Having first seen them through Lou Smith's recording of their Windmill gig, I'm very excited to present the Alex Kent interview! We talked about the Europe tour they embarked on last year, their literary and film influences, and more. Bolded sentences are mine, non-bolded are his.

You just came back from a tour of Europe, how did you find it?

It was great. Everyone was really hospitable, and we had an excellent time.

Were there any venues or cities that stuck out?

(Thinking) playing-wise there was a few that surprised us. We were especially pleasantly surprised with the Polish shows, and they went really well. We played Bologna, Italy and we were really well received, it was a great experience. Pretty much everywhere honestly, it was a great tour. Can't complain about anything.

You mentioned William S. Burroughs as an influence in the past. What's your favourite work by him and are there any authors that influenced your work in a similar way?

(Thinking) my favorite Burroughs... Well I like all the cut-up stuff. So I like Nova Express, Soft Machine, The Ticket That Exploded, Naked Lunch of course... I like Wild Boys... Anything that he did that was cut-up style I really like. I also like some of his more streamlined stuff like Cities of the Red Night, Junkie...

There's a lot of authors that we really like... I really like J. G. Ballard, Don DeLillo, Thomas Pynchon, William Gaddis... Any of the post-modern stuff I usually find to be really good.

What's your process to writing lyrics? Is it a stream of consciousness or is it more planned?

Yeah I have a lot of stuff I have written, and I'll go back and edit it when I'm more... I have a few different modes, one of the modes is where I'm just writing without editing and another mode is when I'm not really being creative but I'm editing things together and doing work. So a lot of the time I'll assemble a lot of material that I've written earlier, and try to put it together in a meaningful way. Usually the lyrics will come before the music.

Do you think you'll ever release your words without the music? Maybe poetry or some writing work?

Yeah I would hope so. I don't know if my writing is good enough to warrant or justify a release like that right now, but hopefully as I improve in time I can do something like that. I don't have any concrete plans but I like the sound of that.

You mentioned living on a farm while growing up for a period of time, and how that along with growing up Catholic influenced your lyrics. Can you elaborate on that a bit?

Well... if you read the lyrics you'll see references and allegories that utilize livestock or animals that would typically be found in that kind of western farm setting. I use those because I like them and I have an affinity towards them. I like the way animals like that were used in fables, folk tales or nursery rhymes and stuff like that.

Pretty much the same thing goes as far as the Catholic/biblical allegories. I don't partake in any Christian faith but I'm familiar with that and the mythology of it. A lot of it is really useful source material to draw from.

Watching you perform, it's pretty clear that you enter a certain headspace and give it your all. Do you do anything after the gig to wind down? How easy is it for you to enter and leave that space?

It's not hard at all. It's just a performance, it's a thing that myself and the rest of the band can enter without any particular ritual. After the shows... It depends on the situation and how much work we have to do. If we're on tour there's usually a lot of stuff we gotta do, so after the show is over, at least at the level we're at now, we don't have much time to screw around. There's some stuff we gotta take care of and we take care of that, then usually on to the next show.

Then once all that stuff is done usually we'll make a couple of bad decisions and get into some trouble, but nothing crazy (laughing).

In terms of influences, what do you listen to currently?

I don't wanna be boring or disappointing but I don't have any musical obsessions right now. I think when you start to do this and you get to a certain level, listening to music and what not... It's not that it becomes 'not special' but it becomes different. I feel like I don't get as excited about hearing music as much anymore. But I do get really excited about making it and playing it. So just the same shit I've been listening to forever. There's always something new and exciting that we've stumbled upon or we're interested in, but I think there's bigger 'music nerd' fans out there.

As music has become more and more a part of my life and identity, I actually tend to avoid a certain amount of things like choosing a favorite or obsessing over stuff. For me it's not good for my mental health to be in these kinds of... music fan hemispheres or whatever. Does that make sense?

Yeah, that's interesting... Was it when you started writing more of your own music that you stopped being a 'big fan' of other acts?

Well it's not that I'm not a 'big fan', it's more that I'm not a fan in the way you would see people who are engaging in 'discourse' or whatever. I think we've all kind of taken a step back from that because when you become a subject in a lot of that stuff it changes your perspective on it. I think it can make you jaded or not interested in pursuing the stuff that you're passionate about.

That's kind of where I am, I need to protect myself from being too big of a music nerd online, even though I really like music and I really care about it. Everyone needs a break, when music becomes your life it becomes more difficult to 'take yourself out of that equation'.

That makes sense, and I assume between the band you guys still talk about music you like.

Of course, we still love music. Music is my whole life so... It stopped being the primary source of my identity though. When I was younger it was imperative to me that like... I'm not sure how to say it without sounding lame but I just wanted to be involved with music stuff, I wanted people to know that I liked the same underground bands that they did... Now I'm more comfortable knowing all that stuff but not making it the centerpiece of my life.

You just announced you're coming to Europe again, can we expect to hear new material this tour?

You can expect new stuff, we always do new stuff.

Did you notice a difference in audience reactions when playing in Europe compared to America?

Yeah. I think everyone who saw us in Europe were there to see us, and they were excited. In America, there's a bit more disposition from the audience... Like they're waiting for you to prove to them why you should exist. More so than the Europeans who seem really grateful. I thought the last tour had the most enthusiastic audiences that we've ever had.

We actually never made our way over to the East Coast though, so we haven't played about half of our country. Our country is really big so that's understandable to a certain extent. I'm just trying to go off of the over-generalized, stereotypical audience though. There's a lot of people in America who are really great and appreciative of what we do. But overall, there was a big difference in the way we were treated.

How far in advance do you plan the direction you'll go in when it comes to music?

I'm not working on any more than one-album-in-advance basis. So I just try to stay in the present and make what we're working on now as good as it possibly can be. Sometimes I'll come up with stuff and be like "huh, that's interesting" but it doesn't really fit with the story or context of what we're doing right now but we can keep that in the back pocket for another point in history. I find that setting yourself up with too much context like that is detrimental to the creative flow.

With Shearling, does someone bring an idea with people then building on it or does it more often happen through jam sessions?

I think for that record most of it was spearheaded by me, so I'll have something and we'll work on it and it will transform in the process of working on it. It will go from my original idea to something better when everyone has their input on it. Usually I'm the first domino to fall in that process.

Even though the records are conceptual, a lot of that stuff we'll create as the record is being created, rather than have it be a preconceived notion. Because again, I find that coming up with stuff first and then trying to make music fit that mold is a recipe for a slow, uninspired working process. So I accept things as they come, reject them if they're bad, and see where that takes me.

We talked about your literary influences, are you also inspired by film in any way when you're writing?

Yeah of course. I like this Hungarian guy called Béla Tarr, this Taiwanese slow cinema guy called Tsai Ming-liang... Though I like other stuff too, less 'artsy' stuff. I like Lord of the Rings. I really like the movie The End of Evangelion. So all sorts of stuff really. I definitely think that our music is really cinematic. It can make more sense why you'd make music like that if you think of it in terms of a soundtrack or something.

Would you like to make a movie soundtrack at some point?

Yeah I think if the right offer comes, we would do it. Not a lot of people reach out to us for those kinds of things, but I wish they would. We gotta wait for the right thing that comes up and then we'd happily do it.

Check out Shearling's bandcamp for their debut album Motherfucker, I am Both: "Amen" and "Hallelujah"... To keep in touch with everything the band is up to and their upcoming Europe tour dates, check out their Instagram.