On the opening track of Love, Guess Who?? Autre Ne Veut’s first album in nearly a decade, the singer thrusts us right into the moment where they lose control: “I was on the phone when I had it with you.” It’s a visceral way to kick off the follow-up to 2015’s Age of Transparency, which constantly finds Arthur Ashin in the throes of despair, negotiating space with others, itching to move on and, ultimately, feel better. Ashin may have reservations about the part of their personhood that the record represents, but that’s as reflective of the time it took to let the songs go – which they used to focus on producing for other artists and pursuing a master’s degree in social work – as it is of the artist embracing a more emotionally unfiltered yet meditative approach. Completing a trilogy that began with 2013’s Anxiety, the album retains the poignant intimacy of Ashin’s lyrics but dials back the dizzying textures and rapturous chaos of previous installments, allowing itself to be more earnest in its expression and softer around the edges. Autre Ne Veut’s music is still emblematic of the human brain and voice failing under the weight of big feelings like yearning, and here more than ever, grief. But for all the strain and conflict embedded in Love, Guess Who??, it’s never sounded lighter on the other end.
We caught up with Autre Ne Veut to talk about how therapy, Asghar Farhadi’s films, a Milton Nascimento song, and more inspired Love, Guess Who??.
His grandmother’s death
One of my earliest memories of listening to your music was hearing ‘Counting’, which was about the fear of losing your grandmother. In the first update you shared about the new record, you said that she passed away right before Age of Transparency was released. How did her affect your outlook on art in general, but also going into a new project?
I’ve been kind of preoccupied with her dying for a while before it actually happened. She was pretty important in raising me; she used to pick me up from school my whole life growing up. My parents were both really busy, they had to work really late often and start work really early. She was the person who I spent my day-to-day with as a kid. She was kind of snarky and had a bad attitude, which I really thought was hilarious. Her kids didn’t love it, but I really got along with her just being kind of grumpy. She seemed old, even when I think she was probably just in her early fifties, which to me doesn’t sound that old anymore. [laughs] Age is relative, and she felt like she was a hundred years old even then, but she was whip-smart. There’s something about grandparents: when you’re born, you’re cognizant that they’re going to die, which I think is such an interesting relationship to have. It’s built into your fundamental understanding of who they are.
I had experienced some loss with friends and a friend’s pet that I took hard when I was a kid, but not really family until that. So as I was getting closer and closer, I just kept becoming more preoccupied, and I tried to spend more and more time with her. At some point, if people are too sick and the hospital is not really going to do anything to help, they just go home. I spent her last days there with her, and we watched this show called Call the Midwife, which is a really sappy show about birth, mostly, in the ‘60s in London. So we just sat there and watched, and I would cry a lot. Ultimately, her passing and that process of watching it happen and being with her while it was happening really reformatted what I prioritized in general. I loved music when I was growing up, and I love it now again, but kind of around that time, I wasn’t loving it that much anymore, which is maybe as big of a reason as any as to why I stepped away. I felt like I could help other people, but I didn’t have whatever that thing is that people need to say, “I need to put this out.”
There needs to be some strong motivation, and I think her passing kind of killed that for me. Also, I just became really obsessed with engineering and micro differences in mixing. I would listen to everyone else’s music and think about how it could have sounded better or listen to my own music and think about all the different ways it could just sound better, and it wasn’t about just picking up an instrument and playing, or just singing, or just being a body that makes sound. It was about something really technical and specific. I think I just lost the thread, and her dying really confirmed that. I did a tour right after Age of Transparency was released, and I got back, and I just couldn’t get out of bed for two weeks, even though she had died months and months earlier. I was just like, “Why am I doing this?”
I don’t even know if it was just that, but it’s definitely mixed in, because I keep writing about her. I keep writing about that experience, so clearly she’s an important figure in how I conceptualize creating for some reason. And I don’t know if I know the answer to why that is.
Were you more hesitant to write about your grandmother, or just write, after her loss?
It felt so urgent to do the writing. I think releasing it is a different process, letting it go. It stops being yours. For whatever reason, I needed to hold on to this material. Most of it was done being written five years ago, so there’s something in that transition from the creation to the release that I’ve struggled with also. But I think she liked it. She liked that I made music. She would only listen to classical music and avant jazz, so she would always compare my goofy pop songs to, like, Debussy. [laughs] She’s like, “It’s very pop, like Debussy.”
Asghar Farhadi’s films
I have always really gravitated towards films that kind of play with perversion and desire in really complicated and sometimes hyper-intellectual ways, like Michael Haneke or Lars von Trier or Céline Sciamma. I saw A Separation in the theater because it kind of crossed over, and I think it was an Academy Award nominee. And then also The Salesman – both of those were really striking to me at the time, for how they felt like they were supposed to be thrillers, but just weren’t. They were just about people. I think what resonated so much with me about his films then, and still does – or even Cronenberg that I loved before – is things that have pathos but are also full of ideas; not only is there feeling, but there’s also all the thought behind the feeling.
It’s not that Farhadi’s films aren’t smart – they’re brilliant. But the first thing that comes across is these are human beings trying to negotiate what’s hard about being a person, and how to negotiate that personhood. My favorites are these two called Fireworks Wednesday and About Elly. Both are a little more explicit in their kind of thriller format than A Separation and The Salesman, and even though they’re almost genre films, first and foremost, it’s just human beings trying to figure out how to negotiate space. But also in Fireworks Wednesday – this is all my ignorance, I apologize – but there’s some holiday where fireworks are shot off across Iran in celebration. And as the film builds in tension and climax, there’s human beings interacting, but the fireworks become more erratic and surprising, and the sound design – I saw it in a theatre at the Metrograph, and you just feel the fireworks going off in ways that elevate this feeling of just being a person, living through chaos, trying to survive and engage with other people.
That also marked a time when I wanted to make music that’s less in my head – which might be funny for people who hear me singing too hard and think about how histrionic I am. But for me, I’ve always felt like I need to do this body stuff, but had to couch it in rationale: Here’s why I’m being a clown or too aggressive. And with this record, and just the way I engage with music now, I’m just trying to make what feels good and what feels right and real, without filtering it through that quite as much.
Therapy
It’s interesting how therapy figures into your work in both thematic and creative ways: Therapy has always been a big theme in your music, but you’ve also likened it to the process of producing as a kind of motherhood. At the risk of overintellectualizing it, does it serve as a reference point on both levels?
A hundred percent, that’s right. When I wrote that down, I was thinking about some specific stuff – working through my relationship with my dad, with my partner, and realizing how far I was keeping myself from being as vulnerable as I could be with the people I love. When I don’t allow myself to be vulnerable, I don’t really allow myself to connect, and that’s another thing with this record. It’s funny because I wrote these songs so long ago, and now I hear my own immaturity in them, which is funny. I thought I was really nailing some truth, and then I’d think back on the things I said and the actual fights or conversations in some of the songs, and most of the time, they’re a little fictional, too – there’s truth behind all of them, but I’m also trying to capture a Platonic truth more than an Aristotelian one. Again, overintellectualizing – but I’m trying to get the gist of something that’s true, not just the details of a true moment.
With ‘Become a Flower’, I was obsessed with this idea of being like a flower, like, “I’m gonna be so vulnerable, so delicate.” How cool is it that flowers just get to grow and be there, and because they’re so beautiful, nobody hurts them, you know? It’s this weird metaphor, like, “I have to be a flower.” And now I’m not sure if that’s quite right, just for me in my life, but at the time, I was so protected, so defended – not ever like a tough person [laughs], but I had all these strategies, like intellectualization, to avoid being present in relationships with friends and family. And I think this record is really about me grappling in a lot of ways with learning how to do that.
On a lyrical level, there’s a way that therapy bleeds into the language of the lyrics. I’m curious how conscious you are of that as well now.
It’s interesting for me, because I wouldn’t be putting this record out if I didn’t really love it on some fundamental level. But also, the author is five years younger than I am, which is just interesting for me – and some of it’s good, some of it’s bad. But it is interesting seeing me in the midst of my own therapeutic process, and of my own process of becoming a better therapist, also – I’m on all different sides of that process. It’s not even that I think it’s not right; it’s just funny to see a different me. It’s like a disjointed relationship to myself.
‘Minas / Paula E Bebeto (Medley)’ by Milton Nascimento
That one required a little research. I was trying to figure out what I was listening to at the time I was finishing that record, so I was going through my play data on Spotify, and that was the top song of that year. There was some other stuff as well – Nilüfer Yanya’s ‘Baby Luv’ I really liked and listened to a lot. But a bunch of music from ‘70s Brazil and a lot of Milton Nascimento in general. I hadn’t really been into his music broadly. He has this collaboration with Lô Borges that, for whatever reason, was remastered in the 2000s at some point. I listened to that in isolation and never really explored his discography. But then, at one point in 2019, I was like, “What is this about? Is there more?” And I became obsessed. I don’t know what the hell he’s talking about – I don’t speak Portuguese at all, so I don’t know what his lyrics are about – but I’ve never felt a body of work that, just on a musical level, touched me in the same way of complexity, nuance, beauty, and nuance that Stevie Wonder’s did for me. His first six records or so, maybe more, there’s so much mastery, so much excellence, but also so much feeling and tension. That song, to me, does a really good job encapsulating this weird play and uncanny beauty, but also feels so homemade.
I remember, twenty years ago or whatever, I was like, “Guitars are dead. Fuck guitars. Every band has been a guitarist, a drummer, and a bassist, and we don’t need to make music that way anymore. Nothing new under the sun; only synthesizers and weird samples, that’s everything.” I felt this weird technological elitism or something. Like, “Let’s just use destroyed CDs and weird noise makers and synthesizers; that’s all music should be made with.” And I think I was really attached to this idea – again, an overintellectualized kind of worldview. Around that time, there was just this notion of, “Oh, no, music can just be these beautiful songs that are just made with big hearts and big feelings.” I think this theme is going to keep coming back over and over in so many ways, but this was like the seed for me, where I feel like I am again with music, where I just listen to music. [laughs] I love it. I listen to mostly stuff from the ‘70s and stuff that just feels warm, before the mastering wars, before high frequencies and low frequencies were all over the place. Just beautiful songwriting, earnest shit. It was the moment where that turned for me, where I was like, “What ideas am I holding on to that are preventing me from just being a person, enjoying, feeling? Why am I not letting myself feel these things?” I think that song is just emblematic of all of that.
Outsider jazz, funk, and soul music
The press bio clarifies that this is not an album about falling in and out of love, but from what we’ve talked about, it kind of is about falling back in love with music. Did you really fall out of love with it, though? How do you trace that journey?
Yeah, I think I did. From when I can remember, I would sing along to trumpet parts and guitar parts. I just loved everything about music. I’m not good at it; I recognize that’s kind of an annoying thing to say, but I’m not naturally a talented musician. I’m not virtuosic. I loved it first, and had to work hard to have any grasp of any of the tools that I use. It’s a lot of work for me; it always has been. But from when I was really young, I was really full of play, and I was okay that I wasn’t good. I felt that, and I think this project was built – I know I’m talking about ideas and intellectualizing things, but it’s also built as an opportunity for me to just let myself really sing. I started thinking about this project, ANV as an idea, around 2004. I was just thinking about these moments in music where people sang too hard, Patti LaBelle’s wails or Otis Redding, just these moments of breakdown, where the voice was ugly and exciting at the same time.
There’s a song by this band called Lime, which is a Canadian, high-energy, Italo-disco-adjacent group. It’s maybe a husband-and-wife duo; I don’t actually know that much about them, but they both sang, and they’re both not that good. But the song was really infectious to me at the time, and they both just really sang. They gave it their all, they just ripped. Something about this combination of things allowed me to feel at liberty to just make. So, ANV for its first number of years, through producing my first record – the self-titled record that I put out on Olde English Spelling Bee in 2010 – all that material, and a bunch of material from a record that I never ended up putting out, it was before it was really professionalized. I ended up having a label at some point, but Olde English Spelling Bee was just a guy making it work kind of thing, just a dude in the community who put out weird stuff, like James Ferraro and this outsider hypnagogic weirdo shit.
I think it was just so playful and so necessary for me as a person to just have an outlet, a catharsis for my aggression, my sex, and a place to put those things. Socially, I’m pretty shy and mild and am not those things very often. So it was a place for me to be like: Here’s the place where you can just be gnarly, be disgusting, be passionate, and be overwhelming and overwhelmed. That was a container for that. And then once Anxiety came out, that was the beginning of it being hard for me in a weird way. It’s a childhood fantasy, like, “Holy shit, I get to live off of making music.” But also, I don’t know – it took the magic away from it. And like I said, I also became really obsessed with fidelity and mix engineering. I’m not a good mix engineer, but I became really obsessed with things sounding pristine and being able to hear frequencies and all these things. It became super scientific, and that just made those things hard to love it.
I don’t know if there’s a single day that I woke up feeling this way, but at some point, I did wake up and I was like, “Oh, this thing that was like a fucking fire in a lighthouse, that gave me a reason to wake up every day – this isn’t there anymore.” I was grieving my grandmother and probably a little depressed, but I felt like I lost that too. And I pretended like I didn’t lose it to myself. I wouldn’t let myself be like, “This isn’t it. This isn’t the thing you’re meant to be doing.” I wouldn’t believe that, so I was trying to produce for other people and doing music for commercials. I had moments that it felt good, but it was just harder and harder to motivate myself to do it and to care.
But at some point, I was like, “This is all you do. This is your life. This is your job, you can’t hate it. You’re not allowed to hate this thing that’s your life.” I think it was around that time, 2019, I just moved upstate and did a pre-pandemic isolation year and finished this record for the most part. And then came back, a month and a half later the pandemic hit New York, and I was ready. [laughs] My mind was prepared for it. I was like, “All right, let’s go back into isolation mode.” And it was during that time the Spotify algorithm gave me this song called ‘I Don’t Want Nobody’ by Eddie Harris. He’s a jazz player, and the song is insane. It’s like Frank Ocean before Frank Ocean existed. It’s this funk-soul epic, and it’s so sad and desperate and beautiful. I built a little radio station just to automatically feed me new music based on this one song, and started doing watercolor painting and would just listen to music. I wasn’t really making it during the beginning of the pandemic; I was just listening over and over and over to all this music from the ‘70s, just weird kind of outsider jazz, funk, soul stuff.
Weirdly, I was painting this image of Britney Spears in her first nervous breakdown, where she shaved her head, and there’s a picture the paparazzi took of her having just broken an umbrella and scowling at the screen. I just painted that image over and over again in watercolor and listened to soul, funk, jazz out shit. Something was able to blossom there, and it’s like, “Oh, music! It can just be free and good.” Again, that ties into what Milo Nascimento was pointing to before, but something happened in that period of time that I shifted from feeling – this maybe sounds like too much, but when I didn’t feel like music was my guiding light anymore, I didn’t know what to do. It was like, “What do you do in life? If this isn’t it, what the fuck is?” A lot of this time since then has been me figuring that out and building out a life for myself in which music can exist and I can love it, but I can also just be a person who does other things too. That’s okay, and those things are important as well.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.
Autre Ne Veut’s Love, Guess Who?? is out now via Rebel Bodies Music.