Catching Up With... John Moen

For a man who’s played in more than twenty bands during his 39 years on planet Earth, the Decemberists’ John Moen is still surprisingly enthusiastic about rock ‘n roll’s endless regenerative qualities. After spending the last few years with Colin Meloy and friends—and, prior to that, with Stephen Malkmus’ Jicks, as a pivotal part of Elliott Smith’s backing band, a sometime member of the Minus 5 and as a Dharma Bum, among other musical pursuits—Moen recently released Perhapst, an eleven-track ode to attention-deficit genre hopping, with tentacles reaching into alt-country (“Aren’t You Glowing”), speed-demon power-pop (the radio-friendly “Maryanne”), pastoral Pentangle folk complete with autoharp (“HyperPlanets”) and a railroad blues, just for good measure (“Caution”). Paste caught up with Moen on the eve of his two northwest-area CD release shows, prior to the Decemberists reconvening in Portland this summer to begin work on their as-yet-unnamed next album for Capitol.

Paste: How should fans of the Decemberists or your previous projects such as the Maroons or Stephen Malkmus’ Jicks think about Perhapst? What is the provenance of the project– is it a band thing, a solo thing with friends?
John Moen: At this point I’m not all that sure, actually. (laughs) I made it a long time ago– the Maroons had broken up, I was still excited about songs and music, but didn’t have a band, didn’t even want one at that point, was more excited about studio stuff. Not that I really used a proper studio, but that was the impetus. I have a feeling I’ll always like to make songs – it’s not a very concise answer, but it’s the truth.

Paste: So when was Perhapst recorded?
Moen: Definitely before I joined the Decemberists– so probably 2005-ish? I was just done with all the recording at that time, and still a member of the Jicks at that time, too. It was a weird in-between transition time. I didn’t get the album art done until last year, though. (laughs) I should also give proper credit to Eric Lovre, who was in the Dharma Bums with me, for his help in recording the album. I played all the instruments except a couple of guest-y bits, but Eric played bass and supplied amazing creative assistance.

Paste: Well this all blows my theory, then. My thinking was that, having spent time with both Malkmus in the Jicks and Colin Meloy in the Decemberists, the two of them had rubbed off on the songwriting heard on Perhapst. But given the chronology you’ve just laid out, it’s clear that this album is entirely yours.
Moen: True, although I’d say there’s some Steve influence– maybe not so much in the writing, per se. I mean, his record collection is amazing, and being in his band for five or six years, I learned a lot about music I didn’t even know I liked—folky stuff, that kind of thing. Definitely I’d credit him with that influence—not so much wanting to be Pavement or anything like that, the first obvious step, but several steps back. It’s a little more chaotic than the Maroons– I allowed a bunch of things to happen at once and didn’t really “check” that urge at all in terms of the textures [on] the album.

Paste: If anything, since you’ve left, the Jicks have become even more of a liberal-arts collective– the latest album is pretty shaggy-sounding. Your record certainly has a Pavement moment or two, but also some pastoral, Pink Floyd kind of stuff—Pentangle. I could swear there’s an autoharp on “HyperPlanets,” right? “Caution” is more of a locomotive blues– this record is definitely an “everything but the kitchen sink” sort of affair.
Moen: Hey, don’t forget Foghat! (laughs) It’s a little mish-mashy, and friends have told me that, too– “It’s nice, John, but a little unfocused.” But that’s fine with me. It’s how I am, I suppose.

Paste: Well that squares with one of my theories about Portland– everyone plays in multiple bands, simultaneously, and our city’s reputation for being an “indie rock Mecca,” or whatever, is sort of ridiculous when you consider how random, stylistically, the typical Portland band has always been. There’s no “Portland sound” or anything remotely like it.
Moen: That’s a really great point and doesn’t get talked about that much– totally true. With this record, for me, it represents my record collection WAY better than one of the Maroons records would have. I used to get reviewed as a “pop enthusiast” and truthfully I don’t know that much about pop – rock and folk, sure. Portland’s great that way– you can be in both a new wave band and a folk band and no-one thinks that sort of thing’s a conflict of interest. (laughs)

Paste: The only thing that really did remind me of the Maroons was “Maryanne,” which has a Byrds-like twelve string and more of a power-pop throughline to the melody. Otherwise, this is entirely unlike anything you’ve recorded before.
Moen: Yeah, there’s a lot of different things on there, I guess. (laughs) The only rule I had, as cliché as it sounds, was to have no rules– to let everything go where it wanted to go.

Paste: I laughed out loud when I heard “Bornless One” in the car today– the Satan-centric lyrics are seriously funny. I just about had to pull the car over before I hurt someone, probably me!
Moen: (laughs) You’re the first person I’ve spoken with to ask me about lyrics at all. I wrote ‘em so long ago, it’s funny to think about them– they’ve been in a void somewhere, not very listenable. I’m sort of a non-believer in most stuff but I also went through a big heavy metal period as a kid, like a lot of kids I know. Now, no-one cares about Satan and rock– but at the time, I thought about it a lot, and how that kind of glued itself to artists who’ve explored that and weren’t accepted, in their time. And that was the theme behind that song. Most of them are like collages– they’re not very “to the point.” (laughs)