The Fog of Fog

If everything were right with the world, Andrew Broder -- aka Fog, aka the man responsible for the indie-hip-hop-smash-bang-love masterpiece Ether Teeth (easily my favorite record from 2003) -- would be living in a penthouse apartment in Manhattan, eating grapes tossed into his mouth by spider monkeys and being fanned with palm leaves by Avril Lavigne and P. Diddy. This is not the case.

Broder lives in Minneapolis and records songs in what I like to think is a dank, cold basement, the one beneath Hymie's Records, the one where, along with collaborator Jonathan Wolf (aka why? of Anticon fame), he recorded the album Hymie's Basement as the band of the same name. While I won't say the record quite accomplishes what Ether Teeth did, it's nevertheless a stunning, fiercely original collection of rust-colored, lo-fi pop-hop. Smart, original, and full of lyrics like "You put your life in the hands of the highway designers/ Your stride an unforeseen side effect of the urban planner's realized blueprint dream," Hymie's Basement is yet another enchanting variation on the unique sound that I sorely wish Broder were more famous for inventing. Last week I had a chance to talk to the man himself, who, it should be made clear, I worship more than sex.

Garrett Kamps: So when we talked at South by Southwest, you said you had used my review of Ether Teeth as part of your application for a grant, is that right?

Andrew Broder: Yeah.

GK: Now, what's up with that? I would think that, what with the beautiful music you make, you'd have tons of money, and the hos and the pimped-out ride that usually goes with such things. Is that not true?

AB: That's not true. Just because you're a fan of it doesn't mean that there's a whole lot of people in the same boat. There's some, but not enough to make it so I'm flush with money.

GK: But you're piecing a living together?

AB: Yeah, I'm piecing it together. "Squeaking by," as we like to call it in the industry.

GK: That strikes me as totally unjust. Maybe it's just my obsession with you and your music, but I've taken it upon myself, beginning with this conversation, to figure out how we can correct that situation.

AB: I really appreciate that.

GK: So how can we fix this?

AB:Goddamn -- if I knew .... [Broder turns away from the phone to address his wife.] Hey, honey, Garrett's going to try to improve my career. [He returns to our conversation.] I don't know how to do that. I'm not good at things like that.

GK: I was thinking: This guy Ashton Kutcher, he's really famous, and this guy J-Kwon --

AB: Who?

GK: J-Kwon. He's got that big No. 1 single: "Everybody in the crowd gettin' tipsy." [Note: It's actually "club," not "crowd."]

AB: Oh, OK. His name's J-Kwon?

GK: Yeah. The point is, they're famous, so maybe we could tweak your image to kind of ... maybe you could host a TV show on MTV?

AB: Huh?

GK: Or work with the Track Boyz?

AB: Who?

GK: They're these famous producers in St. Louis. They're part of that movement to put two "r"s in words that have one "r." Like, "Right thurr."

AB: OK. They're called the Track Boyz?

GK: Yeah, I think their name's spelled with a "ph" and a "w." But anyway, do you have any ideas like that? Ideas for a TV show you could host or something?

AB: Ummm ... no. I don't. We got rid of our television awhile ago, and it was one of the best decisions I think I've ever made in my life, so I'm not really up to speed on anything like that, and I don't think I'd wanna be.

GK: On the Hymie's Basement album, the first track is called "21st Century Pop Song." Are you being ironic with that title? Do you actually want people to think that you're claiming to have written the 21st-century pop song?

AB: We can claim whatever we want to claim. We do live in the age of irony.

GK: Well, that brings me to my next question: It strikes me that we all want Bush out of office, but that 1) being critical of Bush is so2003, and 2) being unashamedly ironic is still, after all these years, the cool thing to do. So my thinking is that we -- the members of the media, the music community -- should embrace Bush, be his most vocal supporters. Because that will be 1) fashionable in a trucker hat, pre-2002 kind of way, and b) clear to all that we actually hate the man. Ultimately our prescient knowledge of trends is what will make people respect and follow our ideas. Thoughts?

AB: Wait, wait: So you're saying that if the left ironically supports the right, then the right will have no choice but turn around and support the left, because it's the hip thing to do? Wait, are you talking about the right, or are you talking about the swing voters? Because the swing voters are what you have to worry about.