His Name Is Alive

(Above [L-R]: His Name is Alive's War Defever and Andy FM. Photo by Hitoko Sakai)

You’d think they’d never seen a washing machine before. That’s what went through my mind when Warren Defever and the His Name Is Alive touring ensemble thanked me profusely as the spin cycle commenced. But that’s a low-budget indie-rock tour: you crash on couches, floors and occasionally beds, and if there’s a washer/dryer? Ka-ching!

Almost a decade after that stop, Defever (now calling himself “War”) is loading up the van again. Having cut the band loose when his contract with the 4AD label ended in 2002, Defever has a new HNIA album, Detrola, and is happy to have an excuse to leave his Detroit studio behind.

“It turned out [that] I want to be an artist,” he explains. “I tried really hard to do my thing, and there’s not always room for that. I decided I just had to make a His Name Is Alive record. I kept trying to make other bands into my band. I’m always like, ‘here’s a new song title,’ ‘try this one.’ We were recording The Stooges and I was like, you should have a song called ‘No Shirt,’ because you never wear a shirt. And then I got fired.”

Detrola is fully a product of the Motor City, an almost perversely creative place, Defever says. “It’s like England after WWII, [which] was a good time for the arts,” he says. “It’s a really special place. One of the reasons I like to travel is to see how healthy a city can be, and then come back here and go, ‘holy crap, I can’t believe I’m still alive.’ “In Detroit, you park your car outside a club—even if you’re playing there—and you can’t leave anything of value visible. ... I mean a scrap of paper, a paper clip, a bottle cap, an old towel—these are all things I know that people have had stolen from their cars. It doesn’t make any sense. Why does a hobo need an old towel?”