The following is an interview conducted over email – unending thanks to Lex for taking the time to answer all of these questions.

First off, thanks for the interview. 2023 was a typically productive year for you – with so material and activity, I was curious how much of your songs come from improvisation vs composition? Do you get a loose feel and build off of it, or approach it methodically, etc?

Thanks for having me! Most of the material was written in one of three ways:

1 – I write a song on guitar or keyboard together with the words, and then create an arrangement from there on (the standard approach).

2 – I write a song instrumentally around an idea, often starting with a title, and then write words around or supplant with stuff from my notes.

3 – (To me, the most fun) I write massive segmented blocks of text and have a vague idea of what each section will sound like, and then realize each section separately.

I’m not sure I’d say there’s really improvisation as much as there are happy accidents that I then play up, especially in the adjoining process of these more sectioned songs. All three processes are heavily reliant on the fact that I am constantly writing words, words, words, all the time, phrases and rhymes and jokes that then are extrapolated into songs. The songs then come from this manic desire to see all these thousands of words I have realized into songs. If I ever lose all my notes, I’ll probably die.

You described the GIRLFRIENDS ep as “Six trax of varispeed autoaccompaniment.” To a complete novice, what exactly did that entail?

Well, it’s as simple as this: varispeeding is the process of speeding up or slowing down on a tape machine/recorder, and autoaccompaniment is the system of preset rhythms and bass/chord/melody patterns on keyboards that are meant to be triggered with the left hand while playing with the right, so as to accompany yourself. All of the songs on that EP were performed largely on my Yamaha PSS-480, and most of them made great use of the autoaccompaniment features, and to my memory almost all of them were varispeeded up (most notably TOUCH SONG).

Last time i was on your bandcamp I checked out your version of LRD’s White Awakening,- it was really lovely – and was curious what influence Les Railles Denudes and Mizutani might have for you?

Well, in high school, an online friend of mine named Alair sent me White Awakening, the Version 2 from Cable Hogue Soundtrack, and it just blew my brain open. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever heard. The obsession grew.

Mizutani began to mean everything to me. The 77 Live version of Night Of The Assassins was the exact length of my drive to school, so every morning it went on. I learned every twist and turn and feedback squeal of that thing. I tried to play guitar like him. I tried to dress like him, I got sunglasses like his. I listened to every bootleg I could find. I became Facebook friends with former LRD members, these elderly Japanese men that I had to talk to with Google Translate. I built up this delusion, this plan, that I was going to go to Japan and find him, this was around 2018, 2019, I was going to find him, and thank him, thank him for Eve Night 83, thank him for the cut of Otherwise Fallin’ In Love With on the Etcetera 7″, kiss his hand, tell him he taught me everything, that he showed me what I needed to do.

This delusion wavered in and out for a couple years, until October ’21, when they announced that Mizutani died in 2019. It was a really rough day, I recorded that version either that day or the day after. Maybe it’s delusional, but the thought that I was still able to hear his music, to be alive at least while he was still alive, that really means something to me. A very special person to me. 
I actually really do like how they’re handling these reissues and remasters, too. Citta 93 is revelatory.

Speaking more on influences, so much of your music sounds so disparate and different from each other. In Girlfriend Song, you mention Blaze Foley, The Shaggs, Haruomi Hosono, etc. I was curious, do you go into tracks with specific musical inspirations in mind?

All I’ll say is to read “The Sound Rocker’s Prayer,” and to know that there are no new chords, melodies, rhythms, at least none that are more effective than we have now 🙂

On Preteen On Omegle Blues you briefly mention growing up with unsupervised Internet access – something that nearly everyone our age can attest to as something that fucks you up and informs your worldview in equal measure. Has having a following online changed how you interact with Internet?

Oh Christ. Today I posted a photo of me at a bar where I look very good with some stupid joke and it has like 20k likes. There’s all these guys DMing me asking if I am “selling content,” there’s TERFs battling it out in the replies, just this constant, constant stream of notifications, all these likes, retweets, people telling me how beautiful I am, how much of a man I am. Why don’t I just mute it? I can’t. I love it. I have always been a whore for attention but my modicum of success online has only made it worse. It’s not like it even helps my art along at all, these people don’t give a shit about my art, it’s all just for me to get validation, for them to have something to jerk off to. I don’t think I’m really that funny online, so I have to resort to just being beautiful instead.

It is exactly the same impulse as being on Omegle when you’re 13. You aren’t loved. You are dysphoric, you are dysmorphic, you hate yourself. You want to be loved. You want to be told you’re pretty. You can pretend the men are gross and creep you out but you’d stop going on there if it didn’t turn you on in some way to see them turned on. They desire you. I just wish they’d all stop comparing me to anime characters.

You’ve kind of alluded to “over-sharing” in your music before, was that sort of earnest expression difficult to put out at the start? Especially when dealing with sex, exes, death, etc.

It took me a long time to write songs that were about anything, because I couldn’t think about anything, I didn’t feel anything but dull pain for so long. Finally, around the time of SHAME MUSIC, things were coming to a head, and I was for the first time able to use songs as a tool to process very complex emotions.

This outburst subsided as I then returned to what you could call “pure,” or “impersonal” pop songs, until I became very close with a former friend and writing partner who’s work really affected me and kind of infected me with this Life As Art impulse, an impulse that is self destructive and intoxicating and so incredibly beautiful, something I am still trying to shake. It corrupts your soul, it feels like you are converting your life energy directly into art.

You get over the fear of the subjects hearing the songs a lot faster when they hate you (then it becomes a fear that they don’t hear it).

Over three years after Shame Music, and it seems like it was the first of yours that a lot of people heard (it was certainly my first exposure to your music, at any rate.) What are your thoughts on it after all this time?

I mostly think about how badly mixed it is, I think about how I was in so much blinding pain that I wasn’t able to see how I could have arranged these songs better, all just nitpicky things. It is very important I made it. I think I would be dead if I hadn’t made it. 

I am putting out SHAME MUSIC 2 soon, which will be a single of a new rerecording of the title track with a new epilogue and some other stuff. Confronting the past. That song has only gotten truer with time but things are not so absolute as I make them out to be. 

What’s been inspiring you lately? In art or life.

The movie Yeast by Mary Bronstein. The Color Wheel by Alex Ross Perry. Deconstructing Harry. The way my girlfriend’s hair falls in curls and glows in the sunlight. Her band I played in briefly, Untitled Noise Night. Having stimulant fueled conversations with my roommates in the kitchen. The Blue “Gene” Tyranny live album Trust In Rock. Phone calls with my best friend every night where I help him pick out outfits and gossip. Songs other people have written about murdering me. Texts from strangers fantasizing about murdering me. The band UNN went on tour with, Queer Bait. A combination of, if not somewhere between spite and forgiveness, if that is a place. Bootcut denim has been with me for a year now and is being supplanted by bell bottoms. 

Listening to the Live In Queens 11/19/21 session, I was curious how you find the translation from studio recording to live performance, and if there was any difficulties in the change?

It’s funny, the recording you mention, that was the very first iteration of the band, on our second show. We were not locked in, we were not there yet. As time went on, the songs from SHAME MUSIC evolved, each new member of the band bringing something new and leaving it as they rotated out. I believe the forms of I Need The Angel and SHAME MUSIC that existed at the very end of the Shame Music All Star Band were the very best those songs could be in that kind of lineup, and far superior to the album versions. It’s about allowing collaboration into something that was created in such isolation. But of course, the band is gone now, so I can only just watch videos back over and over and sigh.

Shame Music Into Perfect Dancer Live

Final question – What are your plans for 2024 and the future?

I am going to leave Boston. I am going to kiss my girlfriend a lot. She and I have started a new band called Small Womens and are gonna start releasing stuff. More stuff with Ezra Furman. Probably not a ton of “Alex Walton” music, other than Everyone Can See How Much You’ve Grown and SHAME MUSIC 2. I’m trying to take a break, I’m really not in very good health these days. I’m writing some screenplays right now. Hopefully things are looking up. This is the year of Forgiveness Rock.

The latest Alex Walton project I WANT YOU TO KILL ME is excellent and available to buy here.

Twitter: jean cocteau vevo