunately—maybe next time we can pick up where we left off! Thanks so much for doing this interview.
Oh, no problem. It was my pleasure!
Yes, hi! Nice to meet you.
Nice to meet you too. Are you in L.A. right now?
I am. I've been there for the last couple days; it's been my last couple days here.
How's the weather over there? It's been freezing here in New York.
Oh, it's gorgeous. I mean, it's been gorgeous. Right now it's kind of gray, but for the past week and a half it's been just like paradise: just slightly cool, blue skies, a little breeze… lovely.
I'm jealous!
Yeah, I know! I was just in New York, but New York has its own thing; there's snow and that wonderful cold that it comes from.
Do you visit New York a lot?
Yeah. I mean, last year I went there maybe twenty times or something like that. It felt like I was there as much of the time as in L.A.
Do you enjoy coming or do you prefer L.A.?
Oh, yeah. New York is one of my favorite places in the world; it's just… not like anywhere else. It's really incredible. When you land you feel like you're in New York.
Do you travel a lot to other places and other countries as well?
Yeah. Well, we've just started, actually. I haven't really traveled anywhere else. We've been to Mexico once on a vacation and England once before but other than that we've really stayed in the states. This time we went to Canada for the first time, which was really great, and then we started going to Europe and I've been to Germany and England and France and Holland and Switzerland. And we're going back again in a few months, and that's really wild. It's really weird when you're sitting somewhere like a café in France and then realizing that it's not a vacation. But it's pretty amazing.
It sounds incredible. Are you and your music received differently abroad than in the U.S.?
No. I thought it would be, just because of how people speak different languages and have different backgrounds, but I think people are people and they go through the same experiences all around the world. Maybe they have slightly different flavors or different circumstances, but the feelings are the same so people respond to music the same way. I think they're just a little bit more excited when we're there just because we're American and it's a long way to come, so people are really grateful that we visited, which is really nice.
Do you draw inspiration from your contemporaries?
Well, I listen to music constantly because when I don't I feel like I dry up a little bit. Bright Eyes, Death Cab, Sigur Ross, Cold Play, Sufjan Stevens; Camera Obscura's really incredible. I definitely draw a lot of inspiration from those people because they're making great music and they're continuously making great music, which is pretty admirable, and also their lyrics, their melodies, their arrangements, they're all pretty much always spot-on.
Right. Speaking of lyrics, how do you develop your songs and your music?
I don't know—I think it's a process that's hard to describe, writing and developing lyrics, because so much of it is this mental process that—I basically sit at the piano and think! And then I just work it out of my head, going through my life and trying to find the words or the images or the pictures that express the way that I feel or what I've observed, and then narrowing it down until it fits and it feels right.
Do you draw a lot of inspiration from literature, from cinema, from other people?
Yeah. Definitely. I mean, there's such a big world out there. It's the same thing as with the music: you can keep yourself in a bubble and not be inspired by anyone else or you can dive into all those amazing minds and ideas and stories and lives and things. Wes Anderson, I think, is an incredible director because he's so visual—he's got this style, you know? It's like stepping into a completely different world. I love Woody Allen films, because they're just funny and witty and pretty accurate about people, too, in some ways. And books are great because when you read a book, even if the character is fictional, you're getting the deepest thoughts and fears and hopes and dreams of a person, even if it is a fictional person, that you wouldn't get anywhere else, really. You get to see in someone's head. Jane Austen is an incredible writer for that. I just finished The Fountainhead, which is fantastic, by Ayn Rand; she's also written a book called Atlas Shrugged which is really great. Who else? Dickens, Shakespeare, the woman that wrote Bridget Jones' Diary? I don't know! [laughs] Harry Potter? It doesn't really matter, I just like to read.
I love how you mentioned Dickens and Shakespeare and then "the woman who wrote Bridget Jones' Diary" right after that!
[laughs] Well, you know, I don't want to start being a literature snob either. There's a lot of great classical writers, but I try to switch it off so I don't get too stuck in my head or read too many classics in a row. Harry Potter's a good one to mix in there.
Of course! You seem like the sort who would be very influenced by the past, though, so it makes sense that you would list a lot of classic writers.
Yeah, they're great. It's also cool to feel like you're tied into something that people have read, so something like Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is a cultural thing and my grandfather read that. Older books give you some sort of thread to hang onto from generation to generation and I think that's really neat. Wow, I sound so nerdy!
[laughs]
I do like regular dorky people things too—you know how it is, nose in a book—but I just think we've forgotten how important it is to read.
Be as nerdy as you want! I'm a literature nerd, so I can relate to everything that you're saying at the moment!
[laughs] Oh, that's good, that's good! I mean, this is all sort of… not newly-acquired but a few years ago, nearly four years ago. I went through a patch after—when did I graduate high school? Seven years ago!—after I graduated high school where I sort of didn't read for three years. I just kind of did stuff and other activities, and I was a really huge reader growing up, so that little period was sort of a departure from normal from me and so when I went back to reading it was like, "Oh my god, what have I been missing?" It's just so easy to stop.
Right. Especially since these days our society's so driven by TV and the internet, it's hard to make time for quieter pursuits.
Yeah. It really is. Like, you get to your bookstore and it's walls upon walls upon walls of choices and it's kind of easier to just go back home and channel surf, you know? [laughs] It's so sad. It's something that shouldn't be.
Oh, yeah. And the whole culture is dying out. Independent bookstores are dying out because there's Barnes & Noble and Amazon, and it's really very depressing.
No, I know! I mean, I was trying to get an old children's book, because I was doing some children's book illustrations to help me because I'm writing a book for kind of young adults, but I wanted to have illustrations in mind so that when I was writing the book I could have it in mind how it would be illustrated and that would kind of put me in the right mood as well. And it was so hard to find a single one! I was like, "Are you serious?" Whatever happened to rummaging through the dusty bookshelves and finding—I mean, they exist, but they're not as common.
Oh yeah, I know. In this neighborhood in Brooklyn called Park Slope, which is the sort of neighborhood where you'd expect used bookstores all over the place, a whole bunch of them have just closed recently.
Aw, I love Park Slope! Yeah, well, Brooklyn's also shooting through the roof real estate-wise because all of a sudden everyone realized that it's really cool out there. I can imagine it's hard for a small bookstore to keep up with the rent soaring. But yeah, I mean, Brooklyn's supposed to be a place where all those bookstores are! That's why you go to Brooklyn!
Exactly! Used bookstores and coffee, that's why you go to Brooklyn! Especially Park Slope.
Yeah. And lately I'm finding that there's a ton of books in antique stores, which is really not a bad place to go to get them, but it's interesting.
Yeah, it's not the same atmosphere.
No, it's not the same atmosphere. I bought a bunch of stuff—I'm not sure if I'm going hang onto it because it's quite heavy but I bought a big stack of old books from the forties and fifties, like old textbooks and stuff to sit on top of my piano just to kind of give it some atmosphere, and I was amazed how many books there were in there but it was an old antique… toy shop? There was a lot of—it was really neat, I bought a big picture of Winnie-the-Pooh as well, and this really weird one of an eagle that's really kind of creepy…
Is this place in L.A. or in New York?
It's in L.A.
Oh, how unfortunate! I was going to take down its name!
[laughs] Yeah! It's really cool. If you ever come out to L.A., there's a little strip of antique stores in Burbank on Magnolia Boulevard and they're all in like a two-block area. I went antiquing the other day and I bought a big birdcage as well—it's really pretty. But yeah, L.A. has that kind of culture as well. You wouldn't expect it, but you just have to look harder for it. But I know what you mean. In New York, it feels like there are certain neighborhoods where these places just shouldn't be closing.
Right. I was walking with my friend in Manhattan one day and she took me to this bookshop called the Mysterious Bookshop which sells only mysteries—it's one large room and it's got wall-to-wall bookshelves and rolling ladders like in Beauty and the Beast… it's fantastic.
Really? I will have to check that out! There's so many neighborhoods—I discovered the East Village last time I was in New York, and I was like, "What is this!?" I mean, I'd been there once before to a place called Edith Machinist—it's a vintage shop but mainly a vintage shoe and purse shop—and they've got the most incredible collection of vintage boots I've ever seen, laid out by size. I bought my favorite pair of blue boots there, which I've worn and re-soled and need to re-sole again because they're so dead, and so I went to buy another pair there the other day. But anyway, that's on the Lower East Side. It's a really neat neighborhood over there.
Oh, yeah. I'm terrible with neighborhoods, though—I usually just figure things out by subway stop. But being not good with neighborhoods is really bad for a New Yorker…
Well, I thought Chelsea was in a totally different spot, so—it's between Essex and Ludlow. Around there.
Yeah. Well, I used to think Chelsea was in Brooklyn, so…
[bursts into laughter] Yeah, I used to think it was… closer. You really aren't good with neighborhoods, are you!?
Well, to be fair, It's been years and years since I thought Chelsea was in Brooklyn—not since I was eight. Nevertheless!
Yeah. Well, Brooklyn is totally beyond me. I know a couple of neighborhoods, and like—I had to do a photo shoot in Brooklyn one time, and I was like, "Where in the world are we!? I have no idea where we are. We could be in New Jersey! I dunno where we are!"
The thing about Brooklyn, though, is that people tend to stay in one or two neighborhoods, which means they develop into interesting communities. Brooklynites don't tend to go to a ton of different Brooklyn neighborhoods, I don't think.
That's funny. I didn't know that at all—but that makes sense, because there's much more of an old-school kind of feel about Brooklyn.
You mentioned earlier that you're writing a book. Could you talk a little about that?
Yeah. I mean, I'm writing a book purely for the joy of writing a book, really. There's no one saying, "Oh, why don't you write a book?", you know what I mean? It's just something that I like to do, something that relaxes my mind, and—I don't know, it's just always been easy for me to write stories, so it's lovely to get to write something for children. It's probably for, like, eight-to-thirteen- or fourteen-year-olds, but it's got the kind of story where an adult would enjoy it too. But it's a different process because there are no boundaries—or you really have to keep your own boundaries. When you're writing a song you have the melody and you really have to stick within the confines of that melody otherwise you're just going to go all over the place and it's going to be a mess. But it's not anything like that with writing a book. It's just pages. So that's kind of interesting, because the challenge of writing a song and that thrill, that friction of making everything fit and drawing things completely out of thin air—it's really three things, the melody, the piano, and the lyrics—that's what drives me in life. But when I just have to write a story and I can go anywhere I want and do anything I want and it doesn't matter, it's like a mental vacation for me! I'm having fun.
What's the story about?
It's… kind of complicated to explain, because it's this fantasy story, but it's basically sort of based on "The Minnow and the Trout" loosely, this song where animals speak, but there's a place where this happens and basically something's happening right now to threaten that place and they need to stop it, and there's this legend of these three ships that go to this island and… it's very hard to describe! I don't know. It's just—these two little children have to go save this island, basically. It's nice. It's a nice story.
Did you just recently start writing, or have you been writing for a long time?
I haven't really written anything besides blogs for my MySpace since I was 11 or 12 years old, so it's really nice to feel like—I felt the same way when I was 11, when I was writing stories. I'd sit down and hours would go by and then I would look up, and it was like, "Oh my god! Wow, where have I been?" Just being so into it, and so immersed, and so excited about the characters and you feel like you know them… it's been a while, though. I think I'm going to do it a lot, because no one ever has to read it; it's not about that, it's just about doing it.
Right, absolutely. Do you write poetry? Or do you read it?
I read a bit of it. I love Pablo Neruda, and I love Elizabeth Barrett Browning. I like Shakespeare's love sonnets, and things. But I'm not… I'm a poet selector, where I'll gravitate toward certain poets, but I don't just pick up poetry books and read them because I kind of like a plot to what I'm reading, but some poems are really life changing. I'm the worst poet ever! My actual poetry, except for when I'm writing lyrics, is so bad! It's kind of embarrassing, so I don't even try any more!
Pardon me, ladies, it's the operator—we're on a tight schedule and we need to move on to the next interview. Thank you.
[laughs] Well, I guess we have to go.
I could talk about books and writing all day long!
Oh, me too, but unfortunately—maybe next time we can pick up where we left off! Thanks so much for doing this interview.
Oh, no problem. It was my pleasure!
1 comment:
I love how down-to-earth and friendly your interviews are. You had me laughing sometimes too, and it wasn't just a internet laugh. Keep up the good work!
I always thought Brooklyn was adorned with old whimsical charm of days gone by. And this entry also makes me want to explore the very last of the used bookstores that still exist there!
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