Jimmy Curry Q&A

Your name:
Jimmy Curry.

Where are you from?

Portland, Oregon.

How would you describe yourself?

I'm manic, heartbroken, obsessed, and sleep deprived. My music lately has been really loud and funky. I'm so tired all the time. Whenever I perform I get pooped from all the shouting.

Who are your main influences musically?

Beck, Black Moth Super Rainbow, Deerhunter, Wilco, My Bloody Valentine, Hank Williams, Merzbow, Neu!, Broadcast, Sonic Youth, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, 2 Chainz. 

What do you hope to achieve in music?

I want it all...! I want to make music that is never boring and always different and also really exquisite and good. Most ambitiously, I want to write songs that people remember things by. Weird moods they got that they flash back to when they hear my tunes. I want to be famous. I want to change the game. I want to make people dance and weep as if something important has happened.

What has been the highlight of your career so far and why?

A show I did at Reed College a couple months ago as I was finishing up my electro-pop album Apocalypse Freaks. It was something of a concept show: I enlisted some friends to dress up in exercise apparel (headbands, sweatpants, etc.) and be my backup dancers as I danced and sang along to pre-recorded backing tracks blasting on a PA system.

The setting was perfect. I bought a couple of six-packs of bright green gatorades to surround us, and the only lights on were these red LED strips on the ground that made the whole thing look like a gym from hell. The sound was great, the moves were funky, and the crowd loved it. It was so much fun!!

I loved this performance because I felt very artistically fulfilled, yes, but also especially because I really felt like I was part of a creative community that night. Noisy soul-screech looper Consumer (http://soundcloud.com/consumermp) played, as well as a brilliant performance art duo called Yah-Eef-Ay (their whole performance that night is on Youtube: https://youtube.com/watch?v=-LB99lixwao).

It was all so good!! I have never felt more welcome than I have in Portland. Nights like that are what I live for.

And what's the moment you want to forget?

There have been really bad times I just won't talk about. Most of high school, maybe. My music wasn't good yet and neither were my friends. A lot of toil and a lot of waiting in those days.

If you had to pick just one of your songs to represent your music, what would it be and why?

That is so hard!! I work in albums and streams and concepts! But if I had to pick: maybe the song Charlene, which closes my lo-fi noise rock album Never Been Lonely. It's about girls, it's about loneliness, it's about the immense wonder of being, and god damn if that isn't what most of my music is about. Sonically I pick it because it goes different ways; it's quiet and it's loud and it's rhythmic and it wilts too.

It's a folk song, which is funny because I've recorded almost no folk songs despite writing many dozens of them by now. Maybe I pick Charlene, then, because it hints at my music's potential. I think I've made good stuff now, but I don't think I've begun to approach the good I'm truly capable of.

Where can we listen to it?

http://jamescurryiv.com/tagged/charlene

Where can we find out more about your music?

jamescurryiv.com is the place. I also have a soundcloud, and a Facebook page, and a twitter all under the handle jamescurryiv. I have a youtube channel too (youtube.com/thethefourth) where upload music videos, demos, and other sorts of musical sketches.

Anything else you'd like to say that I forgot to ask?

Thank you for reading, if you read, and thank you for listening, if you listened. I mean what even is a book if no one reads it?