I chose Sonic Youth’s “Society Is A Hole” from Bad Moon Rising. The reason I wanted to talk about this song is because, after I made this record, Hive Mind... I was thinking of, like, “drool dread,” which is this sense of ominous, creeping dread fused with lethargic drool. [Laughs] Like, dead-eyed ominousness that’s epic, but not like heavy metal. Almost pathetic and slurred―something like that. I think this Sonic Youth song is one of the best examples of that [feeling]. And the lyrics directly engage with that: “society is a hole” and “it makes me lie to my friends.” I think their lyrics are hilariously beatnik-y and this is no exception―they’re sort of bad but poetic and they always seem sort of cool even when they suck.

So, yeah, I was kind of thinking that society is a hole and it forces you into bad habits and bad situations.

Recently, [Sonic Youth] has been more of an influence to me. I didn’t listen to them in high school. I listened to “Teen Age Riot” and that was it. I had a tape of Daydream Nation... and I got the record with the crocheted dolls on the cover―Dirty―but I didn’t get it at all. Later, I got into “Teen Age Riot” because it was so catchy, but it wasn’t until later, like, maybe halfway through college, that I was like, Oh―these guys are fuckin’ cool.

I think there’s something very adult or mature about their music because it’s super not idealistic. It’s not just cynical, though―the darkness of it is the darkness of adult life [whereas] the darkness of punk easily translates to the anger and angst of young life. [Sonic Youth]’s darkness is more subtle and... more aware of the helpless position that a lot of people find themselves in.―Daniel Martin-McCormick a.k.a. Ital