Judging by their sound and style, Purling Hiss are a very hip band. Roaring guitars, noodling solos, laid-back psychedelic style, a rich history of DIY cassette recordings — they sound “of the moment,” specifically because they evoke the best parts of 70s riffage and 90s filtered sludge that we all remember through rose-colored wayfarers. Surprisingly, lead guitarist and songwriter Mike Polizze (who got his start as guitarist for Birds Of Maya) didn’t arrive at this winning combination through a steady diet of the right kind of records. Rather, he diligently practiced pentatonic scales on his Stratocaster until eventual songwriting maturity caught up with him.
This early focus on musicianship lends Polizze’s work, and Purling Hiss as a unit, a tight, competent edge — readily apparent on their new album, Weirdon. The new effort magnifies Purling Hiss’s steadily crystalizing, clarifying, sweetening sound, so apparent on 2013’s Water on Mars. Before Purling Hiss bring their latest guitar solos and pop hooks on tour in support of Weirdon, Polizze spoke with Tiny Mix Tapes from his home in Philadelphia to discuss his rock roots, early tape experiments, and why he’s stuck with the same guitar for more than 15 years.
How are things going for you right now? With Weirdon about to drop, what’s up in the world of Purling Hiss?
Yeah, it’s a week from the release. We’ve got some shows coming up with J Mascis, starting the day after the record comes out. Then we’re home for a little bit, and then we’re gonna do like five weeks. Right now we’re gearing up for tour, stuff like that.
What’s going on right now today is, right around the corner from where I live — it’s a residential neighborhood — but right around the corner there’s some sort of huge warehouse or factory and they have huge 18 wheelers who try to make this turn. I just sit here and watch them struggle every time and a lot of times they just swipe cars — it’s so annoying. There’s so much construction going on in this neighborhood, too, because there’s so much gentrification and development going on. So right now I’m running away from all the noise.
As far as the band goes, we have new members. We’ve been practicing a whole lot but it’s been going really well.
So the recording of Weirdon went well?
Yeah man, we recorded the album at Black Dirt Studio, which is about three hours from here. The guy who [produced] it was Jason Meagher. He recorded Steve Gunn’s album, he’s worked with Blues Control and Jack Rose. We recorded it last winter — it was a great experience.
I got to see Purling Hiss perform in Cincinnati during your tour last year…
Was that with Dinosaur Jr.?
It was! That was a great show.
Thanks. Yeah, I wish we could do a whole tour with them.
I thought it was interesting because, judging from your guitar sound, I assumed Dinosaur Jr. may have been an influence on you at some point. I was wondering what it was like for you now, with 80s and 90s bands like Dinosaur Jr. reforming and touring, and all of a sudden you’re actually opening for them after all these years!
It’s fucking awesome. We did three shows back when you saw us, and we did another show with them a year later. It’s kinda surreal, last time we played with them, standing around hanging out with Lou Barlow and J [Mascis].
I never ever thought we sounded like Dinosaur Jr. [until people started saying so]. I always liked them — I remember borrowing my older cousin’s Green Mind tape when I was in sixth grade […] But they were not on the top of my list. I listened to that stuff in general when I was a kid because that was what was around, and then I got into Hendrix so I started doing the [guitar] solo stuff. It’s funny how I get those comparisons. I’m fine with it. I don’t think the structures of our songs are like [Dinosaur Jr.], but maybe the style — you know, loud indie-rock with solos or whatever. I embrace it. I love You’re Living All Over Me so much.
To be around them and on tour with them is great. It’s an honor for me, I’m super-grateful. Playing around all these older people who were around in the 80s and 90s is really great. We did a tour with [Stephen] Malkmus and the Jicks. We [also] got to open for […] Mission of Burma a few years ago.
There’s a lot more people here, just in general. I just moved back into this neighborhood, in the same exact house I used to live in about five or six years ago, when it was way different. There’s a lot more development, As I was complaining about earlier: they’re building new houses, knocking down old houses, people are selling their property. It’s bittersweet. Development can be annoying, but it can be cool to walk around the neighborhood and see a lot of people in the neighborhood now.
I was having a conversation with a friend earlier, and they were insisting all the best riff-rock happend in the 70s. Do you feel the same way, or was there something about 80s and 90s rock that set it apart for you?
I was a kid in the 90s. I didn’t grow up as a teenager in the 70s and 80s where Mission of Burma and all the punk stuff happened and that culture grew. [The punk culture] grew away from the 70s rock. I embraced the 70s rock because I wasn’t a kid who was bored of it — it was fresh to me. I got into playing guitar when I was a teenager and just got into classic rock because I didn’t know what to listen to. I got into punk a year or two after than, and by the time I was 18 I was buying punk records.
[I got into] psych stuff later and then started combining stuff. But the 70s were the heyday for the riff-rock, and it’s definitely on my palate, creatively.
As someone who clearly has practiced their instrument a lot, I wonder how you feel about the abundance of bands, both in the 90s and now, who seem to revel in hipster sloppiness — like it’s cool not to try. I feel like these type of bands might share a lot of genre descriptors with Purling Hiss, but when you guys play, you sound really tight.
Yeah, I think I came from more of a “musical” background. I grew into [the music] I’m into now. I think a lot of people don’t come from a musical background, they come from a record-collecting background. They reject musicianship because […] you can use your instrument to make cool sounds but the musicianship doesn’t have to be there. I like that because you can be all about an idea — you don’t have to be a great musician to push an idea.
I think I peaked, technically, in my late teens and early twenties. Then I tried to strip away some of the guitar wank and use the building blocks of whatever my knowledge was to just make good songs.
We’re not like a prog band or a total jam band, but I think it’s good — if you got chops, man, show it! Some people really can’t play and they act like they’re in a rock band. You’re just standing there holding a guitar like it’s a necklace and you’re hitting all these pedals. Some bands just have really loud amps and they hit a delay pedal, then a Big Muff and a wah pedal, and it just sounds like a wall of psych freak-out. But when you strip that all away, can you actually play?
There was a time when I was a teenager, when I was much less informed on records to reference and bands who were actually good. I knew how to play but I didn’t know how to use. [Eventually] I tried to move into using [musicianship] as a tool to make good songs. It’s cool to be inept in some ways, but there’s a sweet spot there where you can combine sloppiness and technique. You have to be creative with it.
I think I peaked, technically, in my late teens and early twenties. Then I tried to strip away some of the guitar wank and use the building blocks of whatever my knowledge was to just make good songs.
It sounds like Weirdon is going further down the trajectory you started with Water on Mars; cleaner, tighter, and more hooks.
I wanted to [do] that for this record. I just ended up going into the basement and demoing and writing. It’s expansive in some ways. It’s a little more layered and cerebral. I always liked writing poppy stuff too, and that’s where I wanted to go with this. Not so say that it’s gonna keeping going in a certain direction. I could pull back and do a loud, scuzzy record next time.
It hearkens back to some of the older stuff too — like the Public Service Announcement album. That was a little bit more cerebral, dreamy, more layered instrumentation. That’s kinda what happened with this one.
I think sometimes people think we’re supposed to evolve [along a certain line] and are surprised or maybe disappointed when we take sorta a lateral move. But what am I supposed to do, make the same record again?
Earlier this year, Drag City re-released the Dizzy Polizzy album, your early tapes as Purling Hiss. You’ve come a long way from those bedroom recordings. What’s it like to hear those songs again?
It was cool. It never really went away for me. I’m glad it got to see the light of day. That’s some of my earliest stuff. I had a four-track since 1999 and between 1999 and 2004 I made bunch of recordings that may or may not ever surface, because a lot of them were really “formative years.” But that Dizzy Polizzy record was written and recorded in Philly starting in 2004 up to 2009.
There were some recordings I whittled down to a little collection. I think it’s a good representation of what was going on with me back then. The “bad” recordings and production… It was on a four-track [cassette tape recorder], you know. It’s like looking through a window.
That’s kind of how I like music too. I feel we’re living in a time when rock could be anything. It could be alive, but you sort of look at it like a thing of the past. So to make these recordings are like little nostalgic windows into the past. I feel like Dizzy Polizzy has a couple songs like that: one song might sound like a folksy song from the 70s and another one sounds like an AM [radio] B-side or some shit. I don’t know what that means [laughs].
It has a blurriness to it. Rather than just being a band, it’s like looking at a picture where you’re’ looking at the past, like a memory. That’s how Weirdon is in some ways. I tried to do all three: the past, the present, and the future. I like to reference nostalgic stuff because that’s what I grew up listening to. I try to make it into a present thing.
I embraced the 70s rock because I wasn’t a kid who was bored of it — it was fresh to me. I got into playing guitar when I was a teenager and just got into classic rock because I didn’t know what to listen to. I got into punk a year or two after than, and by the time I was 18 I was buying punk records.
Some time ago, I saw an interview in which you claimed your main guitar was a relatively inexpensive Mexican-made Fender Stratocaster, the same one you’ve had since you were 15. Is that still true?
That’s still my main guitar. Since I learned on it and got comfortable with it I kept it around. It became sentimental after awhile. I ended up buying another Strat from the 70s that was kind of expensive — not super-expensive, but you know. I brought it on tour with me as a backup, but I can’t really dig into it. I can’t beat it up. I feel like it’s kind of a trophy, and I’m really not into that. Maybe one day if I have some more money and I can appreciate a couple nice guitars hanging on the wall, that might be nice for home and studio. I really do like this more expensive Strat, but I think I’m just gonna sell it, man, because I don’t need it.
It’s not practical for me to have a bunch of different guitars. I’m really simple with gear but I think [that fact] brings its own sound a little bit; between the kind of guitar I use, the kind of amp I use, the kind of strings I use, a whammy bar… It kinda has that noodly sound going on.
You had early connections with fellow Philadelphia musicians like Kurt Vile, and Adam Granduciel of War On Drugs. It’s great to see you all bursting out into the national market right now. Do you think the success you’ve all seen should be attributed to something about the Philadelphia music scene, or is it just your group of friends?
I think it’s a little of both. It was a really cool time around 2004 when people started moving into Philly and Philly started becoming more of a spot. I think that’s how we all met each other. My other band, Birds of Maya, were playing a lot back then. (It’s still going — we’re playing this weekend, actually.) We got to know Kurt and we did shows together. Adam from War On Drugs — we used to play in each other’s band. We all hung out and did shows together. It was cool, it was definitely a circle of people, a community here. And it’s still going.
There’s a lot more people here, just in general. I just moved back into this neighborhood, in the same exact house I used to live in about five or six years ago, when it was way different. There’s a lot more development, As I was complaining about earlier: they’re building new houses, knocking down old houses, people are selling their property. It’s bittersweet. Development can be annoying, but it can be cool to walk around the neighborhood and see a lot of people in the neighborhood now.
I have some fond memories, when we were all just fucking around. We would play on a Friday at a warehouse for a party. Or play a small shows and have a cool, small group of friends who supported us. It felt like our own special thing. It’s still cool — when everyone’s around we get to play. I play in another band called Watery Love. We played in Philly the other night and it was cool. Kurt and Adam were both there and all the same friends. Everybody happened to be home for that week — those guys tour a lot. But it’s all still there.
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