Azalia Snail’s willfully bizarre brand of psych-rock has inevitably doomed her to obscurity. Her early albums like Burnt Sienna and Fumarole Rising are pure, unadulterated chaos. She shuns any sense of order or form and seems to intentionally make her compositions as entropic as possible.
Her debut album Snailbait is slightly less entropic and remains her masterpiece. Spaced-out laments (Nothing and Everywhere) alternate with slabs of hard rock (Another Slave Labour Day), pop (Lovelessland), and sheer weirdness (Azalia Bloom #16). The album is sublime, and it deserves a wider audience. Its aforementioned followups, however, are polarizing, despite — or perhaps because of — the fact that they are often stunning (especially Fumarole Rising).
Following several more albums in this vein (and a disappointing Supreme Dicks collaboration that didn’t sound anything like the glorious Emotional Plague / Snailbait hybrid one would hope for), her career took a bizarre turn. She opted for the synthesizer (eschewing guitar, kalimba, and zither) and started writing conventional pop songs. These albums — released either as LoveyDove, Powerlover, or under her own name — were undoubtedly weak compared to her early work, but there were nonetheless some scattered highlights. I asked her a series of questions which — due to her relative obscurity — would likely have remained unanswered had I not done so.
1 | Snailbait is a surreal and hypnotic masterpiece. It’s the aural equivalent of dandelion wine — or, perhaps, an isolated clearing on a sunny spring day. How do you feel about the album’s relative lack of acclaim?
First of all, thank you for such a nice compliment. I would say that album is 100% straight from the heart. 20 some years of accumulated thoughts, feelings, musical ideas, and inspiration went into that debut album.
Well, I’ve always done things for the love of it and certainly not for the acclaim and certainly not for the money. And if it doesn’t sound too pretentious, I think some of the best art is made with that intention.
I’ve always championed the underdogs and have been attracted to many lesser known artists in all facets of their creative endeavors. In fact, popularity can be a problem as it puts too many expectations on individuals. I’ve never been somebody that works good under pressure and I’ve always enjoyed having the freedom to do whatever I wanted to do without much dissection or criticism.
2 | Nothing & Everywhere is simultaneously beguiling and haunting (particularly the “I can’t follow the tracks”climax). I used to listen to it all the time while taking walks and looking at trees. What can you tell us about it?
Well, I think you hit the nail on the head regarding how to listen to that song! Like the title itself, it’s about very little but then again about everything. And that’s decades before that movie from a couple of years ago that won the Oscar!
But seriously, I’ve always been fascinated with philosophy, almost to the point of my head being so crammed with information, books, and obsessive research. I really did have a lot to express with that first album.
I loved the idea of playing a 12-string acoustic guitar put through tons of effects. I dig the idea of it being both organic and electric, layers and layers of noise, with melodious touches peeking through.
And I believe some of those lyrics were partly taken from several different poets, including some of my favorite surrealist poets like Andre Breton.
3 | Azalia Bloom #16 showcases your unorthodox guitar technique. How did you develop that style?
Well, I was never a disciplined guitar player and was a very frustrated student because my hands were so small and I found it hard to play the way my guitar teacher was showing me. So I think I just said fuck it, I’m going to do it my own way. I’m going to make up my own chords and see how it sounds.
I’ve always loved cooking up with my own odd guitar tunings, and seeing what sounds I could concoct.
And I have a pretty cool story about that song in particular.
At that time, I would be calling different booking people from clubs scattered around the country. I knew that one of the things I wanted to do more than anything was to tour around the country as I always loved traveling and meeting like-minded people. There was a phenomenal club in the Washington D.C. area called dc space. I was talking to the booker one day and she said it’s so funny that you just called because I was just listening to you on a Japanese radio station. My first album had recently come out and I had no idea that it was getting some international play. She followed up by saying that she was learning how to speak Japanese, so a friend of hers from Tokyo sent her some cassettes from radio shows so that she could hear the colloquial use of the language. On one of these tapes, it was a top 10 countdown of the most popular songs in Tokyo in 1990. I think it was something like Sonic Youth at No. 4, Pavement at No. 3, Sebadoh at No. 2 and my song Azalia Bloom #16 at No. 1! And they made a really big deal about it and it sounded like a commercial station so it was a real knockout for me!
4 | Thoughts about the other tracks on Snailbait? I’m not a fan of the lighthearted Baby Brother, but otherwise the album is virtually perfect. What’s the overall theme? Connection to nature? Individuality?
Definitely a combination of everything I was feeling and doing at that time, living life as a very free spirited human in Greenwich Village in the last Bohemian decade, as I like to say.
But I’m bummed to hear that you don’t dig the Baby Brother song. I set out to write a very catchy number, the lyrics explaining my relationship with the lead singer of King Missile, John S Hall, who was somebody I was quite close to at the time, but because he had a girlfriend, he said he could only be like my brother, not my lover.
5 | Into Yr World is probably my favorite non-Snailbait track of yours. What do you remember about it?
Another very catchy song if I do say so. I was proud of the little trumpet part that I thought of, and it was played by two friends, members of a whimsical band called Douce Gimlet. They were not accomplished players, but they were able to get the gist of it. I’ve always loved limericks and rhymes that can be repeated and altered slightly, that become a sort of mantra as the song plays out.
Because I listened to so much radio as a kid, songs with fab hooks were deeply embedded into my being. I love bubblegum, soul, funky little novelty songs, and of course, all the great classics. It’s one of the reasons that I enjoy DJing so much these days because I love being able to share those playlists with audiences.
6 | Is there a spiritual component to your music? It at times seems like it (Flight #540 is almost mantra-like).
Bingo! Yes, I would definitely say that as a very spiritual but not necessarily religious person, my aim is to provide ethereal soundtracks to anybody willing to listen. And I should say that psychedelic drugs did add a whole hell of a lot to that mission. Though I never was addicted to anything, I would say that both my music and my life would never be the same without my experimentation with mushrooms, acid, a little bit of angel dust, and a couple other things that didn’t suit me as well, so I did not indulge in those.
7 | You collaborated with Alan Sparhawk on what is arguably the standout track on the new Powerlover album, Zap You Of That Hate. What was that like?
Alan has been a friend of mine for something like 30 years and though we hadn’t toured together as much as I would have liked, we did stay in touch. I had asked him to remix a song from my previous album Neon Resistance. He added bass and some other fun stuff on the song called Field Rep. My husband and the other half of LoveyDove, Dan West, did a fantastic job producing that album by the way!
It was so interesting to note how Low had developed over the years, becoming much more experimental and noisy. I think the last album they made is one of their absolute greatest. I really fell in love with the song All Night and asked him if I could make a video for it. I told him it would be very avant-garde and he said yes, please! You know I’ve been shooting videos and films my entire music career and have made quite a few videos for not only my songs, but many other musicians.
Anyway, I shot a bunch of footage of nature stuff around our house and started playing around with layering, mushing it up in many other ways, until I got to the point where it seemed to fit the haunting and dream-like nature of the song.
I knew Mimi was sick, but I didn’t know how serious it was, and of course it broke my heart into a million pieces when she took off for the celestial skies. The voice of an angel.
The track that Alan played guitar on was one of the first that I created for the album that I intended to be instrumental. Zap You Of That Hate is dedicated to all the less-than-savory monsters masquerading as human beings.
If I could have one wish, it would be to wave a magic wand and get rid of all of the hate, in one fell swoop. I just can’t comprehend why people would choose to be so vile.
8 | Further to the video for All Night by Low: I remember watching the video a while back and being caught off guard by how good it was — rarely do artists seamlessly venture into other fields. Have you thought about directing a full-length film?
(See above) (and thank you for saying that!)
Oh, most definitely! If I had just a little funding, I would love to make a 90-minute, avant-garde, multicolored, psychedelic, dreamy vision that I could blow up on Imax, and force everybody to see it!
9 | You seem to have ditched the guitar for the synthesizer. Can we expect another Snailbait-like album in the future?
Well, I fell in love with Omnichords around the end of the last century, when a relative of mine presented one to me. I love the portable nature of them, the expansive sounds, the stellar rhythm machines on them.
However, the latest LoveyDove album features an array of guitars played by yours truly. It’s a political album called Rude Dawgs. Another excellent production by Dan, who plays incredible bass on it and also featuring our dear friend Jerry playing the skins.
And speaking of, I play drums on Powerlover (Cloud Recordings) and will play them on my upcoming followup, which may or may not be all instrumental as well.
10 | Any other thoughts on music or life in general?
Now that is a loaded question!
I’d love your readers to check out Dan’s latest album which I think is a psychedelic masterpiece called Hedonistic Pillow. I’m on a few tracks as well.
And I want to reiterate how important it is to stay aware of everything that’s going on, not only in your own personal life, but the nation at large and the universe.
Don’t settle for the norm, always be open to spreading the love, be of service any which way you can.
Don’t be boring, as Grace Slick would say.
Go into nature. Go boogie boarding if you can find a clean ocean.
And as I said at the beginning of this, admire and celebrate the underdogs!
Always buy music directly from the artist, if it all possible.
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Brett Abrahamsen is a lifelong connoisseur of the experimental and obscure. He is also a science fiction writer (and an amateur philosopher of sorts). He resides in Saratoga Springs, N.Y.
