Butter me up a bit and I might brag about having met, befriended and occasionally alienated more than my fair share of rock-stars, celebrity artists and popular musicians, yet the only one that’s left me some form of starstruck is Justin Pearson. Which is funny, since he’s actually a true punk lifer with zero pop ambitions! Perhaps the timing was perfect for me to be swept away by The Locust the first time they came to town – I distinctly remember waiting behind them in line at a Dunkin Donuts before my band got to open their show with Jenny Piccolo at an Allentown VFW hall in 1998, thinking how are these dudes even real – but the man is directly and indirectly responsible for so many inventive, prescient hardcore styles that I’m not sure how things would’ve shaken out without his involvement. And how underrated is The Crimson Curse, your feelings on random naked guys in the pit notwithstanding? Justin remains busier than ever, mostly touring with his band Deaf Club, but also doing a podcast, playing Swing Kids reunion gigs and presiding over at least half a dozen other projects I need to dig further into. His edition of Worst Song is the only one so far where the interviewee actually wrote a damn book about the experience… you can listen to his pick here.

JP: Man, my brain immediately went into panic mode trying to figure out which is in fact the worst, as there are quite a lot of bad ones. I have pondered this idea and I think I landed on a song. It was a collaboration with Designer Drugs called “Dead Meat”. It was so bad that I wrote a book about it called How To Lose Friends And Irritate People. I suppose that would be the song to pick, but there are so many to choose from that are total bullshit.

YGR: Is your dissatisfaction with “Dead Meat” solely a personal thing? For my ears, the beat is fairly typical EDM for its era, but your vocals bring the manic energy I think we’ve all come to expect from a Justin Pearson vocal track. Is it wrong that I think I like it?

JP: Well, first off, thank you. I respect you and your resumé. But I think you may have nailed it, specifically with the point of it being “fairly typical EDM”. That is the first issue. I had also written a few verses, and a “chorus” which was scrapped. I assumed I was tracking vocals on a demo, or a version which would be built upon, but nope, it was just farted out there as such. With EDM, I have high(er) standards for what I consider good. Artists like Panicker, Otto von Schirach and MSTRKRFT are more in my realm. But using that criticism there as a departure point, I ended up writing that book partially based on my experience with Designer Drugs. As much as I assume I talked shit, I really wanted to point the finger at myself for being a dumbass and doing that collaboration. I should have stayed in my lane.

YGR: What do you consider to be ‘your lane’, exactly? I feel like you’ve successfully ventured in, out of and around hardcore for many years now… the opposite of a purist.

JP: I’d say my lane would be a bit less conventional, and maybe more creative, which does not translate to “good”, or “talented”, or certainly “successful”. But, if you consider the stuff I am known for, The Locust, Deaf Club, Dead Cross, etc., it’s not in the realm of, say, subpar EDM. I ventured into the EDM lane with a band called All Leather, and that seems more adjacent to the stuff I rambled off, as opposed to your average dance music.

YGR: Hypothetically, let’s say you are invited to contribute vocals to some other straight-up dance project of your choice. Is there a dream collab that comes to mind? Or are you just totally burned on the idea of main-stage EDM from “Dead Meat”?

JP: Oh, I’m not burned on the idea at all. I love a lot of EDM, but I do have “musical standards” for the most part. The artists I listed – Panicker, MSTRKRFT, Otto Von Schirach – are all people who I’d love to collaborate with. I grew up obsessing over bands like Sigue Sigue Sputnik and Wall of Voodoo, and I’m a big fan of a lot of electronic cumbia-based music, too.

Let’s get a little personal: when my most successful high-school band got started (where many of my worst songs reside), Daughn Gibson was right beside me, also screaming into cheap plastic microphones in bedrooms, sheds and garages that belonged to neither of our particular families. It’s been an absolute pleasure to witness his artistry bloom over the ensuing decades, not only talented in all of the supremely boring ways (production, editing, mixing, musicianship) but also by the most important metrics that no amount of money, time or effort can buy. I’m talking the magical shock of sheer WTF creativity – aesthetics and concepts and execution that pre-date trends by a decade or still haven’t gestated long enough for the rest of the world and his adoring peer group (myself included) to fully grasp. He just self-released his newest full-length, Lake Mary not mysterious – it’s his first true album in eleven years – and it’s as opulent, striking and tragic as anything bearing his name. Meticulous yet feral, he’s like an island castaway who built a paradise mansion out of shipwrecked material on Lake Mary. I’ve released a couple of his albums on my indefinitely-hibernating label White Denim, and have probably heard more of his cutting-room-floor songs than anyone else, so this new interview series seemed like the perfect opportunity to get him on record with the one Daughn Gibson song he likes the least. You can listen along to it here.

YGR: Alright, so I don’t think I would have predicted your choice of “I Let Him Deal” if you gave me a dozen guesses. Why’s this your worst?

DG: Well truth be told it started out as my favorite song on Carnation. In fact, I drove out to Chicago mainly to get my man Jim Elkington’s chilly, serpentine guitar style laid down on top of it. And I thought what he did on this was awesome, to be honest its only redeeming quality. But prior to bringing it to Randall Dunn, the producer of Carnation, the song was quiet, dreadful, dreamy, with percussive elements so teensy that the song felt like malarial delirium. I wasn’t quite done shaping, but I knew that there was room for a more dynamic chorus, and probably only something a studio session could deliver. I wanted the thing to feel like waking up from a gentle nightmare on a raft in a slow moving river into a paralyzing death by orgasm or something.

So our first stop on the recording tour was in LA at Matt Chamberlain’s studio. And again this song was at the forefront of my mind, not as a single really, but something I thought was the most evocative, a centerpiece if you will. Matt is a brilliant drummer, Randall a brilliant producer, what could go wrong? But I have a strong belief that an entire song is shaped by the sonic character of a snare drum. This, unfortunately, is modern music making and the snare is the fulcrum by which all of culture spins. So we tracked drums, I told Matt to go with the guts. And what he played was something so huge, so burly, and so sharp, that I immediately got tricked by its power. Now the song takes a new direction in my mind. Big mistake. I was already off course, but it’s something I’d agreed with.

The problem with a big snare drum in a verse is you leave nothing for a death by orgasm chorus. It was a tense, dreadful verse, with smoky, mutating Lynch guitars, only now with a big ol’ crack every two and four. So we sauntered up to Seattle to finish with other musicians. And because of that snare drum, we had to start adding competitive sonics; beefy guitar strums, gnarled synths, the whole thing. Maybe even a freakin’ horn. Problem is, the chorus was already built with subtle washes, and kind of complicated vocal melodies and harmonies. It’s propulsive, but not something that asked for the musical equivalent of Mankind falling from a sixteen-foot tall cage onto an announcers table. And that was when I knew something was really wrong. Now we’re chasing around bigness in a song that wanted to be creeping and seductive, but way smaller. Like a hot, but evil, fairy.

So the entire time during mixing I’m just wincing. Everything cool is getting washed away in large, stray sonic ideas. I protested but keep getting reassured that it’s fine. I’m telling you the outburst bubbling up in me about this mess would have destroyed the entire session right there, I was feeling very Klaus Kinski about it. But you get second guessing in the presence of maybe more experienced producers who you respect and admire. So I just shut the fuck up.

At the end of it, we added so much horseshit to that damned chorus, just to get it to keep up with a snare drum that was already leaving the song bereft of dynamics in the verses. Chasing around a Sasquatch when I had something menacingly delicate in the first half hour of the song’s life. So yeah, if it were possible to break the “skip” button on your music system of choice I would have done it every time this song was on deck.

YGR: Can you think of any instances where a sort of ‘too many cooks in the kitchen’ moment struck gold for you? Or one where perhaps your initial vision was switched up for something you liked more in the end?

DG: I’m usually tyrannical in a studio setting where other musicians are involved. John Baizley came into the Me Moan sessions completely hobbled by a terrible accident Baroness had in England. I mean, he wanted to do the session, but in the moments of tracking, my sympathies seemed to melt away and I worked him extremely hard. Consequently, I too suffered during those sessions from extremely high blood pressure. I went to a doctor in downtown Chicago complaining of dizziness and unusual fatigue and she mentioned being one systolic point away from the ER.

So by the time of the Carnation sessions I made a conscientious effort to tolerate just about everything. The result is a record I don’t listen to very often.

But to your second question, one song I love a lot that turned around completely was called “Won’t You Climb” on Me Moan. I tell you I grinded on that bastard for months trying to unlock what I insanely thought could be Glenn Campbell mixed with something off Lil Wayne’s Tha Carter III, mixed with “Steal My Sunshine” or some other 90’s Mixolydian slice of heaven. Anyway in this case persistence paid off by one single lift of a bass note going into the chorus. Song unlocked and under my nose the entire time.