![]() ![]() As you can see from this list, I'm such a melody guy, I love pretty melodies and harmonies and catchy pop music. I was not very into what was very popular in my crowd – which was hardcore, emo and punk. "I have a very distinct memory of being in a band in high school and I was pretty ingrained in the classic rock cannon. I don't even know what he's talking about when he’s saying "You play glockenspiel, I’ll play drums,” you know? But it appeals to me, it speaks to me in some way." I picked that one because it’s cool, it’s got a very hip synth thing going on but it's very dark. I just recently went back and the whole record is great. "It was a record that we all loved – me and my cousin and a couple of our friends – we listened to it all the time and then we grew out of it. But we were into them and the Stone Roses and this other band called Jellyfish – these bands where there was a sonic lineage to the 60s, to experimental Beatlesque pop. Maybe one of their songs played on that MTV show 120 Minutes too. "I can only assume that the record this is on 0898 was in her collection. I guess the story here is that in early high school, my cousin who's my age and I was really close to had a sister - my other cousin – and she was into cool music and was kind of a punk type person, a Brit Pop aficionado and had good shit in her collection. And that's my job as a performer: to make the audience react the right way.” I'm myself and I make jokes and I'm self depreciating… but when I launch into a fairly serious song, there's no laughs and they're engaged. “I'm not like Robert Smith up there, you know, with the hair in front of my face. And then I take a little break and come back with the band and we play the music,” Heidecker tells me. “I do a stand-up set as my bad stand up character. He tours High School from early July - his longest stretch on the road – kicking off with a week of sold out warm-up shows at the Elysian Theatre in Los Angeles, and ending in late August with five sold-out nights at the Bell House in Brooklyn. He played a lot of lead guitar stuff, and it's just so nice and pretty and appropriate.” And it was perfect, he had all the right gear and the right attitude. ![]() It was just the three of us, song by song, building the tracks. “And then he jumped in and started playing parts on it and engineering and making it with us. “It started with him letting us use his studio – which is basically a guest-house/garage situation,” Heidecker explains. DeMarco came on board when Jonathan Rado’s schedule couldn’t align with with Heidecker’s, and former collaborator Drew Erickson suggested DeMarco could help. Heidecker’s new record High School is released next week via Matthew E White’s Spacebomb label and finds him collaborating with the likes of Mac DeMarco as he revisits his teenage years with new insight and perspective. Heidecker's music - like theirs - is a very American product, informed in parts by storytelling, hyperbole, and (sometimes grotesque) satire. Musically, he’s in a place that’s not too dissimilar to the likes of Harry Nilsson, Warren Zevon, Father John Misty and Randy Newman. Tim and Eric were crossing paths with the alternative scene long before Heidecker began his journey from making parody songs to crafting bona fide albums that side comfortably next to those of his heroes. A series of choice collaborations – among them Jonathan Rado (Foxygen), Kurt Vile and Weyes Blood’s Natalie Mering – show the reverence he’s held in by the indie world. Over the course of several records - and pivotally 2019’s What the Brokenhearted Do… and Fear of Death, released a year later – Heidecker’s earned his musical credentials too. They were doing dank memes as sketch comedy before dank memes were even a thing. It’s quirky and self-conscious to an uncomfortable extreme, punchline-free, and the joke is often that you either get it… or you don’t. Heidecker has, of course, made a name for himself with a branch of comedy he and longtime partner Eric Wareheim can justifiably claim to be unlike anything else out there. ![]()
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